https://hootingyard.github.io/en-gbThe complete archive of Hooting Yard on the Air, Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show of absurdist short stories, originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM and broadcast from 2004 to 2019. Published as an open collection with permission.Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission.Frank KeyThe complete archive of Hooting Yard on the Air, Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show of absurdist short stories, originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM and broadcast from 2004 to 2019. Published as an open collection with permission.episodicfalseHooting Yardhootingyard@pm.meSat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000hy0_hooting_yard_2019-07-18Thu, 18 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 Up In The Mountains 16:05 Absence Of Swans UP IN THE MOUNTAINS Dobson and Marigold Chew were up in the mountains. Dobson was wearing an ill-advised cravat, while Marigold Chew sported a leopardskin pillbox hat. They were in pursuit of a murderer, reported to have taken refuge in the mountains. Their purpose was to persuade the murderer to repent his killing spree. They had no interest in bundling him back down from the mountains to face earthly justice. They simply wanted him to repent. The murderer was Babinsky. Heavy of moustache and lumbering of gait, he had prowled the streets of Pointy Town in darkness before a botched slaying panicked him and he took to the mountains. The mountains were teeming with bears. Many, many, many of the bears were afflicted with lupus, a particular form of ursine lupus common in that mountainous region. You might think that lupine animals like wolves would be more prone to lupus than ursine animals like bears, but as I just pointed out, this was a strain of ursine lupus, not lupine lupus. There were few wolves in the mountains, but they were for the most part tremendously hale and healthy wolves. Lupus, neither ursine nor lupine but human, is an unaccountably popular disease in the television medical drama House M.D. Intriguingly, Dobson and Marigold Chew had arranged their trip to the mountains by buying tickets from a travel agency named Foreman, Cameron & Chase. These are the names of Dr House's young assistants. In a further twist so improbable that it could almost be fictional, the conductor on the train that brought them to the station at the mountain foothills was a man called Cuddy Wilson. Cuddy and Wilson are, as it happens, the other two main characters in House M.D. Not only that, but with his huge lugubrious moustache and lumbering gait, the train conductor's resemblance to the killer Babinsky was startling. There had been an unfortunate incident on the train, in the dining car, when a gung ho Dobson had removed his ill-advised cravat and tried to shove it into the conductor's mouth to incapacitate him and place him under arrest, thinking he was Babinsky. This was despite the warning words of Marigold Chew, alert to one or two subtle features of Cuddy Wilson's physiognomy which differed from that of the fugitive maniac. Dobson was lucky not to be thrown off the train, for it so happened that the conductor was an adept of Goon Fang, and he had no trouble at all disarming Dobson of the ill-advised cravat and crumpling him into the helpless posture known as Pong Gak Hoon, in which he spent the remainder of the journey. Thus, upon arrival at the mountain foothills, the pamphleteer was unable to think straight because he had missed his breakfast, and valuable hours were lost as he insisted on stopping at a snackbar where he stuffed himself with bloaters and Special K and sausages. Let us treat ourselves to a bird's eye view of the terrific mountains. If we imagine we are hovering directly above them, hundreds of feet in the air, at cloud level perhaps, we can draw a triangle between three points. Call them A, B and C. At A, we have the snackbar in the foothills, wherein we find Dobson and Marigold Chew. At B, we have an encampment of mountain bears, many stricken with ursine lupus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-07-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 Up In The Mountains 16:05 Absence Of Swans UP IN THE MOUNTAINS Dobson and Marigold Chew were up in the mountains. Dobson was wearing an ill-advised cravat, while Marigold Chew sported a leopardskin pillbox hat. They were in pursuit of a murderer, reported to have taken refuge in the mountains. Their purpose was to persuade the murderer to repent his killing spree. They had no interest in bundling him back down from the mountains to face earthly justice. They simply wanted him to repent. The murderer was Babinsky. Heavy of moustache and lumbering of gait, he had prowled the streets of Pointy Town in darkness before a botched slaying panicked him and he took to the mountains. The mountains were teeming with bears. Many, many, many of the bears were afflicted with lupus, a particular form of ursine lupus common in that mountainous region. You might think that lupine animals like wolves would be more prone to lupus than ursine animals like bears, but as I just pointed out, this was a strain of ursine lupus, not lupine lupus. There were few wolves in the mountains, but they were for the most part tremendously hale and healthy wolves. Lupus, neither ursine nor lupine but human, is an unaccountably popular disease in the television medical drama House M.D. Intriguingly, Dobson and Marigold Chew had arranged their trip to the mountains by buying tickets from a travel agency named Foreman, Cameron & Chase. These are the names of Dr House's young assistants. In a further twist so improbable that it could almost be fictional, the conductor on the train that brought them to the station at the mountain foothills was a man called Cuddy Wilson. Cuddy and Wilson are, as it happens, the other two main characters in House M.D. Not only that, but with his huge lugubrious moustache and lumbering gait, the train conductor's resemblance to the killer Babinsky was startling. There had been an unfortunate incident on the train, in the dining car, when a gung ho Dobson had removed his ill-advised cravat and tried to shove it into the conductor's mouth to incapacitate him and place him under arrest, thinking he was Babinsky. This was despite the warning words of Marigold Chew, alert to one or two subtle features of Cuddy Wilson's physiognomy which differed from that of the fugitive maniac. Dobson was lucky not to be thrown off the train, for it so happened that the conductor was an adept of Goon Fang, and he had no trouble at all disarming Dobson of the ill-advised cravat and crumpling him into the helpless posture known as Pong Gak Hoon, in which he spent the remainder of the journey. Thus, upon arrival at the mountain foothills, the pamphleteer was unable to think straight because he had missed his breakfast, and valuable hours were lost as he insisted on stopping at a snackbar where he stuffed himself with bloaters and Special K and sausages. Let us treat ourselves to a bird's eye view of the terrific mountains. If we imagine we are hovering directly above them, hundreds of feet in the air, at cloud level perhaps, we can draw a triangle between three points. Call them A, B and C. At A, we have the snackbar in the foothills, wherein we find Dobson and Marigold Chew. At B, we have an encampment of mountain bears, many stricken with ursine lupus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-07-1830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-07-04Thu, 04 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:29 Goofy, Macabre 19:13 Tremendous Potato Urgency 24:27 For Flute Accompaniment GOOFY, MACABRE One of the difficulties that beset Joost Van Dongelbraacke throughout his career as a so-called "suburban shaman" was the ruinous cost of insurance. Having been dragged through the courts by a Pointy Town quantity surveyor who claimed emotional distress, disfigurement and loss of earnings after being entranced into a week-long state of whirling ecstatic frenzy, Van Dongelbraacke vowed never again to practise his mystic arts without being covered. His first approach was to a greasy insurance agent with an unfortunate cowlick of hair who dithered and faffed and seemed more intent on his executive desktop bonsai garden than on the urgency of the suburban shaman's business. The next three people he consulted were by turns lost in wistfulness, egg-bound, and unseemly, and one of them failed to provide Van Dongelbraacke with a suitable chair in which to sit during their appointment. He was ushered into a seat that emitted pneumatic hisses and tilted and swivelled on tubular steel pistons. It was, Van Dongelbraacke thought, the most unshamanic chair in which he had ever tried to sit. He judged each of the three to be unsuitable. And then one evening in a tavern the suburban shaman struck up a conversation with a mountebank who was passing through Pointy Town on his way to a seaside psychic smorgasbord. Ferns and berries decked the brim of this mountebank's hat. His visage was half flesh, half mascara. At a certain angle you could have mistaken him for the god Baal. It was difficult to imagine that he had once been an actuary, but that was indeed the case, and he had maintained many friendships with past office colleagues in the insurance industry. Listening attentively to Van Dongelbraacke's plight as the two of them sank pint after pint of diluted rosemary-and-hibiscus syrup on the tavern balcony, looking out over the filth-strewn fields which stretched unbroken to the horizon, the mountebank eventually took a card out of his pocket and handed it to the shaman. "This is the man you need," he said, "His premiums are ridiculously expensive, you may be alarmed by his taste in cloisonnee enamel ware, and never, ever try to make him laugh. But those things aside, he is as fine an insurance man as you will find on the terrestrial globe." Van Dongelbraacke was puzzled by this reference to a globe, for in his belief system the earth was cylindrical, tapered at one end and ineffably mysterious at the other. But he liked and trusted the mountebank, whose pincer-liked perspicuity appealed to him, as did the hat-brim decked with ferns and berries, a look which the suburban shaman was to ape in the coming years. Six weeks later, after a particularly exhausting session of communal hysteria around a bonfire in one of those filthy fields, Van Dongelbraacke took the bus to O'Houlihan's Wharf. He had the insurance man's card in his pocket, and berries on the brim of his hat. The ferns, he decided, would have to wait. At the time of which I write, the pier at that brine-soaked hellhole had not yet collapsed, and it was in a booth at the far end, a mile or more out to sea, that the suburban shaman came face to face with Jean-Claude Unanugu. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-07-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:29 Goofy, Macabre 19:13 Tremendous Potato Urgency 24:27 For Flute Accompaniment GOOFY, MACABRE One of the difficulties that beset Joost Van Dongelbraacke throughout his career as a so-called "suburban shaman" was the ruinous cost of insurance. Having been dragged through the courts by a Pointy Town quantity surveyor who claimed emotional distress, disfigurement and loss of earnings after being entranced into a week-long state of whirling ecstatic frenzy, Van Dongelbraacke vowed never again to practise his mystic arts without being covered. His first approach was to a greasy insurance agent with an unfortunate cowlick of hair who dithered and faffed and seemed more intent on his executive desktop bonsai garden than on the urgency of the suburban shaman's business. The next three people he consulted were by turns lost in wistfulness, egg-bound, and unseemly, and one of them failed to provide Van Dongelbraacke with a suitable chair in which to sit during their appointment. He was ushered into a seat that emitted pneumatic hisses and tilted and swivelled on tubular steel pistons. It was, Van Dongelbraacke thought, the most unshamanic chair in which he had ever tried to sit. He judged each of the three to be unsuitable. And then one evening in a tavern the suburban shaman struck up a conversation with a mountebank who was passing through Pointy Town on his way to a seaside psychic smorgasbord. Ferns and berries decked the brim of this mountebank's hat. His visage was half flesh, half mascara. At a certain angle you could have mistaken him for the god Baal. It was difficult to imagine that he had once been an actuary, but that was indeed the case, and he had maintained many friendships with past office colleagues in the insurance industry. Listening attentively to Van Dongelbraacke's plight as the two of them sank pint after pint of diluted rosemary-and-hibiscus syrup on the tavern balcony, looking out over the filth-strewn fields which stretched unbroken to the horizon, the mountebank eventually took a card out of his pocket and handed it to the shaman. "This is the man you need," he said, "His premiums are ridiculously expensive, you may be alarmed by his taste in cloisonnee enamel ware, and never, ever try to make him laugh. But those things aside, he is as fine an insurance man as you will find on the terrestrial globe." Van Dongelbraacke was puzzled by this reference to a globe, for in his belief system the earth was cylindrical, tapered at one end and ineffably mysterious at the other. But he liked and trusted the mountebank, whose pincer-liked perspicuity appealed to him, as did the hat-brim decked with ferns and berries, a look which the suburban shaman was to ape in the coming years. Six weeks later, after a particularly exhausting session of communal hysteria around a bonfire in one of those filthy fields, Van Dongelbraacke took the bus to O'Houlihan's Wharf. He had the insurance man's card in his pocket, and berries on the brim of his hat. The ferns, he decided, would have to wait. At the time of which I write, the pier at that brine-soaked hellhole had not yet collapsed, and it was in a booth at the far end, a mile or more out to sea, that the suburban shaman came face to face with Jean-Claude Unanugu. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-07-0430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-27Thu, 27 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 The Horrible Cave : Part Four 07:54 Thousands Of Unusual And Arresting Facts About Birds 23:30 Eclectric Oil 23:45 Crushed And Squashed THE HORRIBLE CAVE : PART FOUR I stared at the cows, and the cows stared back. They showed no sign of letting me pass. And then it dawned on me that they must have been sent as emissaries to stop me returning to the prog rock bewilderment home where Primrose tended to ghouls. The cows were trying to save me from becoming a ghoul myself, and urging me, in their quiet, cow-like way, to turn around, and to return in the direction of the horrible cave! I span around and pranced off with renewed vigour in my step and a sense that I had a mission to fulfil. Someone, or something, must have sent those cows, and whoever or whatever it was emboldened me now. Soon I reached the blasted heath, and I unwrapped myself from the flag and fashioned it into a sail, and as if on cue a howling wind was dinning in my ears and the wind caught my impromptu sail and I was blown across that hideous heath in a matter of minutes. I laughed as I thought of the robbers and sprites that haunted the heath, lying in wait for innocent travellers, and how astonished they must have been as I sped past them at inhuman speed. I was back in the village before the shops shut up for the afternoon. Thus I was able to exchange my bee suit for more suitable garb at a tailor's. While I waited for the pins to be removed one by one from my newly-boiled shirt, I quizzed the tailor about the events of the past few weeks, since the terrors of Saint Eustace's Day. He was forthright with replies to my jabbered questions, explaining in vast but pointless detail that the crow-attacks had been but a prelude. A prelude to what?, I demanded. He removed the final pin from my new shirt and handed it to me, and as he did so I saw that his face was suddenly stricken with terror. He was staring at something behind my left shoulder. I turned, and came face to face with Christopher Plummer. Gone were the appurtenances of the secret agent he had pretended to be. Now he stood in the full splendour of his alien weirdness, with several extra eyes gleaming on the end of stalks. I realised with sudden clarity the world-shaking import of the message the thousand cows had been sent to give me. Not only must I return to the horrible cave, but I had to take Christopher Plummer with me, and somehow stop him ever getting out again. I put on my shirt. That was just two hours ago, since when I feel as if I have lived a hundred lifetimes. I can barely credit that I am sitting, now, in the reading room of a paddle steamer, heading up river to my home, where all I hold dear awaits me. I will be faintly embarrassed to be given the hero's welcome I know is my due, to fight my way past streamers and bunting to get to my garden gate. There will be music and balloons and streamers and bunting. And tonight, in the tavern, I will be pleaded with to tell, over and over again, the tale of how I outwitted the fiendish intergalactic hellhound known as Christopher Plummer. Freshly fitted out in my new suit, I skipped past the being and out of the tailor's shop. Clearly, if he was no longer adopting his secret agent disguise, he had an agenda different from his previous visit. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 The Horrible Cave : Part Four 07:54 Thousands Of Unusual And Arresting Facts About Birds 23:30 Eclectric Oil 23:45 Crushed And Squashed THE HORRIBLE CAVE : PART FOUR I stared at the cows, and the cows stared back. They showed no sign of letting me pass. And then it dawned on me that they must have been sent as emissaries to stop me returning to the prog rock bewilderment home where Primrose tended to ghouls. The cows were trying to save me from becoming a ghoul myself, and urging me, in their quiet, cow-like way, to turn around, and to return in the direction of the horrible cave! I span around and pranced off with renewed vigour in my step and a sense that I had a mission to fulfil. Someone, or something, must have sent those cows, and whoever or whatever it was emboldened me now. Soon I reached the blasted heath, and I unwrapped myself from the flag and fashioned it into a sail, and as if on cue a howling wind was dinning in my ears and the wind caught my impromptu sail and I was blown across that hideous heath in a matter of minutes. I laughed as I thought of the robbers and sprites that haunted the heath, lying in wait for innocent travellers, and how astonished they must have been as I sped past them at inhuman speed. I was back in the village before the shops shut up for the afternoon. Thus I was able to exchange my bee suit for more suitable garb at a tailor's. While I waited for the pins to be removed one by one from my newly-boiled shirt, I quizzed the tailor about the events of the past few weeks, since the terrors of Saint Eustace's Day. He was forthright with replies to my jabbered questions, explaining in vast but pointless detail that the crow-attacks had been but a prelude. A prelude to what?, I demanded. He removed the final pin from my new shirt and handed it to me, and as he did so I saw that his face was suddenly stricken with terror. He was staring at something behind my left shoulder. I turned, and came face to face with Christopher Plummer. Gone were the appurtenances of the secret agent he had pretended to be. Now he stood in the full splendour of his alien weirdness, with several extra eyes gleaming on the end of stalks. I realised with sudden clarity the world-shaking import of the message the thousand cows had been sent to give me. Not only must I return to the horrible cave, but I had to take Christopher Plummer with me, and somehow stop him ever getting out again. I put on my shirt. That was just two hours ago, since when I feel as if I have lived a hundred lifetimes. I can barely credit that I am sitting, now, in the reading room of a paddle steamer, heading up river to my home, where all I hold dear awaits me. I will be faintly embarrassed to be given the hero's welcome I know is my due, to fight my way past streamers and bunting to get to my garden gate. There will be music and balloons and streamers and bunting. And tonight, in the tavern, I will be pleaded with to tell, over and over again, the tale of how I outwitted the fiendish intergalactic hellhound known as Christopher Plummer. Freshly fitted out in my new suit, I skipped past the being and out of the tailor's shop. Clearly, if he was no longer adopting his secret agent disguise, he had an agenda different from his previous visit. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-2730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-20Thu, 20 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:46 Carnival And Cat 10:35 The Horrible Cave : Part Two 18:09 The Horrible Cave : Part Three CARNIVAL AND CAT On a cold wet afternoon in November 1965, Athol and Bruce and Judith and Keith let it be known that the carnival was over. The cat was out of the bag. I was but a tot at the time, with only half a dozen summers behind me, but I knew this was a call to action. If I did not do something, where would it end? First things first. I decided to put the cat back in the bag. It was a cloth bag, pink and green with a scattering of yellow dots, like the dawn rising on a buttercup-splattered meadow, with a draw-string fastener. My mother used it for keeping her buttons in--so many buttons!--until I tipped them out near the fireplace. I picked up the bag, drew it open to its full extent--impressive forward-planning for one so young!--and went in search of the cat. I waylaid Pontius--that was the name of the cat --by the wainscot in the parlour, picked him up by the scruff of the neck, and tried to shove him back into the bag. But, like most cats, Pomtius was not tractable, and he struggled in my grasp, flailing, and clawing savagely at my face. Had a passing snapper photographed the scene, it would have resembled Neon Park's cover design for the Mothers of Invention album Weasels Ripped My Flesh, although that picture was not executed until 1970, it would have shown a six-year-old boy rather than an adult male and a cat rather than a weasel, and would most likely have been black-and-white rather than full colour. Most of my memories of that time are monochrome, when I call them to mind, which is more and more often these days. Howling, I dropped Pontius, who skittered off at high speed towards the catflap and the open air. I also dropped the bag. Clutching at my bloody cheek, I went in search of my mother and bandages. Restarting the carnival would have to wait. Alackaday, I was soon distracted by other matters--a tumbler of milk, snakes and ladders, picking up buttons--and I quite forgot about the carnival. Only today, more than half a century later, have I remembered that it is up to me to get it started again. I will, I will, after I have taken a nap. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:46 Carnival And Cat 10:35 The Horrible Cave : Part Two 18:09 The Horrible Cave : Part Three CARNIVAL AND CAT On a cold wet afternoon in November 1965, Athol and Bruce and Judith and Keith let it be known that the carnival was over. The cat was out of the bag. I was but a tot at the time, with only half a dozen summers behind me, but I knew this was a call to action. If I did not do something, where would it end? First things first. I decided to put the cat back in the bag. It was a cloth bag, pink and green with a scattering of yellow dots, like the dawn rising on a buttercup-splattered meadow, with a draw-string fastener. My mother used it for keeping her buttons in--so many buttons!--until I tipped them out near the fireplace. I picked up the bag, drew it open to its full extent--impressive forward-planning for one so young!--and went in search of the cat. I waylaid Pontius--that was the name of the cat --by the wainscot in the parlour, picked him up by the scruff of the neck, and tried to shove him back into the bag. But, like most cats, Pomtius was not tractable, and he struggled in my grasp, flailing, and clawing savagely at my face. Had a passing snapper photographed the scene, it would have resembled Neon Park's cover design for the Mothers of Invention album Weasels Ripped My Flesh, although that picture was not executed until 1970, it would have shown a six-year-old boy rather than an adult male and a cat rather than a weasel, and would most likely have been black-and-white rather than full colour. Most of my memories of that time are monochrome, when I call them to mind, which is more and more often these days. Howling, I dropped Pontius, who skittered off at high speed towards the catflap and the open air. I also dropped the bag. Clutching at my bloody cheek, I went in search of my mother and bandages. Restarting the carnival would have to wait. Alackaday, I was soon distracted by other matters--a tumbler of milk, snakes and ladders, picking up buttons--and I quite forgot about the carnival. Only today, more than half a century later, have I remembered that it is up to me to get it started again. I will, I will, after I have taken a nap. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-2030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-13Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Being A Robber Baron 12:53 Botany Lesson 18:08 The Horrible Cave--I BEING A ROBBER BARON If you want to pursue a career as a robber baron, the very first step you need to take is to establish your baronetcy. You need to ensure that it has at least a patina of legitimacy, for you do not want nay-sayers and busybodies calling it into question. Youngsters who seek my advice are often surprised that wearing a burnished golden helmet while sitting astride a mighty steed is not, in itself, sufficient claim to be a baron. Of course, it is essential to have such a helmet and such a horse, no self-respecting robber baron could expect to go about his baronial robberies without them, but I'm afraid the drudgery of paperwork has to take precedence. You can pluck the name of your baronetcy out of the air, much as you might invent the name of a monster in a bedtime story for tinies, but if possible it is best to take on the appellation of a genuine baronetcy, one that has fallen into desuetude where the last baron died hundreds of years ago without issue. Many barons fell in battle in far distant lands, so a good start would be to check up on the manifests of ruinous military expeditions. Obviously, whenever a baron fell on the open battlefield, he was almost certainly unhorsed, so that serves as a reminder to you to choose your steed well, when we come to the prickly topic of steed choosing. Once you have picked an extinct baronetcy to revive, you will need a coat of arms. Don't fuddle your head too much with all those heraldry words like azure and gules and rampant and argent and couchant, just make sure you have something that pleases you and that will look good emblazoned on the shields carried proudly by your masked outriders. You might be able simply to appropriate the actual coat of arms of the dead baron you have supplanted, but to do so risks alerting the busybodies and you might be faced with hard questions you will be in no position to answer. In any case, nothing could be easier than designing a coat of arms, it really is child's play. You can even hire an orphan from Pang Hill to do the job for you. With your baronetcy secure(ish) and a spindly orphan beavering away at your coat of arms, the time has come to obtain a mighty steed. I cannot emphasise enough just how important this is. Without a suitable horse, all else is as naught. At this point, up goes the cry "But where do I find a horse?" Well, in my bailiwick, horses are usually to be found standing in fields or, if the weather is inclement, in what are known as paddocks. What you need to do is to wait until nightfall, when their human guards will all be tucked up in bed, and creep stealthily to a field or paddock armed with a torch and a bag of buns. You will use the torch to examine, in the engulfing darkness, such features of your prospective horse as its mane, fetlocks, and withers. Look closely at its musculature. Remember that the horse you choose will be galloping across the land with you astride its back for many years to come. When you have picked a suitable steed, lay a trail of buns from the field or paddock to the gates of your castle. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Being A Robber Baron 12:53 Botany Lesson 18:08 The Horrible Cave--I BEING A ROBBER BARON If you want to pursue a career as a robber baron, the very first step you need to take is to establish your baronetcy. You need to ensure that it has at least a patina of legitimacy, for you do not want nay-sayers and busybodies calling it into question. Youngsters who seek my advice are often surprised that wearing a burnished golden helmet while sitting astride a mighty steed is not, in itself, sufficient claim to be a baron. Of course, it is essential to have such a helmet and such a horse, no self-respecting robber baron could expect to go about his baronial robberies without them, but I'm afraid the drudgery of paperwork has to take precedence. You can pluck the name of your baronetcy out of the air, much as you might invent the name of a monster in a bedtime story for tinies, but if possible it is best to take on the appellation of a genuine baronetcy, one that has fallen into desuetude where the last baron died hundreds of years ago without issue. Many barons fell in battle in far distant lands, so a good start would be to check up on the manifests of ruinous military expeditions. Obviously, whenever a baron fell on the open battlefield, he was almost certainly unhorsed, so that serves as a reminder to you to choose your steed well, when we come to the prickly topic of steed choosing. Once you have picked an extinct baronetcy to revive, you will need a coat of arms. Don't fuddle your head too much with all those heraldry words like azure and gules and rampant and argent and couchant, just make sure you have something that pleases you and that will look good emblazoned on the shields carried proudly by your masked outriders. You might be able simply to appropriate the actual coat of arms of the dead baron you have supplanted, but to do so risks alerting the busybodies and you might be faced with hard questions you will be in no position to answer. In any case, nothing could be easier than designing a coat of arms, it really is child's play. You can even hire an orphan from Pang Hill to do the job for you. With your baronetcy secure(ish) and a spindly orphan beavering away at your coat of arms, the time has come to obtain a mighty steed. I cannot emphasise enough just how important this is. Without a suitable horse, all else is as naught. At this point, up goes the cry "But where do I find a horse?" Well, in my bailiwick, horses are usually to be found standing in fields or, if the weather is inclement, in what are known as paddocks. What you need to do is to wait until nightfall, when their human guards will all be tucked up in bed, and creep stealthily to a field or paddock armed with a torch and a bag of buns. You will use the torch to examine, in the engulfing darkness, such features of your prospective horse as its mane, fetlocks, and withers. Look closely at its musculature. Remember that the horse you choose will be galloping across the land with you astride its back for many years to come. When you have picked a suitable steed, lay a trail of buns from the field or paddock to the gates of your castle. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-1330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-06Thu, 06 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Blodgett And Trubshaw 13:56 Dentist's Potting Shed BLODGETT AND TRUBSHAW Blodgett had a certain militaristic cast to his character, so when he was given command of a pocket battleship it was understandable that he got slightly carried away. He fretted and fussed over his epaulettes and other trimmings of his uniform to a somewhat embarrassing degree, so much so that he neglected more critical aspects of his duty such as keeping a proper log. Thus it is that we do not have a reliable record of his one and only voyage. This was a time of gunboat diplomacy, and Blodgett's mission was to anchor his ship in a faraway bay, train his guns on the coast, and to threaten to blow the township there to smithereens unless certain conditions were met. All very straightforward, or it would have been had the ship not had for its navigator a man who had lost his wits. This fellow's name was Trubshaw, and it is a wonder that he still had the confidence of the Admiralty, for he had been bonkers for years. Instead of steering the ship towards the faraway bay, Trubshaw pored over his charts and barked instructions through a pneumatic funnel that led to the ship becoming encased in pack ice thousands of nautical miles away from its proper destination. There was no township upon which to train the guns, leaving Blodgett at a loss what to do, other than to preen his epaulettes and other trimmings with a little brush. Trubshaw, meanwhile, was following his own demented star. He took to pacing up and down the poop deck shouting at the sky. Icicles formed on the brim of his navigator's cap, but he seemed impervious to the cold. Not so the rest of the crew, huddled below decks wrapped in blankets and keeping their spirits up by playing board games and eating sausages. Blodgett kept to his cabin, using his log as a pad for doodling. He had lost radio contact with the Admiralty weeks ago. There was nothing for it but to sit the winter out and wait for the ice to melt. At this point, I expect the majority of readers will be avid for further details of the board games and the sausages, and I will not disappoint. However, before dealing with those crucial topics, perhaps it is wise to say a few more words about Trubshaw. His insanity was not in doubt, but what has never been established is whether he deliberately stranded the ship in Antarctic waters, or whether within the vaporous murk of his mad brain he honestly believed the ship was heading for that faraway bay. There may be a clue in the words he was shouting at the sky while pacing the poop deck, and by chance we do have a record, albeit fragmentary, of what they were, or some of them at least. By chance an airship packed to the gills with the very latest magnetic cylinder recording technology passed overhead one day, and some of Trubshaw's shouting was picked up by its monitors and etched onto a cylinder, preserved forever. If you get a special coupon for entry to the sound recordings rooms of the Museum At-Or-Near-Ack-On-The-Vug, you can listen to this bewildering caterwaul. Dobson once planned a pamphlet on Blodgett's voyage, and transcribed part of Trubshaw's tirade, but abandoned the essay in favour of his justly famous Bilgewater Elegies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Blodgett And Trubshaw 13:56 Dentist's Potting Shed BLODGETT AND TRUBSHAW Blodgett had a certain militaristic cast to his character, so when he was given command of a pocket battleship it was understandable that he got slightly carried away. He fretted and fussed over his epaulettes and other trimmings of his uniform to a somewhat embarrassing degree, so much so that he neglected more critical aspects of his duty such as keeping a proper log. Thus it is that we do not have a reliable record of his one and only voyage. This was a time of gunboat diplomacy, and Blodgett's mission was to anchor his ship in a faraway bay, train his guns on the coast, and to threaten to blow the township there to smithereens unless certain conditions were met. All very straightforward, or it would have been had the ship not had for its navigator a man who had lost his wits. This fellow's name was Trubshaw, and it is a wonder that he still had the confidence of the Admiralty, for he had been bonkers for years. Instead of steering the ship towards the faraway bay, Trubshaw pored over his charts and barked instructions through a pneumatic funnel that led to the ship becoming encased in pack ice thousands of nautical miles away from its proper destination. There was no township upon which to train the guns, leaving Blodgett at a loss what to do, other than to preen his epaulettes and other trimmings with a little brush. Trubshaw, meanwhile, was following his own demented star. He took to pacing up and down the poop deck shouting at the sky. Icicles formed on the brim of his navigator's cap, but he seemed impervious to the cold. Not so the rest of the crew, huddled below decks wrapped in blankets and keeping their spirits up by playing board games and eating sausages. Blodgett kept to his cabin, using his log as a pad for doodling. He had lost radio contact with the Admiralty weeks ago. There was nothing for it but to sit the winter out and wait for the ice to melt. At this point, I expect the majority of readers will be avid for further details of the board games and the sausages, and I will not disappoint. However, before dealing with those crucial topics, perhaps it is wise to say a few more words about Trubshaw. His insanity was not in doubt, but what has never been established is whether he deliberately stranded the ship in Antarctic waters, or whether within the vaporous murk of his mad brain he honestly believed the ship was heading for that faraway bay. There may be a clue in the words he was shouting at the sky while pacing the poop deck, and by chance we do have a record, albeit fragmentary, of what they were, or some of them at least. By chance an airship packed to the gills with the very latest magnetic cylinder recording technology passed overhead one day, and some of Trubshaw's shouting was picked up by its monitors and etched onto a cylinder, preserved forever. If you get a special coupon for entry to the sound recordings rooms of the Museum At-Or-Near-Ack-On-The-Vug, you can listen to this bewildering caterwaul. Dobson once planned a pamphlet on Blodgett's voyage, and transcribed part of Trubshaw's tirade, but abandoned the essay in favour of his justly famous Bilgewater Elegies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-06-0630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-05-23Thu, 23 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:31 Tosspot In A Bivouac 09:54 The Mysterious Hotel 11:00 Blodgett's Schloss 16:57 When I Was Borp 19:26 Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips 24:02 Boot Bath TOSSPOT IN A BIVOUAC An old favourite from the archives, first posted in 2008. Two words have been added to the original text, giving beetle-browed students of Key Studies something to write an essay about. Once upon a time, I was scrabbling down the lower reaches of a mountainside, through shingle and scumble and bracken, when I chanced upon a tosspot's bivouac. It was a surprisingly well-made bivouac, using branches from larch and beech and bladdernut and sycamore trees to form a roof upon which sufficient foliage had been empacted to provide sterling shelter from hailstorms and tempests, although the weather was in fact spectacularly clement. Clement, too, was the name of the tosspot, as I soon learned, for I immediately struck up a conversation with him, as is my habit when I encounter mountainside people. I learned that he had taken to his bivouac after fleeing. Fleeing from what?, I asked, but he seemed reluctant to tell me. Someone with a less acute insight into human nature than I may have put this down to coyness, but I spent many years studying under Glaggy and Dampster, so I knew there was more than simple shyness behind his diffident mutterings, and I determined to winkle the full story out of him. So I grabbed the tosspot around the neck with one of my huge bear-like hands, lifted him off his feet, and shook my other huge bear-like hand, made into a fist, in front of his face. As Dampster taught, by attuning one's fist-shaking to a very precise rhythm, the half-strangled subject is quickly placed in what Glaggy termed a "confessional brain-zone", akin to having been injected with a truth serum. As I suggested, it took years of training to perfect the technique, and I am afraid a large number of fully-strangled hamsters and stoats lie buried in the grounds of the Institute. Five minutes later I was fully apprised of the reasons why the tosspot had fled to his mountainside bivouac. He had been employed as an extra in a heist film set on a submarine. Sterling Hayden may have been involved in the production, but this was not entirely clear. What came shining through the tosspot's account, however, was the claustrophobic atmosphere on the set, which was actually a real, decommissioned submarine. The tenebrous, leaking interior had been slightly refurbished to include heist movie essentials like an intricate security system and a safe full of gold bullion, but otherwise it remained cramped and hot and riddled with clanking machinery. After six days filming, during which time he had to lean against a damaged pump looking mordant, the tosspot had cracked. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-05-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:31 Tosspot In A Bivouac 09:54 The Mysterious Hotel 11:00 Blodgett's Schloss 16:57 When I Was Borp 19:26 Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips 24:02 Boot Bath TOSSPOT IN A BIVOUAC An old favourite from the archives, first posted in 2008. Two words have been added to the original text, giving beetle-browed students of Key Studies something to write an essay about. Once upon a time, I was scrabbling down the lower reaches of a mountainside, through shingle and scumble and bracken, when I chanced upon a tosspot's bivouac. It was a surprisingly well-made bivouac, using branches from larch and beech and bladdernut and sycamore trees to form a roof upon which sufficient foliage had been empacted to provide sterling shelter from hailstorms and tempests, although the weather was in fact spectacularly clement. Clement, too, was the name of the tosspot, as I soon learned, for I immediately struck up a conversation with him, as is my habit when I encounter mountainside people. I learned that he had taken to his bivouac after fleeing. Fleeing from what?, I asked, but he seemed reluctant to tell me. Someone with a less acute insight into human nature than I may have put this down to coyness, but I spent many years studying under Glaggy and Dampster, so I knew there was more than simple shyness behind his diffident mutterings, and I determined to winkle the full story out of him. So I grabbed the tosspot around the neck with one of my huge bear-like hands, lifted him off his feet, and shook my other huge bear-like hand, made into a fist, in front of his face. As Dampster taught, by attuning one's fist-shaking to a very precise rhythm, the half-strangled subject is quickly placed in what Glaggy termed a "confessional brain-zone", akin to having been injected with a truth serum. As I suggested, it took years of training to perfect the technique, and I am afraid a large number of fully-strangled hamsters and stoats lie buried in the grounds of the Institute. Five minutes later I was fully apprised of the reasons why the tosspot had fled to his mountainside bivouac. He had been employed as an extra in a heist film set on a submarine. Sterling Hayden may have been involved in the production, but this was not entirely clear. What came shining through the tosspot's account, however, was the claustrophobic atmosphere on the set, which was actually a real, decommissioned submarine. The tenebrous, leaking interior had been slightly refurbished to include heist movie essentials like an intricate security system and a safe full of gold bullion, but otherwise it remained cramped and hot and riddled with clanking machinery. After six days filming, during which time he had to lean against a damaged pump looking mordant, the tosspot had cracked. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-05-2330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-05-16Thu, 16 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:24 A Bit Of A Kerfuffle Down By The Bins Outside The Barn 18:24 In Ponga 27:04 An Elocution Lesson 28:58 On Butter And Clatter And Taxis 29:19 Preamble to A Is for Aminadab A BIT OF A KERFUFFLE DOWN BY THE BINS OUTSIDE THE BARN This is a story about a bit of a kerfuffle down by the bins outside the barn, and one man's search for the truth... Last week there was a bit of a kerfuffle down by the bins outside the barn. This was very shocking. Those of us who keep an eye on such things are used to the seemingly endless series of kerfuffles taking place at the bins by the docks, but for the bins outside the barn to be targeted by agencies of kerfuffledom was a frightening development. I had more reason than most to be concerned. I knew that my reaction to the kerfuffle would be watched very closely, that judgements would be made upon me, and that if I did not acquit myself well, I may as well give up any hopes I had of wallowing like a voluptuary in the hot embrace of the Bins Board. Thus it was that as soon as I heard about this unexpected kerfuffle, I grabbed a rag and buffed my badge, and I pinned the buffed badge to my cap, and I placed the cap firmly upon my head, and I held my head erect in a manner that gave me an air of true grit, and I clamped my pipe between my teeth, jutted my jaw, and did a set of Blotzmann Exercises, my favourite ones, from the Second Handbook, before jumping into my jalopy and barrelling along the lanes at tremendous speed, parping my horn to scatter the various infants and small domestic animals in my path. Truly it could be said on that October morning, with its sense of collapse, that Urgency was my middle name, rather than Lembit, which was the middle name my parents, God rest their souls, gave me, weeks before my birth, before they knew whether I would be a boy or a girl. I was only too aware, you see, that the Bins Board was due to meet in the ceremonial chamber of the Big Jagged Castle that very evening, and that I would be held to account. Just past Sawdust Bridge I swerved off into the fields, cranking the gears to no apparent purpose, watched by a clump of disconsolate cows. If cows could talk, they might be able to tell me something about the kerfuffle. There are lands where cows are intelligent and voluble, so I am told, but this was not one of them. The first time I heard about such cows I was frankly incredulous, even though I was at my mother's knee, and I had no reason to distrust that saintly woman. Later, as I accepted that she told me only that which was true, I was stricken with a sense of menace. I did not know what talking cows talked about, but I was--and remain--convinced that such knowledge would shatter my brain and leave me gibbering and twitching. Best not even to think about it. To be on the safe side, I waved a "hail fellow, well met" greeting at the nearest cow in the clump, and sped onwards. Within minutes, I was pulling up at the edge of the compound wherein the barn stood, numinous, like a monolith. Here, I must make a confession. You are probably sitting there thinking how fab I am, my selfless devotion to the doings of the Bins Board evidence of a remarkable sense of civic responsibility. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-05-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:24 A Bit Of A Kerfuffle Down By The Bins Outside The Barn 18:24 In Ponga 27:04 An Elocution Lesson 28:58 On Butter And Clatter And Taxis 29:19 Preamble to A Is for Aminadab A BIT OF A KERFUFFLE DOWN BY THE BINS OUTSIDE THE BARN This is a story about a bit of a kerfuffle down by the bins outside the barn, and one man's search for the truth... Last week there was a bit of a kerfuffle down by the bins outside the barn. This was very shocking. Those of us who keep an eye on such things are used to the seemingly endless series of kerfuffles taking place at the bins by the docks, but for the bins outside the barn to be targeted by agencies of kerfuffledom was a frightening development. I had more reason than most to be concerned. I knew that my reaction to the kerfuffle would be watched very closely, that judgements would be made upon me, and that if I did not acquit myself well, I may as well give up any hopes I had of wallowing like a voluptuary in the hot embrace of the Bins Board. Thus it was that as soon as I heard about this unexpected kerfuffle, I grabbed a rag and buffed my badge, and I pinned the buffed badge to my cap, and I placed the cap firmly upon my head, and I held my head erect in a manner that gave me an air of true grit, and I clamped my pipe between my teeth, jutted my jaw, and did a set of Blotzmann Exercises, my favourite ones, from the Second Handbook, before jumping into my jalopy and barrelling along the lanes at tremendous speed, parping my horn to scatter the various infants and small domestic animals in my path. Truly it could be said on that October morning, with its sense of collapse, that Urgency was my middle name, rather than Lembit, which was the middle name my parents, God rest their souls, gave me, weeks before my birth, before they knew whether I would be a boy or a girl. I was only too aware, you see, that the Bins Board was due to meet in the ceremonial chamber of the Big Jagged Castle that very evening, and that I would be held to account. Just past Sawdust Bridge I swerved off into the fields, cranking the gears to no apparent purpose, watched by a clump of disconsolate cows. If cows could talk, they might be able to tell me something about the kerfuffle. There are lands where cows are intelligent and voluble, so I am told, but this was not one of them. The first time I heard about such cows I was frankly incredulous, even though I was at my mother's knee, and I had no reason to distrust that saintly woman. Later, as I accepted that she told me only that which was true, I was stricken with a sense of menace. I did not know what talking cows talked about, but I was--and remain--convinced that such knowledge would shatter my brain and leave me gibbering and twitching. Best not even to think about it. To be on the safe side, I waved a "hail fellow, well met" greeting at the nearest cow in the clump, and sped onwards. Within minutes, I was pulling up at the edge of the compound wherein the barn stood, numinous, like a monolith. Here, I must make a confession. You are probably sitting there thinking how fab I am, my selfless devotion to the doings of the Bins Board evidence of a remarkable sense of civic responsibility. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-05-1630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-05-09Thu, 09 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Hiking Pickle Revisited 09:13 Game On 13:19 The Great Ecstasy Of Tiny Enid 19:41 Modern Snipe 28:13 Tribute Band HIKING PICKLE REVISITED A further nugget from the archives. One In A Series Of Hiking Pickles first appeared on this day eight years ago. Dobson lived in the era before mobile phones, of course, so when he found himself imperilled in an isolated spot he had to harness every last scrap of ingenuity to summon help. You or I would simply make a call on our mobile--well, you would, but I wouldn't, because I do not own a mobile phone and never shall, for they are an abomination unto me--but this was not an option for Dobson, so what did he do? Let us take a closer look at the circumstances. It was a Tuesday in February. Football fans were grieving the loss of the Busby Babes in the Munich Air Disaster, Pope Pius XII had declared that Saint Clare was to be the patron saint of television, and little blind David Blunkett was just eleven years old. Meanwhile, Dobson got lost on an ill-advised hiking expedition and found himself exhausted, in a spinney, menaced by feral goats. The out of print pamphleteer had also managed to get himself hopelessly entangled in a thicket of thorny brambly creeping greenery rife with puffy spiders and venomous beetles. That's the kind of spinney it was, at least twenty miles from the nearest village, and with no paths nor country lanes leading anywhere close to it. There was, it is true, a big pylon a couple of dozen yards away, but it was a lone pylon, unconnected to any kind of electrical grid or other wiring system, a pylon the purpose of which was unknown, and it was a pylon of rust, suggestive of abandonment and disuse. This was not the first time Dobson had been in a hiking pickle, and it would not be the last. Indeed, late in life he had enough material to furnish a pamphlet entitled An Anthology Of Disastrous Hiking Mishaps Cobbled Together From A Lifetime Of Ill-Starred Rustic Pursuits (out of print). What was significant about this particular pickle was the manner in which Dobson succeeded in extricating himself from it. This was the period during which he had joined an experimental knitting circle, and as luck would have it he had in his noddy bag that day his latest project. It was an interpretation, in wool, of The Wreck Of The Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Dobson realised that, when fully unravelled, the yarn would stretch for miles. He sat down in the brambles, lit his pipe, took the scrunched-up woollen masterpiece out of his noddy bag, and unravelled, unravelled, unravelled. Two hours later he was still unravelling. The sun was setting by the time he was done, but Dobson had no fear of the night, for he was sanguine. Frequently Asked Question : Why didn't the pamphleteer use his portable metal tapping machine to call for help? Answer : He was unable to use his portable metal tapping machine because there was no ground-level pneumatic hub within reach. The wool fully unravelled, Dobson tapped out his pipe on a stone and beckoned to one of the feral Toggenbergs. The goats were still gathered in a gang on the edge of the spinney, and it is a mystery why they had not attacked the bramble-trapped pamphleteer. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-05-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Hiking Pickle Revisited 09:13 Game On 13:19 The Great Ecstasy Of Tiny Enid 19:41 Modern Snipe 28:13 Tribute Band HIKING PICKLE REVISITED A further nugget from the archives. One In A Series Of Hiking Pickles first appeared on this day eight years ago. Dobson lived in the era before mobile phones, of course, so when he found himself imperilled in an isolated spot he had to harness every last scrap of ingenuity to summon help. You or I would simply make a call on our mobile--well, you would, but I wouldn't, because I do not own a mobile phone and never shall, for they are an abomination unto me--but this was not an option for Dobson, so what did he do? Let us take a closer look at the circumstances. It was a Tuesday in February. Football fans were grieving the loss of the Busby Babes in the Munich Air Disaster, Pope Pius XII had declared that Saint Clare was to be the patron saint of television, and little blind David Blunkett was just eleven years old. Meanwhile, Dobson got lost on an ill-advised hiking expedition and found himself exhausted, in a spinney, menaced by feral goats. The out of print pamphleteer had also managed to get himself hopelessly entangled in a thicket of thorny brambly creeping greenery rife with puffy spiders and venomous beetles. That's the kind of spinney it was, at least twenty miles from the nearest village, and with no paths nor country lanes leading anywhere close to it. There was, it is true, a big pylon a couple of dozen yards away, but it was a lone pylon, unconnected to any kind of electrical grid or other wiring system, a pylon the purpose of which was unknown, and it was a pylon of rust, suggestive of abandonment and disuse. This was not the first time Dobson had been in a hiking pickle, and it would not be the last. Indeed, late in life he had enough material to furnish a pamphlet entitled An Anthology Of Disastrous Hiking Mishaps Cobbled Together From A Lifetime Of Ill-Starred Rustic Pursuits (out of print). What was significant about this particular pickle was the manner in which Dobson succeeded in extricating himself from it. This was the period during which he had joined an experimental knitting circle, and as luck would have it he had in his noddy bag that day his latest project. It was an interpretation, in wool, of The Wreck Of The Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Dobson realised that, when fully unravelled, the yarn would stretch for miles. He sat down in the brambles, lit his pipe, took the scrunched-up woollen masterpiece out of his noddy bag, and unravelled, unravelled, unravelled. Two hours later he was still unravelling. The sun was setting by the time he was done, but Dobson had no fear of the night, for he was sanguine. Frequently Asked Question : Why didn't the pamphleteer use his portable metal tapping machine to call for help? Answer : He was unable to use his portable metal tapping machine because there was no ground-level pneumatic hub within reach. The wool fully unravelled, Dobson tapped out his pipe on a stone and beckoned to one of the feral Toggenbergs. The goats were still gathered in a gang on the edge of the spinney, and it is a mystery why they had not attacked the bramble-trapped pamphleteer. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-05-0930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-04-25Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Balsa Wood Crow 11:24 Jug o' Paraffin 17:49 Cadet's Dilemma BALSA WOOD CROW Here is an exciting craft project for young and old alike. Follow the instructions carefully and you will be the proud and happy owner of a toy crow made out of balsa wood. Imagine the flabbergasted looks of family and friends as they admire your handiwork, and resolve to become better, more productive citizens by following your example. Imagine them gnashing their teeth in despair as it becomes apparent that they are cack-handed nincompoops whereas you are the very opposite of a butterfingers. Incidentally, if you are by chance a butterfingers, do not be deterred. All you need is self-belief, sometimes in the teeth of the evidence. Just go and read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and stop snivelling. First of all, obviously, you will need some balsa wood. I'm afraid that you will probably have to pay for it. If you are a mendicant, and cannot countenance frittering your paltry beggings on something as inessential as balsa wood, you may have to resort to theft. I cannot condone even the most measly purloinment, of craft materials or indeed of anything else, so we would seem to have reached an impasse. Help may be at hand, however, from various charitable institutions or even from wealthy individuals who share a passion for balsa wood work. You could try writing letters to such as Yoko Ono, the Duke of Norfolk, or Lyn Cheney. The latter is the wife of the Vice President of the United States, not to be confused with Lon Chaney, the deceased film actor. Here is a model letter you can use to ask for assistance: Dear [insert name here]. Like you, I am an enthusiastic balsa wood craftsperson. Unlike you, I am poverty-stricken. Please send me some of your spare balsa wood so I can make a toy crow. Yours sincerely [insert your name here]. That should do the trick, and keep you away from a life of crime, the consequences of which can be disastrous. Only last week, a ne'er-do-well was apprehended while trying to steal a tube of modelling paste from Hubermann's, and he is due to be hanged imminently. He will certainly not be the envy of his friends and the possessor of a crow made out of balsa wood, so do not even think about emulating him. So you now have your balsa wood. Next you will need adhesive. There is a range of glues and gums available, from Hubermann's and elsewhere, and I think I can leave it to you to make the right choice. It really doesn't matter whether the glue is clear or cloudy or white, whether the method of delivery is via a nozzle or a squeezy pad or a spatula, whether it comes in a tube or a tub or a jar. The only thing you need to keep an eye on is whether or not it is sticky enough to fuse two pieces of balsa wood so decisively that they cannot be prised apart even by wild beasts. You may want to test the adhesiveness of your chosen adhesive before cementing the purchase. If you are in Hubermann's, you can go to the little cupboard near the fire escape to do so, and I am sure other retailers have similar facilities, although there may be a fee involved. I will assume that you have returned home safely with a suitable adhesive and that your pile of bought or donated balsa wood awaits you on your kitchen table. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-04-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Balsa Wood Crow 11:24 Jug o' Paraffin 17:49 Cadet's Dilemma BALSA WOOD CROW Here is an exciting craft project for young and old alike. Follow the instructions carefully and you will be the proud and happy owner of a toy crow made out of balsa wood. Imagine the flabbergasted looks of family and friends as they admire your handiwork, and resolve to become better, more productive citizens by following your example. Imagine them gnashing their teeth in despair as it becomes apparent that they are cack-handed nincompoops whereas you are the very opposite of a butterfingers. Incidentally, if you are by chance a butterfingers, do not be deterred. All you need is self-belief, sometimes in the teeth of the evidence. Just go and read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and stop snivelling. First of all, obviously, you will need some balsa wood. I'm afraid that you will probably have to pay for it. If you are a mendicant, and cannot countenance frittering your paltry beggings on something as inessential as balsa wood, you may have to resort to theft. I cannot condone even the most measly purloinment, of craft materials or indeed of anything else, so we would seem to have reached an impasse. Help may be at hand, however, from various charitable institutions or even from wealthy individuals who share a passion for balsa wood work. You could try writing letters to such as Yoko Ono, the Duke of Norfolk, or Lyn Cheney. The latter is the wife of the Vice President of the United States, not to be confused with Lon Chaney, the deceased film actor. Here is a model letter you can use to ask for assistance: Dear [insert name here]. Like you, I am an enthusiastic balsa wood craftsperson. Unlike you, I am poverty-stricken. Please send me some of your spare balsa wood so I can make a toy crow. Yours sincerely [insert your name here]. That should do the trick, and keep you away from a life of crime, the consequences of which can be disastrous. Only last week, a ne'er-do-well was apprehended while trying to steal a tube of modelling paste from Hubermann's, and he is due to be hanged imminently. He will certainly not be the envy of his friends and the possessor of a crow made out of balsa wood, so do not even think about emulating him. So you now have your balsa wood. Next you will need adhesive. There is a range of glues and gums available, from Hubermann's and elsewhere, and I think I can leave it to you to make the right choice. It really doesn't matter whether the glue is clear or cloudy or white, whether the method of delivery is via a nozzle or a squeezy pad or a spatula, whether it comes in a tube or a tub or a jar. The only thing you need to keep an eye on is whether or not it is sticky enough to fuse two pieces of balsa wood so decisively that they cannot be prised apart even by wild beasts. You may want to test the adhesiveness of your chosen adhesive before cementing the purchase. If you are in Hubermann's, you can go to the little cupboard near the fire escape to do so, and I am sure other retailers have similar facilities, although there may be a fee involved. I will assume that you have returned home safely with a suitable adhesive and that your pile of bought or donated balsa wood awaits you on your kitchen table. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-04-2530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-04-18Thu, 18 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 On Fiends Of The Farmyard 10:26 Tiny Enid And The Gormless Nipper 19:49 A Pointy Town Nativity 26:22 Pontiff Mnemonic 26:43 Laundry Bag Boy 26:57 Tuesday Weld News 27:32 Pontiff Mnemonic 27:36 On Failing To Persuade Maud To Come Into The Garden 28:11 The Walking Dead ON FIENDS OF THE FARMYARD [A slightly shorter version of this piece appeared in June 2006.] There is, or may have been, an old superstition that every farmyard has its own fiend. It is said that Beelzebub personally allotted each fiend to its farmyard, and ratcheted up the fiendishness of his dastardly plan by making the fiends extremely hard to identify. So, for example, neighbouring farmyards may have very, very different resident fiends--a pig here, an old rusty iron pail there, a one-legged hen in one farmyard and a big bright red tractor belching smoke in another. Exorcising a farmyard of its fiend is thus fraught with difficulty, for the average countryside exorcist, stepping through the gate of a farmyard for the first time, does not know where to begin to look. There is great disparity in the fiendishness of farmyard fiends, and some diabolists have argued that Beelzebub treated the whole matter with an uncharacteristic lack of diabolic concentration. For every farmyard that is stricken by an energetic fiend, there are many more that can pass for years, even decades, in untroubled bucolic peace. But of course it is the former that gain attention. Who can forget the ruination visited upon Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard in the 1930s, all those crop failures, diseases, fires, murders, contaminations and inexplicable barn collapses, which ceased only when a marauding night-time squirrel was captured in a net by Father Dermot Boggis and subjected to the full rigour of his holy wrath? It took six months for the exorcist to expel every last vestige of fiendishness from the squirrel, leaving the poor bushy-tailed mammal thin and shrivelled and exhausted and close to death. And yet, as it was slowly revived by the coddling of Old Ma Purgative at her verdant squirrel sanctuary, so too did the farmyard flourish anew, with majestic fields of golden wheat, gleaming new buckets replacing the old rusty pails, and happy, happy pigs. You would be forgiven for thinking that the taxonomy of farmyard fiends is precisely the kind of subject to which Dobson would have devoted a pamphlet or two. Indeed, Marigold Chew often pressed him to tackle the topic, supplying the out of print pamphleteer with a constant stream of newspaper cuttings about hideous devastations of an agricultural kidney. She was a subscriber to the once popular monthly magazine Glimpses Of Farmyard Ruin, and wrote many letters to the editor, some of which were published and one of which (October 1954) was selected as 'Letter of the Month', for which Marigold received a prize. Unfortunately, the prize was a very large hog with a brain disease which went on wild rampages through the house. Mischievously, the editor of the magazine, who had his own farmyard, regularly used the monthly prize to rid himself of his farmyard fiends. Ah yes, note the plural. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-04-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 On Fiends Of The Farmyard 10:26 Tiny Enid And The Gormless Nipper 19:49 A Pointy Town Nativity 26:22 Pontiff Mnemonic 26:43 Laundry Bag Boy 26:57 Tuesday Weld News 27:32 Pontiff Mnemonic 27:36 On Failing To Persuade Maud To Come Into The Garden 28:11 The Walking Dead ON FIENDS OF THE FARMYARD [A slightly shorter version of this piece appeared in June 2006.] There is, or may have been, an old superstition that every farmyard has its own fiend. It is said that Beelzebub personally allotted each fiend to its farmyard, and ratcheted up the fiendishness of his dastardly plan by making the fiends extremely hard to identify. So, for example, neighbouring farmyards may have very, very different resident fiends--a pig here, an old rusty iron pail there, a one-legged hen in one farmyard and a big bright red tractor belching smoke in another. Exorcising a farmyard of its fiend is thus fraught with difficulty, for the average countryside exorcist, stepping through the gate of a farmyard for the first time, does not know where to begin to look. There is great disparity in the fiendishness of farmyard fiends, and some diabolists have argued that Beelzebub treated the whole matter with an uncharacteristic lack of diabolic concentration. For every farmyard that is stricken by an energetic fiend, there are many more that can pass for years, even decades, in untroubled bucolic peace. But of course it is the former that gain attention. Who can forget the ruination visited upon Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard in the 1930s, all those crop failures, diseases, fires, murders, contaminations and inexplicable barn collapses, which ceased only when a marauding night-time squirrel was captured in a net by Father Dermot Boggis and subjected to the full rigour of his holy wrath? It took six months for the exorcist to expel every last vestige of fiendishness from the squirrel, leaving the poor bushy-tailed mammal thin and shrivelled and exhausted and close to death. And yet, as it was slowly revived by the coddling of Old Ma Purgative at her verdant squirrel sanctuary, so too did the farmyard flourish anew, with majestic fields of golden wheat, gleaming new buckets replacing the old rusty pails, and happy, happy pigs. You would be forgiven for thinking that the taxonomy of farmyard fiends is precisely the kind of subject to which Dobson would have devoted a pamphlet or two. Indeed, Marigold Chew often pressed him to tackle the topic, supplying the out of print pamphleteer with a constant stream of newspaper cuttings about hideous devastations of an agricultural kidney. She was a subscriber to the once popular monthly magazine Glimpses Of Farmyard Ruin, and wrote many letters to the editor, some of which were published and one of which (October 1954) was selected as 'Letter of the Month', for which Marigold received a prize. Unfortunately, the prize was a very large hog with a brain disease which went on wild rampages through the house. Mischievously, the editor of the magazine, who had his own farmyard, regularly used the monthly prize to rid himself of his farmyard fiends. Ah yes, note the plural. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-04-1830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-03-28Thu, 28 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:35 Becoming More Like God 07:54 The Pabstus Tack Trilogy 12:06 Janitor BECOMING MORE LIKE GOD I read in the paper today that the Archbishop of York's press officer is himself being ordained as a priest. He has taken this step because, apparently, he "wants to be more like Jesus Christ". If we accept his belief system for a moment, what he is saying is that he wants to be more like God. Such overweening ambition is usually a worrying sign, and almost always delusional, and people who say things like that are likely to get locked up, or at least be given an Asbo. When his careers officer asked the teenage future press person what he wanted to be, did he answer "God!", with a demented gleam in his eyes? His name, by the way, is Arun Arora, rather than Caligula, but you know the type. Some may say there's nothing wrong with setting your sights high, but if you're going to become a god, Jesus Christ seems a poor choice. If it were me, I'd go for one of the more belligerent Aztec or Ancient Egyptian gods, or perhaps something epic and Nordic, like Odin, although I suppose the heavy metal associations would become something of an embarrassment. In the end, I think I'd plump for the hideous bat-god Fatso. There would be none of that nonsense with loaves and fishes, or getting crucified, but lots and lots of cakes and pastries. All of which is an excuse to republish another item from the Archive, a piece entitled Cake And Pastry Person. It originally appeared in July 2006. Many, many years ago, so long ago that you were probably not yet born, there was a cake and pastry person who drove a van around Pang Hill and Blister Lane, tooting a horn in the summer afternoons, for it seemed the sun was always shining in those far away days. Those were times when children still bought cakes and pastries from a van, a big pantechnicon painted yellow and red and pink and mauve and black. It was also, of course, the time when people worshipped the hideous bat-god Fatso, and walked the earth in fear of his flapping wings and his shrill squeaking that churned up the innards and pierced the soul. Where, in other lands, the roads would be lined by milestones telling the distance to an important town or port, here there were hundreds and hundreds of huge stone carvings of Fatso, the visible reminder of his terrible, and terribly haphazard, power. Children were protected from the worst of his wrath, for Fatso the bat-god did not fully reveal himself until a person reached adulthood. For tinies, the stone statues were simply part of the landscape, like trees or kiosks or pneumatic power towers. Although the bat-god is forgotten today, everyone remembers the resin hoops that were the favourite plaything of young and old alike. I am sure you know the words to the old song. "We skip and frolic and loop the loops / Along Pang Hill with our resin hoops / We skip and frolic on Blister Lane / With our resin hoops we loop again." Sometimes children would play at tossing their hoops over a Fatso statue, giving the bat-god a necklace. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-03-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:35 Becoming More Like God 07:54 The Pabstus Tack Trilogy 12:06 Janitor BECOMING MORE LIKE GOD I read in the paper today that the Archbishop of York's press officer is himself being ordained as a priest. He has taken this step because, apparently, he "wants to be more like Jesus Christ". If we accept his belief system for a moment, what he is saying is that he wants to be more like God. Such overweening ambition is usually a worrying sign, and almost always delusional, and people who say things like that are likely to get locked up, or at least be given an Asbo. When his careers officer asked the teenage future press person what he wanted to be, did he answer "God!", with a demented gleam in his eyes? His name, by the way, is Arun Arora, rather than Caligula, but you know the type. Some may say there's nothing wrong with setting your sights high, but if you're going to become a god, Jesus Christ seems a poor choice. If it were me, I'd go for one of the more belligerent Aztec or Ancient Egyptian gods, or perhaps something epic and Nordic, like Odin, although I suppose the heavy metal associations would become something of an embarrassment. In the end, I think I'd plump for the hideous bat-god Fatso. There would be none of that nonsense with loaves and fishes, or getting crucified, but lots and lots of cakes and pastries. All of which is an excuse to republish another item from the Archive, a piece entitled Cake And Pastry Person. It originally appeared in July 2006. Many, many years ago, so long ago that you were probably not yet born, there was a cake and pastry person who drove a van around Pang Hill and Blister Lane, tooting a horn in the summer afternoons, for it seemed the sun was always shining in those far away days. Those were times when children still bought cakes and pastries from a van, a big pantechnicon painted yellow and red and pink and mauve and black. It was also, of course, the time when people worshipped the hideous bat-god Fatso, and walked the earth in fear of his flapping wings and his shrill squeaking that churned up the innards and pierced the soul. Where, in other lands, the roads would be lined by milestones telling the distance to an important town or port, here there were hundreds and hundreds of huge stone carvings of Fatso, the visible reminder of his terrible, and terribly haphazard, power. Children were protected from the worst of his wrath, for Fatso the bat-god did not fully reveal himself until a person reached adulthood. For tinies, the stone statues were simply part of the landscape, like trees or kiosks or pneumatic power towers. Although the bat-god is forgotten today, everyone remembers the resin hoops that were the favourite plaything of young and old alike. I am sure you know the words to the old song. "We skip and frolic and loop the loops / Along Pang Hill with our resin hoops / We skip and frolic on Blister Lane / With our resin hoops we loop again." Sometimes children would play at tossing their hoops over a Fatso statue, giving the bat-god a necklace. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-03-2830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-03-21Thu, 21 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Hectic Clanging 04:32 The Great Emblotchment 09:56 Buster And Radbod 21:05 The Parish Wolf HECTIC CLANGING On Tuesday morning I was woken by the hectic clanging of the bells of St Bibblybibdib's. I had been dreaming about a monkey as big as a planet, as I sometimes do. Using the Blotzmann technique, I squeezed the sleep out of my brain, clambered out of bed, and threw my windows wide open. I was rather disconcerted to note that, as Milton put it in Book IV of Paradise Lost, "the starry cope of Heaven... or all the elements / At least, had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn", for Monday had been mild with sunny intervals and there had been no sign of cosmic cataclysm. Indeed, I had made a point of watching Daniel Corbett's early evening weather forecast on the BBC, and that always reliable and beautifully well-spoken presenter had said nothing at all about wrack, disturbance, and a tearing in the heavens, as far as I could remember. I had, however, taken the precaution of making a copy of his forecast on my bakelite televisual simulacrumating device, and the steam would have dispersed overnight, making it ready for viewing, so I went into the parlour and depressed the starting knob. I was keen to see if my memory was playing tricks, for there seemed to be no other explanation for the disjuncture between Daniel Corbett's prognostications and the foul reality outwith my windows. While I waited for the valves to warm up, I recalled that the monkey in my dream had been about as big as the planet Mercury. In earlier dreams it had been the size of one of those gigantic gas planets you read about, and I wondered if this shrinkage was something to be welcomed or, indeed, feared. It was hard to tell. I sat down on my stool and pulled my crumpled hessian nightshirt tight about my torso, and the simulacrumating device hissed into life. There, as if by magic, was Daniel Corbett again, telling me about the weather, dumbfounding me. For as he moved his arms in graceful scooping gestures, like a meteorological ballerina, his words were not those I remembered from yesterday evening, but those of Milton. Dan said that "the starry cope of Heaven... or all the elements / At least," will go "to wrack, disturbed and torn". And he was right, of course, for that was precisely what was happening outside. I had concentrated like mad watching him the day before, as I always do, and I was absolutely convinced that what his simulacrum was saying now was not what I had heard then. The bakelite device could not be at fault, for I had had a person from Porlock come to give it an overhaul but a week before, and he had pronounced it to be in full working order. Was my brain being monkeyed with by the planet-sized monkey of my dreams? I watched Dan Corbett again, three times, and three times he spoke of wrack. Shutting down the device, I changed into my crumpled hessian outdoor clothing and hurried down the lane to St Bibblybibdib's. The bells still clanged as I staggered into a pew and prayed as hard as I could for my immortal soul, on Tuesday morning. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-03-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Hectic Clanging 04:32 The Great Emblotchment 09:56 Buster And Radbod 21:05 The Parish Wolf HECTIC CLANGING On Tuesday morning I was woken by the hectic clanging of the bells of St Bibblybibdib's. I had been dreaming about a monkey as big as a planet, as I sometimes do. Using the Blotzmann technique, I squeezed the sleep out of my brain, clambered out of bed, and threw my windows wide open. I was rather disconcerted to note that, as Milton put it in Book IV of Paradise Lost, "the starry cope of Heaven... or all the elements / At least, had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn", for Monday had been mild with sunny intervals and there had been no sign of cosmic cataclysm. Indeed, I had made a point of watching Daniel Corbett's early evening weather forecast on the BBC, and that always reliable and beautifully well-spoken presenter had said nothing at all about wrack, disturbance, and a tearing in the heavens, as far as I could remember. I had, however, taken the precaution of making a copy of his forecast on my bakelite televisual simulacrumating device, and the steam would have dispersed overnight, making it ready for viewing, so I went into the parlour and depressed the starting knob. I was keen to see if my memory was playing tricks, for there seemed to be no other explanation for the disjuncture between Daniel Corbett's prognostications and the foul reality outwith my windows. While I waited for the valves to warm up, I recalled that the monkey in my dream had been about as big as the planet Mercury. In earlier dreams it had been the size of one of those gigantic gas planets you read about, and I wondered if this shrinkage was something to be welcomed or, indeed, feared. It was hard to tell. I sat down on my stool and pulled my crumpled hessian nightshirt tight about my torso, and the simulacrumating device hissed into life. There, as if by magic, was Daniel Corbett again, telling me about the weather, dumbfounding me. For as he moved his arms in graceful scooping gestures, like a meteorological ballerina, his words were not those I remembered from yesterday evening, but those of Milton. Dan said that "the starry cope of Heaven... or all the elements / At least," will go "to wrack, disturbed and torn". And he was right, of course, for that was precisely what was happening outside. I had concentrated like mad watching him the day before, as I always do, and I was absolutely convinced that what his simulacrum was saying now was not what I had heard then. The bakelite device could not be at fault, for I had had a person from Porlock come to give it an overhaul but a week before, and he had pronounced it to be in full working order. Was my brain being monkeyed with by the planet-sized monkey of my dreams? I watched Dan Corbett again, three times, and three times he spoke of wrack. Shutting down the device, I changed into my crumpled hessian outdoor clothing and hurried down the lane to St Bibblybibdib's. The bells still clanged as I staggered into a pew and prayed as hard as I could for my immortal soul, on Tuesday morning. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-03-2130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-03-14Thu, 14 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Sick Pig 07:10 The Legend Of The Golden Pig 14:47 Notes Towards A History Of Blister Lane Bypass 20:17 The Book Of Gnats 22:59 Important Lark Information 24:00 Good King Wenceslas Impersonation Incident THE SICK PIG Once upon a time there was a pig. It was a sick pig. Now, in a town far away across the hills there lived a vet. The vet had undergone many years of training in the veterinary sciences, and numerous diplomas in frames hung on the walls of his surgery. The surgery was a clean bright building in the middle of a row of slightly shabbier buildings in the centre of the town far away across the hills from the sty where the sick pig ailed. Next to the surgery was a pie shop, and next to the pie shop was a haberdashery and next to the haberdashery was the town hall annexe. On the other side of the vet's surgery from the pie shop was a second pie shop, and next to that was the library, and squeezed in next to that was a kiosk selling tickets for local events and entertainments and next to that was an ironmongery. Beyond the ironmongery was the bus station. The frames in which the vet's many diplomas were displayed had been made by a framer on the other side of town. One day, the vet rolled up all his diplomas and shoved them into a cardboard cylinder, and waited at the bus station. He caught the number 666 to the other side of town and gave the cylinder to the person behind the counter at the framers', who filled in a receipt from a pad of receipts and gave it to the vet, who put it in his pocket. Six weeks later the vet went to collect his many diplomas, now beautifully framed, and he carried them back to his surgery on the 666 bus and hammered nails into the walls of his surgery and hung the frames on the nails. Now he had all his diplomas on display. If the diplomas were to be believed, the vet had demonstrated the ability to cure the ills of horses and bats and birds and toads and cats and killer bees and shrews and weasels and ducks and chickens and otters and badgers and field mice and cows and bears and hamsters and even giraffes, but not one of his diplomas had a word to say about pigs. Now, the piggery person whose pig was sick, upon discovering the pig's sickness, tried out a number of folk remedies, old and new. He sprinkled the pigsty with tansy and frangipani and gloxinia. He went to see the Woohoowoodihoo Woman, who gave him a spell to cast. He set up a loudspeaker in the pig sty and played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly, over and over again. He took tips from books by Tony Buzan. But the pig stayed sick. In fact it got worse. The piggery person was at his wits' end. Then he remembered hearing about the vet in a town far away across the hills. Leaving the assistant piggery person in charge, the piggery person set off on the long journey across the hills. On the first day he met a man dressed all in green who set him a challenge. The piggery person bashed him about with a bludgeon and went on his way. On the second day he was engulfed in a vaporous mist and had to use his torch to find his way through it. On the third day the man dressed all in green stood in his path again, so this time the piggery person felled him with a Goon Fang manoeuvre. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-03-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Sick Pig 07:10 The Legend Of The Golden Pig 14:47 Notes Towards A History Of Blister Lane Bypass 20:17 The Book Of Gnats 22:59 Important Lark Information 24:00 Good King Wenceslas Impersonation Incident THE SICK PIG Once upon a time there was a pig. It was a sick pig. Now, in a town far away across the hills there lived a vet. The vet had undergone many years of training in the veterinary sciences, and numerous diplomas in frames hung on the walls of his surgery. The surgery was a clean bright building in the middle of a row of slightly shabbier buildings in the centre of the town far away across the hills from the sty where the sick pig ailed. Next to the surgery was a pie shop, and next to the pie shop was a haberdashery and next to the haberdashery was the town hall annexe. On the other side of the vet's surgery from the pie shop was a second pie shop, and next to that was the library, and squeezed in next to that was a kiosk selling tickets for local events and entertainments and next to that was an ironmongery. Beyond the ironmongery was the bus station. The frames in which the vet's many diplomas were displayed had been made by a framer on the other side of town. One day, the vet rolled up all his diplomas and shoved them into a cardboard cylinder, and waited at the bus station. He caught the number 666 to the other side of town and gave the cylinder to the person behind the counter at the framers', who filled in a receipt from a pad of receipts and gave it to the vet, who put it in his pocket. Six weeks later the vet went to collect his many diplomas, now beautifully framed, and he carried them back to his surgery on the 666 bus and hammered nails into the walls of his surgery and hung the frames on the nails. Now he had all his diplomas on display. If the diplomas were to be believed, the vet had demonstrated the ability to cure the ills of horses and bats and birds and toads and cats and killer bees and shrews and weasels and ducks and chickens and otters and badgers and field mice and cows and bears and hamsters and even giraffes, but not one of his diplomas had a word to say about pigs. Now, the piggery person whose pig was sick, upon discovering the pig's sickness, tried out a number of folk remedies, old and new. He sprinkled the pigsty with tansy and frangipani and gloxinia. He went to see the Woohoowoodihoo Woman, who gave him a spell to cast. He set up a loudspeaker in the pig sty and played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly, over and over again. He took tips from books by Tony Buzan. But the pig stayed sick. In fact it got worse. The piggery person was at his wits' end. Then he remembered hearing about the vet in a town far away across the hills. Leaving the assistant piggery person in charge, the piggery person set off on the long journey across the hills. On the first day he met a man dressed all in green who set him a challenge. The piggery person bashed him about with a bludgeon and went on his way. On the second day he was engulfed in a vaporous mist and had to use his torch to find his way through it. On the third day the man dressed all in green stood in his path again, so this time the piggery person felled him with a Goon Fang manoeuvre. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-03-1430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-02-28Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Tidy Is As Tidy Does 06:46 Hunched Among These Shimmerings... 12:48 Days O' Bootpolish 20:58 A Vast And Chilly Gasworks TIDY IS AS TIDY DOES Dobson was an excessively tidy man. He firmly believed the old saw which insists there is a place for everything, and everything in its place. Thus, he kept sweets in jars, and jars on shelves in cupboards. This despite his loathing of confectionery. When asked why he stored so many sweets, including humbugs, toffees and jammy teardrops, in labelled jars on labelled shelves in labelled cupboards, Dobson blustered and tried to change the subject. "Oh look," he might say, pointing out of the window, "A mother shrike with her shrikelets," or "What would you say were the chief causes of the Boxer Rising?" In the latter example, he would not bother pointing out the window, but might furrow his brow, as if he had been pondering the topic for some time. This sneaky yet transparent technique worked surprisingly often. Few people, other than Marigold Chew, felt confident enough in the pamphleteer's presence to challenge Dobson. The explanation for this lies not in any personal magnetism or force of personality. In fact, for the life of me I cannot think why he got away with his preposterous behaviour. Cutlery alignment in cutlery drawers was another type of tidiness which exercised the great man. At particularly fraught times he was known to align and realign the cutlery in the cutlery drawer ten times an hour. Sometimes he would be halfway along the path to the pond to commune with swans, then turn on his heel and stamp back into the house to attend to the knives and forks. Nowadays, of course, some pop psychologist would make a television documentary asserting that Dobson suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, but I think we can safely reject such a notion. It is not as if he was washing his hands every five minutes, or going doolally at the sight of glitter. Indeed, he ought probably to have washed his hands more often. They were invariably ink-splattered and grubby in other ways, particularly if he had been down by the pond with the swans. No, I think we can rely on Dobson's own account of the cutlery issue, which he addressed in a pamphlet entitled Keeping Cutlery Aligned Tidily In The Cutlery Drawer As An Absolute Imperative If One Aspires To Be Fully Human (out of print). For reasons I need not go into here, hardly anybody has ever bothered to read this middle-period work. The prose is clogged and clunky, the views expressed idiotic, and when typesetting it Marigold Chew chose so tiny a font that the average reader needs an extremely powerful magnifying glass to decipher the text. Oh, forgive me, I just went into the reasons why hardly anybody has ever bothered to read this middle-period work. Dobson would ascribe that little slip to the fact that the cutlery in my cutlery drawers is chaotic and askew. Am I not, then, fully human? And if not, what am I? Partly ape? Perhaps I would be able to answer those questions if I myself had read the pamphlet, but I confess I have not done so. My eyesight is not up to it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-02-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Tidy Is As Tidy Does 06:46 Hunched Among These Shimmerings... 12:48 Days O' Bootpolish 20:58 A Vast And Chilly Gasworks TIDY IS AS TIDY DOES Dobson was an excessively tidy man. He firmly believed the old saw which insists there is a place for everything, and everything in its place. Thus, he kept sweets in jars, and jars on shelves in cupboards. This despite his loathing of confectionery. When asked why he stored so many sweets, including humbugs, toffees and jammy teardrops, in labelled jars on labelled shelves in labelled cupboards, Dobson blustered and tried to change the subject. "Oh look," he might say, pointing out of the window, "A mother shrike with her shrikelets," or "What would you say were the chief causes of the Boxer Rising?" In the latter example, he would not bother pointing out the window, but might furrow his brow, as if he had been pondering the topic for some time. This sneaky yet transparent technique worked surprisingly often. Few people, other than Marigold Chew, felt confident enough in the pamphleteer's presence to challenge Dobson. The explanation for this lies not in any personal magnetism or force of personality. In fact, for the life of me I cannot think why he got away with his preposterous behaviour. Cutlery alignment in cutlery drawers was another type of tidiness which exercised the great man. At particularly fraught times he was known to align and realign the cutlery in the cutlery drawer ten times an hour. Sometimes he would be halfway along the path to the pond to commune with swans, then turn on his heel and stamp back into the house to attend to the knives and forks. Nowadays, of course, some pop psychologist would make a television documentary asserting that Dobson suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, but I think we can safely reject such a notion. It is not as if he was washing his hands every five minutes, or going doolally at the sight of glitter. Indeed, he ought probably to have washed his hands more often. They were invariably ink-splattered and grubby in other ways, particularly if he had been down by the pond with the swans. No, I think we can rely on Dobson's own account of the cutlery issue, which he addressed in a pamphlet entitled Keeping Cutlery Aligned Tidily In The Cutlery Drawer As An Absolute Imperative If One Aspires To Be Fully Human (out of print). For reasons I need not go into here, hardly anybody has ever bothered to read this middle-period work. The prose is clogged and clunky, the views expressed idiotic, and when typesetting it Marigold Chew chose so tiny a font that the average reader needs an extremely powerful magnifying glass to decipher the text. Oh, forgive me, I just went into the reasons why hardly anybody has ever bothered to read this middle-period work. Dobson would ascribe that little slip to the fact that the cutlery in my cutlery drawers is chaotic and askew. Am I not, then, fully human? And if not, what am I? Partly ape? Perhaps I would be able to answer those questions if I myself had read the pamphlet, but I confess I have not done so. My eyesight is not up to it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-02-2830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-02-21Thu, 21 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Tugboat Tales, Number One 13:12 M. Bazard To Mme. Francey 13:29 Pale And Fierce 25:24 The Heroic Bus Driver Of Pointy Town TUGBOAT TALES, NUMBER ONE I once read a story, I can't remember where, about a dyspeptic tugboat captain who wore sinister black gloves and struck fear into his crew. I remember that his name was Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, and that his tugboat was ancient and rusty and rotten. I think I read the story in a newspaper, which would suggest that it was factual rather than some made-up fiction, but I can't be sure. The captain's black gloves were made of wool, and often became tattered and frayed, and I recall a phrase in the story where we were told that he used to "darn them with malevolence". I've done a lot of darning in my time, for I am handy with needle and thread and crochet and knitting needles and suchlike, I have darned socks and jumpers and balaclavas and mittens, though not, admittedly, gloves, yet I cannot for the life of me think how I might darn something malevolently, though god knows I tried to, in the weeks and months after reading the story of Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, in that newspaper, if it was a newspaper. It may have been a periodical. I tried snarling, or spitting at passing puppy-dogs as I darned, but it came across as churlish and bad-tempered rather than malevolent, and I felt like a fool. When the captain snarled, he made a sound like the cawing of a thousand crows, and when he spat, he spat sulphur. There were no puppies on the tugboat, of course, but there was a badger. The captain did not snarl at it, because it was his creature, his familiar. At one point I think it is described as a "demonic badger", whatever that may be. I think we were meant to see the captain as a kind of Ahab figure, obsessed and mad as well as sinister, but for me this effect was flawed by the fact that it was a rented tugboat. Bagshaw/Shawbag did not own it. Every week he had to slip some coinage into the waiting palm of a seaside bureaucrat, representative of a dull organisation stuffed with accountants and administrators. Their main business seemed to be civic coastline management and prettifying, with renting out a tugboat to a sinister begloved madman as an afterthought. Somehow that made him less the master of his vessel, for me, and I remember tutting ruefully as I read the paragraph in which this was explained. Whoever wrote the story clearly felt it was important, for it was a very long paragraph, leaden with detail, and I skipped past it on my subsequent rereadings. So there was Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, on his rented tugboat, with his demonic badger and a terror-stricken crew, and then there was the radio cabin, a tiny cubbyhole squeezed under the orlop deck. I am no expert on maritime hoo-ha, but I suspect it is unusual for a tugboat to have an orlop deck, let alone a radio cabin. No illustrations accompanied the story, and the writer is vague on details about the tugboat's specifications. I have to say that this did not bother me when I read it, and it was only years later, when I talked about the tugboat with a raddled and brine-soaked old sea dog while on holiday at O'Houlihan's Wharf that I learned of these anomalies. I put them out of mind, however. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-02-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Tugboat Tales, Number One 13:12 M. Bazard To Mme. Francey 13:29 Pale And Fierce 25:24 The Heroic Bus Driver Of Pointy Town TUGBOAT TALES, NUMBER ONE I once read a story, I can't remember where, about a dyspeptic tugboat captain who wore sinister black gloves and struck fear into his crew. I remember that his name was Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, and that his tugboat was ancient and rusty and rotten. I think I read the story in a newspaper, which would suggest that it was factual rather than some made-up fiction, but I can't be sure. The captain's black gloves were made of wool, and often became tattered and frayed, and I recall a phrase in the story where we were told that he used to "darn them with malevolence". I've done a lot of darning in my time, for I am handy with needle and thread and crochet and knitting needles and suchlike, I have darned socks and jumpers and balaclavas and mittens, though not, admittedly, gloves, yet I cannot for the life of me think how I might darn something malevolently, though god knows I tried to, in the weeks and months after reading the story of Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, in that newspaper, if it was a newspaper. It may have been a periodical. I tried snarling, or spitting at passing puppy-dogs as I darned, but it came across as churlish and bad-tempered rather than malevolent, and I felt like a fool. When the captain snarled, he made a sound like the cawing of a thousand crows, and when he spat, he spat sulphur. There were no puppies on the tugboat, of course, but there was a badger. The captain did not snarl at it, because it was his creature, his familiar. At one point I think it is described as a "demonic badger", whatever that may be. I think we were meant to see the captain as a kind of Ahab figure, obsessed and mad as well as sinister, but for me this effect was flawed by the fact that it was a rented tugboat. Bagshaw/Shawbag did not own it. Every week he had to slip some coinage into the waiting palm of a seaside bureaucrat, representative of a dull organisation stuffed with accountants and administrators. Their main business seemed to be civic coastline management and prettifying, with renting out a tugboat to a sinister begloved madman as an afterthought. Somehow that made him less the master of his vessel, for me, and I remember tutting ruefully as I read the paragraph in which this was explained. Whoever wrote the story clearly felt it was important, for it was a very long paragraph, leaden with detail, and I skipped past it on my subsequent rereadings. So there was Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, on his rented tugboat, with his demonic badger and a terror-stricken crew, and then there was the radio cabin, a tiny cubbyhole squeezed under the orlop deck. I am no expert on maritime hoo-ha, but I suspect it is unusual for a tugboat to have an orlop deck, let alone a radio cabin. No illustrations accompanied the story, and the writer is vague on details about the tugboat's specifications. I have to say that this did not bother me when I read it, and it was only years later, when I talked about the tugboat with a raddled and brine-soaked old sea dog while on holiday at O'Houlihan's Wharf that I learned of these anomalies. I put them out of mind, however. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-02-2130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-02-14Thu, 14 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:04 Pilgrimage To Pointy Town 23:57 The Rubbish Dump PILGRIMAGE TO POINTY TOWN Reports reach me of dismal doings at the Pointy Town Tourist Board. In an attempt to drum up visitor numbers, a faction on the Board is engaged in not just the rewriting of history, but its wholesale invention. The latest brochure invites me, and thousands like me, to take part in the so-called Pointy Town Pilgrimage Trail, experiencing "the sights and sounds and tastes and smells that greeted those ancient wayfarers who embarked upon the Pilgrimage to Pointy Town in days of yore". This is shameless twaddle. In the ancient days to which the brochure refers, Pointy Town itself did not exist. All a wayfarer of yore would have found was an area of curiously pointy ground, with a few ponds on which ancient ducks and swans clamoured. It is true that the pointiness of the land led later to the erection of a town, but in ancient days there were not even any wattle-and-daub dwellings there, and the area has no caves to speak of in which ancestral Pointy Towners could have sheltered from the filthy weather. The Tourist Board wants us to believe, if I am interpreting the illustrations correctly, that thousands of years ago saucy pilgrims with terrific hairstyles fetched up in Pointy Town from all over the land, and even from lands beyond, and celebrated the general pointiness of things by holding strange ancient ceremonies, traces of which can be found today. For example, there is a gaping pit around the corner from the present post office, and this is meant to be evidence not of botched contemporary roadworks but of a rite involving herons and vipers and bees and hairy men. Where all these herons and vipers and bees and hairy men are meant to have come from, and how they gathered around the pit, and what they did once there gathered, is all left a bit vague. As, to be frank, is the claim that the post office itself stands on the site of the Pointy Town Thing, an ancient parliament on the Icelandic model, and predating the Icelanders' own Thing by a good few centuries. I am assured that next time I lick the reverse of a postage stamp at the post office counter, I am doing so at the very spot where an ancient Pointy Towner named Anaxacaractagrax proclaimed The Brimmings, whatever they are meant to be. This same Anaxacaractagrax is supposedly related, how we are not told, to Atossa, the imperious mother of Xerxes, which gets the Tourist Board into all sorts of chronological and geographical knots. Indeed, there are so many knots, vagaries, and plain implausibilities in this invented history that only a fool would be taken in. That being so, it has to be said that there are plenty of foolish people around, for the Pointy Town Pilgrimage Trail is proving to be a thunderous success. Last week I decided to hie over there for the first time in years to see what was going on. I didn't bother taking the brochure with me, for I had dropped it into a puddle and it was not yet dry. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-02-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:04 Pilgrimage To Pointy Town 23:57 The Rubbish Dump PILGRIMAGE TO POINTY TOWN Reports reach me of dismal doings at the Pointy Town Tourist Board. In an attempt to drum up visitor numbers, a faction on the Board is engaged in not just the rewriting of history, but its wholesale invention. The latest brochure invites me, and thousands like me, to take part in the so-called Pointy Town Pilgrimage Trail, experiencing "the sights and sounds and tastes and smells that greeted those ancient wayfarers who embarked upon the Pilgrimage to Pointy Town in days of yore". This is shameless twaddle. In the ancient days to which the brochure refers, Pointy Town itself did not exist. All a wayfarer of yore would have found was an area of curiously pointy ground, with a few ponds on which ancient ducks and swans clamoured. It is true that the pointiness of the land led later to the erection of a town, but in ancient days there were not even any wattle-and-daub dwellings there, and the area has no caves to speak of in which ancestral Pointy Towners could have sheltered from the filthy weather. The Tourist Board wants us to believe, if I am interpreting the illustrations correctly, that thousands of years ago saucy pilgrims with terrific hairstyles fetched up in Pointy Town from all over the land, and even from lands beyond, and celebrated the general pointiness of things by holding strange ancient ceremonies, traces of which can be found today. For example, there is a gaping pit around the corner from the present post office, and this is meant to be evidence not of botched contemporary roadworks but of a rite involving herons and vipers and bees and hairy men. Where all these herons and vipers and bees and hairy men are meant to have come from, and how they gathered around the pit, and what they did once there gathered, is all left a bit vague. As, to be frank, is the claim that the post office itself stands on the site of the Pointy Town Thing, an ancient parliament on the Icelandic model, and predating the Icelanders' own Thing by a good few centuries. I am assured that next time I lick the reverse of a postage stamp at the post office counter, I am doing so at the very spot where an ancient Pointy Towner named Anaxacaractagrax proclaimed The Brimmings, whatever they are meant to be. This same Anaxacaractagrax is supposedly related, how we are not told, to Atossa, the imperious mother of Xerxes, which gets the Tourist Board into all sorts of chronological and geographical knots. Indeed, there are so many knots, vagaries, and plain implausibilities in this invented history that only a fool would be taken in. That being so, it has to be said that there are plenty of foolish people around, for the Pointy Town Pilgrimage Trail is proving to be a thunderous success. Last week I decided to hie over there for the first time in years to see what was going on. I didn't bother taking the brochure with me, for I had dropped it into a puddle and it was not yet dry. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-02-1430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-01-31Thu, 31 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:33 A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song 21:58 The Family Pig A CELEBRATION OF THE BUFFLEHEAD IN PROSE AND SONG Everyone has their favourite type of duck, and for Prudence Foxglove it was the bufflehead. In the summer of 1894, the unsung Victorian genius took a break from writing her daringly modernist plays and compiled a fat volume entitled A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song. It was illustrated with her own cack-handed pencil drawings which, it has to be said, look much more like teal or mergansers than buffleheads. The dramatist had thousands of copies of the book printed at her own expense, a cost she could easily afford after the astonishing success of her plays such as See How The Intoxicated Brute Wallows In A Swamp Of Moral Turpitude Until His Ravaged Soul Is Uplifted By Muscular Christianity In The Personage Of A Pugilist Vicar (1894). The closing scene in that fine play, in which the Reverend "Nobby" Attenborough rains his beboxinggloved fists down upon the head of the intoxicated brute, is unforgettable. Prudence Foxglove had been collecting snippets about buffleheads from books, periodicals and food packaging since childhood. Most girls of that era would have pasted their cuttings into a scrapbook, but Prudence disliked both paste and scrapbooks, and instead she stuffed her snippings into an ever-burgeoning accumulation of burlap gunny sacks. When a sack was plump and full, she stitched it up using exemplary needlework skills, and entrusted it to the keeping of one of her many gardeners for use as a pillow. The Foxglove family estate had extensive grounds, grown wild over generations of neglect, and it was Prudence's mother Hepzibah, improbably green-fingered, who determined to tame them, employing hundreds of snag-toothed peasants from the surrounding hovels to dig and prune and hoe and harrow. Under the spell of the social reformer Rufus Crank, Hepzibah Foxglove built a model village for her gardeners to live in. Each had their own hut, with guttering and drainage and a spigot and a sink and a pallet with a mattress and a shelf of improving tracts and prayerbooks and a picture nailed to the wall of Christ commanding the woman to throw the sack full of beetles and locusts and flies and snakes and hornets and wasps into the sea. It was unusual in those days for gardeners and other servants to have pillows, so Prudence's gunny sacks were particularly welcome. At her mother's insistence, she had taken the precaution of seeking approval from Rufus Crank himself. By then over ninety, the reformer wrote back to her in the famous "pillows for gardeners" letter, in which he laid out a set of principles we would do well to abide by today, if, that is, we still had gardeners in huts in the grounds of our estates. "Be warned," he wrote, "that a gardener plucked from his hovel and given a hut with modern appurtenances such as a sink and a spigot may get hoity-toity if allowed to rest his oddly-shaped head on a pillow. Yet Christian compassion tells us he must be given the chance so to do. The risk of hoity-toityness can be tempered, if not wholly eradicated, by observing some general principles. Rent the pillow to your gardener rather than giving it to him outright. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-01-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:33 A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song 21:58 The Family Pig A CELEBRATION OF THE BUFFLEHEAD IN PROSE AND SONG Everyone has their favourite type of duck, and for Prudence Foxglove it was the bufflehead. In the summer of 1894, the unsung Victorian genius took a break from writing her daringly modernist plays and compiled a fat volume entitled A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song. It was illustrated with her own cack-handed pencil drawings which, it has to be said, look much more like teal or mergansers than buffleheads. The dramatist had thousands of copies of the book printed at her own expense, a cost she could easily afford after the astonishing success of her plays such as See How The Intoxicated Brute Wallows In A Swamp Of Moral Turpitude Until His Ravaged Soul Is Uplifted By Muscular Christianity In The Personage Of A Pugilist Vicar (1894). The closing scene in that fine play, in which the Reverend "Nobby" Attenborough rains his beboxinggloved fists down upon the head of the intoxicated brute, is unforgettable. Prudence Foxglove had been collecting snippets about buffleheads from books, periodicals and food packaging since childhood. Most girls of that era would have pasted their cuttings into a scrapbook, but Prudence disliked both paste and scrapbooks, and instead she stuffed her snippings into an ever-burgeoning accumulation of burlap gunny sacks. When a sack was plump and full, she stitched it up using exemplary needlework skills, and entrusted it to the keeping of one of her many gardeners for use as a pillow. The Foxglove family estate had extensive grounds, grown wild over generations of neglect, and it was Prudence's mother Hepzibah, improbably green-fingered, who determined to tame them, employing hundreds of snag-toothed peasants from the surrounding hovels to dig and prune and hoe and harrow. Under the spell of the social reformer Rufus Crank, Hepzibah Foxglove built a model village for her gardeners to live in. Each had their own hut, with guttering and drainage and a spigot and a sink and a pallet with a mattress and a shelf of improving tracts and prayerbooks and a picture nailed to the wall of Christ commanding the woman to throw the sack full of beetles and locusts and flies and snakes and hornets and wasps into the sea. It was unusual in those days for gardeners and other servants to have pillows, so Prudence's gunny sacks were particularly welcome. At her mother's insistence, she had taken the precaution of seeking approval from Rufus Crank himself. By then over ninety, the reformer wrote back to her in the famous "pillows for gardeners" letter, in which he laid out a set of principles we would do well to abide by today, if, that is, we still had gardeners in huts in the grounds of our estates. "Be warned," he wrote, "that a gardener plucked from his hovel and given a hut with modern appurtenances such as a sink and a spigot may get hoity-toity if allowed to rest his oddly-shaped head on a pillow. Yet Christian compassion tells us he must be given the chance so to do. The risk of hoity-toityness can be tempered, if not wholly eradicated, by observing some general principles. Rent the pillow to your gardener rather than giving it to him outright. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-01-3130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-01-24Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:45 The Imitation Of Christ 11:16 Me And My Monkeys 21:17 A Tip From A Shaman 24:53 On A Fainting Goat 29:09 Regarding That Vox Pop Orphan 29:14 Hooting Yard Archive, March 2005 THE IMITATION OF CHRIST At a loose end, I signed up for Pilbeam's Crash-Course in the Imitation of Christ. Earlier in the day, plodding through the streets, I had been given a leaflet. The hawker who handed it to me was a person of regrettable grubbiness, and some of his filth inevitably besmirched the leaflet, which was smudged, with the effect that I misread The Imitation of Christ as The Imitation of Chris. Chris who?, I wondered, hoping that Pilbeam was taking an overfamiliar tone with regard to the actor Christopher Plummer. It so happened that I was wearing a Tyrolean jacket not unlike the one sported by Plummer in his career-defining role as Captain Von Trapp in the film version of The Sound of Music. Dressed so, I felt I would have an excellent chance of crashing through the crash course and perhaps winning a plaudit or two. Alas, a falling raindrop washed away the smudge and I realised the course was about Christ rather than Christopher Plummer. Still, I was, as I said, at a loose end, so I headed for the hall where the course was to be held, and I signed up. Throng and hubbub packed the hall, but I found an empty seat and sat down. Soon enough, a fellow I assumed to be Pilbeam appeared on a dais at the front. The first thing he said was "I am not Pilbeam" Had I been lured here under false pretences? The speaker cut a pale and widdershins figure and was almost as grime-splattered as the hawker in the street. It may even have been the same man, no doubt a rascal. But I had nothing better to do, so I continued to sit and listen. "I am sorry to say that Pilbeam is not able to be with us today. He has been incapacitated by Mitteleuropean pig flu, and has asked me to deputise for him. While I would never make so bold as to compare myself to Pilbeam, please be assured that you are in good hands. I have spent many years studying under Pilbeam, eating from the same table, having my hair cut at the same barber's, with the same pair of scissors, and wearing the same size shoes, like Beckett and Joyce. My name is Lars, rather than Pilbeam, but I can say truthfully that I am the next best thing to Pilbeam when it comes to delivering this crash course. "So let us turn now to the crash course itself, the aim of which is to furnish you with the skills necessary to imitate Christ. As it is a crash course, we will not be seeking to imitate Christ in every particular. If we tried that"--he chuckled--"we would become so Christ-like there would be a risk of blasphemy. Far better, according to Pilbeam's precepts, to imitate Christ in a limited way, enough for us to benefit and to become holier than we are, but not so much that we threaten the unique and ineffable goodness of Christ Our Lord Himself. "I trust you are all keeping up. Excellent. In what way, then, shall we imitate Christ? You will all, I hope, be familiar with the story of the Gadarene swine. It is to be found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, in Matthew 8 : 28-32, in Mark 5 : 1-13, and in Luke 8 : 26-33. Briefly put, a poor man possessed by demons begs Christ to release him from his torment. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-01-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:45 The Imitation Of Christ 11:16 Me And My Monkeys 21:17 A Tip From A Shaman 24:53 On A Fainting Goat 29:09 Regarding That Vox Pop Orphan 29:14 Hooting Yard Archive, March 2005 THE IMITATION OF CHRIST At a loose end, I signed up for Pilbeam's Crash-Course in the Imitation of Christ. Earlier in the day, plodding through the streets, I had been given a leaflet. The hawker who handed it to me was a person of regrettable grubbiness, and some of his filth inevitably besmirched the leaflet, which was smudged, with the effect that I misread The Imitation of Christ as The Imitation of Chris. Chris who?, I wondered, hoping that Pilbeam was taking an overfamiliar tone with regard to the actor Christopher Plummer. It so happened that I was wearing a Tyrolean jacket not unlike the one sported by Plummer in his career-defining role as Captain Von Trapp in the film version of The Sound of Music. Dressed so, I felt I would have an excellent chance of crashing through the crash course and perhaps winning a plaudit or two. Alas, a falling raindrop washed away the smudge and I realised the course was about Christ rather than Christopher Plummer. Still, I was, as I said, at a loose end, so I headed for the hall where the course was to be held, and I signed up. Throng and hubbub packed the hall, but I found an empty seat and sat down. Soon enough, a fellow I assumed to be Pilbeam appeared on a dais at the front. The first thing he said was "I am not Pilbeam" Had I been lured here under false pretences? The speaker cut a pale and widdershins figure and was almost as grime-splattered as the hawker in the street. It may even have been the same man, no doubt a rascal. But I had nothing better to do, so I continued to sit and listen. "I am sorry to say that Pilbeam is not able to be with us today. He has been incapacitated by Mitteleuropean pig flu, and has asked me to deputise for him. While I would never make so bold as to compare myself to Pilbeam, please be assured that you are in good hands. I have spent many years studying under Pilbeam, eating from the same table, having my hair cut at the same barber's, with the same pair of scissors, and wearing the same size shoes, like Beckett and Joyce. My name is Lars, rather than Pilbeam, but I can say truthfully that I am the next best thing to Pilbeam when it comes to delivering this crash course. "So let us turn now to the crash course itself, the aim of which is to furnish you with the skills necessary to imitate Christ. As it is a crash course, we will not be seeking to imitate Christ in every particular. If we tried that"--he chuckled--"we would become so Christ-like there would be a risk of blasphemy. Far better, according to Pilbeam's precepts, to imitate Christ in a limited way, enough for us to benefit and to become holier than we are, but not so much that we threaten the unique and ineffable goodness of Christ Our Lord Himself. "I trust you are all keeping up. Excellent. In what way, then, shall we imitate Christ? You will all, I hope, be familiar with the story of the Gadarene swine. It is to be found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, in Matthew 8 : 28-32, in Mark 5 : 1-13, and in Luke 8 : 26-33. Briefly put, a poor man possessed by demons begs Christ to release him from his torment. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-01-2430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2019-01-17Thu, 17 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 A Person From Porlock 03:28 An Exciting Pastime 06:02 What is Hooting Yard? 11:11 A Sad Story 13:26 The Windows in the Villa 19:03 The Life & Times of Captain Cake 22:46 Potted Biographies of a Marine Hue, No. 1 25:41 Bees in Bonnets 26:33 "I fancied a sepulchral voice exclaiming: " A PERSON FROM PORLOCK Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I know the misery of being inconvenienced by a person from Porlock. It happened thus. It was a Wednesday, I recall, teeming with Hooting Yard's most tremendous rainfall for forty years. I was sat at the kitchen table attempting to insert a new pair of laces into my gleaming big black leather boots. Minnie was at her spinet, as usual, idly tinkling. I suspected that soon the tinkling would cease and she would launch into an impassioned performance of one of her ten thousand and twenty two songs. I hoped she would play my favourite, the Anthem for a Brutish Haberdasher, or perhaps her mangled sea shanty Bring Me Your Winding Sheet, O Mother of Mine. As I fiddled ineptly with the laces, our door crashed open and a hirsute and drenched individual burst into the room. In an instant, a puddle formed at his feet. Minnie continued to tinkle. "I come," announced the stranger, in a declamatory roar as if he were addressing a vast crowd of huddled petitioners, "I come not from haunts of coot and hern. Nor do I come in response to your whistle, my lad." "I was not whistling," I replied. "Precisely!" he continued, "I come from Porlock, and I am going to confiscate your aglets." So saying, he withdrew from the pocket of his bright yellow windcheater a pair of garden secateurs, swiftly cut the aglets off the ends of my brand new laces, and charged out into the downpour. He did not close the door behind him. I held my head in my hands and began to weep. Minnie played the pounding opening chords of Dismal Corncrakes. AN EXCITING PASTIME Frederica Seeger's Entertainments For Home, Church & School (1910) is packed with unbearably exciting diversions. Here, for example, is "Lighting The Candle" : This feat is a very amusing one, and is performed as follows: Two persons kneel on the ground, facing each other. Each holds in his left hand a candle in a candlestick, at the same time grasping his right foot in his right hand. This position compels him to balance himself on his left knee. One of the candles is lighted; the other is not. The holders are required to light the unlighted candle from the lighted one. The conditions are simple enough, but one would hardly believe how often the performers will roll over on the floor before they succeed in lighting the candle. It will be found desirable to spread a newspaper on the floor between the combatants. Many spots of candle-grease will thus be intercepted, and the peace of mind of the lady of the house proportionately spared. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-01-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 A Person From Porlock 03:28 An Exciting Pastime 06:02 What is Hooting Yard? 11:11 A Sad Story 13:26 The Windows in the Villa 19:03 The Life & Times of Captain Cake 22:46 Potted Biographies of a Marine Hue, No. 1 25:41 Bees in Bonnets 26:33 "I fancied a sepulchral voice exclaiming: " A PERSON FROM PORLOCK Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I know the misery of being inconvenienced by a person from Porlock. It happened thus. It was a Wednesday, I recall, teeming with Hooting Yard's most tremendous rainfall for forty years. I was sat at the kitchen table attempting to insert a new pair of laces into my gleaming big black leather boots. Minnie was at her spinet, as usual, idly tinkling. I suspected that soon the tinkling would cease and she would launch into an impassioned performance of one of her ten thousand and twenty two songs. I hoped she would play my favourite, the Anthem for a Brutish Haberdasher, or perhaps her mangled sea shanty Bring Me Your Winding Sheet, O Mother of Mine. As I fiddled ineptly with the laces, our door crashed open and a hirsute and drenched individual burst into the room. In an instant, a puddle formed at his feet. Minnie continued to tinkle. "I come," announced the stranger, in a declamatory roar as if he were addressing a vast crowd of huddled petitioners, "I come not from haunts of coot and hern. Nor do I come in response to your whistle, my lad." "I was not whistling," I replied. "Precisely!" he continued, "I come from Porlock, and I am going to confiscate your aglets." So saying, he withdrew from the pocket of his bright yellow windcheater a pair of garden secateurs, swiftly cut the aglets off the ends of my brand new laces, and charged out into the downpour. He did not close the door behind him. I held my head in my hands and began to weep. Minnie played the pounding opening chords of Dismal Corncrakes. AN EXCITING PASTIME Frederica Seeger's Entertainments For Home, Church & School (1910) is packed with unbearably exciting diversions. Here, for example, is "Lighting The Candle" : This feat is a very amusing one, and is performed as follows: Two persons kneel on the ground, facing each other. Each holds in his left hand a candle in a candlestick, at the same time grasping his right foot in his right hand. This position compels him to balance himself on his left knee. One of the candles is lighted; the other is not. The holders are required to light the unlighted candle from the lighted one. The conditions are simple enough, but one would hardly believe how often the performers will roll over on the floor before they succeed in lighting the candle. It will be found desirable to spread a newspaper on the floor between the combatants. Many spots of candle-grease will thus be intercepted, and the peace of mind of the lady of the house proportionately spared. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2019-01-1730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-12-20Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon 14:49 Docking Hack 19:34 On Scree 21:05 Fire! 25:07 The Glue In The Palace Was Rarefied; The Putty Was Dreadful 26:02 How I Plunged Into the Bottomless Viper-pit of Gaar 26:05 The Glue In The Palace Was Rarefied; The Putty Was Dreadful 26:22 Vagabond Pod 26:27 The Glue In The Palace Was Rarefied; The Putty Was Dreadful 27:52 King Wenceslas 27:56 The Glue In The Palace Was Rarefied; The Putty Was Dreadful ON THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS AT HOON And while we are on the subject of Hoon ... Splattered with seagull droppings, the Woman of Twigs stood at the very edge of the cliff, her back to the sea. Barefoot, she rocked gently back and forth on her impromptu podium. The villagers were gathered about her, wretched and snivelling. Some carried pitchforks, or dainty little tin boxes full of bip. They were all ears as they waited for the Woman of Twigs to speak. She had blindfolded herself with a threadbare bandage, bound her hair into tufts with flaxen yarn and roots, and held in her hands a ribbon of bloody silk. Precisely at the moment that the thousandth wave of the day crashed against the rocks below, the Woman of Twigs ceased her rocking, cast the ribbon to the winds, and, shouting to make herself heard over the screeching gulls, began: "You asked me to save the village from Doom. I have communed with a variety of weird and tiresome shades to seek guidance. You are correct, your village is imperilled. There is only one way to rescue it from the coming agony. Three of your number must travel many miles distant, to the town of Hoon. There, they must find a churn, possibly broken, the churn of Hoon, which has had engraved upon it a rather fetching likeness of myself. Do not ask why. Having scoured Hoon for this churn, and found in Hoon this churn of Hoon, it must be brought back here, with due haste, and hurled into the boiling sea from this very spot on the cliff's edge. That task complete, your village will once again know glee. I have left unmentioned one crucial point. The three who will venture to Hoon, there to find and return the Hoon-churn, must all be called Ned. That is all." Work began at once on building the chariot. In the kitchens, the villagers boiled up huge iron pans full of mud and silt dredged from the riverbed. Trees were felled in the spinney. The smithy at his anvil beat out a goodly number of nails, spikes, and very sharp hooks. Within a week, the foul-smelling but indestructible vehicle was ready. Volunteers fanned out across the countryside to trap a suitable beast of burden. Horses, oxen, even a crippled reindeer of great elegance, were sighted and stalked, but another week elapsed without success. Eventually it was decided that the three Neds would have to travel under their own steam, pulling the chariot by themselves. Ned, Ned and Ned agreed, drooling with excitement in their eagerness to set out on so glorious a journey, one that would save the village and bring them renown. They left the village at a gallop, in the middle of the night. Without maps, they relied entirely on local lore and superstition. From infancy, each Ned had been imbued with a long catechism of saws and proverbs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-12-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon 14:49 Docking Hack 19:34 On Scree 21:05 Fire! 25:07 The Glue In The Palace Was Rarefied; The Putty Was Dreadful 26:02 How I Plunged Into the Bottomless Viper-pit of Gaar 26:05 The Glue In The Palace Was Rarefied; The Putty Was Dreadful 26:22 Vagabond Pod 26:27 The Glue In The Palace Was Rarefied; The Putty Was Dreadful 27:52 King Wenceslas 27:56 The Glue In The Palace Was Rarefied; The Putty Was Dreadful ON THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS AT HOON And while we are on the subject of Hoon ... Splattered with seagull droppings, the Woman of Twigs stood at the very edge of the cliff, her back to the sea. Barefoot, she rocked gently back and forth on her impromptu podium. The villagers were gathered about her, wretched and snivelling. Some carried pitchforks, or dainty little tin boxes full of bip. They were all ears as they waited for the Woman of Twigs to speak. She had blindfolded herself with a threadbare bandage, bound her hair into tufts with flaxen yarn and roots, and held in her hands a ribbon of bloody silk. Precisely at the moment that the thousandth wave of the day crashed against the rocks below, the Woman of Twigs ceased her rocking, cast the ribbon to the winds, and, shouting to make herself heard over the screeching gulls, began: "You asked me to save the village from Doom. I have communed with a variety of weird and tiresome shades to seek guidance. You are correct, your village is imperilled. There is only one way to rescue it from the coming agony. Three of your number must travel many miles distant, to the town of Hoon. There, they must find a churn, possibly broken, the churn of Hoon, which has had engraved upon it a rather fetching likeness of myself. Do not ask why. Having scoured Hoon for this churn, and found in Hoon this churn of Hoon, it must be brought back here, with due haste, and hurled into the boiling sea from this very spot on the cliff's edge. That task complete, your village will once again know glee. I have left unmentioned one crucial point. The three who will venture to Hoon, there to find and return the Hoon-churn, must all be called Ned. That is all." Work began at once on building the chariot. In the kitchens, the villagers boiled up huge iron pans full of mud and silt dredged from the riverbed. Trees were felled in the spinney. The smithy at his anvil beat out a goodly number of nails, spikes, and very sharp hooks. Within a week, the foul-smelling but indestructible vehicle was ready. Volunteers fanned out across the countryside to trap a suitable beast of burden. Horses, oxen, even a crippled reindeer of great elegance, were sighted and stalked, but another week elapsed without success. Eventually it was decided that the three Neds would have to travel under their own steam, pulling the chariot by themselves. Ned, Ned and Ned agreed, drooling with excitement in their eagerness to set out on so glorious a journey, one that would save the village and bring them renown. They left the village at a gallop, in the middle of the night. Without maps, they relied entirely on local lore and superstition. From infancy, each Ned had been imbued with a long catechism of saws and proverbs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-12-2030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-12-13Thu, 13 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:46 Six Lectures On Fruit 13:04 Wolves And Fruit 23:48 Dog, Serpent, Cushion, Fruit SIX LECTURES ON FRUIT Dobson's Six Lectures On Fruit were among the most highly-regarded of his works, held in an esteem that the contemporary reader finds unfathomable. Revisiting these pamphlets, it swiftly becomes apparent that Dobson has no idea what he's talking about. The revised view of the Lectures is put best by one upstart young Dobson scholar, who dismisses them as "bloviating and orotund". Consider the first lecture, On The Putting Of Fruit Into Pies, in which Dobson challenges the accepted definitions of both 'fruit' and 'pies', not to mention the usual meanings of the verb 'to put'. Some critics like to pretend that the essay is a precursor of what would become known as postmodernism or deconstruction, and inasmuch as it is clueless gibberish, they are correct. In his defence, the pamphleteer does not dress up his babble in needlessly complicated pseudoacademic jargon. Indeed, his language is direct, even earthy, and littered with harsh Anglo Saxon expletives, but he betrays depths of almost unimaginable ignorance. The climax of the lecture is supposed to be a recipe for what Dobson calls a 'prune and lemon pastry explosion', but the instructions are so befogged by witlessness that, to my knowledge, no one has ever succeeded in making it. The genesis of the Lectures was an invitation to Dobson from the Orchard Persons Of The Port Of Tongs. Those of you familiar with the geography of this wretched seaside town will know that it is bounded on its eastern landward side by a terrific number of orchards. The Orchard Persons' Social Club & Community Centre was situated in a clearing between a pear orchard and a persimmon orchard, and the usual entertainments it hosted were nights of oompah oompah music and freakish dancing. Perhaps that is why Dobson chose to deliver his second lecture, On The Cutting Of Grapefruit Into Segments Of Equal Size, in the form of rhyming couplets, to the accompaniment of a glockenspiel. He was not a skilled glockenspielist, nor did he have much understanding of geometry, as those Orchard Persons discovered who went home and tried to cut their grapefruit the Dobson way . For the third and fourth lectures, Dobson resorted to anecdote and personal reminiscence, recounting a series of yarns under the headings All The Plums I Have Ever Eaten, Where I Was, And What They Tasted Like and How I Built A Coathanger Out Of Fig Stones. Audiences were dwindling by this time, and only three people turned up to listen to what was to become the most notorious of the Lectures, the Dialogue Between A Raspberry And A Tangerine. Even those who are most severely critical of the series are forced to admit that Dobson did a tremendous amount of research for this one. He was barely out of the reading room of the Pointy Town Municipal Library for weeks on end, poring over books on topics as diverse as fruit, philately, biochemistry, aerodynamics, the Peninsular Wars, tugboats, flamenco dancing, and the Diet of Worms. But his claims to have penetrated the very essence of a raspberry and a tangerine are, quite frankly, ludicrous. Marigold Chew told him so as they ate breakfast on a hopeless veranda on the morning before the lecture. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-12-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:46 Six Lectures On Fruit 13:04 Wolves And Fruit 23:48 Dog, Serpent, Cushion, Fruit SIX LECTURES ON FRUIT Dobson's Six Lectures On Fruit were among the most highly-regarded of his works, held in an esteem that the contemporary reader finds unfathomable. Revisiting these pamphlets, it swiftly becomes apparent that Dobson has no idea what he's talking about. The revised view of the Lectures is put best by one upstart young Dobson scholar, who dismisses them as "bloviating and orotund". Consider the first lecture, On The Putting Of Fruit Into Pies, in which Dobson challenges the accepted definitions of both 'fruit' and 'pies', not to mention the usual meanings of the verb 'to put'. Some critics like to pretend that the essay is a precursor of what would become known as postmodernism or deconstruction, and inasmuch as it is clueless gibberish, they are correct. In his defence, the pamphleteer does not dress up his babble in needlessly complicated pseudoacademic jargon. Indeed, his language is direct, even earthy, and littered with harsh Anglo Saxon expletives, but he betrays depths of almost unimaginable ignorance. The climax of the lecture is supposed to be a recipe for what Dobson calls a 'prune and lemon pastry explosion', but the instructions are so befogged by witlessness that, to my knowledge, no one has ever succeeded in making it. The genesis of the Lectures was an invitation to Dobson from the Orchard Persons Of The Port Of Tongs. Those of you familiar with the geography of this wretched seaside town will know that it is bounded on its eastern landward side by a terrific number of orchards. The Orchard Persons' Social Club & Community Centre was situated in a clearing between a pear orchard and a persimmon orchard, and the usual entertainments it hosted were nights of oompah oompah music and freakish dancing. Perhaps that is why Dobson chose to deliver his second lecture, On The Cutting Of Grapefruit Into Segments Of Equal Size, in the form of rhyming couplets, to the accompaniment of a glockenspiel. He was not a skilled glockenspielist, nor did he have much understanding of geometry, as those Orchard Persons discovered who went home and tried to cut their grapefruit the Dobson way . For the third and fourth lectures, Dobson resorted to anecdote and personal reminiscence, recounting a series of yarns under the headings All The Plums I Have Ever Eaten, Where I Was, And What They Tasted Like and How I Built A Coathanger Out Of Fig Stones. Audiences were dwindling by this time, and only three people turned up to listen to what was to become the most notorious of the Lectures, the Dialogue Between A Raspberry And A Tangerine. Even those who are most severely critical of the series are forced to admit that Dobson did a tremendous amount of research for this one. He was barely out of the reading room of the Pointy Town Municipal Library for weeks on end, poring over books on topics as diverse as fruit, philately, biochemistry, aerodynamics, the Peninsular Wars, tugboats, flamenco dancing, and the Diet of Worms. But his claims to have penetrated the very essence of a raspberry and a tangerine are, quite frankly, ludicrous. Marigold Chew told him so as they ate breakfast on a hopeless veranda on the morning before the lecture. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-12-1330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-12-06Thu, 06 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 The Blind Man As Poultry Inspector 16:28 Poultry Swimming In Transparent Jellies 18:53 Two Sparrows THE BLIND MAN AS POULTRY INSPECTOR Jorge Luis Borges' tenure as a blind inspector of poultry, while brief, was not without precedent. We recall the case of Pimty, two decades earlier and far, far from Buenos Aires. It may be an exaggeration to dub him, as did Pebblehead in the title of his bestselling paperback biography, The Illustrious Pimty, but that there was a lustre about him cannot be denied, unless you want to start a punch-up. Pimty's blindness was more Blunketty than Miltonic, he was the sort of man who enraged cows, when he trespassed in their fields, at weekends, carrying a picnic basket, under a thunderous sky, escaping the poultry market with its tin roofs and yelling merchants, his prison in the week, the inspector's hut, the braille calendar hanging tattered from a nail and the nail rusted, pricking him if he wasn't careful, blood on his fingers as his hands fumbled delving into a hen's croup, prodding, inspecting, as he was paid to do, oh and more than generously, he got a fair whack, and he spent it on booze and floozies, they haunted the poultry market, like figures from an early Kirchner, gaudy, angular, themselves sozzled on bathtub gin, sometimes they clucked just like the hens, particularly in the early afternoon, poor Pimty fuddled but up to his duty, tape measure round his neck like a tailor shifting schmutter, god knows why, it wasn't his job to measure the hens, nor their eggs, they joked he thought it was some kind of loose cravat, as if being blind he wouldn't know, they should have learned from their failed tricks, those mischievous poulterers, shoving a ball of dough stuck with feathers on the inspector's table, his rage was as terrible as the cows when he opened the gate of the field with one hand, holding tight to the picnic basket with the other, out in the mist, oblivious of it, but not of the cows that bore down on him, on Saturdays and Sundays when the poultry market was closed, shuttered, a deserted patch of concrete and cement, stray feathers scattered, neglected by the janitor's broom, the janitor Pimty's pal, some said his half-brother, deaf as a post where the inspector was blind, they made quite a pair even without the blood tie, always playing card games at lunchtime, rummy and spite and my lady's bonnet and Croesus, no money ever changing hands, the table rickety, sawdust everywhere, the stove in the corner, rain on the roof, birds pecking grain from the floor, shadow in the hut door of the inspector of inspectors looming, come for the rent and a check up, Pimty defiant, spitting out his words, hair standing on end as if he'd seen a ghost, half these hens are sick, man, what do you expect me to do, have a tot of gin while you tally my ledgers, I have to go and have a word with a man about a Buff Orpington and a Dutch Hookbill, and off Pimty goes, weaving across the familiar yard, sniffing the air, a storm brewing, better put on his sou'wester, yellow as a duck in a nursery book, shiny cardboard pages, stiff, buckled here and there, as you'd expect, he remembered gazing and gazing, rapt, when still so tiny with eyes that worked, before the operation, the surgeon cutting the useless withered […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-12-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 The Blind Man As Poultry Inspector 16:28 Poultry Swimming In Transparent Jellies 18:53 Two Sparrows THE BLIND MAN AS POULTRY INSPECTOR Jorge Luis Borges' tenure as a blind inspector of poultry, while brief, was not without precedent. We recall the case of Pimty, two decades earlier and far, far from Buenos Aires. It may be an exaggeration to dub him, as did Pebblehead in the title of his bestselling paperback biography, The Illustrious Pimty, but that there was a lustre about him cannot be denied, unless you want to start a punch-up. Pimty's blindness was more Blunketty than Miltonic, he was the sort of man who enraged cows, when he trespassed in their fields, at weekends, carrying a picnic basket, under a thunderous sky, escaping the poultry market with its tin roofs and yelling merchants, his prison in the week, the inspector's hut, the braille calendar hanging tattered from a nail and the nail rusted, pricking him if he wasn't careful, blood on his fingers as his hands fumbled delving into a hen's croup, prodding, inspecting, as he was paid to do, oh and more than generously, he got a fair whack, and he spent it on booze and floozies, they haunted the poultry market, like figures from an early Kirchner, gaudy, angular, themselves sozzled on bathtub gin, sometimes they clucked just like the hens, particularly in the early afternoon, poor Pimty fuddled but up to his duty, tape measure round his neck like a tailor shifting schmutter, god knows why, it wasn't his job to measure the hens, nor their eggs, they joked he thought it was some kind of loose cravat, as if being blind he wouldn't know, they should have learned from their failed tricks, those mischievous poulterers, shoving a ball of dough stuck with feathers on the inspector's table, his rage was as terrible as the cows when he opened the gate of the field with one hand, holding tight to the picnic basket with the other, out in the mist, oblivious of it, but not of the cows that bore down on him, on Saturdays and Sundays when the poultry market was closed, shuttered, a deserted patch of concrete and cement, stray feathers scattered, neglected by the janitor's broom, the janitor Pimty's pal, some said his half-brother, deaf as a post where the inspector was blind, they made quite a pair even without the blood tie, always playing card games at lunchtime, rummy and spite and my lady's bonnet and Croesus, no money ever changing hands, the table rickety, sawdust everywhere, the stove in the corner, rain on the roof, birds pecking grain from the floor, shadow in the hut door of the inspector of inspectors looming, come for the rent and a check up, Pimty defiant, spitting out his words, hair standing on end as if he'd seen a ghost, half these hens are sick, man, what do you expect me to do, have a tot of gin while you tally my ledgers, I have to go and have a word with a man about a Buff Orpington and a Dutch Hookbill, and off Pimty goes, weaving across the familiar yard, sniffing the air, a storm brewing, better put on his sou'wester, yellow as a duck in a nursery book, shiny cardboard pages, stiff, buckled here and there, as you'd expect, he remembered gazing and gazing, rapt, when still so tiny with eyes that worked, before the operation, the surgeon cutting the useless withered […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-12-0630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-11-29Thu, 29 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:33 Glad Tidings From Pointy Town 09:39 Huad Jardo 09:56 Fruiterer's Gleam 20:48 The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser 22:46 Little Dagobert GLAD TIDINGS FROM POINTY TOWN Glad tidings from Pointy Town, where there has been a massive increase in the number of applications to join the local chapter of the Tuesday Weld Fan Club. You will recall that a troop of Pointy Town Weldists, on an ill-starr'd charabanc outing, made an important archaeological discovery. If by chance you do not recall it, I can refer you back to an account of it through the magic of "het internet" hyperlink. Incidentally, did you know that British Telecom once tried --unsuccessfully--to claim copyright of the word hyperlink? That is true, though you ought not believe similar stories, such as Tesco laying claim to the phrase sausages on the cheap, The Grauniad trying for muddle-headed leftie blather, or both the BBC and ITV attempting to copyright maverick police officer with "issues". Anyway, it appears that the tale of the finding of the tomb of Anaxagrotax has drummed up an unprecedented amount of interest in the Tuesday Weld Fan Club, in spite of the fact that many younger Pointy Towners have absolutely no idea who Tuesday Weld is. Perhaps they think if they are allowed to join the club they will be taken on charabanc outings by sinister, spidery drivers, although my understanding is that there have been no excursions since the one reported here. In fact, there is some mystery regarding the precise activities of the Fan Club, for they have held no jamborees, jumble sales, Weldathons or film screenings for a very long time. Even their newsletter, Weld!, published every week on Tuesday, has ceased to appear in the newsagents' kiosks of Pointy Town. I did manage to track down the minutes of the most recent executive committee meeting, but it was difficult to wring any sense out of them. Take this, for example: We lent our ears to a man standing on one leg, who puffed upon a flute and called us fools. When he did so, he stretched out the "oo" in "fools" so that it lasted several minutes. During the whole time he maintained his monopod posture. Eventually, he was asked by Weldist No. 472 how this imprecation related to Tuesday Weld. In reply, he gave another somewhat wheezy puff on his flute and stole softly away, like Jack-in-the-Green. Is this evidence of some sort of esoteric hoo-hah going on in the preciously staid atmosphere of the Tuesday Weld Fan Club? Certainly the sheer numbers of new applicants suggest a coup or takeover. But what in heaven's name could their agenda be? I shall keep a beady, if myopic, eye on these matters, and may send Mrs Gubbins to be an infiltrator among the infiltrators. Meanwhile, to keep you occupied while you await further developments, here is a cut out 'n' keep Tuesday Weld to print, 'n' cut out, 'n' keep upon your mantelpiece. Dust it often, and dust it well. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-11-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:33 Glad Tidings From Pointy Town 09:39 Huad Jardo 09:56 Fruiterer's Gleam 20:48 The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser 22:46 Little Dagobert GLAD TIDINGS FROM POINTY TOWN Glad tidings from Pointy Town, where there has been a massive increase in the number of applications to join the local chapter of the Tuesday Weld Fan Club. You will recall that a troop of Pointy Town Weldists, on an ill-starr'd charabanc outing, made an important archaeological discovery. If by chance you do not recall it, I can refer you back to an account of it through the magic of "het internet" hyperlink. Incidentally, did you know that British Telecom once tried --unsuccessfully--to claim copyright of the word hyperlink? That is true, though you ought not believe similar stories, such as Tesco laying claim to the phrase sausages on the cheap, The Grauniad trying for muddle-headed leftie blather, or both the BBC and ITV attempting to copyright maverick police officer with "issues". Anyway, it appears that the tale of the finding of the tomb of Anaxagrotax has drummed up an unprecedented amount of interest in the Tuesday Weld Fan Club, in spite of the fact that many younger Pointy Towners have absolutely no idea who Tuesday Weld is. Perhaps they think if they are allowed to join the club they will be taken on charabanc outings by sinister, spidery drivers, although my understanding is that there have been no excursions since the one reported here. In fact, there is some mystery regarding the precise activities of the Fan Club, for they have held no jamborees, jumble sales, Weldathons or film screenings for a very long time. Even their newsletter, Weld!, published every week on Tuesday, has ceased to appear in the newsagents' kiosks of Pointy Town. I did manage to track down the minutes of the most recent executive committee meeting, but it was difficult to wring any sense out of them. Take this, for example: We lent our ears to a man standing on one leg, who puffed upon a flute and called us fools. When he did so, he stretched out the "oo" in "fools" so that it lasted several minutes. During the whole time he maintained his monopod posture. Eventually, he was asked by Weldist No. 472 how this imprecation related to Tuesday Weld. In reply, he gave another somewhat wheezy puff on his flute and stole softly away, like Jack-in-the-Green. Is this evidence of some sort of esoteric hoo-hah going on in the preciously staid atmosphere of the Tuesday Weld Fan Club? Certainly the sheer numbers of new applicants suggest a coup or takeover. But what in heaven's name could their agenda be? I shall keep a beady, if myopic, eye on these matters, and may send Mrs Gubbins to be an infiltrator among the infiltrators. Meanwhile, to keep you occupied while you await further developments, here is a cut out 'n' keep Tuesday Weld to print, 'n' cut out, 'n' keep upon your mantelpiece. Dust it often, and dust it well. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-11-2930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-11-22Thu, 22 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Episode 44 (Swan Registry Version) 03:00 O! To Be In Pepinstow! 15:05 A Ticket 22:01 Bedtime Stories 25:55 Blodwyn & Fulgenceac EPISODE 44 (SWAN REGISTRY VERSION) To listen to yesterday's exciting episode of Hooting Yard On The Air, click here. O! TO BE IN PEPINSTOW! O! To be in Pepinstow, among the Tundist Adepts! We shall stand in a ring around the bonfire, breathing in the fumes and snorting like bears! On the other hand, might it not be safer to be barricaded indoors, behind shutters, with a pile of rags ready to set afire and fling from the rooftop? Whenever I find myself in such a quandary, I seek counsel from my pal Aesop, who lives in a tin hut at the end of a long and bosky lane. I set off to see him, taking with me two loaves of bread, and on the way I sold one of the loaves and bought a hyacinth, an aesthetic touch I learned from Sweetie Appleyard. Aesop would, I knew, happily wolf down the bread while I contemplated the flower which he would plop into a vase on his windowsill or mantelpiece. Perhaps I should point out that Aesop was not named after the Ancient Greek fabulist, though people invariably assumed that to be the case. After all, one meets with very very few Aesops these days, and I cannot think of anyone else of my acquaintance who goes by that moniker. As far as my pal was concerned, it was simply that his pa and ma liked the name. His sister was called Atossa for the same reason, and not because the parents had a "thing" about the daughter of Cyrus the Great and mother of Xerxes I. In fact they were an ignorant pair who knew nothing of the Ancient Greeks, nor of Ancient Rome nor Sparta nor Carthage nor Ur of the Chaldees. And it must be said that Aesop himself was pretty thick, quite the dimwit. One of the reasons I bought the hyacinth was to give me something to concentrate on while he gobbled down the loaf. His table manners were absolutely awful, like Kafka's. The miraculous thing about Aesop was that in spite of his stupidity he always dispensed judicious advice, at least on matters related to Tundism. He had, you see, once been an Adept himself, unlikely as that may seem. Though beetle-browed and inarticulate and insanitary, he had been privy to the mysteries. It was never clear to me whether they drummed him out or if he had to escape their Tundist clutches, but either way he now had to remain in hiding in his tin hut at the end of the lane sheltered in clumps of larch, laburnum, hornbeam and pine, those being the four kinds of tree which grow in and around Pepinstow by dint of the soil conditions. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-11-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Episode 44 (Swan Registry Version) 03:00 O! To Be In Pepinstow! 15:05 A Ticket 22:01 Bedtime Stories 25:55 Blodwyn & Fulgenceac EPISODE 44 (SWAN REGISTRY VERSION) To listen to yesterday's exciting episode of Hooting Yard On The Air, click here. O! TO BE IN PEPINSTOW! O! To be in Pepinstow, among the Tundist Adepts! We shall stand in a ring around the bonfire, breathing in the fumes and snorting like bears! On the other hand, might it not be safer to be barricaded indoors, behind shutters, with a pile of rags ready to set afire and fling from the rooftop? Whenever I find myself in such a quandary, I seek counsel from my pal Aesop, who lives in a tin hut at the end of a long and bosky lane. I set off to see him, taking with me two loaves of bread, and on the way I sold one of the loaves and bought a hyacinth, an aesthetic touch I learned from Sweetie Appleyard. Aesop would, I knew, happily wolf down the bread while I contemplated the flower which he would plop into a vase on his windowsill or mantelpiece. Perhaps I should point out that Aesop was not named after the Ancient Greek fabulist, though people invariably assumed that to be the case. After all, one meets with very very few Aesops these days, and I cannot think of anyone else of my acquaintance who goes by that moniker. As far as my pal was concerned, it was simply that his pa and ma liked the name. His sister was called Atossa for the same reason, and not because the parents had a "thing" about the daughter of Cyrus the Great and mother of Xerxes I. In fact they were an ignorant pair who knew nothing of the Ancient Greeks, nor of Ancient Rome nor Sparta nor Carthage nor Ur of the Chaldees. And it must be said that Aesop himself was pretty thick, quite the dimwit. One of the reasons I bought the hyacinth was to give me something to concentrate on while he gobbled down the loaf. His table manners were absolutely awful, like Kafka's. The miraculous thing about Aesop was that in spite of his stupidity he always dispensed judicious advice, at least on matters related to Tundism. He had, you see, once been an Adept himself, unlikely as that may seem. Though beetle-browed and inarticulate and insanitary, he had been privy to the mysteries. It was never clear to me whether they drummed him out or if he had to escape their Tundist clutches, but either way he now had to remain in hiding in his tin hut at the end of the lane sheltered in clumps of larch, laburnum, hornbeam and pine, those being the four kinds of tree which grow in and around Pepinstow by dint of the soil conditions. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-11-2230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-11-15Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:44 At The Coffin-Makers' 09:04 Variation On A Theme Of Gerard Manley Hopkins 21:59 The Monkey House Incident AT THE COFFIN-MAKERS' It is, by all accounts, lovely and elegant and varnished, the coffin in which I shall rot, in time to come. I chose it, in a whimsical mood, from a photographic brochure, at the coffin-maker's workshop which I had entered distractedly, mistaking it for the pie 'n' pastry shop. I cannot claim this was a simple error to which any humdrum jackanape might be prone, for not only are the exteriors of the coffin-maker's and the pie 'n' pastry shop radically distinct from one another, but they lie in completely different parts of town, the one at the eastern edge and the other slotted in a parade in the precinct to the south-west. It could with justice be said I was "not all there" that morning. I could blame my paramour or the postie or the weather, but to do so, in any of those cases, would be churlish and incontinent. Well, perhaps the weather. Hailstones pinging down in June? Who'd have thought it? My equanimity was disturbed, as, it seems, were the readings on my compass, for there I was, to the east rather than the south-west, and all beflummoxed, so. There were several coffin-makers busy in the workshop, most of them engaged in sawing and hammering and sanding and planing and hewing and chiselling. One was sat at a desk, writing a tract denouncing cremations and ashes and urns. I have since read it, thoroughly, and it makes a convincing argument without betraying the base personal motives of its author. It was this chap who, looking up from his scribbling, introduced himself to me and asked me what it was I wanted. He gave his name as Ned the Coffin-Maker. In spite of my befuddlement, I had already realised I was not in the pie 'n' pastry shop, so I managed not to make a fool of myself. But I was rather tongue-tied, and all I managed to say in reply was "Hello there, Ned". There followed a confusing five minutes where Ned the Coffin-Maker mistook me for a long lost pal of his, who had run away to sea, or possibly to join a circus, many years before. Apparently, I looked startlingly similar to this fled companion, at least to how Ned imagined he might look after the passage of so many years, grayer and stooped and bewrinkled and riddled with liver spots. He assumed the bunch of chrysanthemums I was carrying was a gift for him, snatched it from me, and plunged it into a jug full of water. When we eventually escaped from our muddle, with the realisation that I was not after all his pal, I felt too embarrassed to ask for my flowers back and, indeed, Ned the Coffin-Maker made no offer to return them to me. I was poised to leave the workshop there and then. That is to say, I had manoeuvred my body so that my toes and nose were pointed in the direction of the doorway, my left arm was outflung to sweep me fully around without my overbalancing, which is always a risk with me, quite honestly, and I was in the process of shifting my glance away from Ned the Coffin-Maker's characterful and strangely enormous head. But then he piped up, waving his pictorial brochure at me as he did so. "Your death is horribly inevitable. It is best to be prepared." I re-poised myself, facing him squarely on. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-11-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:44 At The Coffin-Makers' 09:04 Variation On A Theme Of Gerard Manley Hopkins 21:59 The Monkey House Incident AT THE COFFIN-MAKERS' It is, by all accounts, lovely and elegant and varnished, the coffin in which I shall rot, in time to come. I chose it, in a whimsical mood, from a photographic brochure, at the coffin-maker's workshop which I had entered distractedly, mistaking it for the pie 'n' pastry shop. I cannot claim this was a simple error to which any humdrum jackanape might be prone, for not only are the exteriors of the coffin-maker's and the pie 'n' pastry shop radically distinct from one another, but they lie in completely different parts of town, the one at the eastern edge and the other slotted in a parade in the precinct to the south-west. It could with justice be said I was "not all there" that morning. I could blame my paramour or the postie or the weather, but to do so, in any of those cases, would be churlish and incontinent. Well, perhaps the weather. Hailstones pinging down in June? Who'd have thought it? My equanimity was disturbed, as, it seems, were the readings on my compass, for there I was, to the east rather than the south-west, and all beflummoxed, so. There were several coffin-makers busy in the workshop, most of them engaged in sawing and hammering and sanding and planing and hewing and chiselling. One was sat at a desk, writing a tract denouncing cremations and ashes and urns. I have since read it, thoroughly, and it makes a convincing argument without betraying the base personal motives of its author. It was this chap who, looking up from his scribbling, introduced himself to me and asked me what it was I wanted. He gave his name as Ned the Coffin-Maker. In spite of my befuddlement, I had already realised I was not in the pie 'n' pastry shop, so I managed not to make a fool of myself. But I was rather tongue-tied, and all I managed to say in reply was "Hello there, Ned". There followed a confusing five minutes where Ned the Coffin-Maker mistook me for a long lost pal of his, who had run away to sea, or possibly to join a circus, many years before. Apparently, I looked startlingly similar to this fled companion, at least to how Ned imagined he might look after the passage of so many years, grayer and stooped and bewrinkled and riddled with liver spots. He assumed the bunch of chrysanthemums I was carrying was a gift for him, snatched it from me, and plunged it into a jug full of water. When we eventually escaped from our muddle, with the realisation that I was not after all his pal, I felt too embarrassed to ask for my flowers back and, indeed, Ned the Coffin-Maker made no offer to return them to me. I was poised to leave the workshop there and then. That is to say, I had manoeuvred my body so that my toes and nose were pointed in the direction of the doorway, my left arm was outflung to sweep me fully around without my overbalancing, which is always a risk with me, quite honestly, and I was in the process of shifting my glance away from Ned the Coffin-Maker's characterful and strangely enormous head. But then he piped up, waving his pictorial brochure at me as he did so. "Your death is horribly inevitable. It is best to be prepared." I re-poised myself, facing him squarely on. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-11-1530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-10-18Thu, 18 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 The Hermit Of The Dingly Dell 06:36 Y 11:15 Wool 19:48 Galvanic Batteries, Heads Of Swans 27:11 Rhubarb THE HERMIT OF THE DINGLY DELL I am the hermit of the dingly dell. Ach God!, it is the dingliest of dells. That is why I chose it for my hermitage. Its glades and dingles are abundant with those things which provide for a hermit's simple needs, such as nuts and fruits and rills of fresh water. Every now and then, in a rill, a fish might swim by. Deploying my net with practised skill, I catch the fish. Then I will sit before a fire toasting the fish upon a fork, my hand raised to sleet and sun, my shoes doffed to oblivion, like the hermit in the song by the Art Bears, himself inspired by the hermit carved in stone on the stylobate of the cathedral in Amiens. I have considered carving myself in stone, to pass the time in the dingly dell, but I do not have the proper tools. I suppose I could rub and rub at a pebble, every day, persistently, and carefully, for years, but even then it would be very difficult to get the proper finish. Still, it is a project I might yet embark upon, for the days and nights are long in the dingly dell, and once I have gathered my nuts and fruits of a morning, and made a note of the reading on the rain gauge hanging from a branch of the mighty laburnum, I must always be on my guard against the devil, who, we know, makes work for idle hands. The devil has appeared to me in many guises since I came to my hermitage in the dingly dell. At first he took the form of a vaporous mist. This suggested to me that his powers were weak, and I laughed at him, loudly, waving my arms about to disperse him. But then he grew able to inhabit solid forms, albeit tiny ones, such as an ant or a twig. Lately things have entered a dangerous phase, for the devil has entered the body of a squirrel, and the dingly dell is teeming with squirrels. Shunning the company of my kind, as I do, being a hermit, I have learned to commune with squirrels, but now I must shun them too, or risk engaging with Beelzebub himself. Were that to happen, I might be forced to take refuge in the dingly dell hotel. In the normal run of things, of course, I avoid it. Sometimes, while gathering my nuts and fruits, I come close to the hotel car park, and hide behind a shrub. I have seen the major domo of the hotel striding purposefully across the car park, even making his way into the dingly dell itself, where he stops and sits on a log and smokes a cigarette. This is disturbing, but I am not so neurotic as to think he is in league with the devil, even though squirrels do approach him, tentatively, hoping perhaps for a nut or two. But the major domo is not a man for nuts, he just smokes his cigarette, and occasionally taps out messages on a Blackberry. Not the kind of blackberry I would have for my supper, after some toasted fish, I should add. His is an electronic device, which beeps from time to time while he smokes. It is most irritating, but I dare not rush out at him from behind my shrub and snatch the thing from his hands and stamp upon it until it is crushed to smithereens, which is what I would like to do. For if I did that, I would betray my presence in the dingly dell, and it would no longer be my hermitage. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-10-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 The Hermit Of The Dingly Dell 06:36 Y 11:15 Wool 19:48 Galvanic Batteries, Heads Of Swans 27:11 Rhubarb THE HERMIT OF THE DINGLY DELL I am the hermit of the dingly dell. Ach God!, it is the dingliest of dells. That is why I chose it for my hermitage. Its glades and dingles are abundant with those things which provide for a hermit's simple needs, such as nuts and fruits and rills of fresh water. Every now and then, in a rill, a fish might swim by. Deploying my net with practised skill, I catch the fish. Then I will sit before a fire toasting the fish upon a fork, my hand raised to sleet and sun, my shoes doffed to oblivion, like the hermit in the song by the Art Bears, himself inspired by the hermit carved in stone on the stylobate of the cathedral in Amiens. I have considered carving myself in stone, to pass the time in the dingly dell, but I do not have the proper tools. I suppose I could rub and rub at a pebble, every day, persistently, and carefully, for years, but even then it would be very difficult to get the proper finish. Still, it is a project I might yet embark upon, for the days and nights are long in the dingly dell, and once I have gathered my nuts and fruits of a morning, and made a note of the reading on the rain gauge hanging from a branch of the mighty laburnum, I must always be on my guard against the devil, who, we know, makes work for idle hands. The devil has appeared to me in many guises since I came to my hermitage in the dingly dell. At first he took the form of a vaporous mist. This suggested to me that his powers were weak, and I laughed at him, loudly, waving my arms about to disperse him. But then he grew able to inhabit solid forms, albeit tiny ones, such as an ant or a twig. Lately things have entered a dangerous phase, for the devil has entered the body of a squirrel, and the dingly dell is teeming with squirrels. Shunning the company of my kind, as I do, being a hermit, I have learned to commune with squirrels, but now I must shun them too, or risk engaging with Beelzebub himself. Were that to happen, I might be forced to take refuge in the dingly dell hotel. In the normal run of things, of course, I avoid it. Sometimes, while gathering my nuts and fruits, I come close to the hotel car park, and hide behind a shrub. I have seen the major domo of the hotel striding purposefully across the car park, even making his way into the dingly dell itself, where he stops and sits on a log and smokes a cigarette. This is disturbing, but I am not so neurotic as to think he is in league with the devil, even though squirrels do approach him, tentatively, hoping perhaps for a nut or two. But the major domo is not a man for nuts, he just smokes his cigarette, and occasionally taps out messages on a Blackberry. Not the kind of blackberry I would have for my supper, after some toasted fish, I should add. His is an electronic device, which beeps from time to time while he smokes. It is most irritating, but I dare not rush out at him from behind my shrub and snatch the thing from his hands and stamp upon it until it is crushed to smithereens, which is what I would like to do. For if I did that, I would betray my presence in the dingly dell, and it would no longer be my hermitage. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-10-1830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-10-11Thu, 11 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 I Hiked With A Zombie 12:44 Bemufflement Of Clangings 18:09 Thursday Morning Thriller 25:49 God's Grandeur I HIKED WITH A ZOMBIE I have learned to be very picky when it comes to choosing my hiking companions. Once, I tramped the moors with a skittish widow-woman. Another time, I tramped other moors in the company of a pig-ignorant popinjay. These hikes taught me much, and they were hard lessons, from which my immortal soul took weeks to recover. Sprawled on a pallet in a post-hiking clinic, I had time to review my entire approach to hikes. One thing that became absolutely clear to me is that I needs must have a companion of some kind, for I am temperamentally unsuited to solo hiking due to the particular admixture of blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm which makes me what I am. I did, once, go on a hike all by myself, and it was a disaster. I got hopelessly lost, entangled in a clump of bracken, dive-bombed by a flock of angry guillemots, drenched by rain and stung by hailstones, apprehended by surly border guards and subjected to interrogation in a subterranean interrogation chamber the cold stone walls of which were stained with the blood of peasants, entangled in a clump of gorse, waylaid by banditti, buffeted by gales, accused of trespass in a top secret military installation, deafened by the relentless pounding of voodoo drums, entangled in a clump of nettles, haunted by hallucinatory visions of the skittish widow-woman and the pig-ignorant popinjay, poisoned by befouled water from a deceptively idyllic rill, attacked by tiny flying biting things, strafed by fighter jets, entangled in a clump of hawthorn, besmirched by the excreta of starlings, savaged by weasels, battered and bruised after toppling into a ha-ha, almost suffocated in a slaapsok accident, lacerated by barbed wire, discombobulated by the jumbling of my blood and black bile and yellow bile and phlegm, ridiculed by wayfaring minstrels, burned by the sun, stung by bees, entangled in a clump of thistles, threatened by bellowing cows, and lost, lost, hopelessly lost. "Never again must you go hiking alone!" shouted Dr Heinrich Weems, my post-hike traumatic neurasthenia syndrome counsellor. At my first consultation, he had actually forbidden me ever to hike again full stop, but I protested that I would die if I did not hike. This was utter twaddle, of course, but I deployed the full gamut of my thespian skills, learned at the feet of Sir Donald Sinden and Bruce Willis, and Dr Weems was convinced I spoke the truth. "Ach! You poor fellow!" he shouted, "So if I understand you correctly, you will keel over and die in agony unless you regularly embark upon jaunty hiking expeditions, across moors and heaths, through woods and forests, up hills and mountains, and down vales and dells?" To which flagrant poppycock I responded with a nod, adding "Yippee-ky-ay, motherfucker", a Willisism which never fails to do the trick. In subsequent meetings with Dr Weems, we moved from his consulting room in an agreeable Swiss chalet to his secret underground laboratory. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-10-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 I Hiked With A Zombie 12:44 Bemufflement Of Clangings 18:09 Thursday Morning Thriller 25:49 God's Grandeur I HIKED WITH A ZOMBIE I have learned to be very picky when it comes to choosing my hiking companions. Once, I tramped the moors with a skittish widow-woman. Another time, I tramped other moors in the company of a pig-ignorant popinjay. These hikes taught me much, and they were hard lessons, from which my immortal soul took weeks to recover. Sprawled on a pallet in a post-hiking clinic, I had time to review my entire approach to hikes. One thing that became absolutely clear to me is that I needs must have a companion of some kind, for I am temperamentally unsuited to solo hiking due to the particular admixture of blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm which makes me what I am. I did, once, go on a hike all by myself, and it was a disaster. I got hopelessly lost, entangled in a clump of bracken, dive-bombed by a flock of angry guillemots, drenched by rain and stung by hailstones, apprehended by surly border guards and subjected to interrogation in a subterranean interrogation chamber the cold stone walls of which were stained with the blood of peasants, entangled in a clump of gorse, waylaid by banditti, buffeted by gales, accused of trespass in a top secret military installation, deafened by the relentless pounding of voodoo drums, entangled in a clump of nettles, haunted by hallucinatory visions of the skittish widow-woman and the pig-ignorant popinjay, poisoned by befouled water from a deceptively idyllic rill, attacked by tiny flying biting things, strafed by fighter jets, entangled in a clump of hawthorn, besmirched by the excreta of starlings, savaged by weasels, battered and bruised after toppling into a ha-ha, almost suffocated in a slaapsok accident, lacerated by barbed wire, discombobulated by the jumbling of my blood and black bile and yellow bile and phlegm, ridiculed by wayfaring minstrels, burned by the sun, stung by bees, entangled in a clump of thistles, threatened by bellowing cows, and lost, lost, hopelessly lost. "Never again must you go hiking alone!" shouted Dr Heinrich Weems, my post-hike traumatic neurasthenia syndrome counsellor. At my first consultation, he had actually forbidden me ever to hike again full stop, but I protested that I would die if I did not hike. This was utter twaddle, of course, but I deployed the full gamut of my thespian skills, learned at the feet of Sir Donald Sinden and Bruce Willis, and Dr Weems was convinced I spoke the truth. "Ach! You poor fellow!" he shouted, "So if I understand you correctly, you will keel over and die in agony unless you regularly embark upon jaunty hiking expeditions, across moors and heaths, through woods and forests, up hills and mountains, and down vales and dells?" To which flagrant poppycock I responded with a nod, adding "Yippee-ky-ay, motherfucker", a Willisism which never fails to do the trick. In subsequent meetings with Dr Weems, we moved from his consulting room in an agreeable Swiss chalet to his secret underground laboratory. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-10-1130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-10-04Thu, 04 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 07:07 Tales Of Duntblau--IV 11:49 On Butter And Clatter And Taxis 21:35 Tales Of Duntblau--V TALES OF DUNTBLAU--IV Nimrod Im Duntblau is an opera by Horst Gack, the contemporary composer famed for his startling bouffant, ill temper, and near-fatal coughing fits. It is both unfinished and unperformed. Several extracts have been recorded, at gunpoint, by the Loopy Von Straubenzee Jug Band accompanied by one-time popstrels Ingmar & Hetty, the so-called "terrifying singing twins". Horst Gack himself pointed the gun. In Act One, Scene One, Nimrod arrives in Duntblau. The "mighty hunter before the Lord" is, appropriately, on a hunting expedition. He sings that he has heard much about the fabled Chicken of Duntblau, which he means to hunt down, pinion, and strangle with his bare hands. He is overheard by Schwindi, the Duntblau Postmistress, who is hiding behind an arras. When Nimrod exits, she appears and sings the plaintive ballad "Must we swim yet again in the blood of chickens?" Horst Gack has yet to write scenes two and three, but in Act One, Scene Four we find Nimrod, alone in the graveyard of St Bibblybibdib's church, leaning insouciantly against a tombstone, smoking a fag, and muttering to himself. Because the muttering is punctuated by occasional thumps of a kettledrum, Horst Gack counts this as an arietta. The only other scene yet completed is Act Seven, Scene Forty-Two. Schwindi is standing outside the Duntblau Chicken Sanctuary, holding a placard and singing a dirge. Critics have been sharply divided over this lengthy number. In the Macclesfield Tomato Sellers' Weekly, Trilby Baxter dubbed it "a dire dirge, the direst dirge I ever heard". (This sentence was abstracted by Dennis Beerpint, who used it as the first line of one of his twee verses, where "heard" is rhymed with "bird", "curd", "furred", "bird" again, and "erred".) On the other hand, writing in the journal Dirges By Gack, Giles Pipstraw commended the piece as "possibly the most magnificent dirge moaned by a postmistress holding a placard outside Duntblau Chicken Sanctuary ever committed to sheet music by your friend and mine, Horst Gack!" (The overexcited Pipstraw in fact added nine more exclamation marks, which I have omitted for reasons of space.) Other critics have ignored the dirge entirely, waiting, some would say wisely, for the opera to be finished before they pronounce upon it. CDs of the recorded extracts can be obtained at jumble sales, charity shops, and as part of the contents of a jamboree bag available from spivs lurking in insalubrious alleyways in certain ill-starred seaside resorts, but not in Duntblau. Ingmar & Hetty are currently on tour with their "Eighty Years In Showbiz And Contemporary German Opera" special extravaganza. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-10-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 07:07 Tales Of Duntblau--IV 11:49 On Butter And Clatter And Taxis 21:35 Tales Of Duntblau--V TALES OF DUNTBLAU--IV Nimrod Im Duntblau is an opera by Horst Gack, the contemporary composer famed for his startling bouffant, ill temper, and near-fatal coughing fits. It is both unfinished and unperformed. Several extracts have been recorded, at gunpoint, by the Loopy Von Straubenzee Jug Band accompanied by one-time popstrels Ingmar & Hetty, the so-called "terrifying singing twins". Horst Gack himself pointed the gun. In Act One, Scene One, Nimrod arrives in Duntblau. The "mighty hunter before the Lord" is, appropriately, on a hunting expedition. He sings that he has heard much about the fabled Chicken of Duntblau, which he means to hunt down, pinion, and strangle with his bare hands. He is overheard by Schwindi, the Duntblau Postmistress, who is hiding behind an arras. When Nimrod exits, she appears and sings the plaintive ballad "Must we swim yet again in the blood of chickens?" Horst Gack has yet to write scenes two and three, but in Act One, Scene Four we find Nimrod, alone in the graveyard of St Bibblybibdib's church, leaning insouciantly against a tombstone, smoking a fag, and muttering to himself. Because the muttering is punctuated by occasional thumps of a kettledrum, Horst Gack counts this as an arietta. The only other scene yet completed is Act Seven, Scene Forty-Two. Schwindi is standing outside the Duntblau Chicken Sanctuary, holding a placard and singing a dirge. Critics have been sharply divided over this lengthy number. In the Macclesfield Tomato Sellers' Weekly, Trilby Baxter dubbed it "a dire dirge, the direst dirge I ever heard". (This sentence was abstracted by Dennis Beerpint, who used it as the first line of one of his twee verses, where "heard" is rhymed with "bird", "curd", "furred", "bird" again, and "erred".) On the other hand, writing in the journal Dirges By Gack, Giles Pipstraw commended the piece as "possibly the most magnificent dirge moaned by a postmistress holding a placard outside Duntblau Chicken Sanctuary ever committed to sheet music by your friend and mine, Horst Gack!" (The overexcited Pipstraw in fact added nine more exclamation marks, which I have omitted for reasons of space.) Other critics have ignored the dirge entirely, waiting, some would say wisely, for the opera to be finished before they pronounce upon it. CDs of the recorded extracts can be obtained at jumble sales, charity shops, and as part of the contents of a jamboree bag available from spivs lurking in insalubrious alleyways in certain ill-starred seaside resorts, but not in Duntblau. Ingmar & Hetty are currently on tour with their "Eighty Years In Showbiz And Contemporary German Opera" special extravaganza. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-10-0430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-09-27Thu, 27 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Tales Of Duntblau--I 07:58 Tales Of Duntblau--II 16:27 Tales Of Duntblau--III 21:22 Annals Of Fruit 26:57 Boiled Black Broth And Cornets 26:59 On Crevasse Wankers TALES OF DUNTBLAU--I They clapped me in irons, and read me my rights. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Maybe the clapping and the reading happened at the same time, I can't be clear. The day was so hot, the sunlight so bright, the meadow so bespattered with buttercups, and here and there a dumb stupid cow, I could not think straight. In any case, they read my rights to me in a wholly unfamiliar language, guttural and seemingly lacking in vowels. Then they shoved me into the back of a van and slammed shut the door. We drove for several hours, over the mountain pass to Duntblau. I only learned this later. At the time I had no idea where we were going. There were three other miscreants in the back of the van with me, but they were clueless. They had also been clapped in irons, and were as dumb and stupid as the cows I had left behind in the meadow. I soon gave up my attempts at conversation. Instead I studied their heads for evidence of criminality. I have often found phrenology a capital way to pass the time. When we arrived at the police station in Duntblau, we were bundled out of the van and led through a door along a filthy corridor and through another door and another corridor, less filthy, and oh get on with it. We ended up in an interrogation room. Well, I did. Perhaps the other three were taken to their own interrogation rooms. Perhaps they were shot. I don't know. On that day and the next I must have answered thousands of questions. All my replies were spirited and perky, for I was keen to make the right impression and to help them with their enquiries. The chief interrogator, who spoke my language with an accent I would have found amusing in any other circumstances, was a dwarf. I thought he had a criminal shape to his head, but did not say so. From time to time he was joined by a colleague, no dwarf he by golly!, but this fellow stayed silent, and seemed more interested in contemplating the tulips in a vase on the windowsill. The window itself had been covered over by a poster of the type sold by Athena in the 1970s. It was upside down. The questions hurled at me ranged over the entirety of my life, from before birth up to the moment just before I was clapped in irons. He was a very thorough dwarf. He took no written notes, but tapped his fingertips upon his temple every now and then, as if lodging what I said into his memory. His trousers were of the drainpipe variety, for what it's worth, and his shoes were of blue suede. He did a lot of strutting to and fro as he fired his questions, rarely bothering to look at me. I remained perky. Midway through the second day, there came the roars and flashes of a thunderstorm so terrible and violent that all of us, me and the dwarf and the tulip-worrier, were cowed. We sheltered under a table, much as James Joyce did when so storm-frightened in Scheveningen, in 1917. Once the storm ceased, and I was back in my chair, and the dwarf was strutting, and the other chap had left the room to fetch some Baby Bio for the tulips, my interrogation lost its focus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-09-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Tales Of Duntblau--I 07:58 Tales Of Duntblau--II 16:27 Tales Of Duntblau--III 21:22 Annals Of Fruit 26:57 Boiled Black Broth And Cornets 26:59 On Crevasse Wankers TALES OF DUNTBLAU--I They clapped me in irons, and read me my rights. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Maybe the clapping and the reading happened at the same time, I can't be clear. The day was so hot, the sunlight so bright, the meadow so bespattered with buttercups, and here and there a dumb stupid cow, I could not think straight. In any case, they read my rights to me in a wholly unfamiliar language, guttural and seemingly lacking in vowels. Then they shoved me into the back of a van and slammed shut the door. We drove for several hours, over the mountain pass to Duntblau. I only learned this later. At the time I had no idea where we were going. There were three other miscreants in the back of the van with me, but they were clueless. They had also been clapped in irons, and were as dumb and stupid as the cows I had left behind in the meadow. I soon gave up my attempts at conversation. Instead I studied their heads for evidence of criminality. I have often found phrenology a capital way to pass the time. When we arrived at the police station in Duntblau, we were bundled out of the van and led through a door along a filthy corridor and through another door and another corridor, less filthy, and oh get on with it. We ended up in an interrogation room. Well, I did. Perhaps the other three were taken to their own interrogation rooms. Perhaps they were shot. I don't know. On that day and the next I must have answered thousands of questions. All my replies were spirited and perky, for I was keen to make the right impression and to help them with their enquiries. The chief interrogator, who spoke my language with an accent I would have found amusing in any other circumstances, was a dwarf. I thought he had a criminal shape to his head, but did not say so. From time to time he was joined by a colleague, no dwarf he by golly!, but this fellow stayed silent, and seemed more interested in contemplating the tulips in a vase on the windowsill. The window itself had been covered over by a poster of the type sold by Athena in the 1970s. It was upside down. The questions hurled at me ranged over the entirety of my life, from before birth up to the moment just before I was clapped in irons. He was a very thorough dwarf. He took no written notes, but tapped his fingertips upon his temple every now and then, as if lodging what I said into his memory. His trousers were of the drainpipe variety, for what it's worth, and his shoes were of blue suede. He did a lot of strutting to and fro as he fired his questions, rarely bothering to look at me. I remained perky. Midway through the second day, there came the roars and flashes of a thunderstorm so terrible and violent that all of us, me and the dwarf and the tulip-worrier, were cowed. We sheltered under a table, much as James Joyce did when so storm-frightened in Scheveningen, in 1917. Once the storm ceased, and I was back in my chair, and the dwarf was strutting, and the other chap had left the room to fetch some Baby Bio for the tulips, my interrogation lost its focus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-09-2730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-09-13Thu, 13 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:24 On Scarecrows 12:09 On The Sea 21:17 On Jam Tomorrow ON SCARECROWS Mad Old Farmer Frack was vexed, not on account of his cows, as would normally be the cause of his vexation, for his cows were unusually contented, in their field, chewing and munching, in balmy weather, contented perhaps because they were not being driven relentlessly from field to field, through gate after gate, by the mad old farmer, for no apparent purpose, as was his habit, come rain or shine, though rain was much more common than shine in that part of the world, where Old Farmer Frack had his farm, ee-i-ee-i-oh, no, for once the cows were being left to go about their cuddy business undisturbed, for Old Farmer Frack had other things on his mad old mind, things that kept him from attending to his cows, and what was vexing him on this merry May morning was seething envy, envy of his neighbouring farmers, whose names we know not, but whose farms gloried in their scarecrows, fantastic constructions of sticks and straw and hay and old rags and abandoned hats and what have you, serried ranks of them, scattered here and there across the fields, frightening any crows that might ponder landing for a peck at a growing crop, frightening children too, those traipsing across the fields to or from the village school or post office, who could imagine the scarecrows springing to life, uttering rustic curses and abracadabras, causing birds to topple dead from the sky and trees to wither and die, or such mischiefs as it amused them to wreak, out there in the country, where civilisation is held at bay, and weird and wild spirits are abroad in the land, none weirder nor wilder, some say, than the innards of mad Old Farmer Frack's head, the like of which is the stuff of nightmares to city folk, the innards of that head atop the creaking frame that is leaning on one of his farm fences this May morning, his mad eyes gleaming as he surveys the neighbours' fields and their numberless scarecrows, the cause of his vexations, for he has not a single scarecrow in his fields, having been banned from keeping one by the rustic authorities, on trumped up charges, gossip put about by the other farmers, terrible tales of cruelty and vice about which he was given no opportunity to defend himself before the ruling was laid down, at a conclave in a barn, on a thunder-booming evening, and ever since he has seen his fields beset by impertinent crows, unafraid to swoop, and it is this that vexes him, on every day God brings, until he is at his wits' end, leaning on the fence, boots embedded in a puddle, gazing at the scarecrows, when all of a sudden, within the weird and wild innards of his head, there is a spark, a snap, and he has a bright idea. It is many a long year since mad Old Farmer Frack provided a service to the woman he knew only as "Postie", the woman who presided over the village post office. In his befuddled old head he cannot recall exactly what it was he did for her. If he concentrates hard he recalls something about her asking him for a hen, to be ritually sacrificed, its entrails scattered on the post office floor and the signs read. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-09-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:24 On Scarecrows 12:09 On The Sea 21:17 On Jam Tomorrow ON SCARECROWS Mad Old Farmer Frack was vexed, not on account of his cows, as would normally be the cause of his vexation, for his cows were unusually contented, in their field, chewing and munching, in balmy weather, contented perhaps because they were not being driven relentlessly from field to field, through gate after gate, by the mad old farmer, for no apparent purpose, as was his habit, come rain or shine, though rain was much more common than shine in that part of the world, where Old Farmer Frack had his farm, ee-i-ee-i-oh, no, for once the cows were being left to go about their cuddy business undisturbed, for Old Farmer Frack had other things on his mad old mind, things that kept him from attending to his cows, and what was vexing him on this merry May morning was seething envy, envy of his neighbouring farmers, whose names we know not, but whose farms gloried in their scarecrows, fantastic constructions of sticks and straw and hay and old rags and abandoned hats and what have you, serried ranks of them, scattered here and there across the fields, frightening any crows that might ponder landing for a peck at a growing crop, frightening children too, those traipsing across the fields to or from the village school or post office, who could imagine the scarecrows springing to life, uttering rustic curses and abracadabras, causing birds to topple dead from the sky and trees to wither and die, or such mischiefs as it amused them to wreak, out there in the country, where civilisation is held at bay, and weird and wild spirits are abroad in the land, none weirder nor wilder, some say, than the innards of mad Old Farmer Frack's head, the like of which is the stuff of nightmares to city folk, the innards of that head atop the creaking frame that is leaning on one of his farm fences this May morning, his mad eyes gleaming as he surveys the neighbours' fields and their numberless scarecrows, the cause of his vexations, for he has not a single scarecrow in his fields, having been banned from keeping one by the rustic authorities, on trumped up charges, gossip put about by the other farmers, terrible tales of cruelty and vice about which he was given no opportunity to defend himself before the ruling was laid down, at a conclave in a barn, on a thunder-booming evening, and ever since he has seen his fields beset by impertinent crows, unafraid to swoop, and it is this that vexes him, on every day God brings, until he is at his wits' end, leaning on the fence, boots embedded in a puddle, gazing at the scarecrows, when all of a sudden, within the weird and wild innards of his head, there is a spark, a snap, and he has a bright idea. It is many a long year since mad Old Farmer Frack provided a service to the woman he knew only as "Postie", the woman who presided over the village post office. In his befuddled old head he cannot recall exactly what it was he did for her. If he concentrates hard he recalls something about her asking him for a hen, to be ritually sacrificed, its entrails scattered on the post office floor and the signs read. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-09-1330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-26Thu, 26 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 On The Ice Age 11:49 On Golden Pond 19:59 On The Sky At Night ON THE ICE AGE Brrrr! Wrap up warm, because it's cold outside! Well, it would be, wouldn't it, this being the Ice Age. There have been other Ages--Stone and Iron, for example, and Bronze--but this one we have dubbed the Ice Age, because it is so chilly. Sitting here next to my oil stove, wearing various furry animal pelts, it is easy to forget just how cold it is outside. I can't see through the windows, because they are all frosted up, but I suppose if I turned down the volume on the cassette player I would be able to hear the howling winds of the blizzard, and they would serve to remind me of the cold. But I would rather listen to the cassette playing poptones, quite frankly. I am not in the right mood for howling. The wind howls, and so do wolves. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish one kind of howling from another. Wolves seem to thrive in the chilly chilly weather of this Ice Age. They have furry coats of course, or at least hairy, bristly coats, au naturelle, as it were. To obtain my furry pelt I have to slaughter apt creatures, or at least pay someone to do so for me, to slaughter and skin and stitch. I am somewhat weedy, and short-sighted, and I would much rather huddle by the oil stove listening to poptones than be out there in the cold, hunting and stalking. In any case, I do not have a pair of snow shoes, so I wouldn't get very far. Within a few feet of my door I expect I would be up to my waist in snow, and helpless, and I would have to make puny cries, in the hope that a tough wolf-hunter would come to my rescue. At least you know where you are with wolves. Those rampaging wild boars are another matter entirely. Blimey. I have been woken from a nap by the sound of them battering their tusks against the walls of my hut. I am pretty sure it was a wild boar, covered in hoar frost, that chewed through the wiring of my radio set. I thought the wiring was safe, submerged under snow, stretching out across the tarputa, but those boars are relentless. Now I can only get some of the channels, and none of the music ones, which is why I rely on the cassette player. Ice Age music is pretty grim, all told, but when the alternative is the howling of wind and wolves and the bashing of boar-tusks against the walls, you have to take what you can get. And it's not all bad. I grew quite fond of Chepstow's Icicle Symphony, for example. But the tape was ruined when I left it too close to the oil stove, and it partly melted. So now I make do with poptones, icy poptones, with lots of synthesizer. At top volume, it drowns out the howling. I used to have a pair of snow shoes. Of course I did, for how else would I have been able to cross the tarputa and make it to my hut? It took me six weeks to get here, plodding slowly. I meant to hang on to them, for emergencies, but the fibre they were made from was highly flammable, and one evening the oil stove spat out a stray spark which ignited them. I acted quickly, putting on a pair of mittens and chucking the burning snow shoes out of the door, into a snowdrift. If I hadn't, the whole hut would have burned down and I'd have been a goner. But it means that now I have to rely on passing wolf-hunters for certain essentials. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 On The Ice Age 11:49 On Golden Pond 19:59 On The Sky At Night ON THE ICE AGE Brrrr! Wrap up warm, because it's cold outside! Well, it would be, wouldn't it, this being the Ice Age. There have been other Ages--Stone and Iron, for example, and Bronze--but this one we have dubbed the Ice Age, because it is so chilly. Sitting here next to my oil stove, wearing various furry animal pelts, it is easy to forget just how cold it is outside. I can't see through the windows, because they are all frosted up, but I suppose if I turned down the volume on the cassette player I would be able to hear the howling winds of the blizzard, and they would serve to remind me of the cold. But I would rather listen to the cassette playing poptones, quite frankly. I am not in the right mood for howling. The wind howls, and so do wolves. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish one kind of howling from another. Wolves seem to thrive in the chilly chilly weather of this Ice Age. They have furry coats of course, or at least hairy, bristly coats, au naturelle, as it were. To obtain my furry pelt I have to slaughter apt creatures, or at least pay someone to do so for me, to slaughter and skin and stitch. I am somewhat weedy, and short-sighted, and I would much rather huddle by the oil stove listening to poptones than be out there in the cold, hunting and stalking. In any case, I do not have a pair of snow shoes, so I wouldn't get very far. Within a few feet of my door I expect I would be up to my waist in snow, and helpless, and I would have to make puny cries, in the hope that a tough wolf-hunter would come to my rescue. At least you know where you are with wolves. Those rampaging wild boars are another matter entirely. Blimey. I have been woken from a nap by the sound of them battering their tusks against the walls of my hut. I am pretty sure it was a wild boar, covered in hoar frost, that chewed through the wiring of my radio set. I thought the wiring was safe, submerged under snow, stretching out across the tarputa, but those boars are relentless. Now I can only get some of the channels, and none of the music ones, which is why I rely on the cassette player. Ice Age music is pretty grim, all told, but when the alternative is the howling of wind and wolves and the bashing of boar-tusks against the walls, you have to take what you can get. And it's not all bad. I grew quite fond of Chepstow's Icicle Symphony, for example. But the tape was ruined when I left it too close to the oil stove, and it partly melted. So now I make do with poptones, icy poptones, with lots of synthesizer. At top volume, it drowns out the howling. I used to have a pair of snow shoes. Of course I did, for how else would I have been able to cross the tarputa and make it to my hut? It took me six weeks to get here, plodding slowly. I meant to hang on to them, for emergencies, but the fibre they were made from was highly flammable, and one evening the oil stove spat out a stray spark which ignited them. I acted quickly, putting on a pair of mittens and chucking the burning snow shoes out of the door, into a snowdrift. If I hadn't, the whole hut would have burned down and I'd have been a goner. But it means that now I have to rely on passing wolf-hunters for certain essentials. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-2630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-19Thu, 19 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:26 On The Fox And The Dog 12:31 On (Or Rather, Towards) The Planet Of The Crumpled Jesuits 22:36 Ten Tarleton Tales--I ON THE FOX AND THE DOG Something that has always puzzled me about the famous story in which the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is its lack of detail. Ever since it first appeared in The Michigan School Moderator in 1885, it has been a popular and well-known story, and I would guess that most people know its basic outline. There is a fox which is quick and brown, and it jumps over a dog which is lazy. Even the most harebrained dimwit can understand that, and it is made all the more vivid by being told in the present tense. That gives it a sense of immediacy, such that we could almost be present, witnessing the fox jumping over the dog. Yet I cannot be alone in thinking that the tale leaves too many unanswered questions. Of course, as sophisticated readers we do not necessarily want everything handed to us on a plate. We expect to do some work, and part of the pleasure of a tale well told is that we may well have to exercise our imaginations to fill gaps, to flesh out details, to complete a picture which is only hinted at. But in the story of the fox and the dog there is so much missing from the narrative that we are ultimately dissatisfied. Even the few details we are given beg further questions. How quick is the fox, exactly? Quickness is surely relative. Is the fox quicker or slower than, say, a tortoise or a steam train? Does it move with the swiftness of a javelin through the air, or of a cheetah? Without having any moving object to compare it with, we have no idea of its speed. The only other thing we know about the fox is that it is brown. Well, that tells us little, given that there are innumerable shades of brown, from umber to dun and from dun to umber, and all sorts of others I cannot be bothered to list. If we were to grab hold of the fox and hold it up against a paint chart, a grid of squares of various shades of brown, where would we stop and cry "Aha! Look how closely the colour of this fox struggling in our grasp and attempting to bite our wrist matches the colour of that square, such that if we painted the room with it from floor to ceiling we would render the fox invisible!"? We do not know the answer to that question. Things are even less satisfactory in the case of the dog. At least with the fox we are given two snippets of information, vague as both those snippets may be. But all we are told of the dog is that it is lazy. It is true that, being a personality trait, the imputation of laziness tells us more--much more--about the character of the dog than we ever learn about the character of the fox. Insightful as this may be, however, it is meagre pickings. Thus we have several questions directly related to what little we do know. How many more are thrown up when we consider what we are not told! What manner of dog is it? Is it asleep or awake? Has it been recently fed? Is it sound of limb? Does it wear a collar to which is affixed a small round metal tag with its name engraved upon it? Is it a homeless stray? Where the hell is the damned dog anyway? On a lawn? Outside a kennel? Inside a kennel? As the questions multiply, we begin to lose patience with the dog. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:26 On The Fox And The Dog 12:31 On (Or Rather, Towards) The Planet Of The Crumpled Jesuits 22:36 Ten Tarleton Tales--I ON THE FOX AND THE DOG Something that has always puzzled me about the famous story in which the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is its lack of detail. Ever since it first appeared in The Michigan School Moderator in 1885, it has been a popular and well-known story, and I would guess that most people know its basic outline. There is a fox which is quick and brown, and it jumps over a dog which is lazy. Even the most harebrained dimwit can understand that, and it is made all the more vivid by being told in the present tense. That gives it a sense of immediacy, such that we could almost be present, witnessing the fox jumping over the dog. Yet I cannot be alone in thinking that the tale leaves too many unanswered questions. Of course, as sophisticated readers we do not necessarily want everything handed to us on a plate. We expect to do some work, and part of the pleasure of a tale well told is that we may well have to exercise our imaginations to fill gaps, to flesh out details, to complete a picture which is only hinted at. But in the story of the fox and the dog there is so much missing from the narrative that we are ultimately dissatisfied. Even the few details we are given beg further questions. How quick is the fox, exactly? Quickness is surely relative. Is the fox quicker or slower than, say, a tortoise or a steam train? Does it move with the swiftness of a javelin through the air, or of a cheetah? Without having any moving object to compare it with, we have no idea of its speed. The only other thing we know about the fox is that it is brown. Well, that tells us little, given that there are innumerable shades of brown, from umber to dun and from dun to umber, and all sorts of others I cannot be bothered to list. If we were to grab hold of the fox and hold it up against a paint chart, a grid of squares of various shades of brown, where would we stop and cry "Aha! Look how closely the colour of this fox struggling in our grasp and attempting to bite our wrist matches the colour of that square, such that if we painted the room with it from floor to ceiling we would render the fox invisible!"? We do not know the answer to that question. Things are even less satisfactory in the case of the dog. At least with the fox we are given two snippets of information, vague as both those snippets may be. But all we are told of the dog is that it is lazy. It is true that, being a personality trait, the imputation of laziness tells us more--much more--about the character of the dog than we ever learn about the character of the fox. Insightful as this may be, however, it is meagre pickings. Thus we have several questions directly related to what little we do know. How many more are thrown up when we consider what we are not told! What manner of dog is it? Is it asleep or awake? Has it been recently fed? Is it sound of limb? Does it wear a collar to which is affixed a small round metal tag with its name engraved upon it? Is it a homeless stray? Where the hell is the damned dog anyway? On a lawn? Outside a kennel? Inside a kennel? As the questions multiply, we begin to lose patience with the dog. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-1930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-12Thu, 12 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 On Weems 09:29 On Not Having A Dog In The Fight 16:40 On Distant Booms ON WEEMS Last week I had reason to mention the German secret agent Weems. Since then, further information has come to light, which I shall share with you in the interests of robust transparency and transparent robustness. The first tranche of information concerns his mop and his patter and his flip-top lids and his submarine and his fixation and his ink and his piccolo and his other mop and his secrets. His mop. Weems had a blond mop, sometimes tousled, sometimes flattened and primped and slathered in hair oil. Which "look" he chose depended on the mission he was undertaking. Where a mission called for a tousled mop, he tousled his mop. If it was thought prudent to have his mop flattened and primped and slathered in hair oil, he flattened and primped it and slathered it in hair oil. There were occasions where no clear guidance was available, with regard to his mop. Weems would agonise, up to the very last minute before embarking on the mission. Then he would either tousle or flatten and primp and slather in hair oil according to what he described as his "gut feelings". These feelings were not truly in his gut, but in his head, directly below his mop. They were cogitations of the brain rather than feelings. His patter. Weems was a polyglot, and could deliver his patter in the tongues of many lands. The patter was designed to disguise his true identity as a German secret agent. If he unleashed his patter on you, you would think he was a chocolate swiss roll sales rep, or a trainer of budgerigars, or a snippy man, depending on which patter he deployed. Those three were by no means his only patters, there were others, but they are given as a sample. His flip-top lids. For ease of access and retrieval of the things he kept in containers, Weems insisted on those containers having flip-top lids. He argued that the time it would take him to unscrew a screw-top lid could prove critical, and he would be better occupied doing something germane to his mission rather than unscrewing a screw-top lid. Several containers had to be modified by lid boffins in the secret agency atelier. Weems liked to personally test the modified lids when possible, but if he was engaged on a secret mission and thus unable to visit the atelier he delegated the lid testing to a trusted minion. His submarine. Weems travelled from place to place in a submarine. It was his HQ, his centre of operations, and he was the captain. Weems knew every inch of its piping and every individual valve. He could move about the submarine blindfold, and sometimes did, just to show off. He had a hand-picked crew who idolised him. He also kept a budgerigar in a cage hanging from one of the overhead pipes. The budgerigar's name was Simon. Weems once blindfolded Simon, as a prank, but the bird panicked and suffered heart palpitations and the prank was never repeated. His fixation. Dangerously for a secret agent, Weems had a Gwyneth Paltrow fixation. He did not go so far as to stalk the actress, but he had a compulsion to hack into her website, Goop, from the on-board computer on the submarine. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 On Weems 09:29 On Not Having A Dog In The Fight 16:40 On Distant Booms ON WEEMS Last week I had reason to mention the German secret agent Weems. Since then, further information has come to light, which I shall share with you in the interests of robust transparency and transparent robustness. The first tranche of information concerns his mop and his patter and his flip-top lids and his submarine and his fixation and his ink and his piccolo and his other mop and his secrets. His mop. Weems had a blond mop, sometimes tousled, sometimes flattened and primped and slathered in hair oil. Which "look" he chose depended on the mission he was undertaking. Where a mission called for a tousled mop, he tousled his mop. If it was thought prudent to have his mop flattened and primped and slathered in hair oil, he flattened and primped it and slathered it in hair oil. There were occasions where no clear guidance was available, with regard to his mop. Weems would agonise, up to the very last minute before embarking on the mission. Then he would either tousle or flatten and primp and slather in hair oil according to what he described as his "gut feelings". These feelings were not truly in his gut, but in his head, directly below his mop. They were cogitations of the brain rather than feelings. His patter. Weems was a polyglot, and could deliver his patter in the tongues of many lands. The patter was designed to disguise his true identity as a German secret agent. If he unleashed his patter on you, you would think he was a chocolate swiss roll sales rep, or a trainer of budgerigars, or a snippy man, depending on which patter he deployed. Those three were by no means his only patters, there were others, but they are given as a sample. His flip-top lids. For ease of access and retrieval of the things he kept in containers, Weems insisted on those containers having flip-top lids. He argued that the time it would take him to unscrew a screw-top lid could prove critical, and he would be better occupied doing something germane to his mission rather than unscrewing a screw-top lid. Several containers had to be modified by lid boffins in the secret agency atelier. Weems liked to personally test the modified lids when possible, but if he was engaged on a secret mission and thus unable to visit the atelier he delegated the lid testing to a trusted minion. His submarine. Weems travelled from place to place in a submarine. It was his HQ, his centre of operations, and he was the captain. Weems knew every inch of its piping and every individual valve. He could move about the submarine blindfold, and sometimes did, just to show off. He had a hand-picked crew who idolised him. He also kept a budgerigar in a cage hanging from one of the overhead pipes. The budgerigar's name was Simon. Weems once blindfolded Simon, as a prank, but the bird panicked and suffered heart palpitations and the prank was never repeated. His fixation. Dangerously for a secret agent, Weems had a Gwyneth Paltrow fixation. He did not go so far as to stalk the actress, but he had a compulsion to hack into her website, Goop, from the on-board computer on the submarine. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-1230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-05Thu, 05 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 The Pratincole 05:25 Bird Nomenclature 06:05 The Roc 16:41 On The Spittle Of Donkeys 26:07 All Hail Gervase Beerpint THE PRATINCOLE Chapter Five of Mr Key's Book Of Birds, a work in progress. The pratincole is a type of bird. Beak, feathers, power of flight etcetera etcetera. It is something of a neglected bird. In a poll, when asked to list, with a minimum of thought, the first five birds that came into their heads, nought percent of respondents named the pratincole. And there were a lot of respondents. A lot. It was one of the biggest polls ever conducted by the Pratincolophilia Society, and the results caused its members severe disappointment. Pratincolophilia is the technical term given to the psychological state of attraction to pratincoles. This can vary from a casual regard and appreciation of the bird, as when a person clomping about in the sort of environment where one might see a pratincole (meadows and marshes in southern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia) spots one and smiles and says, "Gosh! What a delightful little pratincole!", to full-blown crazed adoration of the bird. Pratincolophiles at the far end of the spectrum have been known to erect shrines and altars on which they place simulacra of the object of their obsession, made from plaster of Paris or plasticine or wax or marzipan. Occasionally they might obtain a stuffed pratincole from a friendly taxidermist. These people are doolally but harmless, and you might be acquainted with one for years without suspecting the nature of their inner mania, or even that they are maniacs at all. Commonly, the first hint you will be given is when the pratincolophile, speaking in a strangely heightened and excited tone of voice, invites you into the sanctum wherein stands the shrine or altar to their bird. In these circumstances, the best thing to do, having prostrated yourself upon the floor and jabbered a rum litany of nonsense, as bidden, is to pretend you have an urgent appointment, preferably on the other side of town, and to scarper without looking back. Next time you bump into your acquaintance, you would be advised to steer the conversation away from any bird-related topics whatsoever. It is a curious fact, however, that high spectrum pratincolophiles often display absolutely no interest in any other types of birds. If anything, they seem blitheringly ignorant about birds in general. Boffins have yet to identify the "danger points" which propel the casual or low spectrum pratincolophile, the one clomping about with a pair of binoculars and a healthy interest in other types of birds, to the bonkers level. It may have something to do with brain chemistry, or exposure to airborne toxins, or trauma, though it is difficult to imagine what possible trauma could be occasioned by a little pratincole. Still, the Lord moves in mysterious ways, as we know, and it would not be beyond His wit to think up some horror involving a maddened flock of pratincoles and visit it upon a poor benighted sod. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 The Pratincole 05:25 Bird Nomenclature 06:05 The Roc 16:41 On The Spittle Of Donkeys 26:07 All Hail Gervase Beerpint THE PRATINCOLE Chapter Five of Mr Key's Book Of Birds, a work in progress. The pratincole is a type of bird. Beak, feathers, power of flight etcetera etcetera. It is something of a neglected bird. In a poll, when asked to list, with a minimum of thought, the first five birds that came into their heads, nought percent of respondents named the pratincole. And there were a lot of respondents. A lot. It was one of the biggest polls ever conducted by the Pratincolophilia Society, and the results caused its members severe disappointment. Pratincolophilia is the technical term given to the psychological state of attraction to pratincoles. This can vary from a casual regard and appreciation of the bird, as when a person clomping about in the sort of environment where one might see a pratincole (meadows and marshes in southern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia) spots one and smiles and says, "Gosh! What a delightful little pratincole!", to full-blown crazed adoration of the bird. Pratincolophiles at the far end of the spectrum have been known to erect shrines and altars on which they place simulacra of the object of their obsession, made from plaster of Paris or plasticine or wax or marzipan. Occasionally they might obtain a stuffed pratincole from a friendly taxidermist. These people are doolally but harmless, and you might be acquainted with one for years without suspecting the nature of their inner mania, or even that they are maniacs at all. Commonly, the first hint you will be given is when the pratincolophile, speaking in a strangely heightened and excited tone of voice, invites you into the sanctum wherein stands the shrine or altar to their bird. In these circumstances, the best thing to do, having prostrated yourself upon the floor and jabbered a rum litany of nonsense, as bidden, is to pretend you have an urgent appointment, preferably on the other side of town, and to scarper without looking back. Next time you bump into your acquaintance, you would be advised to steer the conversation away from any bird-related topics whatsoever. It is a curious fact, however, that high spectrum pratincolophiles often display absolutely no interest in any other types of birds. If anything, they seem blitheringly ignorant about birds in general. Boffins have yet to identify the "danger points" which propel the casual or low spectrum pratincolophile, the one clomping about with a pair of binoculars and a healthy interest in other types of birds, to the bonkers level. It may have something to do with brain chemistry, or exposure to airborne toxins, or trauma, though it is difficult to imagine what possible trauma could be occasioned by a little pratincole. Still, the Lord moves in mysterious ways, as we know, and it would not be beyond His wit to think up some horror involving a maddened flock of pratincoles and visit it upon a poor benighted sod. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-07-0530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-06-28Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:51 The Robin 06:49 The Willow Warbler 11:44 The Corncrake 19:39 The Chiffchaff 24:23 The Cow THE ROBIN The robin is a type of bird. It may be found, in near stasis, perched on a bough. Arrival upon and departure from the bough is accomplished by flight, flight achieved by deployment of the wings (a pair). Not all birds are capable of flight, but the robin is. During perchment, the robin may be captured by placing over it a net attached to one end of a stick. While it is thus prevented from flying away, one can insert a syringe through the net, and stun the robin with a sedative, rendering it unconscious. The net can then be lifted up, and the bird placed in the pocket. One should ensure that the bough from which the robin is abducted is within a short walking distance of the laboratory or other workspace. If the bird regains consciousness while in the pocket, it will panic, and flap about, and may well exercise its wings sufficiently to fly free, up and away into the boundless sky. Upon arrival at the lab, place the stunned bird on a work-surface and inject it with another dose of the serum, calibrated to keep it away with the fairies for a few hours. Various activities can now be carried out with the unconscious robin. These may be in the spirit of scientific enquiry, or just larking about. (Technically, the lark is a different type of bird and has nothing to do with larking about, at least not in the present context.) If one intends, shortly before the robin wakes up, its tiny brain woozy, to replace it on its bough, or on a different but nearby bough, it is important that no great harm should come to the bird as a result of the activities, whatever they might be. Small modifications to the unconscious robin are permissible, for example plucking out a handful of its feathers for later examination under a microscope at one's leisure, or painting it an entirely different colour with a non-toxic pigment. But on no account should one remove, say, its head, for in doing so one will kill the robin and it will not wake from its induced coma. If carrying out scientific experiments, it is well to bear in mind that the robin is but one type of bird, and one cannot extrapolate from the results of one's experiments deductions applicable to all types of birds, not even to all robins. It may not be a normal robin. If simply larking about, say by dipping the feet in a pool of ink and then printing a false bird-trail across the bedroom ceiling of a wife one is plotting to drive insane, as in the Patrick Hamilton play Gaslight, one need not bother whether the robin is normal or not. (The villainous husband in Gaslight did not print such a bird-trail, but it is the sort of tactic he might have used, had he had access to an unconscious robin.) When replacing the bird on its bough, it will need to be propped upright until it is fully awake, otherwise it will topple to the ground due to gravitational force. Use a small structure of interlaced twigs, or some such temporary bolster. Upon waking, the robin will probably bestir itself and use its wings to depart the bough, in flight, up into the sky, until it is quite out of sight, its destination unknown, even to the robin itself. This is an extract from Mr Key's Book Of Birds, a work in progress. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-06-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:51 The Robin 06:49 The Willow Warbler 11:44 The Corncrake 19:39 The Chiffchaff 24:23 The Cow THE ROBIN The robin is a type of bird. It may be found, in near stasis, perched on a bough. Arrival upon and departure from the bough is accomplished by flight, flight achieved by deployment of the wings (a pair). Not all birds are capable of flight, but the robin is. During perchment, the robin may be captured by placing over it a net attached to one end of a stick. While it is thus prevented from flying away, one can insert a syringe through the net, and stun the robin with a sedative, rendering it unconscious. The net can then be lifted up, and the bird placed in the pocket. One should ensure that the bough from which the robin is abducted is within a short walking distance of the laboratory or other workspace. If the bird regains consciousness while in the pocket, it will panic, and flap about, and may well exercise its wings sufficiently to fly free, up and away into the boundless sky. Upon arrival at the lab, place the stunned bird on a work-surface and inject it with another dose of the serum, calibrated to keep it away with the fairies for a few hours. Various activities can now be carried out with the unconscious robin. These may be in the spirit of scientific enquiry, or just larking about. (Technically, the lark is a different type of bird and has nothing to do with larking about, at least not in the present context.) If one intends, shortly before the robin wakes up, its tiny brain woozy, to replace it on its bough, or on a different but nearby bough, it is important that no great harm should come to the bird as a result of the activities, whatever they might be. Small modifications to the unconscious robin are permissible, for example plucking out a handful of its feathers for later examination under a microscope at one's leisure, or painting it an entirely different colour with a non-toxic pigment. But on no account should one remove, say, its head, for in doing so one will kill the robin and it will not wake from its induced coma. If carrying out scientific experiments, it is well to bear in mind that the robin is but one type of bird, and one cannot extrapolate from the results of one's experiments deductions applicable to all types of birds, not even to all robins. It may not be a normal robin. If simply larking about, say by dipping the feet in a pool of ink and then printing a false bird-trail across the bedroom ceiling of a wife one is plotting to drive insane, as in the Patrick Hamilton play Gaslight, one need not bother whether the robin is normal or not. (The villainous husband in Gaslight did not print such a bird-trail, but it is the sort of tactic he might have used, had he had access to an unconscious robin.) When replacing the bird on its bough, it will need to be propped upright until it is fully awake, otherwise it will topple to the ground due to gravitational force. Use a small structure of interlaced twigs, or some such temporary bolster. Upon waking, the robin will probably bestir itself and use its wings to depart the bough, in flight, up into the sky, until it is quite out of sight, its destination unknown, even to the robin itself. This is an extract from Mr Key's Book Of Birds, a work in progress. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-06-2830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-06-14Thu, 14 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 The Squeamish Vagabond 04:30 The Metamorphosis 17:48 Naming The Fruits 23:27 Lupe Node THE SQUEAMISH VAGABOND I am the squeamish vagabond I swoon when I see blood And I see blood aplenty As I trudge through slime and mud As I roam from copse to spinney I see corpses widely strewn Of slaughtered tramps and vagrants I fear I'll join them soon For I'm pursued by a violent foe A fiend from the bottomless pond I tremble and piddle in my pants I'm the squeamish vagabond THE METAMORPHOSIS As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his back, and as he lifted his head slightly, he could see several tiny, stick-thin legs wriggling helplessly. He realised that, at some point during the night, he had become some kind of beetle. His brain could not cope with this horror, and promptly shut down, propelling him back into merciful unconsciousness. When, eventually, he woke from his stupor, he was shocked to discover that he had undergone a second transformation. He was no longer a beetle. He was a Beatle! Somehow, he had now become Ringo Starr, or, more precisely, a perfect replica of Ringo Starr circa 1964. Cautiously, he ran his hands over his hair, now become a moptop. He called out, quietly, for his Mama, and heard a lugubrious Liverpudlian accent. But Mama did not come, and in his despair he picked up a pair of drumsticks which had appeared on his bedside table, and bashed himself on the head, repeatedly and rhythmically, with a characteristic "fill", until, once again, he lost consciousness. There were more uneasy dreams, and when he awoke again he discovered he had undergone a third transformation. Now he had become an entirely new being. Outwardly--indeed, inwardly--he was exactly the same as he had been the previous day, no longer a beetle or a Beatle. Yet it was clear to him, as he leapt out of bed and plunged his head into a bucket of icy water and shuffled into the kitchen for a breakfast of jugged eels and reconstituted marmalade and turned on the radiogram to listen to an early morning concert of argumentative German improvised racket, that something had changed, something decisive and irreversible. But what? Neither Mama nor Papa, nor his young sister Sophonisba, gave any indication that he was in any way different. But then they barely noticed his presence at all, as they sat at the kitchen table stuffing their gobs with cornflakes and hardboiled eggs in jelly. So concentrated were they on their munching and chewing they did not even hear the frankly godawful din from the radiogram. He decided that the simplest way to work out what had happened to him would be to go about his usual routine, but to monitor himself. So he spent a profitable three or four hours faffing about with the inner workings of his wristwatch. When he was done, it would not only tell the time, but it would keep a continuous check on the state of his soul and his vitals. If all his tweakings were correct, then at nightfall, when the day was done, his watch would spit out a printed report, with handy bullet points. The next day, he could pass this to a consultant for analysis. The difficulty would be to find a competent analyst. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-06-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 The Squeamish Vagabond 04:30 The Metamorphosis 17:48 Naming The Fruits 23:27 Lupe Node THE SQUEAMISH VAGABOND I am the squeamish vagabond I swoon when I see blood And I see blood aplenty As I trudge through slime and mud As I roam from copse to spinney I see corpses widely strewn Of slaughtered tramps and vagrants I fear I'll join them soon For I'm pursued by a violent foe A fiend from the bottomless pond I tremble and piddle in my pants I'm the squeamish vagabond THE METAMORPHOSIS As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his back, and as he lifted his head slightly, he could see several tiny, stick-thin legs wriggling helplessly. He realised that, at some point during the night, he had become some kind of beetle. His brain could not cope with this horror, and promptly shut down, propelling him back into merciful unconsciousness. When, eventually, he woke from his stupor, he was shocked to discover that he had undergone a second transformation. He was no longer a beetle. He was a Beatle! Somehow, he had now become Ringo Starr, or, more precisely, a perfect replica of Ringo Starr circa 1964. Cautiously, he ran his hands over his hair, now become a moptop. He called out, quietly, for his Mama, and heard a lugubrious Liverpudlian accent. But Mama did not come, and in his despair he picked up a pair of drumsticks which had appeared on his bedside table, and bashed himself on the head, repeatedly and rhythmically, with a characteristic "fill", until, once again, he lost consciousness. There were more uneasy dreams, and when he awoke again he discovered he had undergone a third transformation. Now he had become an entirely new being. Outwardly--indeed, inwardly--he was exactly the same as he had been the previous day, no longer a beetle or a Beatle. Yet it was clear to him, as he leapt out of bed and plunged his head into a bucket of icy water and shuffled into the kitchen for a breakfast of jugged eels and reconstituted marmalade and turned on the radiogram to listen to an early morning concert of argumentative German improvised racket, that something had changed, something decisive and irreversible. But what? Neither Mama nor Papa, nor his young sister Sophonisba, gave any indication that he was in any way different. But then they barely noticed his presence at all, as they sat at the kitchen table stuffing their gobs with cornflakes and hardboiled eggs in jelly. So concentrated were they on their munching and chewing they did not even hear the frankly godawful din from the radiogram. He decided that the simplest way to work out what had happened to him would be to go about his usual routine, but to monitor himself. So he spent a profitable three or four hours faffing about with the inner workings of his wristwatch. When he was done, it would not only tell the time, but it would keep a continuous check on the state of his soul and his vitals. If all his tweakings were correct, then at nightfall, when the day was done, his watch would spit out a printed report, with handy bullet points. The next day, he could pass this to a consultant for analysis. The difficulty would be to find a competent analyst. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-06-1430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-06-07Thu, 07 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:28 Bolshevik Tomato Paste Scoop 02:55 Disparate Horseflies 05:08 The Higher Mathematics 10:01 Elf-Help For Idiots 11:37 Where Do You Go To, My Lovely? 15:22 The Only Sound 19:02 String And Wood And Tin 19:50 Bellhop's Catbrain 25:04 Bib BOLSHEVIK TOMATO PASTE SCOOP I opened my briefcase and took from it my Bolshevik Tomato Paste Scoop. I was so pleased with it. I had snapped it up on eBay, where it was going for a song. The song I opted for was "Essay On Pigs" (1968) by Hans Werner Henze. Strictly speaking, this is actually five separate songs, but I got away with it. The Bolshevik Tomato Paste Scoop arrived in the post four days later. I will be sure to take it with me, in my briefcase, on my forthcoming trip, by hot air balloon, to the Lost City of Karencarpenter, far far away, beyond the mountains of madness, where night-penguins fringe a yawning abyss. DISPARATE HORSEFLIES Ever since it ended, after eight seasons, in 2012, fans of the television comedy-drama Desperate Housewives have been hoping for a sequel. Now it appears their prayers have been answered. Next month sees the launch of a brand new television comedy-drama called Disparate Horseflies. Set on a horse named Wisteria, the show features the amusing and sometimes not so amusing antics of a group of horseflies who live, parasitically, upon its shanks, withers, fetlocks, and other parts of a horse which I am sure you can list for yourselves. As the title implies, the flies are a varied bunch, apart from their all being flies of the horsefly family (Tabanus sulcifrons). The cast comprises several actual horseflies, specially trained to act by tiptop thespian fly-trainer Cedric Flytrain. For the setting of Wisteria, an elegant if tubercular horse named Keith, resident at a stables in Vileshire, was employed. Preview tapes have not been made available, but word has it that the first episode includes close-up scenes of grotesque horsefly behaviour which some viewers, and horses, may find absolutely sickening. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-06-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:28 Bolshevik Tomato Paste Scoop 02:55 Disparate Horseflies 05:08 The Higher Mathematics 10:01 Elf-Help For Idiots 11:37 Where Do You Go To, My Lovely? 15:22 The Only Sound 19:02 String And Wood And Tin 19:50 Bellhop's Catbrain 25:04 Bib BOLSHEVIK TOMATO PASTE SCOOP I opened my briefcase and took from it my Bolshevik Tomato Paste Scoop. I was so pleased with it. I had snapped it up on eBay, where it was going for a song. The song I opted for was "Essay On Pigs" (1968) by Hans Werner Henze. Strictly speaking, this is actually five separate songs, but I got away with it. The Bolshevik Tomato Paste Scoop arrived in the post four days later. I will be sure to take it with me, in my briefcase, on my forthcoming trip, by hot air balloon, to the Lost City of Karencarpenter, far far away, beyond the mountains of madness, where night-penguins fringe a yawning abyss. DISPARATE HORSEFLIES Ever since it ended, after eight seasons, in 2012, fans of the television comedy-drama Desperate Housewives have been hoping for a sequel. Now it appears their prayers have been answered. Next month sees the launch of a brand new television comedy-drama called Disparate Horseflies. Set on a horse named Wisteria, the show features the amusing and sometimes not so amusing antics of a group of horseflies who live, parasitically, upon its shanks, withers, fetlocks, and other parts of a horse which I am sure you can list for yourselves. As the title implies, the flies are a varied bunch, apart from their all being flies of the horsefly family (Tabanus sulcifrons). The cast comprises several actual horseflies, specially trained to act by tiptop thespian fly-trainer Cedric Flytrain. For the setting of Wisteria, an elegant if tubercular horse named Keith, resident at a stables in Vileshire, was employed. Preview tapes have not been made available, but word has it that the first episode includes close-up scenes of grotesque horsefly behaviour which some viewers, and horses, may find absolutely sickening. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-06-0730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-05-24Thu, 24 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 Gus 04:41 The Pier At Deal 12:50 Rustic Wisdom 13:35 Mesmerism 13:39 Important Cephalopod News 13:57 Cost O' Cows & Horses 16:41 The Real World Is Stranger Than Hooting Yard (Part 94) 22:34 Telling Fibs To Impuissance 25:31 "The kam, as if approaching the Yarta..." 29:13 Eclectric Oil GUS Gus was pipped at the post. It was one of those huffington posts, recently erected at strategic points across the land, by diktat. They were named in honour of Puissance Huffington, the tiny orphan child who, by some inexplicable chain of accidents, now reigns over our realm. Nobody expected frail little Puissance to rule with an iron fist, but she does, and then some! Like so many citizens, Gus had assumed that Puissance would be a benign queenlet. It was perhaps this naivete which led to his undoing, when he entered a contest in the weekly children's comic The Terrible Wrath Of Christ Our Saviour. Readers were asked to supply a caption for a drawing which showed an innocent farmyard scene, typical of our country. Mischievous Gus wrote something disobliging about a hen, unaware that every single caption submitted to the comic would be scrutinised, personally, by Puissance Huffington. She could not read, of course, so pressed into service a man of letters who loitered somewhere in the bowels of the palace. When this sickly one-legged fellow read to Puissance the words written by Gus, she was outraged. "I am very fond of hens," she is reported to have said, "And I will not have disobliging things said of them, no siree!" And she told the man of letters to aim his crutches in the direction of the Palace Git, conveying instructions to have Gus arrested. And so within hours of writing his unwise words, Gus found himself chained to one of the huffington posts in one of the less salubrious parts of the country, populated for the most part by ne'er-do-wells, halfwits, and Corbynistas. Eagerly, they pelted Gus with pips, as Puissance Huffington decreed. In retrospect, we can appreciate just how fortunate Gus was to have committed his crime in the early days of the reign of Puissance. For her power made the little orphan child ever more vindictive and cruel, and it was not long before she declared that miscreants should be pelted, not with pips, but with plumstones. THE PIER AT DEAL Yesterday's little winklepicker squib reminded me of a piece I wrote about the pier at Deal in July 2012. Here it is again: […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-05-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 Gus 04:41 The Pier At Deal 12:50 Rustic Wisdom 13:35 Mesmerism 13:39 Important Cephalopod News 13:57 Cost O' Cows & Horses 16:41 The Real World Is Stranger Than Hooting Yard (Part 94) 22:34 Telling Fibs To Impuissance 25:31 "The kam, as if approaching the Yarta..." 29:13 Eclectric Oil GUS Gus was pipped at the post. It was one of those huffington posts, recently erected at strategic points across the land, by diktat. They were named in honour of Puissance Huffington, the tiny orphan child who, by some inexplicable chain of accidents, now reigns over our realm. Nobody expected frail little Puissance to rule with an iron fist, but she does, and then some! Like so many citizens, Gus had assumed that Puissance would be a benign queenlet. It was perhaps this naivete which led to his undoing, when he entered a contest in the weekly children's comic The Terrible Wrath Of Christ Our Saviour. Readers were asked to supply a caption for a drawing which showed an innocent farmyard scene, typical of our country. Mischievous Gus wrote something disobliging about a hen, unaware that every single caption submitted to the comic would be scrutinised, personally, by Puissance Huffington. She could not read, of course, so pressed into service a man of letters who loitered somewhere in the bowels of the palace. When this sickly one-legged fellow read to Puissance the words written by Gus, she was outraged. "I am very fond of hens," she is reported to have said, "And I will not have disobliging things said of them, no siree!" And she told the man of letters to aim his crutches in the direction of the Palace Git, conveying instructions to have Gus arrested. And so within hours of writing his unwise words, Gus found himself chained to one of the huffington posts in one of the less salubrious parts of the country, populated for the most part by ne'er-do-wells, halfwits, and Corbynistas. Eagerly, they pelted Gus with pips, as Puissance Huffington decreed. In retrospect, we can appreciate just how fortunate Gus was to have committed his crime in the early days of the reign of Puissance. For her power made the little orphan child ever more vindictive and cruel, and it was not long before she declared that miscreants should be pelted, not with pips, but with plumstones. THE PIER AT DEAL Yesterday's little winklepicker squib reminded me of a piece I wrote about the pier at Deal in July 2012. Here it is again: […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-05-2430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-05-17Thu, 17 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 Absent-Minded Window-Gazing 06:24 Film Review : Billy Two Hats 10:44 Fellowship 16:35 Two Hats Whizz 20:32 Riddle 21:41 Advocates ABSENT-MINDED WINDOW-GAZING What are we to do with these spring days that are now fast coming on? I had not thought I would need to do anything. When I arrived home, I fully expected to find waiting for me, on the desk in my study, the traditional bottle of whisky and loaded revolver. Together, they would take care of the immediate future, after which I need no longer concern myself with the travails of this mundane world. But I came home to find, instead, that Control had left for me a can of Squelcho! and a pencil-sharpener. And so now I am sitting at my desk and gazing absent-mindedly out of the window. I see the sky, across which clouds lie splattered. It is many years since I read Luke Howard, and I can no longer recall all that stuff I once learned about cumulocirronimbostratus et cetera. I see grass, upon which birds are hopping and slouching and preening. Ornithology has always confounded me. I could not tell you what manner of birds they are. I see the backs of buildings made of brick, and their roofs, or is it rooves? Some of the birds move, in flight, between the grass and the roofs, or between the roofs and the grass, and some of them fly away never to be seen again, and others come swooping in, possibly after exceedingly lengthy flights from distant continents. That is one thing I know about ornithology, that certain birds undertake flights the length of which we can barely imagine. Now I see, lolloping along the lane, Old Halob, the all-too-real coach and mentor of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol. He is wearing his trademark macintosh and Homburg hat, and smoking one of his filthy cigarettes, crammed with acrid Serbian tobacco. In one hand is his stopwatch, which he uses when timing the fictional athlete as he runs round and round and round and round and round a fictional running-track. His other hand is holding the hand of his walking-companion, or rather limping-companion, the club-footed plucky Fascist tot Tiny Enid. She is a polka-dot-dressed girl of many adventures. I did not know she was in cahoots with Old Halob. What are they up to? They stop by a puddle, release each other's hands, and stand there, like a pair of vases on a mantelpiece. I gaze out of the window at them. They appear to be gazing back at me, though I cannot be sure, because I am myopic, and the window is covered in the grime of umpteen weathers. I remember reading somewhere that most birds are frightened of Tiny Enid, and this is borne out by the fact that all the birds that were pootling about on the grass have now flown away. Old Halob drops the butt of his cigarette, crushes it underfoot, takes another gasper from the packet in his pocket, lights it, and puffs. This, then, is what we do with these spring days that are now fast coming on. We gaze out of the window, vacantly, at fictional characters of our own imagining. We hallucinate. Because of course the man is not Old Halob and the girl is not Tiny Enid. Those are just figments in my brain with no purchase in brute reality. Outside, on either side of the puddle, the man is just any man, the girl just any girl. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-05-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 Absent-Minded Window-Gazing 06:24 Film Review : Billy Two Hats 10:44 Fellowship 16:35 Two Hats Whizz 20:32 Riddle 21:41 Advocates ABSENT-MINDED WINDOW-GAZING What are we to do with these spring days that are now fast coming on? I had not thought I would need to do anything. When I arrived home, I fully expected to find waiting for me, on the desk in my study, the traditional bottle of whisky and loaded revolver. Together, they would take care of the immediate future, after which I need no longer concern myself with the travails of this mundane world. But I came home to find, instead, that Control had left for me a can of Squelcho! and a pencil-sharpener. And so now I am sitting at my desk and gazing absent-mindedly out of the window. I see the sky, across which clouds lie splattered. It is many years since I read Luke Howard, and I can no longer recall all that stuff I once learned about cumulocirronimbostratus et cetera. I see grass, upon which birds are hopping and slouching and preening. Ornithology has always confounded me. I could not tell you what manner of birds they are. I see the backs of buildings made of brick, and their roofs, or is it rooves? Some of the birds move, in flight, between the grass and the roofs, or between the roofs and the grass, and some of them fly away never to be seen again, and others come swooping in, possibly after exceedingly lengthy flights from distant continents. That is one thing I know about ornithology, that certain birds undertake flights the length of which we can barely imagine. Now I see, lolloping along the lane, Old Halob, the all-too-real coach and mentor of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol. He is wearing his trademark macintosh and Homburg hat, and smoking one of his filthy cigarettes, crammed with acrid Serbian tobacco. In one hand is his stopwatch, which he uses when timing the fictional athlete as he runs round and round and round and round and round a fictional running-track. His other hand is holding the hand of his walking-companion, or rather limping-companion, the club-footed plucky Fascist tot Tiny Enid. She is a polka-dot-dressed girl of many adventures. I did not know she was in cahoots with Old Halob. What are they up to? They stop by a puddle, release each other's hands, and stand there, like a pair of vases on a mantelpiece. I gaze out of the window at them. They appear to be gazing back at me, though I cannot be sure, because I am myopic, and the window is covered in the grime of umpteen weathers. I remember reading somewhere that most birds are frightened of Tiny Enid, and this is borne out by the fact that all the birds that were pootling about on the grass have now flown away. Old Halob drops the butt of his cigarette, crushes it underfoot, takes another gasper from the packet in his pocket, lights it, and puffs. This, then, is what we do with these spring days that are now fast coming on. We gaze out of the window, vacantly, at fictional characters of our own imagining. We hallucinate. Because of course the man is not Old Halob and the girl is not Tiny Enid. Those are just figments in my brain with no purchase in brute reality. Outside, on either side of the puddle, the man is just any man, the girl just any girl. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-05-1730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-05-03Thu, 03 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:33 A Special Christmas Treat for All Our Readers 02:46 Living With Alf 03:37 The Helmsman 09:53 Jackals And Arabs 19:33 The Departure 26:32 On My Transformation A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS TREAT FOR ALL OUR READERS Hooting Yard has been eerily quiet for the past two months, during which time Mr Key has been plotting all sorts of exciting bagatelles for the coming year. But to assure readers that he has not succumbed to the living death of zombiedom, Frank is presenting as a Christmas treat the working drafts of two episodes of an exciting new television series. The show is provisionally entitled Blodgett And His Pals Hanging Around On A Mysterious Island After Surviving A Plane Crash. Here is the first, which takes place somewhere around the middle of the story. The notes for a second episode will appear tomorrow. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is covered in blood. Dobson and Marigold Chew do medical stuff. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is croaking. Marigold Chew: "What's happening, Dobson?" Dobson: "His lung just collapsed." Tense music. Tracheotomy. Tiny Enid winces. Dobson tells Marigold Chew to go to the beach and ransack fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's stuff for rubbing alcohol. Flashback. Dobson is tying a bowtie on a young mystic badger named Little Severin, who says "You can still back out, Dobson". Wedding preparations? Possibly. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is still croaking and bloody. Dobson says: "I'm going to save you." Daytime on the beach. Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, his spectacles nowhere in sight, offers Minnie Crunlop a fish. The raft should be ready in about a week. Old Halob offers The Grunty Man a fish. Neither Minnie Crunlop nor The Grunty Man want fish. Marigold Chew arrives and demands all of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's alcohol. Dobson is stitching Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp's chest up. He's still groaning. He needs a blood transfusion. Pabstus Tack asks Dobson where Blodgett is. Flashback. Pre-wedding party. "The future Mrs Dobson" makes a speech. A year ago she broke her back. (A bit like Blodgett's sister breaking her neck as a child, though this is not made explicit.) They said it was inoperable. "But there was Dobson. And he promised to fix me. He's the most committed man I have ever known. I will dance at our wedding." Dobson looks soulful. Tiny Enid puts a twig in Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp's mouth, which is not a herbal remedy despite Dobson's protestations. They pull him about and he makes very loud groaning noises. Marigold Chew trips over in the forest carrying her rucksack full of alcohol. Something is lurking in the trees. It's Minnie Crunlop, going into labour. Marigold Chew: "You're having contractions, Minnie Crunlop!" Minnie Crunlop: "No I'm bloody not!" Marigold Chew: "Help! Somebody help!" The Grunty Man hears the yelling and runs into the forest. Marigold Chew tells The Grunty Man to go and get Dobson. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp has stopped groaning and is now quivering, in shock. Tiny Enid asks him what blood type he is. He eventually groans, "A negative". Dobson tells Tiny Enid to go and find someone with A negative blood, and to find Mrs Gubbins too. Mrs Gubbins and Lothar Preen are out walking. Lothar Preen has made a picnic for them on a secluded beach. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-05-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:33 A Special Christmas Treat for All Our Readers 02:46 Living With Alf 03:37 The Helmsman 09:53 Jackals And Arabs 19:33 The Departure 26:32 On My Transformation A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS TREAT FOR ALL OUR READERS Hooting Yard has been eerily quiet for the past two months, during which time Mr Key has been plotting all sorts of exciting bagatelles for the coming year. But to assure readers that he has not succumbed to the living death of zombiedom, Frank is presenting as a Christmas treat the working drafts of two episodes of an exciting new television series. The show is provisionally entitled Blodgett And His Pals Hanging Around On A Mysterious Island After Surviving A Plane Crash. Here is the first, which takes place somewhere around the middle of the story. The notes for a second episode will appear tomorrow. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is covered in blood. Dobson and Marigold Chew do medical stuff. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is croaking. Marigold Chew: "What's happening, Dobson?" Dobson: "His lung just collapsed." Tense music. Tracheotomy. Tiny Enid winces. Dobson tells Marigold Chew to go to the beach and ransack fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's stuff for rubbing alcohol. Flashback. Dobson is tying a bowtie on a young mystic badger named Little Severin, who says "You can still back out, Dobson". Wedding preparations? Possibly. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is still croaking and bloody. Dobson says: "I'm going to save you." Daytime on the beach. Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, his spectacles nowhere in sight, offers Minnie Crunlop a fish. The raft should be ready in about a week. Old Halob offers The Grunty Man a fish. Neither Minnie Crunlop nor The Grunty Man want fish. Marigold Chew arrives and demands all of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's alcohol. Dobson is stitching Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp's chest up. He's still groaning. He needs a blood transfusion. Pabstus Tack asks Dobson where Blodgett is. Flashback. Pre-wedding party. "The future Mrs Dobson" makes a speech. A year ago she broke her back. (A bit like Blodgett's sister breaking her neck as a child, though this is not made explicit.) They said it was inoperable. "But there was Dobson. And he promised to fix me. He's the most committed man I have ever known. I will dance at our wedding." Dobson looks soulful. Tiny Enid puts a twig in Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp's mouth, which is not a herbal remedy despite Dobson's protestations. They pull him about and he makes very loud groaning noises. Marigold Chew trips over in the forest carrying her rucksack full of alcohol. Something is lurking in the trees. It's Minnie Crunlop, going into labour. Marigold Chew: "You're having contractions, Minnie Crunlop!" Minnie Crunlop: "No I'm bloody not!" Marigold Chew: "Help! Somebody help!" The Grunty Man hears the yelling and runs into the forest. Marigold Chew tells The Grunty Man to go and get Dobson. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp has stopped groaning and is now quivering, in shock. Tiny Enid asks him what blood type he is. He eventually groans, "A negative". Dobson tells Tiny Enid to go and find someone with A negative blood, and to find Mrs Gubbins too. Mrs Gubbins and Lothar Preen are out walking. Lothar Preen has made a picnic for them on a secluded beach. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-05-0330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-04-26Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:02 On Flocks Of Birds 01:18 The Vulture 11:30 The Knock At The Manor Gate 20:32 The Orchard Gull 25:53 Folk Song ON FLOCKS OF BIRDS Often, if you are out of doors and crane your neck at such an angle that you are looking up at the sky, you will see a flock of birds. Not always, but often, often enough in any case to make my opening sentence credible. I strive, as a writer, to be credible. I think all writers do. We want readers to believe what we are telling them, if only temporarily, during the act of reading. This is the case even with persons who write of outlandish and preposterous things, for example those kinds of science fiction stories set in the distant future on far-flung planets, where characters with names like Zybog and Kagvond try to prevent an explosion at the weapons facility on Planet X-47215, while menaced by intergalactic beings with tentacles and metallic parts. This is obviously tosh, but the writer will try to make it credible. As soon as you put the potboiler or pulp magazine aside, you can dismiss what you have just read as piffle. The important thing is that you believe it while you are reading it. So I do not think it is outwith the bounds of reason to claim that, in peering up at the sky, you will often see a flock of birds. It depends where you are, of course. Some areas are more bird-haunted than others. If you are in a desert, you might see a flock of vultures, circling over potential carrion, but probably not as often as, at the seaside, you might spot a flock of seagulls. In fact at some seaside resorts, particularly those with gigantic rubbish tips in the vicinity, it is hard to look up at the sky without seeing teeming seagulls. The desert and the seaside are extreme cases, geographically, but the fact that in both, or rather above both, one might glimpse flocks of birds is telling, I think, in terms of my argument. Not all birds fly about in flocks. Come to think of it, not all birds fly. The ostrich, for example, is a flightless bird, and a remarkably stupid one. That being so, you are unlikely to read a sentence such as Above, a huge flock of ostriches swooped in the blue sky, silhouetted against the blazing sun at noon on Thursday. which would probably cause you to fling the book across the room in exasperation. On the other hand, you might find it credible if the sentence was Above, a huge flock of ostriches swooped in the beige sky, silhouetted against the blazing suns at noon on Thursday at the weapons facility on Planet X-47215, where Zybog and Kagvond were doing battle with intergalactic beings with tentacles and metallic parts while trying to prevent an explosion which would have unforeseeable effects on the space-time continuum. In this context, flying ostriches might be credible. Much depends on your tolerance for science fiction. If it is low, you might still fling the book across the room in exasperation, and go to find something else to read. If a writer wishes to entertain you, however fleetingly, with a scene in which a flock of birds is visible in the sky, they will need to do a spot of ornithological research to ensure that the birds they mention are indeed ones that fly about in flocks. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-04-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:02 On Flocks Of Birds 01:18 The Vulture 11:30 The Knock At The Manor Gate 20:32 The Orchard Gull 25:53 Folk Song ON FLOCKS OF BIRDS Often, if you are out of doors and crane your neck at such an angle that you are looking up at the sky, you will see a flock of birds. Not always, but often, often enough in any case to make my opening sentence credible. I strive, as a writer, to be credible. I think all writers do. We want readers to believe what we are telling them, if only temporarily, during the act of reading. This is the case even with persons who write of outlandish and preposterous things, for example those kinds of science fiction stories set in the distant future on far-flung planets, where characters with names like Zybog and Kagvond try to prevent an explosion at the weapons facility on Planet X-47215, while menaced by intergalactic beings with tentacles and metallic parts. This is obviously tosh, but the writer will try to make it credible. As soon as you put the potboiler or pulp magazine aside, you can dismiss what you have just read as piffle. The important thing is that you believe it while you are reading it. So I do not think it is outwith the bounds of reason to claim that, in peering up at the sky, you will often see a flock of birds. It depends where you are, of course. Some areas are more bird-haunted than others. If you are in a desert, you might see a flock of vultures, circling over potential carrion, but probably not as often as, at the seaside, you might spot a flock of seagulls. In fact at some seaside resorts, particularly those with gigantic rubbish tips in the vicinity, it is hard to look up at the sky without seeing teeming seagulls. The desert and the seaside are extreme cases, geographically, but the fact that in both, or rather above both, one might glimpse flocks of birds is telling, I think, in terms of my argument. Not all birds fly about in flocks. Come to think of it, not all birds fly. The ostrich, for example, is a flightless bird, and a remarkably stupid one. That being so, you are unlikely to read a sentence such as Above, a huge flock of ostriches swooped in the blue sky, silhouetted against the blazing sun at noon on Thursday. which would probably cause you to fling the book across the room in exasperation. On the other hand, you might find it credible if the sentence was Above, a huge flock of ostriches swooped in the beige sky, silhouetted against the blazing suns at noon on Thursday at the weapons facility on Planet X-47215, where Zybog and Kagvond were doing battle with intergalactic beings with tentacles and metallic parts while trying to prevent an explosion which would have unforeseeable effects on the space-time continuum. In this context, flying ostriches might be credible. Much depends on your tolerance for science fiction. If it is low, you might still fling the book across the room in exasperation, and go to find something else to read. If a writer wishes to entertain you, however fleetingly, with a scene in which a flock of birds is visible in the sky, they will need to do a spot of ornithological research to ensure that the birds they mention are indeed ones that fly about in flocks. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-04-2630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-04-05Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 A Fratricide 11:04 Hamstrung, Pointy, & Downcast 16:30 A Visit To A Mine 23:59 The Singing Pipstraws A FRATRICIDE The evidence shows that this is how the murder was committed. The victim was a fanatic named Vanityvanity Orliss Vanity, known as Vov for short. He made his living as a thumper. He thumped both tubs and Bibles, and sometimes, when he was strung out on dandelion-and-burdock, he thumped police officers, puppies, and other things beginning with P, such as pin-cushions. On the day of the murder, Vov woke at dawn and rose from his bed and shoved his head into a pail of icy water and thumped a tub and ate some cream crackers and stood on his balcony and engaged in blood-curdling invective with his downstairs neighbour and thumped a Bible and tallied up the visible toads and combed his hair with a Bedraggler and fossicked in a cupboard and took a swipe at a bat and prayed the Lord his soul to save and wrapped a cravat around his neck, his neck, his neck, and paid no heed to the weather forecast and left his gloves on the bus and eked from its shell a tiny wriggling unidentified creature and admired the view from Sawdust Bridge and boxed clever and dipped an orphan in a pond and failed to understand foreign signage and almost toppled into a ditch but righted himself at the critical moment and had a go at a game of Regurgitate The Cream Crackers and scratched an irritant and looked at the town hall clock and thumped a few things beginning with P and pursed his lips, his lips, his lips, and tossed a hard-boiled egg so high it vanished in the aether and lost all sense of cardboard and did a few other things on his way to the post office. At the post office, Vov joined a queue. The back of the head of the person in front of him was a phrenologist's nightmare. This reminded Vov that he had in his blazer pocket a copy of Dobson's pamphlet A Compendium Of Phrenologists' Nightmares (out of print). It occurred to him that this would be a suitable gift for his brother, whose birthday it was today. Unfortunately, Vov knew not where his brother was. The last he had heard of him, he was being carted off in chains to a prison hulk after committing a series of enormities. Vov had no idea of the location of the hulk, nor if his brother was still there, in chains, raving, while the sea sloshed against the sides and birds swooped overhead in glorious aerial displays of avian grace and beauty. What we know now is that Vov's brother had escaped and was, at that very moment, bearing down on the post office, rattling his chains and raving and strung out on dandelion-and-burdock-diluted-with-seawater and mad as a kitten on the moon and armed with a club manufactured for the slaughter of baby seals and dribbling and drooling and forgotten by God and tormented by imaginary bells. Accompanying him, because they were chained together, was a second escaped convict, a man named Schmar. Schmar had been sent to the prison hulk due to the shape of his head. According to the judiciary's phrenologist, the bumps and dents in Schmar's skull were indicative of the kind of criminal who would steal toffee apples from crippled children, or forge his bus ticket, or hang out his laundry with the wrong sort of clothes-pegs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-04-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 A Fratricide 11:04 Hamstrung, Pointy, & Downcast 16:30 A Visit To A Mine 23:59 The Singing Pipstraws A FRATRICIDE The evidence shows that this is how the murder was committed. The victim was a fanatic named Vanityvanity Orliss Vanity, known as Vov for short. He made his living as a thumper. He thumped both tubs and Bibles, and sometimes, when he was strung out on dandelion-and-burdock, he thumped police officers, puppies, and other things beginning with P, such as pin-cushions. On the day of the murder, Vov woke at dawn and rose from his bed and shoved his head into a pail of icy water and thumped a tub and ate some cream crackers and stood on his balcony and engaged in blood-curdling invective with his downstairs neighbour and thumped a Bible and tallied up the visible toads and combed his hair with a Bedraggler and fossicked in a cupboard and took a swipe at a bat and prayed the Lord his soul to save and wrapped a cravat around his neck, his neck, his neck, and paid no heed to the weather forecast and left his gloves on the bus and eked from its shell a tiny wriggling unidentified creature and admired the view from Sawdust Bridge and boxed clever and dipped an orphan in a pond and failed to understand foreign signage and almost toppled into a ditch but righted himself at the critical moment and had a go at a game of Regurgitate The Cream Crackers and scratched an irritant and looked at the town hall clock and thumped a few things beginning with P and pursed his lips, his lips, his lips, and tossed a hard-boiled egg so high it vanished in the aether and lost all sense of cardboard and did a few other things on his way to the post office. At the post office, Vov joined a queue. The back of the head of the person in front of him was a phrenologist's nightmare. This reminded Vov that he had in his blazer pocket a copy of Dobson's pamphlet A Compendium Of Phrenologists' Nightmares (out of print). It occurred to him that this would be a suitable gift for his brother, whose birthday it was today. Unfortunately, Vov knew not where his brother was. The last he had heard of him, he was being carted off in chains to a prison hulk after committing a series of enormities. Vov had no idea of the location of the hulk, nor if his brother was still there, in chains, raving, while the sea sloshed against the sides and birds swooped overhead in glorious aerial displays of avian grace and beauty. What we know now is that Vov's brother had escaped and was, at that very moment, bearing down on the post office, rattling his chains and raving and strung out on dandelion-and-burdock-diluted-with-seawater and mad as a kitten on the moon and armed with a club manufactured for the slaughter of baby seals and dribbling and drooling and forgotten by God and tormented by imaginary bells. Accompanying him, because they were chained together, was a second escaped convict, a man named Schmar. Schmar had been sent to the prison hulk due to the shape of his head. According to the judiciary's phrenologist, the bumps and dents in Schmar's skull were indicative of the kind of criminal who would steal toffee apples from crippled children, or forge his bus ticket, or hang out his laundry with the wrong sort of clothes-pegs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-04-0530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-29Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 A Dream 07:27 On True Grit 08:43 Two Hats Whizz 08:50 Acknowledgements And Disclaimer 09:53 At Night 15:46 The Coronation 16:47 An Old Manuscript 27:43 Recommended Reading A DREAM Josef K. was dreaming. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you about it. Other people's dreams are almost always insufferably boring. My heart sinks when somebody I barely know insists on telling me one of their dreams. It is akin to the horror I feel when buttonholed by somebody who is determined to read to me their "latest poem". These poems are invariably codswallop. And so it is with dreams. On the other hand we are, perhaps rightly, fascinated by our own dreams--as, I suppose, we are by our poems, if we are foolish enough to write them. Dreams churn up our memories, distort them, pluck them from where they belong and drop them into new and weird contexts. Because they belong to us, they are endlessly interesting. We try to wring sense from them, to act as our own Viennese quack and work out what the dream tells us about ourselves. Such navel-gazing is very pleasing, but you really don't want to impose it on anybody else. Pleasing, yes, but sometimes futile. God alone knows how I have wrestled with the deep, deep meaning of a dream I had a few years ago, in which I attacked the actor Roy Kinnear, bashing him over the head with a chair. I never met the late Mr Kinnear. It is, to date, his sole appearance in my dreamworld. I still have no idea what that dream meant, if it meant anything. We might, if we are sufficiently engaged, find the dreams of fictional characters intriguing. I can't remember the particular dream Josef K. had in A Dream by Franz Kafka, which is another reason I'm not telling you about it. But we ought to remember that fictional characters' dreams aren't real dreams--they're made up by the author. They may well be based on actual dreams the author had, though there is no guarantee of that. In any case, you can bet on your sickly and wizened grandmother's life that the author embroiders, and shapes the dream-narrative, through art. Consider, as an example, the story in which fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol has a dream while taking a pre-polevaulting nap. As readers, we know that the dream has been planted in his (fictional) sleeping brain, probably by his coach, the cantankerous, chain-smoking, enovercoated, Homburg-hatted, and all too real Old Halob, a non-fictional character if ever there was one. In the dream, Bobnit Tivol and Old Halob have somehow swapped identities. Thus, it is the coach who is polevaulting, an image so absurd and preposterous it is the epitome of dream-bizarrerie. This is what I mean by art. Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, meanwhile, in the persona of his coach, has gone to visit Old Halob's sickly and wizened grandmother in her hovel. He explains to her, by thumps on her head, that he is going to gamble on her life in a sordid wager. The grandmother then takes off her thrum nightcap, and is revealed to be a large, fierce wolf, with gleaming and razor-sharp fangs. Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol screams. In real life, this is the point where a dreamer would be shocked awake. But in the story, the dream continues. Bobnit Tivol runs out of the hovel, runs and runs, and finds himself on a familiar running track. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 A Dream 07:27 On True Grit 08:43 Two Hats Whizz 08:50 Acknowledgements And Disclaimer 09:53 At Night 15:46 The Coronation 16:47 An Old Manuscript 27:43 Recommended Reading A DREAM Josef K. was dreaming. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you about it. Other people's dreams are almost always insufferably boring. My heart sinks when somebody I barely know insists on telling me one of their dreams. It is akin to the horror I feel when buttonholed by somebody who is determined to read to me their "latest poem". These poems are invariably codswallop. And so it is with dreams. On the other hand we are, perhaps rightly, fascinated by our own dreams--as, I suppose, we are by our poems, if we are foolish enough to write them. Dreams churn up our memories, distort them, pluck them from where they belong and drop them into new and weird contexts. Because they belong to us, they are endlessly interesting. We try to wring sense from them, to act as our own Viennese quack and work out what the dream tells us about ourselves. Such navel-gazing is very pleasing, but you really don't want to impose it on anybody else. Pleasing, yes, but sometimes futile. God alone knows how I have wrestled with the deep, deep meaning of a dream I had a few years ago, in which I attacked the actor Roy Kinnear, bashing him over the head with a chair. I never met the late Mr Kinnear. It is, to date, his sole appearance in my dreamworld. I still have no idea what that dream meant, if it meant anything. We might, if we are sufficiently engaged, find the dreams of fictional characters intriguing. I can't remember the particular dream Josef K. had in A Dream by Franz Kafka, which is another reason I'm not telling you about it. But we ought to remember that fictional characters' dreams aren't real dreams--they're made up by the author. They may well be based on actual dreams the author had, though there is no guarantee of that. In any case, you can bet on your sickly and wizened grandmother's life that the author embroiders, and shapes the dream-narrative, through art. Consider, as an example, the story in which fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol has a dream while taking a pre-polevaulting nap. As readers, we know that the dream has been planted in his (fictional) sleeping brain, probably by his coach, the cantankerous, chain-smoking, enovercoated, Homburg-hatted, and all too real Old Halob, a non-fictional character if ever there was one. In the dream, Bobnit Tivol and Old Halob have somehow swapped identities. Thus, it is the coach who is polevaulting, an image so absurd and preposterous it is the epitome of dream-bizarrerie. This is what I mean by art. Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, meanwhile, in the persona of his coach, has gone to visit Old Halob's sickly and wizened grandmother in her hovel. He explains to her, by thumps on her head, that he is going to gamble on her life in a sordid wager. The grandmother then takes off her thrum nightcap, and is revealed to be a large, fierce wolf, with gleaming and razor-sharp fangs. Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol screams. In real life, this is the point where a dreamer would be shocked awake. But in the story, the dream continues. Bobnit Tivol runs out of the hovel, runs and runs, and finds himself on a familiar running track. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-2930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-22Thu, 22 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:39 The Hunter Gracchus 10:30 Children On A Country Road 20:47 The Bucket Rider THE HUNTER GRACCHUS Two boys were sitting on the harbour wall playing with dice. One of the boys was clever, and the other boy was dim. Now, when I tell you that one of the boys tossed the dice into the sea that sloshed against the harbour wall, you are likely to conclude that the boy who so tossed was the dim one. Dice serve no purpose in the sea. They will bob upon the surface of the waters, uselessly, carried by the tides, growing ever more distant the one from the other, sopping wet, and no longer to be played with. But in fact it was the clever boy who ruined their play by tossing the dice into the sea. For not only was he astoundingly clever, with an intellect far outwith the usual range of boyish brains, but he was also a psychopath. No sooner had he tossed the dice into the sea than he shoved his dim playmate off the harbour wall into the same sloshing sea and, for good measure, he grabbed hold of a passing harbour kitten and, deaf to its mewling, chucked it into the water alongside the dice and the dim boy. The name of this clever boy? Young Babinsky! Amused by his seaside enormities, the youthful psychopath toddled off to a milk bar with not a care in the world. Meanwhile, in the vast wet merciless sea, the dice bobbed, but the dim boy and the harbour kitten sank like stones, and the waters washed over them, and they were forgotten. Let us leap forward thirty, no, forty years. Forty is a better number than thirty, according to Blotzmann, who famously assigned abstruse yet compelling non-numerical values to certain numbers that took his fancy, for example eight and eleven and fifteen and sixteen and nineteen and twenty-six and twenty-nine and thirty-seven and forty and oh for god's sake shut up with the list of numbers, it could go on ad infinitum. Suffice to say forty is one of Blotzmann's so-called "basilisk" numbers, whatever that might mean. In the forty years since the clever boy and the dim boy sat on the harbour wall playing with dice, the wall has crumbled. The big wet sea is reclaiming the land. Half of the town is now under water, including the milk bar where, all those years ago, Babinsky drank a tumbler of warm sour goaty milk and chuckled at his youthful crimes. And now he has returned. Look, there he is, silhouetted against the ghastly sky, swinging his axe, standing on the town's highest hill and gazing, perplexed, at the sea below. He has come on a pilgrimage of sorts, eager to revisit the scenes--idyllic, as he remembers them--of his youth. But they are gone, sunk beneath the waves as surely as his first victims, his dim playmate and the harbour kitten, vanished forever. Babinsky was not a man to let a little thing like the sea confound him. Pausing only to waylay a passing Punch & Judy man, butchering him with his axe and slicers, the lumbering walrus-moustached psychopath lumbered off towards a chandlery, where he rented a deep-sea diving outfit, complete with gleaming brass helmet. Then he walked into the sea, following the old familiar roads and paths and mews and alleys submerged under the churning waters, until he came to the milk bar. Its door had long ago fallen from its rusted hinges. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:39 The Hunter Gracchus 10:30 Children On A Country Road 20:47 The Bucket Rider THE HUNTER GRACCHUS Two boys were sitting on the harbour wall playing with dice. One of the boys was clever, and the other boy was dim. Now, when I tell you that one of the boys tossed the dice into the sea that sloshed against the harbour wall, you are likely to conclude that the boy who so tossed was the dim one. Dice serve no purpose in the sea. They will bob upon the surface of the waters, uselessly, carried by the tides, growing ever more distant the one from the other, sopping wet, and no longer to be played with. But in fact it was the clever boy who ruined their play by tossing the dice into the sea. For not only was he astoundingly clever, with an intellect far outwith the usual range of boyish brains, but he was also a psychopath. No sooner had he tossed the dice into the sea than he shoved his dim playmate off the harbour wall into the same sloshing sea and, for good measure, he grabbed hold of a passing harbour kitten and, deaf to its mewling, chucked it into the water alongside the dice and the dim boy. The name of this clever boy? Young Babinsky! Amused by his seaside enormities, the youthful psychopath toddled off to a milk bar with not a care in the world. Meanwhile, in the vast wet merciless sea, the dice bobbed, but the dim boy and the harbour kitten sank like stones, and the waters washed over them, and they were forgotten. Let us leap forward thirty, no, forty years. Forty is a better number than thirty, according to Blotzmann, who famously assigned abstruse yet compelling non-numerical values to certain numbers that took his fancy, for example eight and eleven and fifteen and sixteen and nineteen and twenty-six and twenty-nine and thirty-seven and forty and oh for god's sake shut up with the list of numbers, it could go on ad infinitum. Suffice to say forty is one of Blotzmann's so-called "basilisk" numbers, whatever that might mean. In the forty years since the clever boy and the dim boy sat on the harbour wall playing with dice, the wall has crumbled. The big wet sea is reclaiming the land. Half of the town is now under water, including the milk bar where, all those years ago, Babinsky drank a tumbler of warm sour goaty milk and chuckled at his youthful crimes. And now he has returned. Look, there he is, silhouetted against the ghastly sky, swinging his axe, standing on the town's highest hill and gazing, perplexed, at the sea below. He has come on a pilgrimage of sorts, eager to revisit the scenes--idyllic, as he remembers them--of his youth. But they are gone, sunk beneath the waves as surely as his first victims, his dim playmate and the harbour kitten, vanished forever. Babinsky was not a man to let a little thing like the sea confound him. Pausing only to waylay a passing Punch & Judy man, butchering him with his axe and slicers, the lumbering walrus-moustached psychopath lumbered off towards a chandlery, where he rented a deep-sea diving outfit, complete with gleaming brass helmet. Then he walked into the sea, following the old familiar roads and paths and mews and alleys submerged under the churning waters, until he came to the milk bar. Its door had long ago fallen from its rusted hinges. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-2230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-15Thu, 15 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Hooting Yard Christmas Gift Guide 04:50 Emblems Of Inanity 11:19 Wedding Preparations In The Country 22:43 Ruined Picnics HOOTING YARD CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE This gift guide appeared seven years ago. All the items are still available, albeit they are now covered in layers of dust. I am disconcerted, on trawling back through the archives, to note that every Yuletide season has passed without the appearance of what one would have thought was essential, a Hooting Yard Christmas Gift Guide. God alone knows how you lot have coped! Anyway, following an exclusive commercial tie-in with the most gorgeous department store in the known universe, Hubermann's, I can now rectify this terrible omission. Here, then, are five superlative gifts, available at bargain bin prices from a bin outside the bargain bin basement of Hubermann's "beacon" store in Pointy Town. Jumbo Sack O' Agricultural Waste Matter. The perfect gift for the peasant in your life. A mind-numbingly gigantic burlap sack absolutely cram-packed with noisome slurry and farm filth. Wandering Mendicant's Collapsed Lung, Preserved In Jelly. Surgically removed by top doctors from the corpse of a wandering mendicant, this collapsed lung has been expertly preserved in special jelly. Is what it says on the jar. "Two-In-One" Marionette. Made from old coathangers, rags, and solidified puff pastry, this fascinating puppet looks just like Yoko Ono until you turn it round and tweak it a bit, when, voila! you have a lifelike Bernard Cribbins doll! Hours of fun with two of your favourite non-fiction characters. (Provide your own string.) Grow Your Own Marsh. Transform your living room into an eerie marsh, complete with mephitic vapours, inexplicable darting lights, and pipe-smoking marsh sprites. Simply sprinkle the contents of the sachet on to your carpet and watch it dissolve, before sinking up to your armpits and flailing hopelessly, just like Sabine Baring-Gould! The Radiating Lance Of Saint Poppo. If you have any Belgian Catholics in your family, they will treasure this miniature plastic toy lance, radiating fire from heaven just like the lance of Saint Poppo (977-1048), one of the first Flemish pilgrims to the Holy Land. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Hooting Yard Christmas Gift Guide 04:50 Emblems Of Inanity 11:19 Wedding Preparations In The Country 22:43 Ruined Picnics HOOTING YARD CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE This gift guide appeared seven years ago. All the items are still available, albeit they are now covered in layers of dust. I am disconcerted, on trawling back through the archives, to note that every Yuletide season has passed without the appearance of what one would have thought was essential, a Hooting Yard Christmas Gift Guide. God alone knows how you lot have coped! Anyway, following an exclusive commercial tie-in with the most gorgeous department store in the known universe, Hubermann's, I can now rectify this terrible omission. Here, then, are five superlative gifts, available at bargain bin prices from a bin outside the bargain bin basement of Hubermann's "beacon" store in Pointy Town. Jumbo Sack O' Agricultural Waste Matter. The perfect gift for the peasant in your life. A mind-numbingly gigantic burlap sack absolutely cram-packed with noisome slurry and farm filth. Wandering Mendicant's Collapsed Lung, Preserved In Jelly. Surgically removed by top doctors from the corpse of a wandering mendicant, this collapsed lung has been expertly preserved in special jelly. Is what it says on the jar. "Two-In-One" Marionette. Made from old coathangers, rags, and solidified puff pastry, this fascinating puppet looks just like Yoko Ono until you turn it round and tweak it a bit, when, voila! you have a lifelike Bernard Cribbins doll! Hours of fun with two of your favourite non-fiction characters. (Provide your own string.) Grow Your Own Marsh. Transform your living room into an eerie marsh, complete with mephitic vapours, inexplicable darting lights, and pipe-smoking marsh sprites. Simply sprinkle the contents of the sachet on to your carpet and watch it dissolve, before sinking up to your armpits and flailing hopelessly, just like Sabine Baring-Gould! The Radiating Lance Of Saint Poppo. If you have any Belgian Catholics in your family, they will treasure this miniature plastic toy lance, radiating fire from heaven just like the lance of Saint Poppo (977-1048), one of the first Flemish pilgrims to the Holy Land. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-1530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-08Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 The Book Of Gnats 16:15 On The Balletomane Nan Kew THE BOOK OF GNATS By request, or possibly cajoling, from a few readers, here is the complete text of The Book Of Gnats, first published in Massacre 4 : An Annual Anthology Of Anti-Naturalistic Writings (Indelible Inc, 1993), edited by the esteemed Roberta Mock. I have taken the opportunity to mop up a handful of infelicities in the text, but otherwise it's pretty much as written sixteen long and tempestuous years ago. I have mixed feelings about some of these old pieces, written before my Wilderness Years, and I can identify a difference in my method, given that then I was writing for the page, whereas now I am ever conscious that I will be reading aloud. Anyway, here it is. Make of it what you will. Oh, and please note that Dobson, the private detective who appears here, is by no means to be confused with his namesake, the titanic, albeit out of print, twentieth century pamphleteer. Originally published by Thwack & Rudder Ltd in 1926, The Book Of Gnats was written by the noted aviatrix and explorer Maud Glubb (1873-1958). Well-known for her countless newspaper articles, travelogues, and often indiscreet prefaces to other people's books, Glubb wrote this--her only work of fiction--by the sputtering light of blubber candles during the ill-starred Bilgegrew Antarctic Expedition of 1911. Captain Gervase Bilgegrew of the Royal Scrofulous Hussars was, according to the Dictionary Of National Biography, "perhaps the most incompetent person ever to lead a polar expedition". On the very day the explorers set out from the sprightly little port of Mobster, Bilgegrew burned all the charts, broke the compass, contaminated the pemmican supply, and blinded the medical officer. At the Commission of Enquiry held in 1913 upon the expedition's return, he first insisted that these were unfortunate accidents, later changing his story under cross-examination to plead that he was only trying to run a tight ship and to instil a sense of discipline into his crew. The full story of the disastrous expedition is told in Curwen's Polar Hebetude : To The End Of The Earth With A Halfwit, to which the reader is referred. Glubb herself did not return to her homeland until 1919, for reasons which remain shrouded in mystery. Some reports have her leading rebel troops in the Tantarabim Revolution of 1915, but they are unsubstantiated. Glubb herself never spoke of this missing period in her life. Her biographer Gravel Slobber, despite years of prodigious research, finally conceded that "we are unlikely ever to learn precisely what happened to Glubb during this period". Slobber notes that the great aviatrix never intended The Book Of Gnats for publication. The manuscript was stored in a huge mahogany casket in the belvedere of a country house in which Glubb's friend Laburnum Bails worked as a piano-tuner. Interviewed shortly before her death in 1968, Bails said that the text would have remained forever locked away had it not been for the intervention of Crocus Thwack, sister of the notorious publisher, toad-collector, and sot Wenceslas Thwack. Like her brother, Crocus was both an alcoholic and a kleptomaniac. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 The Book Of Gnats 16:15 On The Balletomane Nan Kew THE BOOK OF GNATS By request, or possibly cajoling, from a few readers, here is the complete text of The Book Of Gnats, first published in Massacre 4 : An Annual Anthology Of Anti-Naturalistic Writings (Indelible Inc, 1993), edited by the esteemed Roberta Mock. I have taken the opportunity to mop up a handful of infelicities in the text, but otherwise it's pretty much as written sixteen long and tempestuous years ago. I have mixed feelings about some of these old pieces, written before my Wilderness Years, and I can identify a difference in my method, given that then I was writing for the page, whereas now I am ever conscious that I will be reading aloud. Anyway, here it is. Make of it what you will. Oh, and please note that Dobson, the private detective who appears here, is by no means to be confused with his namesake, the titanic, albeit out of print, twentieth century pamphleteer. Originally published by Thwack & Rudder Ltd in 1926, The Book Of Gnats was written by the noted aviatrix and explorer Maud Glubb (1873-1958). Well-known for her countless newspaper articles, travelogues, and often indiscreet prefaces to other people's books, Glubb wrote this--her only work of fiction--by the sputtering light of blubber candles during the ill-starred Bilgegrew Antarctic Expedition of 1911. Captain Gervase Bilgegrew of the Royal Scrofulous Hussars was, according to the Dictionary Of National Biography, "perhaps the most incompetent person ever to lead a polar expedition". On the very day the explorers set out from the sprightly little port of Mobster, Bilgegrew burned all the charts, broke the compass, contaminated the pemmican supply, and blinded the medical officer. At the Commission of Enquiry held in 1913 upon the expedition's return, he first insisted that these were unfortunate accidents, later changing his story under cross-examination to plead that he was only trying to run a tight ship and to instil a sense of discipline into his crew. The full story of the disastrous expedition is told in Curwen's Polar Hebetude : To The End Of The Earth With A Halfwit, to which the reader is referred. Glubb herself did not return to her homeland until 1919, for reasons which remain shrouded in mystery. Some reports have her leading rebel troops in the Tantarabim Revolution of 1915, but they are unsubstantiated. Glubb herself never spoke of this missing period in her life. Her biographer Gravel Slobber, despite years of prodigious research, finally conceded that "we are unlikely ever to learn precisely what happened to Glubb during this period". Slobber notes that the great aviatrix never intended The Book Of Gnats for publication. The manuscript was stored in a huge mahogany casket in the belvedere of a country house in which Glubb's friend Laburnum Bails worked as a piano-tuner. Interviewed shortly before her death in 1968, Bails said that the text would have remained forever locked away had it not been for the intervention of Crocus Thwack, sister of the notorious publisher, toad-collector, and sot Wenceslas Thwack. Like her brother, Crocus was both an alcoholic and a kleptomaniac. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-03-0830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-02-15Thu, 15 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:31 The Flapper Who Outwitted Babinsky! 09:05 A Ghoul And His Monkey 21:33 17 Years In An Alpine Mist 27:34 Kipling THE FLAPPER WHO OUTWITTED BABINSKY! In her distant youth, the balletomane Nan Kew was a flapper. Not yet smitten by the ballet, she liked to flap about in speakeasies, getting dizzy on illicit cocktails and executing the latest dance crazes to the sound of boogie woogie and similar musical woogies, as performed by hot jazz quintets led by rascals. It was in one speakeasy, on 43,722nd Street, that Nan Kew encountered the lumbering walrus-moustached psychopathic serial killer Babinsky. In those days, of course, the phrase "serial killer" had not yet been coined, so Babinsky's modus operandi remained sub rosa, and he did not have coppers on his trail. The Helsingfors poliisi may not have had their eyes on Babinsky that night but somebody else did. Lurking in the speakeasy subfusc was the serial killer's long-lost idiot half-brother, Babinsky 2. He was watching Babinsky's every move--and what moves! Babinsky was out on the dancefloor, essaying some new dance steps of his own invention, which he called "the lumbering psychopath". Those of you familiar with the dances of the era will recall it from its abbreviated name, the lumberpsych, which became wildly popular and spawned such hot jazz standards as Papa Done Gone Lopped Off My Limbs Again and Polka Dots, Hair Oil, And Brutality. Now it so happened that at this time, Babinsky 2 was Nan Kew's paramour. They seemed an ill-matched couple, the flapper and the idiot, but there was a definite, if inexplicable, chemistry between them. Thus it was that Nan Kew, dizzy on illicit cocktails and slumped somewhat lopsidedly against Babinsky 2 in their booth in the speakeasy gloom, knew without asking why her darling was transfixed by the lumbering brute on the dancefloor. Babinsky 2 longed for a reconciliation with his long-lost brother, from whom he had been parted ever since that catastrophic picnic on the edge of the forest at the end of the war. Or had it been at the beginning of the war? So fuddled was his brain that Babinsky 2 could no longer remember. All he knew was that he had a burning desire to climb trees and play pin-the-antennae-on-the-locust again with his brother, to relive their carefree childhood in the shadow of the Big Formidable Mountains. But idiot that he was, even Babinsky 2 knew that his half-brother, being a psychopath, wanted nothing more than to drive an axe into his, Babinsky 2's, skull, and then chop off his head and boil it in one of his horrible grease-encrusted vats in his horrible grease-encrusted cellar beneath his horrible grease-encrusted chalet. And so all he could do was sit in the darkened booth, gazing at Babinsky with love and longing and terror. Then dizzy Nan Kew had an idea. "I am sure he won't recognise you if you don a disguise," she slurred in her woozy way, "We could get you up as a Levantine toothbrush salesman, or a crippled Dutch ski-lift operative, and Babinsky will never guess your true identity. Then, if we persuade him there is a cuddly little hamster or guinea pig trapped at the top of that sycamore tree in the street outside the speakeasy, the two of you can climb it together, just as if you were carefree tots before that picnic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-02-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:31 The Flapper Who Outwitted Babinsky! 09:05 A Ghoul And His Monkey 21:33 17 Years In An Alpine Mist 27:34 Kipling THE FLAPPER WHO OUTWITTED BABINSKY! In her distant youth, the balletomane Nan Kew was a flapper. Not yet smitten by the ballet, she liked to flap about in speakeasies, getting dizzy on illicit cocktails and executing the latest dance crazes to the sound of boogie woogie and similar musical woogies, as performed by hot jazz quintets led by rascals. It was in one speakeasy, on 43,722nd Street, that Nan Kew encountered the lumbering walrus-moustached psychopathic serial killer Babinsky. In those days, of course, the phrase "serial killer" had not yet been coined, so Babinsky's modus operandi remained sub rosa, and he did not have coppers on his trail. The Helsingfors poliisi may not have had their eyes on Babinsky that night but somebody else did. Lurking in the speakeasy subfusc was the serial killer's long-lost idiot half-brother, Babinsky 2. He was watching Babinsky's every move--and what moves! Babinsky was out on the dancefloor, essaying some new dance steps of his own invention, which he called "the lumbering psychopath". Those of you familiar with the dances of the era will recall it from its abbreviated name, the lumberpsych, which became wildly popular and spawned such hot jazz standards as Papa Done Gone Lopped Off My Limbs Again and Polka Dots, Hair Oil, And Brutality. Now it so happened that at this time, Babinsky 2 was Nan Kew's paramour. They seemed an ill-matched couple, the flapper and the idiot, but there was a definite, if inexplicable, chemistry between them. Thus it was that Nan Kew, dizzy on illicit cocktails and slumped somewhat lopsidedly against Babinsky 2 in their booth in the speakeasy gloom, knew without asking why her darling was transfixed by the lumbering brute on the dancefloor. Babinsky 2 longed for a reconciliation with his long-lost brother, from whom he had been parted ever since that catastrophic picnic on the edge of the forest at the end of the war. Or had it been at the beginning of the war? So fuddled was his brain that Babinsky 2 could no longer remember. All he knew was that he had a burning desire to climb trees and play pin-the-antennae-on-the-locust again with his brother, to relive their carefree childhood in the shadow of the Big Formidable Mountains. But idiot that he was, even Babinsky 2 knew that his half-brother, being a psychopath, wanted nothing more than to drive an axe into his, Babinsky 2's, skull, and then chop off his head and boil it in one of his horrible grease-encrusted vats in his horrible grease-encrusted cellar beneath his horrible grease-encrusted chalet. And so all he could do was sit in the darkened booth, gazing at Babinsky with love and longing and terror. Then dizzy Nan Kew had an idea. "I am sure he won't recognise you if you don a disguise," she slurred in her woozy way, "We could get you up as a Levantine toothbrush salesman, or a crippled Dutch ski-lift operative, and Babinsky will never guess your true identity. Then, if we persuade him there is a cuddly little hamster or guinea pig trapped at the top of that sycamore tree in the street outside the speakeasy, the two of you can climb it together, just as if you were carefree tots before that picnic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-02-1530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-02-01Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:54 The Tarleton Sentence 14:12 Homage To Wallace Stevens 22:15 The Wicker Limerick 25:02 The Flapper Who Outwitted Babinsky! THE TARLETON SENTENCE So baffled were the police by the teeming ramifications of the Inspip case that they had no idea what to do, until a dejected inspector threw in the towel and suggested, reluctantly, that they call in Tarleton, the amateur's amateur, in hope that he might hack a clearing through their mental forest, to which Tarleton's response, upon receipt of the coppers' telegram, was to instruct his helpmeet, the dwarf Crepusco, to pay them a visit and pull one of his faces at them, to which Crepusco's response was "Are you sure?", said in a trembling voice, for he was all too aware that when he pulled one of his faces the effect on those who saw it was akin to something from a story by H P Lovecraft, reducing the witness to a horror-stricken gibbering wreck, fit only to be chained up in an asylum for the incurably insane for the rest of their days, but Tarleton insisted, telling Crepusco to pull face number forty-three, expressive of fathomless and bitter contempt, so the dwarf toddled off along the lane towards the police station, and on his way encountered, as chance would have it, one of the teeming ramifications of the Inspip case, in that, not too far along the way, he tripped and toppled into the bottomless viper-pit of Shoeburyness, and was mightily surprised, after falling just a few feet, to land with a crunch upon a false bottom in the viper-pit, a platform installed by unknown hand, possibly but not definitively Inspip's, the crunchy nature of his landing caused by the bescatterment, upon the platform, of eggshells in great abundance, with no sign whatsoever of the eggs' innards, the albumen and yellow yolk and whatever else an egg expert might descry inside an egg, there were just the shells, upon which Crepusco landed, crunchily, before sitting up and rubbing his bonce and wondering why he had not continued to fall, forever and ever, as ought surely to have been his fate, the viper-pit of Shoeburyness, like that of Gaar, and several others, being notorious for being bottomless, according to the guidebooks and gazetteers available from the souvenir kiosk located at one end of a sort of modern-day ley line, along which magnets ceased to function and clumps of vetch and bindweed withered, at the other end of which stood, surrounded by an imposing fence fitted with floodlights, the police station, wherein the frazzled coppers were still awaiting a response from Tarleton, the amateur's amateur, and busying themselves meanwhile by rummaging, for the umperumpteenth time, through their miles of filing cabinets in which every last scrap of information regarding the Inspip case was kept, from that very first report of an eye-witness, a preternaturally alert passer-by, who had tested negative for hallucinogens, thrice, and who had brought, breathlessly, panting, panting, to the coppers' attention the curious circumstance that in Scroonhoonpooge Model Village, the aviary, behind the milk factory, was life-size, and filled with real birds, such that they would appear enormous and monstrous to the tiny little figures populating the model village, and their caws and chirps and chirrups and trills […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-02-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:54 The Tarleton Sentence 14:12 Homage To Wallace Stevens 22:15 The Wicker Limerick 25:02 The Flapper Who Outwitted Babinsky! THE TARLETON SENTENCE So baffled were the police by the teeming ramifications of the Inspip case that they had no idea what to do, until a dejected inspector threw in the towel and suggested, reluctantly, that they call in Tarleton, the amateur's amateur, in hope that he might hack a clearing through their mental forest, to which Tarleton's response, upon receipt of the coppers' telegram, was to instruct his helpmeet, the dwarf Crepusco, to pay them a visit and pull one of his faces at them, to which Crepusco's response was "Are you sure?", said in a trembling voice, for he was all too aware that when he pulled one of his faces the effect on those who saw it was akin to something from a story by H P Lovecraft, reducing the witness to a horror-stricken gibbering wreck, fit only to be chained up in an asylum for the incurably insane for the rest of their days, but Tarleton insisted, telling Crepusco to pull face number forty-three, expressive of fathomless and bitter contempt, so the dwarf toddled off along the lane towards the police station, and on his way encountered, as chance would have it, one of the teeming ramifications of the Inspip case, in that, not too far along the way, he tripped and toppled into the bottomless viper-pit of Shoeburyness, and was mightily surprised, after falling just a few feet, to land with a crunch upon a false bottom in the viper-pit, a platform installed by unknown hand, possibly but not definitively Inspip's, the crunchy nature of his landing caused by the bescatterment, upon the platform, of eggshells in great abundance, with no sign whatsoever of the eggs' innards, the albumen and yellow yolk and whatever else an egg expert might descry inside an egg, there were just the shells, upon which Crepusco landed, crunchily, before sitting up and rubbing his bonce and wondering why he had not continued to fall, forever and ever, as ought surely to have been his fate, the viper-pit of Shoeburyness, like that of Gaar, and several others, being notorious for being bottomless, according to the guidebooks and gazetteers available from the souvenir kiosk located at one end of a sort of modern-day ley line, along which magnets ceased to function and clumps of vetch and bindweed withered, at the other end of which stood, surrounded by an imposing fence fitted with floodlights, the police station, wherein the frazzled coppers were still awaiting a response from Tarleton, the amateur's amateur, and busying themselves meanwhile by rummaging, for the umperumpteenth time, through their miles of filing cabinets in which every last scrap of information regarding the Inspip case was kept, from that very first report of an eye-witness, a preternaturally alert passer-by, who had tested negative for hallucinogens, thrice, and who had brought, breathlessly, panting, panting, to the coppers' attention the curious circumstance that in Scroonhoonpooge Model Village, the aviary, behind the milk factory, was life-size, and filled with real birds, such that they would appear enormous and monstrous to the tiny little figures populating the model village, and their caws and chirps and chirrups and trills […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-02-0130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2018-01-18Thu, 18 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Dobson Goes Doolally 13:30 The Size Of God 14:46 The Janitor And His Mop 19:01 The Janitor And His Pail 22:53 The Tarleton Sentence DOBSON GOES DOOLALLY Dear Dr Fang, wrote Marigold Chew, I am writing to you, as the most eminent brain-quack I can think of, to ask for your help. Dobson has gone doolally. Yesterday he was as right as rain--a curious phrase, I grant you, but let us not dwell upon it--sitting at his escritoire scribbling away, then trudging along the towpath of the filthy old canal in the pouring rain, chucking pebbles at swans. He remained reassuringly Dobson-like at breakfast this morning, tucking into a bowl of boil-in-the-bag koala bear brains 'n' mashed plums and blathering inconsequential poltrooneries, just as he always does. It was only when he drained the last dregs from his tumbler of post-breakfast Squelcho! that I noticed something amiss. Instead of putting on his Uruguayan Notary Public's boots and crashing out of the door into the teeming downpour, as I expected him to do, he stayed sitting at the breakfast table, a thin smile playing about his lips, a fat beetle scuttling through his bouffant, a blob of marmalade on his cravat. "Look! Can you see it, O my cherished bundle of utter loveliness?" he said, pointing at a corner of the room. I could see nothing, save for some dust. "It is my little man, my homunculus. He has been following me about, in his satin and tat, in his frock coat and bippety-boppety hat. He whispers words I can never quite hear." I asked Dobson what on earth he was talking about. He continued to prattle. "Even were I able to hear him, I am not sure I would be able to understand his whisperings. Not only is he a foreign little man, from remote and distant parts not shown on any map, but he always whispers with his mouth full. He is forever stuffing his gob with smokers' poptarts, of which he seems to have an endless supply. Have you noticed any packets missing from the larder, O my buttercup?" "You mean the pantry, Dobson," I said, "No, I have noticed no such thing." "Larder, pantry, pantry, larder," he went on, excitably, "Sofa, cushions, chaise longue, pouffe. Lay me place and bake me pie, I'm starving for me gravy. Leave my shoes and door unlocked, I might just slip away. If I slip away, perhaps I can escape my little man. But it's likely he will follow me. God knows, I haven't been able to shake him off these past seventeen years." It was at this point that I asked Dobson if he had taken leave of his senses. But he ignored the question. "He came seventeen years ago, and to this day he has shown no intention of going away," he said, "Sometimes he moves his arms as if they were the propellers on a seaplane, the Gnome Omega-powered Fabre Hydravion, for example. I have to place extra paperweights on my escritoire when he does this in close proximity to it, to prevent my papers being blown away. Are you sure you can't see him?" I assured Dobson that I could not. "I think the propelling of his arms is an attempt to dry his hands," he continued, "His palms are horribly moist. Indeed, for such a tiny man he is surprisingly moist in every particular. Yet whenever he follows me into the bathroom, he shuns the towels. They seem to frighten him, as nothing else does. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-01-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Dobson Goes Doolally 13:30 The Size Of God 14:46 The Janitor And His Mop 19:01 The Janitor And His Pail 22:53 The Tarleton Sentence DOBSON GOES DOOLALLY Dear Dr Fang, wrote Marigold Chew, I am writing to you, as the most eminent brain-quack I can think of, to ask for your help. Dobson has gone doolally. Yesterday he was as right as rain--a curious phrase, I grant you, but let us not dwell upon it--sitting at his escritoire scribbling away, then trudging along the towpath of the filthy old canal in the pouring rain, chucking pebbles at swans. He remained reassuringly Dobson-like at breakfast this morning, tucking into a bowl of boil-in-the-bag koala bear brains 'n' mashed plums and blathering inconsequential poltrooneries, just as he always does. It was only when he drained the last dregs from his tumbler of post-breakfast Squelcho! that I noticed something amiss. Instead of putting on his Uruguayan Notary Public's boots and crashing out of the door into the teeming downpour, as I expected him to do, he stayed sitting at the breakfast table, a thin smile playing about his lips, a fat beetle scuttling through his bouffant, a blob of marmalade on his cravat. "Look! Can you see it, O my cherished bundle of utter loveliness?" he said, pointing at a corner of the room. I could see nothing, save for some dust. "It is my little man, my homunculus. He has been following me about, in his satin and tat, in his frock coat and bippety-boppety hat. He whispers words I can never quite hear." I asked Dobson what on earth he was talking about. He continued to prattle. "Even were I able to hear him, I am not sure I would be able to understand his whisperings. Not only is he a foreign little man, from remote and distant parts not shown on any map, but he always whispers with his mouth full. He is forever stuffing his gob with smokers' poptarts, of which he seems to have an endless supply. Have you noticed any packets missing from the larder, O my buttercup?" "You mean the pantry, Dobson," I said, "No, I have noticed no such thing." "Larder, pantry, pantry, larder," he went on, excitably, "Sofa, cushions, chaise longue, pouffe. Lay me place and bake me pie, I'm starving for me gravy. Leave my shoes and door unlocked, I might just slip away. If I slip away, perhaps I can escape my little man. But it's likely he will follow me. God knows, I haven't been able to shake him off these past seventeen years." It was at this point that I asked Dobson if he had taken leave of his senses. But he ignored the question. "He came seventeen years ago, and to this day he has shown no intention of going away," he said, "Sometimes he moves his arms as if they were the propellers on a seaplane, the Gnome Omega-powered Fabre Hydravion, for example. I have to place extra paperweights on my escritoire when he does this in close proximity to it, to prevent my papers being blown away. Are you sure you can't see him?" I assured Dobson that I could not. "I think the propelling of his arms is an attempt to dry his hands," he continued, "His palms are horribly moist. Indeed, for such a tiny man he is surprisingly moist in every particular. Yet whenever he follows me into the bathroom, he shuns the towels. They seem to frighten him, as nothing else does. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2018-01-1830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-12-14Thu, 14 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:55 Ogre 09:19 Dobson On An Atoll 19:10 Dobson In A Pickle OGRE We all know that God spelled backwards is Dog, but it is not commonly pointed out that Ergo spelled backwards is Ogre. This insight can lead us to faff about with Descartes' famous dictum cogito ergo sum so that, instead of stating I think therefore I am, we say instead I think I am an ogre. It could be argued that this is actually a more profound statement than Descartes' original. It could be, and it has. In a new book, the paperbackist Pebblehead takes cogito ogre sum as his starting point, and weaves a tale staggering in its implications. "I am known for my potboilers" said Pebblehead, speaking from his chalet o' prose high in the Swiss Alps, smoking his pipe, "Fat paperbacks with garish covers sold in bulk at airport bookstalls and the like. With my new book, I like to think I have created an entirely new genre, which I have dubbed the 'potboiler of profundity'. This is a fat paperback with a garish cover sold in bulk at airport bookstalls and the like which, in terms of deep mind-numbing profundity, can stand alongside the deepest and most mind-numbing and most profound works in the canon." Bashed out in just two weeks of frantic typing, Pebblehead's potboiler of profundity tells the story of a man who thinks he is an ogre. It poses questions which delve into the core of the human soul. If I think I am an ogre, am I an ogre? If I think I am an ogre but I am not an ogre, what, then, am I? Why would I think I am an ogre in the first place? Am I hairy and brutish and savage? Do I grunt rather than speak articulate words? If so, how do I manage to narrate this potboiler of profundity in such punchy prose, daddy-o? Answer me that, or I'll tear your head off with my bare hands, or rather paws, yes, great hairy paws, suitable for an ogre. And when I've torn your head off I'll carry it back to my lair, a dark dank cave, full of bats, where I lurk, grunting and slobbering, ogreishly. With your head torn off and tossed on to the pile of other torn-off human heads in the corner of my cave, you won't be able to continue reading my fat paperback with a garish cover sold in bulk at airport bookstalls and the like, will you? You won't be able to read, and you won't be able to think. And if you can't read and you can't think, can you still call yourself civilised, or are you, too, now merely an ogre, albeit one without a head? Ultimately, are we not, all of us, wandering the world like headless ogres, searching for our torn-off heads, tossed onto piles of other torn-off heads in the corners of dark dank caves? Is one of those caves Plato's cave? Was Plato, too, an ogre? And if Plato was an ogre, what of Rene Descartes? And what of you? The latest news from Pebblehead is that his own brain has been so bedizened by the writing of his potboiler of profundity that he is currently languishing, exhausted, on the balcony of a sanatorium even higher in the Swiss Alps. His book is available at all good airport bookstalls. We wish him well. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-12-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:55 Ogre 09:19 Dobson On An Atoll 19:10 Dobson In A Pickle OGRE We all know that God spelled backwards is Dog, but it is not commonly pointed out that Ergo spelled backwards is Ogre. This insight can lead us to faff about with Descartes' famous dictum cogito ergo sum so that, instead of stating I think therefore I am, we say instead I think I am an ogre. It could be argued that this is actually a more profound statement than Descartes' original. It could be, and it has. In a new book, the paperbackist Pebblehead takes cogito ogre sum as his starting point, and weaves a tale staggering in its implications. "I am known for my potboilers" said Pebblehead, speaking from his chalet o' prose high in the Swiss Alps, smoking his pipe, "Fat paperbacks with garish covers sold in bulk at airport bookstalls and the like. With my new book, I like to think I have created an entirely new genre, which I have dubbed the 'potboiler of profundity'. This is a fat paperback with a garish cover sold in bulk at airport bookstalls and the like which, in terms of deep mind-numbing profundity, can stand alongside the deepest and most mind-numbing and most profound works in the canon." Bashed out in just two weeks of frantic typing, Pebblehead's potboiler of profundity tells the story of a man who thinks he is an ogre. It poses questions which delve into the core of the human soul. If I think I am an ogre, am I an ogre? If I think I am an ogre but I am not an ogre, what, then, am I? Why would I think I am an ogre in the first place? Am I hairy and brutish and savage? Do I grunt rather than speak articulate words? If so, how do I manage to narrate this potboiler of profundity in such punchy prose, daddy-o? Answer me that, or I'll tear your head off with my bare hands, or rather paws, yes, great hairy paws, suitable for an ogre. And when I've torn your head off I'll carry it back to my lair, a dark dank cave, full of bats, where I lurk, grunting and slobbering, ogreishly. With your head torn off and tossed on to the pile of other torn-off human heads in the corner of my cave, you won't be able to continue reading my fat paperback with a garish cover sold in bulk at airport bookstalls and the like, will you? You won't be able to read, and you won't be able to think. And if you can't read and you can't think, can you still call yourself civilised, or are you, too, now merely an ogre, albeit one without a head? Ultimately, are we not, all of us, wandering the world like headless ogres, searching for our torn-off heads, tossed onto piles of other torn-off heads in the corners of dark dank caves? Is one of those caves Plato's cave? Was Plato, too, an ogre? And if Plato was an ogre, what of Rene Descartes? And what of you? The latest news from Pebblehead is that his own brain has been so bedizened by the writing of his potboiler of profundity that he is currently languishing, exhausted, on the balcony of a sanatorium even higher in the Swiss Alps. His book is available at all good airport bookstalls. We wish him well. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-12-1430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-12-07Thu, 07 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:37 Unspeakable 09:50 Gravediggers' Glade 10:25 Village Of The Cheesegraters 13:32 Birds And Bats And The Bible And The BBC 18:50 Lint UNSPEAKABLE Browsing in the basement of a dust-choked and unkempt secondhand bookshop, I found on the floor a slim pamphlet entitled A Guide To The Care And Feeding Of The Internal Combustion Monkey. The author's name was not given, but there was a picture of him below the title, a cad, a cad wearing a cravat, with a Terry-Thomas moustache and a glint in his eye. That glint, I assumed, that cad's glint, was the glint that led him to envisage, and then to invent, the internal combustion monkey. Why did he not wish to crow his name from the rooftops, or at least to print it on his pamphlet? I picked up the pamphlet, and purchased it (thruppence), and made it my life's work, from that hour, to find out exactly who this cad was, to give him a name, to slot him into his deserved place in the history of this our island's glory. I began with the cravat. In the picture on the pamphlet it was black and white, but I felt sure the real thing, when tucked around the neck of the cad, had been bursting with colours. Which colours? I made multiple photocopies of the picture, and spent two years, armed with crayons and watercolours and state-of-the-art pigment-staining technology, working out the colour combinations most likely to have emblazoned the cravat of the cad. It was thirsty work, and I drank a well dry. This did not sit well with the well's owner, a florid bumpkin plagued with whitlows, who evicted me from my chalet anent the well. And so I roamed the hills, reduced to just a few crayons, but with my portfolio of photocopied hand-coloured cad portraits intact, tucked in a satchel slung over my good shoulder. There was, up in the hills, the salon of a cravatteuse, and I made no bones about badgering her. One by one I waved in front of her the photocopies, much as a conjuror might deploy a deck of playing cards for a magic trick, until, at last, she stopped me, by pointing her finger decisively at the photocopy of the cad in which I had coloured his cravat in swirling curlicues of baize-green and fire-ant-red and Lee Harvey Oswald beige, with a few subtle tints of indigo, cerise, puce, chartreuse, mauve, mauve, and more mauve. "That is his cravat!", she cried. "And who is or was he?" I asked. Her eyes narrowed. Her lips puckered. Her dog, sitting at her feet, snarled. I felt a sudden mortification of the bowels. "He was an unspeakable cad!" she cried, and she had her dog chase me out of the salon, and further up into the hills, where the air was thin, and the promontories dizzying. I had left my satchel and crayons and sheaf of photocopies at the salon, but clutched in my good hand the only photocopy that mattered, the one with the accurate rendition of the colour scheme of the cravat sported by the cad. And I knew, now, what I had not known before, that his name was unspeakable. I remained in the hills for several years, living on rainwater and birds felled with well-aimed pebbles. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-12-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:37 Unspeakable 09:50 Gravediggers' Glade 10:25 Village Of The Cheesegraters 13:32 Birds And Bats And The Bible And The BBC 18:50 Lint UNSPEAKABLE Browsing in the basement of a dust-choked and unkempt secondhand bookshop, I found on the floor a slim pamphlet entitled A Guide To The Care And Feeding Of The Internal Combustion Monkey. The author's name was not given, but there was a picture of him below the title, a cad, a cad wearing a cravat, with a Terry-Thomas moustache and a glint in his eye. That glint, I assumed, that cad's glint, was the glint that led him to envisage, and then to invent, the internal combustion monkey. Why did he not wish to crow his name from the rooftops, or at least to print it on his pamphlet? I picked up the pamphlet, and purchased it (thruppence), and made it my life's work, from that hour, to find out exactly who this cad was, to give him a name, to slot him into his deserved place in the history of this our island's glory. I began with the cravat. In the picture on the pamphlet it was black and white, but I felt sure the real thing, when tucked around the neck of the cad, had been bursting with colours. Which colours? I made multiple photocopies of the picture, and spent two years, armed with crayons and watercolours and state-of-the-art pigment-staining technology, working out the colour combinations most likely to have emblazoned the cravat of the cad. It was thirsty work, and I drank a well dry. This did not sit well with the well's owner, a florid bumpkin plagued with whitlows, who evicted me from my chalet anent the well. And so I roamed the hills, reduced to just a few crayons, but with my portfolio of photocopied hand-coloured cad portraits intact, tucked in a satchel slung over my good shoulder. There was, up in the hills, the salon of a cravatteuse, and I made no bones about badgering her. One by one I waved in front of her the photocopies, much as a conjuror might deploy a deck of playing cards for a magic trick, until, at last, she stopped me, by pointing her finger decisively at the photocopy of the cad in which I had coloured his cravat in swirling curlicues of baize-green and fire-ant-red and Lee Harvey Oswald beige, with a few subtle tints of indigo, cerise, puce, chartreuse, mauve, mauve, and more mauve. "That is his cravat!", she cried. "And who is or was he?" I asked. Her eyes narrowed. Her lips puckered. Her dog, sitting at her feet, snarled. I felt a sudden mortification of the bowels. "He was an unspeakable cad!" she cried, and she had her dog chase me out of the salon, and further up into the hills, where the air was thin, and the promontories dizzying. I had left my satchel and crayons and sheaf of photocopies at the salon, but clutched in my good hand the only photocopy that mattered, the one with the accurate rendition of the colour scheme of the cravat sported by the cad. And I knew, now, what I had not known before, that his name was unspeakable. I remained in the hills for several years, living on rainwater and birds felled with well-aimed pebbles. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-12-0730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-30Thu, 30 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript 07:54 Hendiadys In Mudchute 13:42 Juvenilia 15:35 Forgotten Head : A Childhood Memoir 20:53 Choruses For Doris PEEP, BO : LECTURE TRANSCRIPT Good evening, and thank you for your warm welcome. Well, warm-ish. The clapping petered out rather quickly, and I must say that other audiences, in other auditoria, have shown a sight more enthusiasm. But there we go. I am not complaining. This lecturing lark is much preferable to being out and about in all weathers in the company of sheep, dim-witted and fearful beasts that they are. It is more lucrative too. But I should introduce myself. My name is Bo Peep. I am often known as "Little" Bo Peep by dint of my diminutive stature. I don't mind being called "Little". It has an affectionate ring. But I do object when some newspapers compare me to a dwarf from a Wagner opera. Clearly, the organisers of tonight's event expected me to be smaller than I am. What a tiny lectern! The one thing most of you will know about me is that I lost my sheep. I do not deny it. Quite why it caused such a kerfuffle in the press is a mystery to me. I became the poster girl for neglectful and inept shepherdesses, and even now I can barely leave my cottage without some mucky little country urchin calling out to me to ask where my sheep are. It is a trying existence. Thus I welcome this opportunity to tell my side of the story. It all happened on one of those blustery misty wuthery weathery days, in some godawful rustic backwater. As usual, I was sitting in a field, supervising several sheep. My childhood ambition of intergalactic space travel, of boldly going where no Peep had gone before, seemed as far off as ever. Bored out of my considerably acute mind, I drifted into a doze. And as I dozed, I dreamed. I dreamt of the moon and a yew tree. The light was blue. Grasses prickled my ankles, and I simply could not see where to get to through the fumy, spiritous mists. The moon dragged the sea after it like a dark crime. Bells startled the sky, eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection bonged out their names. The yew tree pointed up. It had a Gothic shape. The moon was my mother. Her blue garments unloosed small bats and owls. She was bald and wild. The message of the yew tree was blackness, blackness and silence. I started awake, rubbed my eyes, and saw that the sheep I was meant to be shepherdessing were gone. My immediate hunch was that they had been abducted by a band of roaming Wagnerian dwarves. I had read of several such crimes in the Daily Nibelungenlied And Countryside Advertiser. So, with the gung ho approach for which we Peeps are universally admired, or if not universally then at least in and around Sibodnedabshire, I hoisted my crook and marched off to the newsagent's kiosk, under those pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing at Ketchworth. It was not the Advertiser I was looking for. It so happened that this newsagent kept in stock various seventeenth-century tracts, including Dagons-Downfall; or The great IDOL digged up Root and Branch by Roger Crabb, A Fiery Flying Roll by Abiezer Coppe, and The Neck of the Quakers Broken by Lodowicke Muggleton. The one I wanted--obviously--was The Lost Sheep Found by Laurence Clarkson. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript 07:54 Hendiadys In Mudchute 13:42 Juvenilia 15:35 Forgotten Head : A Childhood Memoir 20:53 Choruses For Doris PEEP, BO : LECTURE TRANSCRIPT Good evening, and thank you for your warm welcome. Well, warm-ish. The clapping petered out rather quickly, and I must say that other audiences, in other auditoria, have shown a sight more enthusiasm. But there we go. I am not complaining. This lecturing lark is much preferable to being out and about in all weathers in the company of sheep, dim-witted and fearful beasts that they are. It is more lucrative too. But I should introduce myself. My name is Bo Peep. I am often known as "Little" Bo Peep by dint of my diminutive stature. I don't mind being called "Little". It has an affectionate ring. But I do object when some newspapers compare me to a dwarf from a Wagner opera. Clearly, the organisers of tonight's event expected me to be smaller than I am. What a tiny lectern! The one thing most of you will know about me is that I lost my sheep. I do not deny it. Quite why it caused such a kerfuffle in the press is a mystery to me. I became the poster girl for neglectful and inept shepherdesses, and even now I can barely leave my cottage without some mucky little country urchin calling out to me to ask where my sheep are. It is a trying existence. Thus I welcome this opportunity to tell my side of the story. It all happened on one of those blustery misty wuthery weathery days, in some godawful rustic backwater. As usual, I was sitting in a field, supervising several sheep. My childhood ambition of intergalactic space travel, of boldly going where no Peep had gone before, seemed as far off as ever. Bored out of my considerably acute mind, I drifted into a doze. And as I dozed, I dreamed. I dreamt of the moon and a yew tree. The light was blue. Grasses prickled my ankles, and I simply could not see where to get to through the fumy, spiritous mists. The moon dragged the sea after it like a dark crime. Bells startled the sky, eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection bonged out their names. The yew tree pointed up. It had a Gothic shape. The moon was my mother. Her blue garments unloosed small bats and owls. She was bald and wild. The message of the yew tree was blackness, blackness and silence. I started awake, rubbed my eyes, and saw that the sheep I was meant to be shepherdessing were gone. My immediate hunch was that they had been abducted by a band of roaming Wagnerian dwarves. I had read of several such crimes in the Daily Nibelungenlied And Countryside Advertiser. So, with the gung ho approach for which we Peeps are universally admired, or if not universally then at least in and around Sibodnedabshire, I hoisted my crook and marched off to the newsagent's kiosk, under those pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing at Ketchworth. It was not the Advertiser I was looking for. It so happened that this newsagent kept in stock various seventeenth-century tracts, including Dagons-Downfall; or The great IDOL digged up Root and Branch by Roger Crabb, A Fiery Flying Roll by Abiezer Coppe, and The Neck of the Quakers Broken by Lodowicke Muggleton. The one I wanted--obviously--was The Lost Sheep Found by Laurence Clarkson. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-3030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-23Thu, 23 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:40 Judith And Holofernes 01:58 Potsdam Windbag 02:20 Picture Yourself 06:06 O, Cuxhaven! 16:11 Another House Of Turps 23:52 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES "How now, Holofernes," said Judith. Holofernes put down his sack of grubbings on the floor and leaned to kiss the back of Judith's hand. "Your moustache is very bristly, Holofernes," said Judith, "I fear it has raised tiny scratches on my hand." "Plunge it into a tub of ointment and it will be as right as rain, woman!" shouted Holofernes. Holofernes always shouted, he was that kind of general. "Oh, never mind, Holofernes, I am fond of your moustache. It suits you. It is, how shall I say, decisive," said Judith. Holofernes picked up his sack of grubbings again. He was blushing slightly. "I must take this sack of grubbings to my encampment, woman!" he shouted, "It will not do for me to dilly dally with a widow woman such as yourself." "What a pity, Holofernes," said Judith, "I have just borrowed some interesting pamphlets by Dobson from the mobile library, and I thought you might like to join me in browsing through them. We could go and sit upon a municipal park bench, and take a picnic with us. I have some radishes and coleslaw and a jug of potato pulp diluted with rainwater." Holofernes was a sucker for pamphlets, particularly ones written by Dobson, and he needed little persuading to join Judith in the municipal park. The clouds were louring, however. "See here, woman!" he shouted, after swallowing a mouthful of coleslaw, "If it begins to rain these pamphlets will get soaking wet and when you return them to the library on or before the due date there may be ructions!" "I am sure you know a thing or two about ructions, Holofernes," said Judith coquettishly, "But don't worry, I have a tarpaulin here in my pippy bag and in the event of a downpour I can take it out and unfold it and place the pamphlets underneath it. Here, have another radish." Holofernes furrowed his massive forehead, as if deep in thought, but then seemed to relax and, taking the proffered radish, popped it into his mouth and crunched it. Judith caught a glimpse of his teeth. "Have you had a recent dental checkup, Holofernes?" she asked. "That, woman, is between me and my dentist! It is unseemly for a widow woman from Bethulia to pry into such matters," shouted Holofernes. "Forgive me, Holofernes," said Judith, "I was forgetting my manners there for a moment. But I was a little concerned that you may need an appointment with the hygienist, for I clearly saw scraps of raw meat and carrots and cake-crumbs stuck between your teeth. You have not been flossing, have you?" Holofernes' temper flared. He stood up, picked up his sack of grubbings, and was about to stomp off out of the municipal park when there was a cloudburst and the rain began teeming down. "Quick, Holofernes, help me to unfold the tarpaulin!" said Judith. Two minutes later the Dobson pamphlets were safely covered up but both Judith and Holofernes were sopping wet. "When the rain stops we ought to find a little boatman's hut in which to dry off and get a nice cup of tea," said Judith, "Just like Laura and Alec do in Brief Encounter after he falls into the boating lake. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:40 Judith And Holofernes 01:58 Potsdam Windbag 02:20 Picture Yourself 06:06 O, Cuxhaven! 16:11 Another House Of Turps 23:52 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES "How now, Holofernes," said Judith. Holofernes put down his sack of grubbings on the floor and leaned to kiss the back of Judith's hand. "Your moustache is very bristly, Holofernes," said Judith, "I fear it has raised tiny scratches on my hand." "Plunge it into a tub of ointment and it will be as right as rain, woman!" shouted Holofernes. Holofernes always shouted, he was that kind of general. "Oh, never mind, Holofernes, I am fond of your moustache. It suits you. It is, how shall I say, decisive," said Judith. Holofernes picked up his sack of grubbings again. He was blushing slightly. "I must take this sack of grubbings to my encampment, woman!" he shouted, "It will not do for me to dilly dally with a widow woman such as yourself." "What a pity, Holofernes," said Judith, "I have just borrowed some interesting pamphlets by Dobson from the mobile library, and I thought you might like to join me in browsing through them. We could go and sit upon a municipal park bench, and take a picnic with us. I have some radishes and coleslaw and a jug of potato pulp diluted with rainwater." Holofernes was a sucker for pamphlets, particularly ones written by Dobson, and he needed little persuading to join Judith in the municipal park. The clouds were louring, however. "See here, woman!" he shouted, after swallowing a mouthful of coleslaw, "If it begins to rain these pamphlets will get soaking wet and when you return them to the library on or before the due date there may be ructions!" "I am sure you know a thing or two about ructions, Holofernes," said Judith coquettishly, "But don't worry, I have a tarpaulin here in my pippy bag and in the event of a downpour I can take it out and unfold it and place the pamphlets underneath it. Here, have another radish." Holofernes furrowed his massive forehead, as if deep in thought, but then seemed to relax and, taking the proffered radish, popped it into his mouth and crunched it. Judith caught a glimpse of his teeth. "Have you had a recent dental checkup, Holofernes?" she asked. "That, woman, is between me and my dentist! It is unseemly for a widow woman from Bethulia to pry into such matters," shouted Holofernes. "Forgive me, Holofernes," said Judith, "I was forgetting my manners there for a moment. But I was a little concerned that you may need an appointment with the hygienist, for I clearly saw scraps of raw meat and carrots and cake-crumbs stuck between your teeth. You have not been flossing, have you?" Holofernes' temper flared. He stood up, picked up his sack of grubbings, and was about to stomp off out of the municipal park when there was a cloudburst and the rain began teeming down. "Quick, Holofernes, help me to unfold the tarpaulin!" said Judith. Two minutes later the Dobson pamphlets were safely covered up but both Judith and Holofernes were sopping wet. "When the rain stops we ought to find a little boatman's hut in which to dry off and get a nice cup of tea," said Judith, "Just like Laura and Alec do in Brief Encounter after he falls into the boating lake. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-2330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-16Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 The Wisdom Of Peasants 12:06 The Blind Goose-Killer Of Urk 18:13 Jasper The Baffled Eel 23:07 The Barbarian At The Gate THE WISDOM OF PEASANTS [This piece originally appeared under the title Tarleton Comes A-Cropper in April 2013.] And then, as we know, there came the time when Tarleton, the amateur's amateur, came a-cropper. He was in pursuit of a shifty pastry hawker, a man with a barrow, known to galumph along ill-lit lanes. Tarleton carried a torch, sweeping its bright beam ahead of him, both to avoid pits and puddles and in hope that he might catch a glimpse of his quarry. But, as the old saying has it, a torch in the hands of a nincompoop sheds no light. Incidentally, it is well worth your while to jot down old sayings in a notepad when you hear them. They can be invaluable in establishing rapport with countryside peasants. If you fall into conversation with such a person, you will discover that their utterances often consist of little else but old sayings strung together. By dropping in your own crumbs of rustic wisdom from time to time, you will be able to maintain conversational sparkle in otherwise trying circumstances. The beauty of it is, you do not need to grasp the actual meaning of the old sayings you deploy. Consider, for example, the one we have just encountered, a torch in the hands of a nincompoop sheds no light. On the face of it, this would seem to make little or no sense, unless we presume the nincompoop has neglected to press the knob that lights the bulb of the torch he is carrying. But one must always avoid presumption, as we learned from Blotzmann (Third Notebook, Lavender Series). Say that saying to, say, a sophisticated urban person at a swish cocktail party, and you face a series of brusque questions demanding that you clarify what you are saying. Say the same words to a peasant in the countryside and as likely as not he will suck thoughtfully on his piece of straw and nod, before parrying with a saying of his own, such as You can't milk a goat with a hammer. But wait wait wait! [These are the words erupting inside your head, dear reader. You see, I know you only too well.] Grateful as I am to be given tips on talking to peasants, tips I will no doubt make use of when next I go trudging through an area of rustic squalor, I cannot let pass the clear implication in your opening paragraph that Tarleton was a nincompoop. How can such things be? Tarleton, the amateur's amateur. a nincompoop? Surely, sir, you are in jest! Let me answer that. It is true enough that few persons have ever trod this earth whose brains were as acute as Tarleton's. Indeed, hold his brain in the palm of your hand and you would be astonished at its heft. It is worth noting, in this context, that you could, if you wished to, so hold Tarleton's brain. It is kept preserved in jelly in a jar in a display case in the lobby of his alma mater, Miss Blossom Partridge's Institute For The Education Of Frighteningly Adept Tinies. Make an appointment with the bursar, don a pair of gloves, and an attendant will open the display case and unscrew the lid from the jar and, with special tweezers, lift the brain from its protective jelly and allow you to hold it, registering its heft, for up to sixty seconds. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 The Wisdom Of Peasants 12:06 The Blind Goose-Killer Of Urk 18:13 Jasper The Baffled Eel 23:07 The Barbarian At The Gate THE WISDOM OF PEASANTS [This piece originally appeared under the title Tarleton Comes A-Cropper in April 2013.] And then, as we know, there came the time when Tarleton, the amateur's amateur, came a-cropper. He was in pursuit of a shifty pastry hawker, a man with a barrow, known to galumph along ill-lit lanes. Tarleton carried a torch, sweeping its bright beam ahead of him, both to avoid pits and puddles and in hope that he might catch a glimpse of his quarry. But, as the old saying has it, a torch in the hands of a nincompoop sheds no light. Incidentally, it is well worth your while to jot down old sayings in a notepad when you hear them. They can be invaluable in establishing rapport with countryside peasants. If you fall into conversation with such a person, you will discover that their utterances often consist of little else but old sayings strung together. By dropping in your own crumbs of rustic wisdom from time to time, you will be able to maintain conversational sparkle in otherwise trying circumstances. The beauty of it is, you do not need to grasp the actual meaning of the old sayings you deploy. Consider, for example, the one we have just encountered, a torch in the hands of a nincompoop sheds no light. On the face of it, this would seem to make little or no sense, unless we presume the nincompoop has neglected to press the knob that lights the bulb of the torch he is carrying. But one must always avoid presumption, as we learned from Blotzmann (Third Notebook, Lavender Series). Say that saying to, say, a sophisticated urban person at a swish cocktail party, and you face a series of brusque questions demanding that you clarify what you are saying. Say the same words to a peasant in the countryside and as likely as not he will suck thoughtfully on his piece of straw and nod, before parrying with a saying of his own, such as You can't milk a goat with a hammer. But wait wait wait! [These are the words erupting inside your head, dear reader. You see, I know you only too well.] Grateful as I am to be given tips on talking to peasants, tips I will no doubt make use of when next I go trudging through an area of rustic squalor, I cannot let pass the clear implication in your opening paragraph that Tarleton was a nincompoop. How can such things be? Tarleton, the amateur's amateur. a nincompoop? Surely, sir, you are in jest! Let me answer that. It is true enough that few persons have ever trod this earth whose brains were as acute as Tarleton's. Indeed, hold his brain in the palm of your hand and you would be astonished at its heft. It is worth noting, in this context, that you could, if you wished to, so hold Tarleton's brain. It is kept preserved in jelly in a jar in a display case in the lobby of his alma mater, Miss Blossom Partridge's Institute For The Education Of Frighteningly Adept Tinies. Make an appointment with the bursar, don a pair of gloves, and an attendant will open the display case and unscrew the lid from the jar and, with special tweezers, lift the brain from its protective jelly and allow you to hold it, registering its heft, for up to sixty seconds. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-1630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-09Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:28 Whither The Bint Of Shelmerdox? 08:49 Conquistador 15:01 Pale Horseman 24:11 Nocturnal Pig Observatory WHITHER THE BINT OF SHELMERDOX? Whither the bint of Shelmerdox? The story goes that she went out a-hiking one morning and never came home. Some said she had a tryst with a tinker and ran away with him to his glen. Others spoke of a mysterious hot air balloon, spotted in the sky above the goaty place around noon. The parish priest insisted he saw her waving from its basket, but he was an old and foolish man and had had sundry hallucinations. There were those who muttered in the shadows of dark and desperate deeds. Before she left, the bint of Shelmerdox ate an egg on toast and drank half a bottle of gin. She took the time to wash her dishes and place them on the drainer. But she left her purse and keys and passport and engagement ring upon the kitchen table, next to a saucer she used as an ashtray. Had she planned her disappearance, or had she not?. The bint's fiance, the village wrestler, was much distraught. In the market square, by the horse trough, he blubbered like a baby as night fell and there was no sign of her. The Woohoohoodiwoo Woman collected his tears in a cup, and boiled them, that she might see in the clouds of steam a vision of the bint and her present whereabouts. But the steam vouchsafed nought but unreadable swirlings, so the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman next eviscerated a few hens and read their hot bloody entrails, again to no avail. The bint of Shelmerdox had vanished off the face of the earth. On the first anniversary, the village folk gathered in a barn and sang songs for her. They would have lit candles too, had the parish priest not eaten them all in his madness. The songs they sang were the current popular hits of the village and its hinterland, with newly-minted lyrics, some penned by the wrestler, who still wept every day. Oh where is she now, my Shelmerdox bint? / I dab at my tears with a poor scrap of lint / If only the gods would let drop a hint / Of where she has gone to, my Shelmerdox bint! The parish priest, whose chain was lengthened so he could just about reach the doorway of the barn, tried to offer up a prayer for the immortal soul of the bint, but he forgot why he was there, and blessed a couple of cows instead. The names of the cows were Puskas and Di Stefano. They were terrific cows, the pride of the village, and the bint had oftentimes patted their heads and whispered in their ears in that sozzled way of hers. The commemoration was repeated in subsequent years, always with new songs from the village wrestler, still weeping copiously, and with haphazard blessings from the parish priest. One time he managed a spark of lucidity and actually prayed for the bint, though usually his benediction fell upon the cows or a patch of lupins or even the chain that ensured he did not stray beyond the village. The Woohoohoodiwoo Woman refused to attend any of these ceremonies. But she had not forgotten about the bint of Shelmerdox. Within her hovel, among her dried-up poisonous plants and toads and beetles and pins and pokey-sticks, she carried on her eldritch flummery in secret. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:28 Whither The Bint Of Shelmerdox? 08:49 Conquistador 15:01 Pale Horseman 24:11 Nocturnal Pig Observatory WHITHER THE BINT OF SHELMERDOX? Whither the bint of Shelmerdox? The story goes that she went out a-hiking one morning and never came home. Some said she had a tryst with a tinker and ran away with him to his glen. Others spoke of a mysterious hot air balloon, spotted in the sky above the goaty place around noon. The parish priest insisted he saw her waving from its basket, but he was an old and foolish man and had had sundry hallucinations. There were those who muttered in the shadows of dark and desperate deeds. Before she left, the bint of Shelmerdox ate an egg on toast and drank half a bottle of gin. She took the time to wash her dishes and place them on the drainer. But she left her purse and keys and passport and engagement ring upon the kitchen table, next to a saucer she used as an ashtray. Had she planned her disappearance, or had she not?. The bint's fiance, the village wrestler, was much distraught. In the market square, by the horse trough, he blubbered like a baby as night fell and there was no sign of her. The Woohoohoodiwoo Woman collected his tears in a cup, and boiled them, that she might see in the clouds of steam a vision of the bint and her present whereabouts. But the steam vouchsafed nought but unreadable swirlings, so the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman next eviscerated a few hens and read their hot bloody entrails, again to no avail. The bint of Shelmerdox had vanished off the face of the earth. On the first anniversary, the village folk gathered in a barn and sang songs for her. They would have lit candles too, had the parish priest not eaten them all in his madness. The songs they sang were the current popular hits of the village and its hinterland, with newly-minted lyrics, some penned by the wrestler, who still wept every day. Oh where is she now, my Shelmerdox bint? / I dab at my tears with a poor scrap of lint / If only the gods would let drop a hint / Of where she has gone to, my Shelmerdox bint! The parish priest, whose chain was lengthened so he could just about reach the doorway of the barn, tried to offer up a prayer for the immortal soul of the bint, but he forgot why he was there, and blessed a couple of cows instead. The names of the cows were Puskas and Di Stefano. They were terrific cows, the pride of the village, and the bint had oftentimes patted their heads and whispered in their ears in that sozzled way of hers. The commemoration was repeated in subsequent years, always with new songs from the village wrestler, still weeping copiously, and with haphazard blessings from the parish priest. One time he managed a spark of lucidity and actually prayed for the bint, though usually his benediction fell upon the cows or a patch of lupins or even the chain that ensured he did not stray beyond the village. The Woohoohoodiwoo Woman refused to attend any of these ceremonies. But she had not forgotten about the bint of Shelmerdox. Within her hovel, among her dried-up poisonous plants and toads and beetles and pins and pokey-sticks, she carried on her eldritch flummery in secret. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-0930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-02Thu, 02 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 Mudguard 07:31 Pol Pot In France 11:02 An Experiment With Curd 14:24 Poptastic! 15:30 I Heard The Owl Call My Name MUDGUARD I am the Mudguard. I guard the mud. And, boy!, there is an awful lot of mud. It's a full-time job. The mud covers a large rectangular area on the outskirts of town, just beyond the duckpond and the viaduct. It is known locally as "the muddy field", though its official name is Plunkett's Meadow. Nobody living calls it that, but the name is shown on old maps of the area. I patrol the perimeter of the field from dawn till dusk, day in day out, and sometimes at night too, for example when the regime has declared a state of emergency. At such times I am provided with extra supplies of strong black coffee and/or cans of fizzy pop infused with chemicals designed to stimulate the nerves. Because of the long hours, and because I am the only mudguard, I live on site, or as near as dammit, in a hut, or chalet, slap bang next to the muddy field. It is, alas, far, far from the sea, but I keep on my bookshelf several paperbacks by Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad. They have a briny smell, having been dipped in seawater and dried by sea-squalls. My uniform is best described as a blouse and pantaloons. It is a foolish outfit, and often the object of ridicule by wayfaring strangers. To cut a long story short, the Mud Bureau Chef d'Affaires was a fanatical devotee of Spandau Ballet early in their career. That much is true. I have grown used to the hysterical laughter of passers-by and no longer bother to throw pebbles at them. On a typical day, I rise from my pallet before dawn, ablute, eat a slap-up breakfast in which sausages play an important part, put on my preposterous uniform, and am ready to begin my first patrol as the sun comes up. Brave Helios!, etcetera etcetera. I prance along each side of the muddy field, first clockwise then anti-clockwise, keeping an eye out for anybody or anything that might imperil the mud. I then take a break, perched on a stool outside my chalet for five minutes, but remaining vigilant. I then conduct the second patrol of the day, armed with a pointy stick. And so it goes on, until nightfall. It is very satisfying work. Once a week, I receive a visit from a senior official of the Mud Bureau. It is rarely the same official. They go about their business in plain clothes, the only sign of their status being a small lapel badge. This depicts a patch of mud, above which hovers a disembodied head. I think this is intended to be a generic human head, but for my money it bears an arresting resemblance to Tony Hadley (b. 1960), the lead singer of Spandau Ballet. The official interrogates me, under a Klieg light, about each patrol of the previous week. I furnish the details using an agreed code, in which sausages play an important part. There is then a little break, during which we might chat about Melville and Conrad, if the official is sea-brained, or other matters, if not. For example we might talk about stamp collecting or foopball or the transubstantiation of the host in the Catholic Mass in Tudor times. During these discussions, the Klieg light is switched off. As mud goes, the mud I guard in the muddy field, aka Plunkett's Meadow, is pretty ordinary mud. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 Mudguard 07:31 Pol Pot In France 11:02 An Experiment With Curd 14:24 Poptastic! 15:30 I Heard The Owl Call My Name MUDGUARD I am the Mudguard. I guard the mud. And, boy!, there is an awful lot of mud. It's a full-time job. The mud covers a large rectangular area on the outskirts of town, just beyond the duckpond and the viaduct. It is known locally as "the muddy field", though its official name is Plunkett's Meadow. Nobody living calls it that, but the name is shown on old maps of the area. I patrol the perimeter of the field from dawn till dusk, day in day out, and sometimes at night too, for example when the regime has declared a state of emergency. At such times I am provided with extra supplies of strong black coffee and/or cans of fizzy pop infused with chemicals designed to stimulate the nerves. Because of the long hours, and because I am the only mudguard, I live on site, or as near as dammit, in a hut, or chalet, slap bang next to the muddy field. It is, alas, far, far from the sea, but I keep on my bookshelf several paperbacks by Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad. They have a briny smell, having been dipped in seawater and dried by sea-squalls. My uniform is best described as a blouse and pantaloons. It is a foolish outfit, and often the object of ridicule by wayfaring strangers. To cut a long story short, the Mud Bureau Chef d'Affaires was a fanatical devotee of Spandau Ballet early in their career. That much is true. I have grown used to the hysterical laughter of passers-by and no longer bother to throw pebbles at them. On a typical day, I rise from my pallet before dawn, ablute, eat a slap-up breakfast in which sausages play an important part, put on my preposterous uniform, and am ready to begin my first patrol as the sun comes up. Brave Helios!, etcetera etcetera. I prance along each side of the muddy field, first clockwise then anti-clockwise, keeping an eye out for anybody or anything that might imperil the mud. I then take a break, perched on a stool outside my chalet for five minutes, but remaining vigilant. I then conduct the second patrol of the day, armed with a pointy stick. And so it goes on, until nightfall. It is very satisfying work. Once a week, I receive a visit from a senior official of the Mud Bureau. It is rarely the same official. They go about their business in plain clothes, the only sign of their status being a small lapel badge. This depicts a patch of mud, above which hovers a disembodied head. I think this is intended to be a generic human head, but for my money it bears an arresting resemblance to Tony Hadley (b. 1960), the lead singer of Spandau Ballet. The official interrogates me, under a Klieg light, about each patrol of the previous week. I furnish the details using an agreed code, in which sausages play an important part. There is then a little break, during which we might chat about Melville and Conrad, if the official is sea-brained, or other matters, if not. For example we might talk about stamp collecting or foopball or the transubstantiation of the host in the Catholic Mass in Tudor times. During these discussions, the Klieg light is switched off. As mud goes, the mud I guard in the muddy field, aka Plunkett's Meadow, is pretty ordinary mud. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-11-0230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-10-12Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:33 The World-Famous Food-Splattered Jesuit 10:18 Being A True Account Of The Discovery Of The Tomb Of Anaxagrotax 21:49 The Forty Thieves THE WORLD-FAMOUS FOOD-SPLATTERED JESUIT The world-famous food-splattered Jesuit was one of the best loved and most successful variety acts of the interwar years. It is believed that he appeared at every single seaside resort in the land, the grandiose and the dilapidated, in and out of season, and always to rapturous applause. Key to his appeal was sheer simplicity. The curtains would open and there, on stage, world-famous and splattered with food, stood a Jesuit. He would extend his arms, almost in crucifixion pose, and gaze at a point slightly above the heads of the audience. There were no frills, no "business" with props. After a few minutes, the curtains would close, and--barring the inevitable encore--that was that. It was a winning formula, but one which, alas, could not transfer to radio, where so many of the stars of variety theatre went on to find fame and fortune. Throughout the years of his greatest popularity, roughly the decade from 1925 to 1935, the world-famous food-splattered Jesuit managed, miraculously, to preserve his anonymity. We still do not know for certain who he was. We do know, in spite of rumours put about to the contrary, that he was a single, particular individual, and not a series of different Jesuits. This charge was first levelled in a scurrilous newspaper story. In the Daily Voodoo Dolly for the sixth of September 1929, a hack named only as "Our Seaside Resort Reporter" claimed that the original world-famous food-splattered Jesuit had been killed in an accident (picnic, lightning) and replaced by at least seven other Jesuits, who took it in turns to appear at the end of piers, splattered with food. This farrago of nonsense was comprehensively demolished by investigative variety theatre reporter John Pilge, a man who knew his onions. But even Pilge was not perfect, and it seems he was the source of a common misapprehension of the nature of the Jesuit's performances. Oft repeated by nincompoop wannabe historians of the seaside variety theatre, this is the idea that the Jesuit stood on stage, initially pristine in his soutane, and that he was splattered with food by members of the audience pelting him with eggs, fruit, cuts of meat, soup, ketchup, ad nauseam. So let me be crystal clear--there is not a shred of evidence that this was ever so. More than that, it belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire point of the act, and the reason it was so wildly popular, to wit, that the Jesuit simply stood there, stock still, arms outstretched, faintly holy, world-famous, and food-splattered. There was an art to these performances which we lose sight of in our modern fast-moving age of pap 'n' twaddle. It would be a mistake to think that the Jesuit was nothing more than a messy eater with the table manners of Kafka, who simply allowed various stains and spillages to accumulate upon his soutane. Anybody could achieve that, with persistence, determination, slapdash eating habits, and the shunning of laundry. In fact, there was for a time a rival act known as the world-famous bacon-and-egg-besmirched nun. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-10-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:33 The World-Famous Food-Splattered Jesuit 10:18 Being A True Account Of The Discovery Of The Tomb Of Anaxagrotax 21:49 The Forty Thieves THE WORLD-FAMOUS FOOD-SPLATTERED JESUIT The world-famous food-splattered Jesuit was one of the best loved and most successful variety acts of the interwar years. It is believed that he appeared at every single seaside resort in the land, the grandiose and the dilapidated, in and out of season, and always to rapturous applause. Key to his appeal was sheer simplicity. The curtains would open and there, on stage, world-famous and splattered with food, stood a Jesuit. He would extend his arms, almost in crucifixion pose, and gaze at a point slightly above the heads of the audience. There were no frills, no "business" with props. After a few minutes, the curtains would close, and--barring the inevitable encore--that was that. It was a winning formula, but one which, alas, could not transfer to radio, where so many of the stars of variety theatre went on to find fame and fortune. Throughout the years of his greatest popularity, roughly the decade from 1925 to 1935, the world-famous food-splattered Jesuit managed, miraculously, to preserve his anonymity. We still do not know for certain who he was. We do know, in spite of rumours put about to the contrary, that he was a single, particular individual, and not a series of different Jesuits. This charge was first levelled in a scurrilous newspaper story. In the Daily Voodoo Dolly for the sixth of September 1929, a hack named only as "Our Seaside Resort Reporter" claimed that the original world-famous food-splattered Jesuit had been killed in an accident (picnic, lightning) and replaced by at least seven other Jesuits, who took it in turns to appear at the end of piers, splattered with food. This farrago of nonsense was comprehensively demolished by investigative variety theatre reporter John Pilge, a man who knew his onions. But even Pilge was not perfect, and it seems he was the source of a common misapprehension of the nature of the Jesuit's performances. Oft repeated by nincompoop wannabe historians of the seaside variety theatre, this is the idea that the Jesuit stood on stage, initially pristine in his soutane, and that he was splattered with food by members of the audience pelting him with eggs, fruit, cuts of meat, soup, ketchup, ad nauseam. So let me be crystal clear--there is not a shred of evidence that this was ever so. More than that, it belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire point of the act, and the reason it was so wildly popular, to wit, that the Jesuit simply stood there, stock still, arms outstretched, faintly holy, world-famous, and food-splattered. There was an art to these performances which we lose sight of in our modern fast-moving age of pap 'n' twaddle. It would be a mistake to think that the Jesuit was nothing more than a messy eater with the table manners of Kafka, who simply allowed various stains and spillages to accumulate upon his soutane. Anybody could achieve that, with persistence, determination, slapdash eating habits, and the shunning of laundry. In fact, there was for a time a rival act known as the world-famous bacon-and-egg-besmirched nun. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-10-1230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-10-05Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 From The Mountains To The Sea 05:47 A Family Of Goatherds Unparalleled In Their Rapacity 12:22 Two Sparrows 17:02 A Person Of Unhinged Mien 22:20 Tuesday Weld Goes Berserk FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA The other day I was scuttling, as one does, across the floors of silent seas. There is no light down there, and it was cold and very wet. But that's the bottom of the sea for you. It's no picnic--though I've had my fair share of picnics in the cold and wet. I recall one particular childhood picnic where the lid was left off the marmalade jar, and soon enough it contained half marmalade, half rainwater. I was an inquisitive child. I screwed the lid back on the jar and shook it, violently, until the two substances, the marmalade and the rainwater, were mixed together. Years later, I wrote a book about this experiment, called Marmalade And Rainwater. Some of you may know of it. It was a bestseller, and won several prestigious awards, including the Prix Poubelle. With the money I received for that, I was able to buy an Alpine chalet with its own private funicular railway. Success prompted the idea that I could mine my memories of childhood picnics for further books. I began work on a fictionalised account of one such picnic, provisionally entitled Sausages And Wasps. But I couldn't make it work. After every few pages I would grow exasperated and despairing, and scrunch up what I'd written and toss it down a waste chute. I realised that I was temperamentally incapable of writing about this picnic, even in the guise of fiction, because it had taken place on a hot dry sunny day, whereas what spoke to my imagination was the cold wet picnic. It seems, though, that readers prefer their literary picnics dry and sunny. My second book, More Marmalade And Further Rainwater, was a complete flop, selling fewer than a dozen copies and winning no prizes whatsoever. It did not take long before I faced financial ruin, so I decided to sell up and move elsewhere. But I made the foolish mistake of selling the funicular railway first. This meant I was unable to go to and from the Alpine chalet without paying a hefty fare for each journey to the new owners, a family of goatherds unparalleled in their rapacity. How, then, did I get from my high Alpine home to where I am now, lingering in the chambers of the sea? Ah, that will be the subject of my next book, a non-picnic-based memwa. I am taking my time over it. There will be time, there will be time for a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea. And I shall spread my toast with a mixture of marmalade and rainwater. A FAMILY OF GOATHERDS UNPARALLELED IN THEIR RAPACITY […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-10-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 From The Mountains To The Sea 05:47 A Family Of Goatherds Unparalleled In Their Rapacity 12:22 Two Sparrows 17:02 A Person Of Unhinged Mien 22:20 Tuesday Weld Goes Berserk FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA The other day I was scuttling, as one does, across the floors of silent seas. There is no light down there, and it was cold and very wet. But that's the bottom of the sea for you. It's no picnic--though I've had my fair share of picnics in the cold and wet. I recall one particular childhood picnic where the lid was left off the marmalade jar, and soon enough it contained half marmalade, half rainwater. I was an inquisitive child. I screwed the lid back on the jar and shook it, violently, until the two substances, the marmalade and the rainwater, were mixed together. Years later, I wrote a book about this experiment, called Marmalade And Rainwater. Some of you may know of it. It was a bestseller, and won several prestigious awards, including the Prix Poubelle. With the money I received for that, I was able to buy an Alpine chalet with its own private funicular railway. Success prompted the idea that I could mine my memories of childhood picnics for further books. I began work on a fictionalised account of one such picnic, provisionally entitled Sausages And Wasps. But I couldn't make it work. After every few pages I would grow exasperated and despairing, and scrunch up what I'd written and toss it down a waste chute. I realised that I was temperamentally incapable of writing about this picnic, even in the guise of fiction, because it had taken place on a hot dry sunny day, whereas what spoke to my imagination was the cold wet picnic. It seems, though, that readers prefer their literary picnics dry and sunny. My second book, More Marmalade And Further Rainwater, was a complete flop, selling fewer than a dozen copies and winning no prizes whatsoever. It did not take long before I faced financial ruin, so I decided to sell up and move elsewhere. But I made the foolish mistake of selling the funicular railway first. This meant I was unable to go to and from the Alpine chalet without paying a hefty fare for each journey to the new owners, a family of goatherds unparalleled in their rapacity. How, then, did I get from my high Alpine home to where I am now, lingering in the chambers of the sea? Ah, that will be the subject of my next book, a non-picnic-based memwa. I am taking my time over it. There will be time, there will be time for a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea. And I shall spread my toast with a mixture of marmalade and rainwater. A FAMILY OF GOATHERDS UNPARALLELED IN THEIR RAPACITY […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-10-0530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-09-21Thu, 21 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:03 Mr Key Goes To Innsmouth 21:54 Cocking A Snook 26:19 The Pious Infant MR KEY GOES TO INNSMOUTH I write these words with immense difficulty, and in frantic haste. If what I believe is true, I have little more than an hour, perhaps two, before my mind will lose its moorings, the brain inside my head will be reduced to a twitching jelly of miasmic horror, and I will be a hopeless case, raving and gibbering and throwing myself against the walls of this padded cell. I am confined here upon my own insistence. I had to demand that the lunatic asylum staff lock me up, and keep me locked up. If, in an hour or two's time, I was free to roam the streets among other men, I shudder to think what unimaginable chaos and havoc would be wrought. No, I must remain here, isolated from a world that must, must be protected at all costs from me ... or rather, from the ... thing that I will soon become. Can it really be only a week ago that I was sitting at home, surrounded by my familiar magnets and retorts and cylinders, in peace and comfort, without a care in the world other than the incessant yapping of my neighbour's dog and the incessant tinkling of the bell dangling from the collar round my neighbour's dog's neck and the incessant ululating incantations of my neighbour himself, incantations devised to summon forth the incarnation of the hideous bat-god Fatso, incantations which, thank the heavens, had proved unsuccessful for twenty years and which, one hoped, would remain unsuccessful for a further twenty years and, indeed, forever after? The yapping and tinkling and ululating aside, I was, as I say, in peace and comfort, and could never have imagined the inexplicable horror that was about to unfold. It has been just one week, but I feel I have lived through a thousand years, nay!, a thousand centuries, a thousand millennia in that time. It all began, prosaically enough, with the telltale sound of the daily postal delivery dropping onto the mat. I put aside the lemon meringue pie I was eating and went to retrieve it. I flicked briefly through the items: a couple of bills, a letter from my bankers, the latest copy of the Reader's Digest--I quickly scanned the contents page and made a mental note to read, at the earliest opportunity, the article about bringing a monkey out of a medically-induced coma--a couple of advertising flyers, and--fatefully, as I was to learn--a black envelope, addressed by hand in gleaming silver lettering, bearing a postage stamp which, though I looked at it from every conceivable angle, and then from several inconceivable angles, resisted all attempts to see it clearly. It seemed somehow to shift in shape and colour and size, to become invisible and then visible again. I could not even tell whether it was self-adhesive or had had to be affixed to the envelope with a lick of spittle from a human--or inhuman?--tongue. Placing the rest of my post in the wicker basket on my escritoire, I returned to the breakfast table, took another mouthful of lemon meringue pie, and opened the envelope carefully. The letter inside was unexpectedly ordinary--a single sheet of white paper, covered in black handwriting of commendable neatness and legibility. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-09-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:03 Mr Key Goes To Innsmouth 21:54 Cocking A Snook 26:19 The Pious Infant MR KEY GOES TO INNSMOUTH I write these words with immense difficulty, and in frantic haste. If what I believe is true, I have little more than an hour, perhaps two, before my mind will lose its moorings, the brain inside my head will be reduced to a twitching jelly of miasmic horror, and I will be a hopeless case, raving and gibbering and throwing myself against the walls of this padded cell. I am confined here upon my own insistence. I had to demand that the lunatic asylum staff lock me up, and keep me locked up. If, in an hour or two's time, I was free to roam the streets among other men, I shudder to think what unimaginable chaos and havoc would be wrought. No, I must remain here, isolated from a world that must, must be protected at all costs from me ... or rather, from the ... thing that I will soon become. Can it really be only a week ago that I was sitting at home, surrounded by my familiar magnets and retorts and cylinders, in peace and comfort, without a care in the world other than the incessant yapping of my neighbour's dog and the incessant tinkling of the bell dangling from the collar round my neighbour's dog's neck and the incessant ululating incantations of my neighbour himself, incantations devised to summon forth the incarnation of the hideous bat-god Fatso, incantations which, thank the heavens, had proved unsuccessful for twenty years and which, one hoped, would remain unsuccessful for a further twenty years and, indeed, forever after? The yapping and tinkling and ululating aside, I was, as I say, in peace and comfort, and could never have imagined the inexplicable horror that was about to unfold. It has been just one week, but I feel I have lived through a thousand years, nay!, a thousand centuries, a thousand millennia in that time. It all began, prosaically enough, with the telltale sound of the daily postal delivery dropping onto the mat. I put aside the lemon meringue pie I was eating and went to retrieve it. I flicked briefly through the items: a couple of bills, a letter from my bankers, the latest copy of the Reader's Digest--I quickly scanned the contents page and made a mental note to read, at the earliest opportunity, the article about bringing a monkey out of a medically-induced coma--a couple of advertising flyers, and--fatefully, as I was to learn--a black envelope, addressed by hand in gleaming silver lettering, bearing a postage stamp which, though I looked at it from every conceivable angle, and then from several inconceivable angles, resisted all attempts to see it clearly. It seemed somehow to shift in shape and colour and size, to become invisible and then visible again. I could not even tell whether it was self-adhesive or had had to be affixed to the envelope with a lick of spittle from a human--or inhuman?--tongue. Placing the rest of my post in the wicker basket on my escritoire, I returned to the breakfast table, took another mouthful of lemon meringue pie, and opened the envelope carefully. The letter inside was unexpectedly ordinary--a single sheet of white paper, covered in black handwriting of commendable neatness and legibility. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-09-2130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-09-14Thu, 14 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:46 When I Was Borp 05:10 Expulsion Of The Fools From The Orchard 13:22 Pierre Et Clothilde 19:03 Pierre Et Les Pantoufles 23:37 The Pauper And The Princeling And The Pea WHEN I WAS BORP I am often asked what it was like to be borp. For example, I may be leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece at a swish sophisticated cocktail party when a fellow-guest will approach me, sometimes in a wheelchair, and say: "I'm told you were borp. I don't suppose you'd care to tell me about that, would you?" Or I may be queueing in the post office to buy a postage stamp or two, when the person behind me, sometimes on crutches, will tap me on the shoulder and say: "I could tell by looking at the back of your head that you were borp. What was it like?" Every so often, I am asked in writing, usually in a crabbed and barely legible hand. I wish I could say that I try to give a full and frank answer. I wish I could say I responded, at least, politely. But I do not. My usual tactic is to gibber like unto a monkey, toss my not so golden locks, what's left of them, and execute a little pirouette. I then remove from my blazer pocket a crucifix, kiss it, and set it on fire with my Ignitofab lighter. As Perkins run through with a rapier, so Himmelfarb bewildered in the gloaming. There are things fit only for the ears of those who dwell in Cretin Town. Was it Browning who wrote about "the bough of cherries some officious fool / Broke in the orchard"? There are no fools in my orchard any longer. I sent them packing, one by one, from Thursday through to the following Monday, yes, even on the Lord's Day I chased a fool from my orchard, by dint of borp. Wish me Godspeed, and count the circle of toads, for borp is borp and shall ever be as never be in witlessness and pox. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-09-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:46 When I Was Borp 05:10 Expulsion Of The Fools From The Orchard 13:22 Pierre Et Clothilde 19:03 Pierre Et Les Pantoufles 23:37 The Pauper And The Princeling And The Pea WHEN I WAS BORP I am often asked what it was like to be borp. For example, I may be leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece at a swish sophisticated cocktail party when a fellow-guest will approach me, sometimes in a wheelchair, and say: "I'm told you were borp. I don't suppose you'd care to tell me about that, would you?" Or I may be queueing in the post office to buy a postage stamp or two, when the person behind me, sometimes on crutches, will tap me on the shoulder and say: "I could tell by looking at the back of your head that you were borp. What was it like?" Every so often, I am asked in writing, usually in a crabbed and barely legible hand. I wish I could say that I try to give a full and frank answer. I wish I could say I responded, at least, politely. But I do not. My usual tactic is to gibber like unto a monkey, toss my not so golden locks, what's left of them, and execute a little pirouette. I then remove from my blazer pocket a crucifix, kiss it, and set it on fire with my Ignitofab lighter. As Perkins run through with a rapier, so Himmelfarb bewildered in the gloaming. There are things fit only for the ears of those who dwell in Cretin Town. Was it Browning who wrote about "the bough of cherries some officious fool / Broke in the orchard"? There are no fools in my orchard any longer. I sent them packing, one by one, from Thursday through to the following Monday, yes, even on the Lord's Day I chased a fool from my orchard, by dint of borp. Wish me Godspeed, and count the circle of toads, for borp is borp and shall ever be as never be in witlessness and pox. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-09-1430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-07-27Thu, 27 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 The Potger Letter 06:33 But Was There A Shoggoth? 11:26 Why Do Fools Fall In Love? 18:19 Buster And Radbod THE POTGER LETTER Oh look! A letter has arrived in the post: Dear Mr Key : I have long been an avid reader of your witterings, but this is the first time I have felt compelled to write to you. My name is Keith Potger. Last week, two days short of my eighty-first birthday, I learned that I share my name with one of The Seekers, the Antipodean folk/pop sensations of the 1960s, with whom you seem to be (over)familiar. I found it surprising that nobody had ever pointed this out to me before, but there you go, dimpus dempus, as they used to say, in Latin, or Dog Latin, or Pig Latin, or one of the Latins, if memory serves, and it may not, given my advancing years. The reason I am writing to you is born of concern. As I said, I have been reading your stuff for a long time, and I have until now considered you perhaps the most sensible writer on the planet, if not in the known universe. Many is the time I have whacked my ancient mother on the head, to wake her from her stupor, just so I could recite to her, yelling as loudly as possible into her ear-trumpet, one of your matchless sentences, so full of wisdom and moral rigour. But now, I am sad to say, I fear you may be teetering on the delusional. You seem to think that every civilised person knows the names of The Seekers. I pride myself on being an incomparably civilised man, in spite of recent unfortunate piddle-stains on my trousers, and until last week I did not know the names of any of them. It is only because of the far-fetched coincidence that I share Keith Potger's name that I now know one. And yet I am quite well-informed about 1960s pop sensations in general, having committed to memory the Bernard Levin List. Indeed, when I am not shouting your sentences at my ancient mother, I am shouting that list at her, in short bursts, into her ear-trumpet, in an attempt to stimulate her catastrophically fading brain-integuments. I am minded to observe, however, that should you persist with the absurd fancy that everybody knows The Seekers, my mother appears a mental colossus in comparison. This could be merely the top of a slippery slope for you, Mr Key. I note that you also seem to believe that everybody can reel off the names John, Paul, George, and Ringo (plus Yoko), barely without thinking. What in the name of heaven are you blathering on about? John Paul--without the comma in between--is the name of a pair of late twentieth-century pontiffs of the Holy Apostolic Roman Catholic Church. As for the other three names, in that context they are frankly incomprehensible, and you have obviously made two of them up. I screamed all five names repeatedly into my mother's ear trumpet, and the dear woman showed not a flicker of recognition. This, for me, is the acid test. Speaking of the ancient Mrs Potger, I must end this letter now to go and attend to her. The cup affixed under her chin to collect her drool is almost full, so I must empty it into the drool-vat in the pantry. Please try to get a grip, Mr Key. It will be a tragedy if you lose your marbles. Ever yours, Keith Potger (not a Seeker) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-07-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 The Potger Letter 06:33 But Was There A Shoggoth? 11:26 Why Do Fools Fall In Love? 18:19 Buster And Radbod THE POTGER LETTER Oh look! A letter has arrived in the post: Dear Mr Key : I have long been an avid reader of your witterings, but this is the first time I have felt compelled to write to you. My name is Keith Potger. Last week, two days short of my eighty-first birthday, I learned that I share my name with one of The Seekers, the Antipodean folk/pop sensations of the 1960s, with whom you seem to be (over)familiar. I found it surprising that nobody had ever pointed this out to me before, but there you go, dimpus dempus, as they used to say, in Latin, or Dog Latin, or Pig Latin, or one of the Latins, if memory serves, and it may not, given my advancing years. The reason I am writing to you is born of concern. As I said, I have been reading your stuff for a long time, and I have until now considered you perhaps the most sensible writer on the planet, if not in the known universe. Many is the time I have whacked my ancient mother on the head, to wake her from her stupor, just so I could recite to her, yelling as loudly as possible into her ear-trumpet, one of your matchless sentences, so full of wisdom and moral rigour. But now, I am sad to say, I fear you may be teetering on the delusional. You seem to think that every civilised person knows the names of The Seekers. I pride myself on being an incomparably civilised man, in spite of recent unfortunate piddle-stains on my trousers, and until last week I did not know the names of any of them. It is only because of the far-fetched coincidence that I share Keith Potger's name that I now know one. And yet I am quite well-informed about 1960s pop sensations in general, having committed to memory the Bernard Levin List. Indeed, when I am not shouting your sentences at my ancient mother, I am shouting that list at her, in short bursts, into her ear-trumpet, in an attempt to stimulate her catastrophically fading brain-integuments. I am minded to observe, however, that should you persist with the absurd fancy that everybody knows The Seekers, my mother appears a mental colossus in comparison. This could be merely the top of a slippery slope for you, Mr Key. I note that you also seem to believe that everybody can reel off the names John, Paul, George, and Ringo (plus Yoko), barely without thinking. What in the name of heaven are you blathering on about? John Paul--without the comma in between--is the name of a pair of late twentieth-century pontiffs of the Holy Apostolic Roman Catholic Church. As for the other three names, in that context they are frankly incomprehensible, and you have obviously made two of them up. I screamed all five names repeatedly into my mother's ear trumpet, and the dear woman showed not a flicker of recognition. This, for me, is the acid test. Speaking of the ancient Mrs Potger, I must end this letter now to go and attend to her. The cup affixed under her chin to collect her drool is almost full, so I must empty it into the drool-vat in the pantry. Please try to get a grip, Mr Key. It will be a tragedy if you lose your marbles. Ever yours, Keith Potger (not a Seeker) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-07-2730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-07-20Thu, 20 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:00 Antipodean Chicken-Dyeing 06:43 The Nylon Duke 12:56 On Captain Nitty 22:15 On Tin Foil ANTIPODEAN CHICKEN-DYEING You will be pleased to learn that Mr Key has returned from his sojourn on foreign shores, refreshed, revivified, and ready to shower you once again with sweeping paragraphs of majestic prose. I am not going to tell you much, if anything, about my jaunt, but I think it is worth noting that I met, on my travels, a man called Dave, from Australia who, when young, used to dye chickens different colours. It was not entirely clear to me whether he did this as a form of gainful employment, or for his own entertainment. It might even have been art. I mention this because it occurred to me that an Antipodean chicken-dyer could prove a useful recurring character in the various doings recounted here at Hooting Yard. We shall see. Oh, one more thing. I was startled to discover that Dave was unable to name the four members of The Seekers. I have long believed--with good reason--that it is the mark of any civilised person, and certainly of any civilised Antipodean, that they can rattle off those names without even having to think, much as one might list John, Paul, George, and Ringo (not forgetting Yoko, of course), or Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. I have no doubt that every single one of my readers will be as baffled as I was by Dave's inability in this regard. Perhaps a lethal chemical constituent of the dyes used on those chickens long ago bedizened his brainpans. THE NYLON DUKE Behold the Nylon Duke. He is fashioned entirely from nylon, every last bit of him, yea, even unto his cartilages. He is a nylon wonder of the world. The Nylon Duke is pulled along, flat on his back, on a cart, by a great grey drayhorse with its bright and battering sandal, from village to village. At each stop along the way, in villages leafy or otherwise, he is hoisted upright by a system of winches and pulleys. The villagers gather and gasp and gawp at the sight of the Nylon Duke. They bring offerings of potatoes and similar root vegetables, piled high on the cart before being transferred into sacks by the Nylon Duke's attendants. These attendants are not made of nylon. Elsewhere, there is a Nylon Duchess, and there may be a Nylon Dauphin, and there are even rumours of a Nylon Dunce. But in this land there are not enough great grey drayhorses to pull them on carts around villages. A Dearth Of Drayhorses is an oft-reprinted tract which goes some way to explaining this situation. Consider the Nylon Duke in the round, in all his pomp and finery and nylonosity. Would you begrudge him your potatoes? Think hard before you answer, for fig eider remprent, scou binder ad fig, as it is written, as it is engraved, as it is tattooed upon the foreheads of the attendants. The Nylon Duke's given name is Bob. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-07-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:00 Antipodean Chicken-Dyeing 06:43 The Nylon Duke 12:56 On Captain Nitty 22:15 On Tin Foil ANTIPODEAN CHICKEN-DYEING You will be pleased to learn that Mr Key has returned from his sojourn on foreign shores, refreshed, revivified, and ready to shower you once again with sweeping paragraphs of majestic prose. I am not going to tell you much, if anything, about my jaunt, but I think it is worth noting that I met, on my travels, a man called Dave, from Australia who, when young, used to dye chickens different colours. It was not entirely clear to me whether he did this as a form of gainful employment, or for his own entertainment. It might even have been art. I mention this because it occurred to me that an Antipodean chicken-dyer could prove a useful recurring character in the various doings recounted here at Hooting Yard. We shall see. Oh, one more thing. I was startled to discover that Dave was unable to name the four members of The Seekers. I have long believed--with good reason--that it is the mark of any civilised person, and certainly of any civilised Antipodean, that they can rattle off those names without even having to think, much as one might list John, Paul, George, and Ringo (not forgetting Yoko, of course), or Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. I have no doubt that every single one of my readers will be as baffled as I was by Dave's inability in this regard. Perhaps a lethal chemical constituent of the dyes used on those chickens long ago bedizened his brainpans. THE NYLON DUKE Behold the Nylon Duke. He is fashioned entirely from nylon, every last bit of him, yea, even unto his cartilages. He is a nylon wonder of the world. The Nylon Duke is pulled along, flat on his back, on a cart, by a great grey drayhorse with its bright and battering sandal, from village to village. At each stop along the way, in villages leafy or otherwise, he is hoisted upright by a system of winches and pulleys. The villagers gather and gasp and gawp at the sight of the Nylon Duke. They bring offerings of potatoes and similar root vegetables, piled high on the cart before being transferred into sacks by the Nylon Duke's attendants. These attendants are not made of nylon. Elsewhere, there is a Nylon Duchess, and there may be a Nylon Dauphin, and there are even rumours of a Nylon Dunce. But in this land there are not enough great grey drayhorses to pull them on carts around villages. A Dearth Of Drayhorses is an oft-reprinted tract which goes some way to explaining this situation. Consider the Nylon Duke in the round, in all his pomp and finery and nylonosity. Would you begrudge him your potatoes? Think hard before you answer, for fig eider remprent, scou binder ad fig, as it is written, as it is engraved, as it is tattooed upon the foreheads of the attendants. The Nylon Duke's given name is Bob. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-07-2030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-07-06Thu, 06 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 On Scarecrows 09:50 On Sand Robots ON SCARECROWS Mad Old Farmer Frack was vexed, not on account of his cows, as would normally be the cause of his vexation, for his cows were unusually contented, in their field, chewing and munching, in balmy weather, contented perhaps because they were not being driven relentlessly from field to field, through gate after gate, by the mad old farmer, for no apparent purpose, as was his habit, come rain or shine, though rain was much more common than shine in that part of the world, where Old Farmer Frack had his farm, ee-i-ee-i-oh, no, for once the cows were being left to go about their cuddy business undisturbed, for Old Farmer Frack had other things on his mad old mind, things that kept him from attending to his cows, and what was vexing him on this merry May morning was seething envy, envy of his neighbouring farmers, whose names we know not, but whose farms gloried in their scarecrows, fantastic constructions of sticks and straw and hay and old rags and abandoned hats and what have you, serried ranks of them, scattered here and there across the fields, frightening any crows that might ponder landing for a peck at a growing crop, frightening children too, those traipsing across the fields to or from the village school or post office, who could imagine the scarecrows springing to life, uttering rustic curses and abracadabras, causing birds to topple dead from the sky and trees to wither and die, or such mischiefs as it amused them to wreak, out there in the country, where civilisation is held at bay, and weird and wild spirits are abroad in the land, none weirder nor wilder, some say, than the innards of mad Old Farmer Frack's head, the like of which is the stuff of nightmares to city folk, the innards of that head atop the creaking frame that is leaning on one of his farm fences this May morning, his mad eyes gleaming as he surveys the neighbours' fields and their numberless scarecrows, the cause of his vexations, for he has not a single scarecrow in his fields, having been banned from keeping one by the rustic authorities, on trumped up charges, gossip put about by the other farmers, terrible tales of cruelty and vice about which he was given no opportunity to defend himself before the ruling was laid down, at a conclave in a barn, on a thunder-booming evening, and ever since he has seen his fields beset by impertinent crows, unafraid to swoop, and it is this that vexes him, on every day God brings, until he is at his wits' end, leaning on the fence, boots embedded in a puddle, gazing at the scarecrows, when all of a sudden, within the weird and wild innards of his head, there is a spark, a snap, and he has a bright idea. It is many a long year since mad Old Farmer Frack provided a service to the woman he knew only as "Postie", the woman who presided over the village post office. In his befuddled old head he cannot recall exactly what it was he did for her. If he concentrates hard he recalls something about her asking him for a hen, to be ritually sacrificed, its entrails scattered on the post office floor and the signs read. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-07-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 On Scarecrows 09:50 On Sand Robots ON SCARECROWS Mad Old Farmer Frack was vexed, not on account of his cows, as would normally be the cause of his vexation, for his cows were unusually contented, in their field, chewing and munching, in balmy weather, contented perhaps because they were not being driven relentlessly from field to field, through gate after gate, by the mad old farmer, for no apparent purpose, as was his habit, come rain or shine, though rain was much more common than shine in that part of the world, where Old Farmer Frack had his farm, ee-i-ee-i-oh, no, for once the cows were being left to go about their cuddy business undisturbed, for Old Farmer Frack had other things on his mad old mind, things that kept him from attending to his cows, and what was vexing him on this merry May morning was seething envy, envy of his neighbouring farmers, whose names we know not, but whose farms gloried in their scarecrows, fantastic constructions of sticks and straw and hay and old rags and abandoned hats and what have you, serried ranks of them, scattered here and there across the fields, frightening any crows that might ponder landing for a peck at a growing crop, frightening children too, those traipsing across the fields to or from the village school or post office, who could imagine the scarecrows springing to life, uttering rustic curses and abracadabras, causing birds to topple dead from the sky and trees to wither and die, or such mischiefs as it amused them to wreak, out there in the country, where civilisation is held at bay, and weird and wild spirits are abroad in the land, none weirder nor wilder, some say, than the innards of mad Old Farmer Frack's head, the like of which is the stuff of nightmares to city folk, the innards of that head atop the creaking frame that is leaning on one of his farm fences this May morning, his mad eyes gleaming as he surveys the neighbours' fields and their numberless scarecrows, the cause of his vexations, for he has not a single scarecrow in his fields, having been banned from keeping one by the rustic authorities, on trumped up charges, gossip put about by the other farmers, terrible tales of cruelty and vice about which he was given no opportunity to defend himself before the ruling was laid down, at a conclave in a barn, on a thunder-booming evening, and ever since he has seen his fields beset by impertinent crows, unafraid to swoop, and it is this that vexes him, on every day God brings, until he is at his wits' end, leaning on the fence, boots embedded in a puddle, gazing at the scarecrows, when all of a sudden, within the weird and wild innards of his head, there is a spark, a snap, and he has a bright idea. It is many a long year since mad Old Farmer Frack provided a service to the woman he knew only as "Postie", the woman who presided over the village post office. In his befuddled old head he cannot recall exactly what it was he did for her. If he concentrates hard he recalls something about her asking him for a hen, to be ritually sacrificed, its entrails scattered on the post office floor and the signs read. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-07-0630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-06-22Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:42 On Fact Checking 08:20 On Being Hopelessly Lost 18:08 Colossus ON FACT CHECKING I've said it before and I'll say it again : reportage is the lifeblood of Hooting Yard. The reason I say it again is to drum it into your heads. There is a distressing number of readers who seem to believe that I make all of this stuff up. Quite apart from the sheer foolishness of doing so, I am ever mindful of B. S. Johnson's dictum "Telling stories is telling lies". And, as Lennox and Stewart put it so cogently, "Would I lie to you?" You need not attempt to answer that now, just read on, mes braves! To bolster Hooting Yard's reputation as a respectable space age information provider, I have decided to appoint a Fact Check Team. They will go about their business independently, without fear or favour, digging and rummaging and fossicking where their piercingly-honed instincts take them. If it should so happen that they come upon an instance of inaccuracy or outright lying, I will accept their ruling and remove the offending postage, replacing it with a correction written by the team. I will even so arrange things that the correction appears in big bright red bold capital letters, accompanied perhaps by a skull-and-crossbones symbol such as one sometimes finds on bottles of poison. That should liven things up! So let me introduce you to the team. There are three members, each of whom graduated, if that is the word I want, from Pang Hill Orphanage. Bim and Bam and Little Nitty each have long experience of the kind of painstaking drudgery necessary to hunt down the facts, although in their case the painstaking drudgery they experienced was sewing mailbags in a dank cellar by the light of a single Toc H lamp. I have always been a great believer in transferable skills. I am also a great believer in the benefits of fresh air and hiking and long jaunts in the open air. That is why Bim and Bam and Little Nitty will do their fact-checking in "the field" or "on the ground", out and about. In any case, I do not want them cluttering up my chalet o' prose and whimpering and eating me out of house and home. They can forage for nuts and berries and fresh puddlewater when they are in the field or on the ground. In order to decide what the trio should investigate first, I conducted a lightning readers' poll. "On what topic," I asked, "can Bim and Bam and Little Nitty cut their chops as a tiptop fact check team?" Typical of the response I received--sorry, I mean to say "responses" plural, because I did ask more than one reader, honestly, cross my heart and hope to ascend in glory to the ethereal realms--was this, from one T. Thurn: Dear Mr Key, Last night I lay awake tossing and turning and biting and pummelling my Plumpo!(tm) pillow, bereft of even a second of shut-eye because I am so desperate to know if the orchard and hotel and squirrels referred to in Alfred Pigtosser's autobiography I, Alfred Pigtosser actually exist. And if they do, I have supplementary questions, not so much about the squirrels but regarding the orchard and hotel. They can wait, however, until Bim and Bam and Little Nitty have ascertained the brute reality or otherwise of the orchard and the hotel and the squirrels and reported back, exhausted from their hike or jaunt, having cut their chops. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-06-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:42 On Fact Checking 08:20 On Being Hopelessly Lost 18:08 Colossus ON FACT CHECKING I've said it before and I'll say it again : reportage is the lifeblood of Hooting Yard. The reason I say it again is to drum it into your heads. There is a distressing number of readers who seem to believe that I make all of this stuff up. Quite apart from the sheer foolishness of doing so, I am ever mindful of B. S. Johnson's dictum "Telling stories is telling lies". And, as Lennox and Stewart put it so cogently, "Would I lie to you?" You need not attempt to answer that now, just read on, mes braves! To bolster Hooting Yard's reputation as a respectable space age information provider, I have decided to appoint a Fact Check Team. They will go about their business independently, without fear or favour, digging and rummaging and fossicking where their piercingly-honed instincts take them. If it should so happen that they come upon an instance of inaccuracy or outright lying, I will accept their ruling and remove the offending postage, replacing it with a correction written by the team. I will even so arrange things that the correction appears in big bright red bold capital letters, accompanied perhaps by a skull-and-crossbones symbol such as one sometimes finds on bottles of poison. That should liven things up! So let me introduce you to the team. There are three members, each of whom graduated, if that is the word I want, from Pang Hill Orphanage. Bim and Bam and Little Nitty each have long experience of the kind of painstaking drudgery necessary to hunt down the facts, although in their case the painstaking drudgery they experienced was sewing mailbags in a dank cellar by the light of a single Toc H lamp. I have always been a great believer in transferable skills. I am also a great believer in the benefits of fresh air and hiking and long jaunts in the open air. That is why Bim and Bam and Little Nitty will do their fact-checking in "the field" or "on the ground", out and about. In any case, I do not want them cluttering up my chalet o' prose and whimpering and eating me out of house and home. They can forage for nuts and berries and fresh puddlewater when they are in the field or on the ground. In order to decide what the trio should investigate first, I conducted a lightning readers' poll. "On what topic," I asked, "can Bim and Bam and Little Nitty cut their chops as a tiptop fact check team?" Typical of the response I received--sorry, I mean to say "responses" plural, because I did ask more than one reader, honestly, cross my heart and hope to ascend in glory to the ethereal realms--was this, from one T. Thurn: Dear Mr Key, Last night I lay awake tossing and turning and biting and pummelling my Plumpo!(tm) pillow, bereft of even a second of shut-eye because I am so desperate to know if the orchard and hotel and squirrels referred to in Alfred Pigtosser's autobiography I, Alfred Pigtosser actually exist. And if they do, I have supplementary questions, not so much about the squirrels but regarding the orchard and hotel. They can wait, however, until Bim and Bam and Little Nitty have ascertained the brute reality or otherwise of the orchard and the hotel and the squirrels and reported back, exhausted from their hike or jaunt, having cut their chops. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-06-2230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-06-15Thu, 15 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 On Crutched Friars 07:48 In The Socks Of The Mighty 17:09 Dobson's Diary 1.1.53 22:24 On Shackleton's Extra Man ON CRUTCHED FRIARS The other day I was walking through the City of London and as I turned on to Crutched Friars I almost collided with a friar on crutches. "Oi! Watch where you're going!" he shouted. "I do beg your pardon," I said, for I am always polite to friars, "I'm afraid I was, as so often, lost in a dreamy haze of preoccupation." The friar steadied himself on his crutches and fixed me with a piercing gaze, as if he were preparing to excavate my soul. "With what were you preoccupied?" he asked. His tone was abrupt. "Oh, nothing significant," I said, "Current affairs, you know, turmoil at the BBC, ash dieback, the ongoing saga of Abu Qatada." "You have your finger on the pulse," he said, "I know nothing of those things. As a member of the Order of the Fratres Cruciferi my mind is pointed towards the ineffable." "Away from the grubby world?" I asked, but he was already hoisting himself off down the street. Having nothing better to do, I turned about and followed him. There was something in that gaze that had dislodged my brain from its mundane concerns. Not being on crutches myself, I swiftly caught up with him. "May I accompany you as you make your tottering progress along Crutched Friars?" I asked. He spat on a flagstone in a very unfriarly way and grunted. "I would like to know less about current affairs and more about the ineffable," I said. "I can tell you nothing of the ineffable that you do not already know, in the innermost core of your being," he said, "You might be more interested to know why I am on crutches." We turned left on to Lloyd's Avenue. "Well I didn't want to pry," I said. He cackled. "Why do people always say they are reluctant to pry into the affairs of crutched friars?" he said, and without waiting for an answer, carried on. "They pry when they ought to pray. Do you pray?" "Not often," I admitted, "Though I have been known to raise my eyes to the heavens at times of emotional anguish." We were now on Fenchurch Street. "I can see," he said, "By looking at your legs that you have not suffered the emotional anguish of losing the use of your lower limbs and being forced to haul yourself along Fenchurch Street on crutches." "Well actually I did lose the use of my lower limbs for several weeks when I was seven years old," I said, "And felt great emotional anguish, commensurate with my youthfulness at the time." "Ah, but did you hobble encrutched through the city?" He saw from my face that the answer was no. "No, you lay abed in the comfort of home, no doubt, fetched warm milk and biscuits by your mama." "Indeed so," I said, "May I ask, then, why you do not lie abed in your friary, fetched warm milk and biscuits by your friary equivalent of a mama?" "Because a crutched friar cannot rest when he has urgent business to attend!" he shouted. We were now on Lombard Street. "You cannot pray, so pry!" he went on, "Pry to find out why I am on crutches and why I am heading west and now very slightly north-west through the city!" To be honest, I didn't much care. I still wanted to hear about the ineffable. But it seemed rude not to ask, as he kept going on about his crutches, so I asked. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-06-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 On Crutched Friars 07:48 In The Socks Of The Mighty 17:09 Dobson's Diary 1.1.53 22:24 On Shackleton's Extra Man ON CRUTCHED FRIARS The other day I was walking through the City of London and as I turned on to Crutched Friars I almost collided with a friar on crutches. "Oi! Watch where you're going!" he shouted. "I do beg your pardon," I said, for I am always polite to friars, "I'm afraid I was, as so often, lost in a dreamy haze of preoccupation." The friar steadied himself on his crutches and fixed me with a piercing gaze, as if he were preparing to excavate my soul. "With what were you preoccupied?" he asked. His tone was abrupt. "Oh, nothing significant," I said, "Current affairs, you know, turmoil at the BBC, ash dieback, the ongoing saga of Abu Qatada." "You have your finger on the pulse," he said, "I know nothing of those things. As a member of the Order of the Fratres Cruciferi my mind is pointed towards the ineffable." "Away from the grubby world?" I asked, but he was already hoisting himself off down the street. Having nothing better to do, I turned about and followed him. There was something in that gaze that had dislodged my brain from its mundane concerns. Not being on crutches myself, I swiftly caught up with him. "May I accompany you as you make your tottering progress along Crutched Friars?" I asked. He spat on a flagstone in a very unfriarly way and grunted. "I would like to know less about current affairs and more about the ineffable," I said. "I can tell you nothing of the ineffable that you do not already know, in the innermost core of your being," he said, "You might be more interested to know why I am on crutches." We turned left on to Lloyd's Avenue. "Well I didn't want to pry," I said. He cackled. "Why do people always say they are reluctant to pry into the affairs of crutched friars?" he said, and without waiting for an answer, carried on. "They pry when they ought to pray. Do you pray?" "Not often," I admitted, "Though I have been known to raise my eyes to the heavens at times of emotional anguish." We were now on Fenchurch Street. "I can see," he said, "By looking at your legs that you have not suffered the emotional anguish of losing the use of your lower limbs and being forced to haul yourself along Fenchurch Street on crutches." "Well actually I did lose the use of my lower limbs for several weeks when I was seven years old," I said, "And felt great emotional anguish, commensurate with my youthfulness at the time." "Ah, but did you hobble encrutched through the city?" He saw from my face that the answer was no. "No, you lay abed in the comfort of home, no doubt, fetched warm milk and biscuits by your mama." "Indeed so," I said, "May I ask, then, why you do not lie abed in your friary, fetched warm milk and biscuits by your friary equivalent of a mama?" "Because a crutched friar cannot rest when he has urgent business to attend!" he shouted. We were now on Lombard Street. "You cannot pray, so pry!" he went on, "Pry to find out why I am on crutches and why I am heading west and now very slightly north-west through the city!" To be honest, I didn't much care. I still wanted to hear about the ineffable. But it seemed rude not to ask, as he kept going on about his crutches, so I asked. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-06-1530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-06-01Thu, 01 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 06:35 Dimwit Under The Trellis 14:27 Hot Zinc 16:02 By Kayak To The Kiosk 20:32 The King And Nitty 24:53 Who Was Captain Nitty? DIMWIT UNDER THE TRELLIS That morning, I strode out into the grounds of my country pile, whacking my stick at lupins and at crocuses and, in one instance, at a swan passing between one pond and another. Following the path towards the ha-ha, I was startled to spot a dimwit standing under the trellis. He was a still, grubby, plump dimwit. I asked him what in the name of all the angels in heaven he was doing in the grounds of my pile. His answer was incoherent, perhaps because he was a foreign dimwit whose language was not known to me. I took him by the hand, and led him, like a fat puppy, away from the trellis, all along the path into the house. I was wearing a pair of goatskin gloves, so I did not fear picking up any germs from his grubby hands. I bade the dimwit sit at the banqueting table and rang for Snippage, my factotum, to fetch him a beaker of water. Snippage took an unconscionably long time to respond to my call, which was unlike him. It was turning into a very odd day. First the dimwit under the trellis, then a queerly delayed Snippage. It was while I waited for him that I reflected on an additional oddity. Where had that swan popped up from? I had never seen a swan on my estate before. When Snippage eventually arrived in the banqueting hall, he was breathless and dishevelled and reeked of malt vinegar. I sent him off to get a beaker of water for the dimwit, and then recalled that he, Snippage, was of foreign parentage. Either his mother, or his father, or both, had come from a land so distant it was not even on the same continent, but far far away, on the other side of one of the oceans, Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, I can't remember the names of the others offhand. It occurred to me that, given his parental provenance, Snippage might be able to communicate with the dimwit better than I could. While we awaited his return, I removed my goatskin gloves and thrummed my fingertips impatiently on the banqueting table. The dimwit sat, still and grubby and plump, staring vacantly ahead of him. An hour passed, and there was no sign of Snippage. I was concerned that the dimwit would think me uncivil, having brought him into my castle and promised him water and then left him to sit there possibly dying of thirst while I thrummed and thrummed. Words would be useless. I rang for my underfactotum, Snippage's nephew, and when he came clomping into the banqueting hall, his usual lopsided self on account of his corrective boot, I sent him in search of his uncle. The nephew was something of a dimwit himself, but he was always eager to follow simple instructions. He returned, panting, not ten minutes later. Snippage, he explained, in his curiously high-pitched voice, was standing under the trellis, clasping to his chest the swan, which had been strangled, presumably by Snippage himself. What a palaver, I thought. I asked the youngster if, in addition, Snippage was in possession of a beaker of water. No, was the response. I apologised to the dimwit at the table, in spite of the fact that he was taking no notice of me whatsoever. He was still gazing blankly at nothing. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-06-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 06:35 Dimwit Under The Trellis 14:27 Hot Zinc 16:02 By Kayak To The Kiosk 20:32 The King And Nitty 24:53 Who Was Captain Nitty? DIMWIT UNDER THE TRELLIS That morning, I strode out into the grounds of my country pile, whacking my stick at lupins and at crocuses and, in one instance, at a swan passing between one pond and another. Following the path towards the ha-ha, I was startled to spot a dimwit standing under the trellis. He was a still, grubby, plump dimwit. I asked him what in the name of all the angels in heaven he was doing in the grounds of my pile. His answer was incoherent, perhaps because he was a foreign dimwit whose language was not known to me. I took him by the hand, and led him, like a fat puppy, away from the trellis, all along the path into the house. I was wearing a pair of goatskin gloves, so I did not fear picking up any germs from his grubby hands. I bade the dimwit sit at the banqueting table and rang for Snippage, my factotum, to fetch him a beaker of water. Snippage took an unconscionably long time to respond to my call, which was unlike him. It was turning into a very odd day. First the dimwit under the trellis, then a queerly delayed Snippage. It was while I waited for him that I reflected on an additional oddity. Where had that swan popped up from? I had never seen a swan on my estate before. When Snippage eventually arrived in the banqueting hall, he was breathless and dishevelled and reeked of malt vinegar. I sent him off to get a beaker of water for the dimwit, and then recalled that he, Snippage, was of foreign parentage. Either his mother, or his father, or both, had come from a land so distant it was not even on the same continent, but far far away, on the other side of one of the oceans, Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, I can't remember the names of the others offhand. It occurred to me that, given his parental provenance, Snippage might be able to communicate with the dimwit better than I could. While we awaited his return, I removed my goatskin gloves and thrummed my fingertips impatiently on the banqueting table. The dimwit sat, still and grubby and plump, staring vacantly ahead of him. An hour passed, and there was no sign of Snippage. I was concerned that the dimwit would think me uncivil, having brought him into my castle and promised him water and then left him to sit there possibly dying of thirst while I thrummed and thrummed. Words would be useless. I rang for my underfactotum, Snippage's nephew, and when he came clomping into the banqueting hall, his usual lopsided self on account of his corrective boot, I sent him in search of his uncle. The nephew was something of a dimwit himself, but he was always eager to follow simple instructions. He returned, panting, not ten minutes later. Snippage, he explained, in his curiously high-pitched voice, was standing under the trellis, clasping to his chest the swan, which had been strangled, presumably by Snippage himself. What a palaver, I thought. I asked the youngster if, in addition, Snippage was in possession of a beaker of water. No, was the response. I apologised to the dimwit at the table, in spite of the fact that he was taking no notice of me whatsoever. He was still gazing blankly at nothing. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-06-0130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-05-25Thu, 25 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:46 Swan 04:43 The Cadet And The Angel 09:29 Birds And Fish 17:04 Captain Nitty's Attribute 20:32 Captain Nitty's Lung Collapses 23:50 Tenth Anniversary (XI) SWAN For Tim Henman I was walking along the towpath of the old canal when, suddenly and out of nowhere, a maddened swan came flapping at me in stormy rage, and thumped me so hard with its wing that it broke my arm. "Confound you, swan!" I cried in my distress, but the swan had already returned to the canal, gliding through the water, a vision of elegance. By one of those curious coincidences with which my life is stippled, the physician who tended to my fractured bone at the canalside clinic was called Dr Swanfracture. "I suppose you must have to set quite a few bones broken by swans," I said, through the haze of anaesthetic with which I had been, unnecessarily, injected. "Actually, you are the first such patient I have had to attend to in twenty years of practice at this clinic," said the doc, "For the swans on this canal are known for their placidity. There is perhaps something in the canal water." Later, convalescing, shattered on an Alpine balcony, I reflected on this, and my reflections were unhappy ones. If Dr Swanfracture was correct, and the canal swans were placid, then what had I done to provoke one of them to such uncharacteristic violent frenzy? Or, was it not something I had done, but simply me, my being, my essential self? Was I, without realising it, a danger to swans? A man can come undone when faced with such an uncomfortable truth about himself, and I did indeed come undone. I raved and spluttered and rolled about. It never occurred to me that Dr Swanfracture was talking through his hat. Many years passed, the majority of them spent trussed and medicated and bewildered in a series of lunatic asylums, before, one day, I was visited by an ornithologist. This saintly chap was convinced that the mad and the lunatic and the bewildered could be brought to their senses through a better appreciation of birds. He it was who enlightened me regarding the ineradicable savagery of swans. When I explained that there was something in the canal water that made placid the swans that glid therein, he laughed, like a drain. When eventually his gurgling ceased he said he had never heard such poppycock in his life. There is no drug on earth, he said, that could pacify a swan. Indeed, his own studies had shown that the only way to render a swan harmless was to wring its graceful neck. Dr Swanfracture's neck was anything but graceful. Rather, it was scrawny and bepimpled and wrinkled, as I learned when I clamped my hairy hands around it and wrung it, having stridden into the canalside clinic and through his waiting-room, where sat several patients nursing swan-broken arms. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-05-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:46 Swan 04:43 The Cadet And The Angel 09:29 Birds And Fish 17:04 Captain Nitty's Attribute 20:32 Captain Nitty's Lung Collapses 23:50 Tenth Anniversary (XI) SWAN For Tim Henman I was walking along the towpath of the old canal when, suddenly and out of nowhere, a maddened swan came flapping at me in stormy rage, and thumped me so hard with its wing that it broke my arm. "Confound you, swan!" I cried in my distress, but the swan had already returned to the canal, gliding through the water, a vision of elegance. By one of those curious coincidences with which my life is stippled, the physician who tended to my fractured bone at the canalside clinic was called Dr Swanfracture. "I suppose you must have to set quite a few bones broken by swans," I said, through the haze of anaesthetic with which I had been, unnecessarily, injected. "Actually, you are the first such patient I have had to attend to in twenty years of practice at this clinic," said the doc, "For the swans on this canal are known for their placidity. There is perhaps something in the canal water." Later, convalescing, shattered on an Alpine balcony, I reflected on this, and my reflections were unhappy ones. If Dr Swanfracture was correct, and the canal swans were placid, then what had I done to provoke one of them to such uncharacteristic violent frenzy? Or, was it not something I had done, but simply me, my being, my essential self? Was I, without realising it, a danger to swans? A man can come undone when faced with such an uncomfortable truth about himself, and I did indeed come undone. I raved and spluttered and rolled about. It never occurred to me that Dr Swanfracture was talking through his hat. Many years passed, the majority of them spent trussed and medicated and bewildered in a series of lunatic asylums, before, one day, I was visited by an ornithologist. This saintly chap was convinced that the mad and the lunatic and the bewildered could be brought to their senses through a better appreciation of birds. He it was who enlightened me regarding the ineradicable savagery of swans. When I explained that there was something in the canal water that made placid the swans that glid therein, he laughed, like a drain. When eventually his gurgling ceased he said he had never heard such poppycock in his life. There is no drug on earth, he said, that could pacify a swan. Indeed, his own studies had shown that the only way to render a swan harmless was to wring its graceful neck. Dr Swanfracture's neck was anything but graceful. Rather, it was scrawny and bepimpled and wrinkled, as I learned when I clamped my hairy hands around it and wrung it, having stridden into the canalside clinic and through his waiting-room, where sat several patients nursing swan-broken arms. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-05-2530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-05-11Thu, 11 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Sixty Unassailable Facts About Birds 10:45 Dobson's Abortive Bandicoot Pamphlet 16:32 In Gorse He Shook 19:35 Pebblehead's Book Of British Pebbles 22:23 The Cardigan Book 25:24 Janitor, Janitor 28:01 Mr Key Goes Feral SIXTY UNASSAILABLE FACTS ABOUT BIRDS Delving in the archives, for reasons related to Project Thrilling, I came upon this postage from 2008 which, my memory being the puny thing it is, I had completely forgotten. Well worth rereading. 1. A raven called Dot-son-paa created the world. 2. Startled blackbirds emit piercing cries because they think they are about to be attacked by demons. 3. Each legion of the Roman Army had a Pullarius, whose job it was to look after the cage of sacred chickens they carried with them. 4. If a dove flies over a coal mine, disaster is likely to follow. 5. The souls of unbaptised children take the form of nightjars. 6. Cuckoos in Herefordshire buy horses at a country fair, and sell them at another. 7. Beowulf was reincarnated as a woodpecker. 8. Every single corncrake in Siberia got there by riding on the back of a crane. 9. If you want to provoke someone to commit suicide, send them a picture of an owl. 10. A splinter of wood from a coffin will keep sparrows at bay. 11. If you drink boiled magpie broth you will go mad. 12. If a woman befriends a stork, it will bring her jewellery. 13. In an apotheosis, an eagle is hidden behind a blazing waxen image of a dead emperor, and released when it has melted away. 14. Epileptics can transfer their illness to a chicken by carrying it three times around a well and then spending the night with it asleep under a church altar. 15. It is a good idea to place a wooden diver atop a tall post at the corner of a grave. 16. Robins can speak Latin. 17. Jesus turned a woman into a lapwing after she baked him a cake. 18. On every beach there is a magic stone that cures blindness, but only swallows know how to find it. 19. One way to find gold is to carry with you a stone vomited up by a crane. 20. If you hear a cuckoo before eating your breakfast, ill fortune will follow, possibly to include a loss of feeling in your arms and legs. 21. Nightingales used to be one-eyed, but borrowed the eye from a blindworm and never returned it. 22. Ireland has been called "the swan abounding land". 23. Pelicans are the most pious of birds. 24. To avoid being bitten by a rabid dog, tuck the heart and right foot of an owl under your left armpit. 25. Cranes migrate south for the sole purpose of launching savage attacks on miniature people, about seven inches high, who they gobble up. 26. You can protect your house from lightning strikes by keeping a blackbird in your living room 27. Crossbills watch over children who fall asleep in direct moonlight and may therefore otherwise come to harm. 28. If bird eggs are incubated by frogs, the birds that hatch from them, irrespective of the parent birds, will be stonechats. 29. Migrating quails are terrified of the sea, and shut their eyes when crossing it, thus often colliding with ships. 30. Nail a dead owl to your barn to protect against storms. 31. The earth was created from mud collected by white-billed divers. 32. If you eat roasted swallow, you are likely to be attacked by dragons. 33. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-05-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Sixty Unassailable Facts About Birds 10:45 Dobson's Abortive Bandicoot Pamphlet 16:32 In Gorse He Shook 19:35 Pebblehead's Book Of British Pebbles 22:23 The Cardigan Book 25:24 Janitor, Janitor 28:01 Mr Key Goes Feral SIXTY UNASSAILABLE FACTS ABOUT BIRDS Delving in the archives, for reasons related to Project Thrilling, I came upon this postage from 2008 which, my memory being the puny thing it is, I had completely forgotten. Well worth rereading. 1. A raven called Dot-son-paa created the world. 2. Startled blackbirds emit piercing cries because they think they are about to be attacked by demons. 3. Each legion of the Roman Army had a Pullarius, whose job it was to look after the cage of sacred chickens they carried with them. 4. If a dove flies over a coal mine, disaster is likely to follow. 5. The souls of unbaptised children take the form of nightjars. 6. Cuckoos in Herefordshire buy horses at a country fair, and sell them at another. 7. Beowulf was reincarnated as a woodpecker. 8. Every single corncrake in Siberia got there by riding on the back of a crane. 9. If you want to provoke someone to commit suicide, send them a picture of an owl. 10. A splinter of wood from a coffin will keep sparrows at bay. 11. If you drink boiled magpie broth you will go mad. 12. If a woman befriends a stork, it will bring her jewellery. 13. In an apotheosis, an eagle is hidden behind a blazing waxen image of a dead emperor, and released when it has melted away. 14. Epileptics can transfer their illness to a chicken by carrying it three times around a well and then spending the night with it asleep under a church altar. 15. It is a good idea to place a wooden diver atop a tall post at the corner of a grave. 16. Robins can speak Latin. 17. Jesus turned a woman into a lapwing after she baked him a cake. 18. On every beach there is a magic stone that cures blindness, but only swallows know how to find it. 19. One way to find gold is to carry with you a stone vomited up by a crane. 20. If you hear a cuckoo before eating your breakfast, ill fortune will follow, possibly to include a loss of feeling in your arms and legs. 21. Nightingales used to be one-eyed, but borrowed the eye from a blindworm and never returned it. 22. Ireland has been called "the swan abounding land". 23. Pelicans are the most pious of birds. 24. To avoid being bitten by a rabid dog, tuck the heart and right foot of an owl under your left armpit. 25. Cranes migrate south for the sole purpose of launching savage attacks on miniature people, about seven inches high, who they gobble up. 26. You can protect your house from lightning strikes by keeping a blackbird in your living room 27. Crossbills watch over children who fall asleep in direct moonlight and may therefore otherwise come to harm. 28. If bird eggs are incubated by frogs, the birds that hatch from them, irrespective of the parent birds, will be stonechats. 29. Migrating quails are terrified of the sea, and shut their eyes when crossing it, thus often colliding with ships. 30. Nail a dead owl to your barn to protect against storms. 31. The earth was created from mud collected by white-billed divers. 32. If you eat roasted swallow, you are likely to be attacked by dragons. 33. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-05-1130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-27Thu, 27 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 The Stealthy Chump 05:44 Dobson's Invitation 12:52 Sirinuntananon & Bewg 24:04 Winnie-The-Swan 26:11 Captain Nitty's Attribute THE STEALTHY CHUMP I am very much looking forward to the new 26-part television drama The Stealthy Chump, which begins next week. Previews have not been available, but a few details have been leaked to the press. Very few, actually--the title, the number of episodes, and the basic premise. I have told you the first two, so let me now move on, wings unfurled, to the third. The Stealthy Chump centres around a chump who is stealthy. Each week, the chump tries to use his talent for stealthiness in some way, for example creeping unseen through a cemetery after dark, or lurking next to a pillar box on an important thoroughfare, or taking part in a jewel heist. But, as the series title indicates, while he is indubitably stealthy, he is also a chump. Being a chump, each week he manages to sabotage his own stealthiness by making the sort of idiotic decision only a dyed in the wool chump would make. So, when creeping unseen through a cemetery after dark he carries with him a box of fireworks which, through cackhandedness with a box of matches, he manages to ignite all at once, thus drawing attention to himself with lots of sparkly whizzes and bangs. When lurking next to a pillar box on an important thoroughfare, he wears a hat with a giant propeller on it, and the wind picks up and spins the propeller blades around and the stealthy chump finds himself hovering a few feet off the ground, making passers-by gawp. When taking part in a jewel heist, he carries a box of fireworks and wears his propeller-hat at the same time, with predictable results. I hope I have not given the impression that The Stealthy Chump is a comedy. On the contrary, by all accounts it is the sort of drama invariably described as "gritty". What this means is that it is set in the north of England where the rainfall is incessant, several characters scowl and swear a lot, and nobody ever smiles--not even the stealthy chump himself. I suggested above that the title character was dyed in the wool, and this is literally the case. Each week, the stealthy chump wears an item of knitwear, and the dye that has been used to colour the wool has also coloured the stealthy chump from head to toe. As all his knitwear is dyed in brash and gaudy blues and pinks and yellows, the fact that his head is the same colour means he finds it even more difficult to be inconspicuous and stealthy, and is thus even more of a chump. The Stealthy Chump was filmed entirely on location in a municipal car park. No animals were harmed in the making of the series, except for some ants and beetles and other creepy-crawlies, and an unfortunate trumpeter swan that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 The Stealthy Chump 05:44 Dobson's Invitation 12:52 Sirinuntananon & Bewg 24:04 Winnie-The-Swan 26:11 Captain Nitty's Attribute THE STEALTHY CHUMP I am very much looking forward to the new 26-part television drama The Stealthy Chump, which begins next week. Previews have not been available, but a few details have been leaked to the press. Very few, actually--the title, the number of episodes, and the basic premise. I have told you the first two, so let me now move on, wings unfurled, to the third. The Stealthy Chump centres around a chump who is stealthy. Each week, the chump tries to use his talent for stealthiness in some way, for example creeping unseen through a cemetery after dark, or lurking next to a pillar box on an important thoroughfare, or taking part in a jewel heist. But, as the series title indicates, while he is indubitably stealthy, he is also a chump. Being a chump, each week he manages to sabotage his own stealthiness by making the sort of idiotic decision only a dyed in the wool chump would make. So, when creeping unseen through a cemetery after dark he carries with him a box of fireworks which, through cackhandedness with a box of matches, he manages to ignite all at once, thus drawing attention to himself with lots of sparkly whizzes and bangs. When lurking next to a pillar box on an important thoroughfare, he wears a hat with a giant propeller on it, and the wind picks up and spins the propeller blades around and the stealthy chump finds himself hovering a few feet off the ground, making passers-by gawp. When taking part in a jewel heist, he carries a box of fireworks and wears his propeller-hat at the same time, with predictable results. I hope I have not given the impression that The Stealthy Chump is a comedy. On the contrary, by all accounts it is the sort of drama invariably described as "gritty". What this means is that it is set in the north of England where the rainfall is incessant, several characters scowl and swear a lot, and nobody ever smiles--not even the stealthy chump himself. I suggested above that the title character was dyed in the wool, and this is literally the case. Each week, the stealthy chump wears an item of knitwear, and the dye that has been used to colour the wool has also coloured the stealthy chump from head to toe. As all his knitwear is dyed in brash and gaudy blues and pinks and yellows, the fact that his head is the same colour means he finds it even more difficult to be inconspicuous and stealthy, and is thus even more of a chump. The Stealthy Chump was filmed entirely on location in a municipal car park. No animals were harmed in the making of the series, except for some ants and beetles and other creepy-crawlies, and an unfortunate trumpeter swan that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-2730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-20Thu, 20 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:28 I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing 05:34 Meetings With Remarkable Buntings 11:10 Swan Guru 15:49 Dobson, Preoccupied 23:21 Swan Hunter I'D LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I think I have the makings of an excellent singing teacher. I am to pedagogy as a duck to water. There is nothing that cannot be taught by ferocious spittle-flecked shouting accompanied by thumps on the head with a big stick. It is true that my field of expertise is ornithology, not singing, but I have taught even the most recalcitrant dimwit to identify four different types of bird, with as near as dammit a twenty-five percent success rate. The birds were a swan, an owl, a wren, and an ostrich. I'd like to teach the world to sing, and the world is rather larger than the classroom in the cellar of Pang Hill Orphanage, where I currently teach. In fact I have never taught anywhere else, as far as I can recall. And I have rarely taught anything other than bird identification skills, apart from occasional sessions of boot-scrubbing, mucking about with saucepans, and guttural German. But pedagogy courses through my veins like blood. The more recalcitrant dimwits among the orphans often develop nosebleeds after my thumpings, so I know what blood looks like, even though it is not my field of expertise. Another reason I am well suited to the task of teaching the world to sing is that I awake every morning with a song in my heart. Often it is a tuneless and monotonous dirge, which is the best I can muster when I wake in a foul temper, as I usually do. My attic bedroom at Pang Hill Orphanage is dark and dismal and icy cold, even at the height of summer. I have been told this is something to do with local atmospheric conditions, but such conditions are outwith my field of expertise, so I cannot judge the truth of the claim. Sometimes a frail and freezing robin will come and perch on my windowsill of a morning. I think it is a robin, though it is difficult to tell through the grease- and grime-smeared window. But at the sight, albeit blurred, of a feathered friend, the song in my heart is a cheerier and more up-tempo one, such as "Withered And Died" by Richard and Linda Thompson. Before I teach the world to sing, then, I will make a start by teaching the orphans to sing. But before I teach the orphans to sing, I will hone my singing-teacher techniques--shouting, big stick--by teaching monkeys to sing. There is a Monkey House at Pang Hill Zoo, over on the other side of the hill beyond the viaduct. Through bribery and threats I obtained a key to the Monkey House. I think the janitor who passed me the key assumed I wanted to gain access to the monkeys for unseemly purposes. Well, let him think what he likes. I will betray him to the zoo authorities in any case, and he will languish in a prison cell while I teach the monkeys to sing. UPDATE : I have discovered that most of the monkeys in the Monkey House at Pang Hill Zoo are howler monkeys. They can already howl their little heads off like nobody's business. My work is done. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:28 I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing 05:34 Meetings With Remarkable Buntings 11:10 Swan Guru 15:49 Dobson, Preoccupied 23:21 Swan Hunter I'D LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I think I have the makings of an excellent singing teacher. I am to pedagogy as a duck to water. There is nothing that cannot be taught by ferocious spittle-flecked shouting accompanied by thumps on the head with a big stick. It is true that my field of expertise is ornithology, not singing, but I have taught even the most recalcitrant dimwit to identify four different types of bird, with as near as dammit a twenty-five percent success rate. The birds were a swan, an owl, a wren, and an ostrich. I'd like to teach the world to sing, and the world is rather larger than the classroom in the cellar of Pang Hill Orphanage, where I currently teach. In fact I have never taught anywhere else, as far as I can recall. And I have rarely taught anything other than bird identification skills, apart from occasional sessions of boot-scrubbing, mucking about with saucepans, and guttural German. But pedagogy courses through my veins like blood. The more recalcitrant dimwits among the orphans often develop nosebleeds after my thumpings, so I know what blood looks like, even though it is not my field of expertise. Another reason I am well suited to the task of teaching the world to sing is that I awake every morning with a song in my heart. Often it is a tuneless and monotonous dirge, which is the best I can muster when I wake in a foul temper, as I usually do. My attic bedroom at Pang Hill Orphanage is dark and dismal and icy cold, even at the height of summer. I have been told this is something to do with local atmospheric conditions, but such conditions are outwith my field of expertise, so I cannot judge the truth of the claim. Sometimes a frail and freezing robin will come and perch on my windowsill of a morning. I think it is a robin, though it is difficult to tell through the grease- and grime-smeared window. But at the sight, albeit blurred, of a feathered friend, the song in my heart is a cheerier and more up-tempo one, such as "Withered And Died" by Richard and Linda Thompson. Before I teach the world to sing, then, I will make a start by teaching the orphans to sing. But before I teach the orphans to sing, I will hone my singing-teacher techniques--shouting, big stick--by teaching monkeys to sing. There is a Monkey House at Pang Hill Zoo, over on the other side of the hill beyond the viaduct. Through bribery and threats I obtained a key to the Monkey House. I think the janitor who passed me the key assumed I wanted to gain access to the monkeys for unseemly purposes. Well, let him think what he likes. I will betray him to the zoo authorities in any case, and he will languish in a prison cell while I teach the monkeys to sing. UPDATE : I have discovered that most of the monkeys in the Monkey House at Pang Hill Zoo are howler monkeys. They can already howl their little heads off like nobody's business. My work is done. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-2030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-13Thu, 13 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Pudding Flaps 04:33 Cargpan And Beppo 11:34 Huad Jardo 13:05 Six Lectures On Fruit 20:24 Whence Inspip Fled 23:47 Exemplary Slobbering Vignettes PUDDING FLAPS A while ago I wrote about hiking pickles, and today I want to address the equally important topic of pudding flaps. Flaps about pudding are rarer than they once were, chiefly because puddings play a less critical role in our diets than used to be the case. Time was when no meal was innocent of a pudding, and though of course not every pudding preparation was the occasion of a flap, the incidence of such flaps was obviously more frequent. One or two psychoculinary statisticians have attempted to put a precise figure on the occurrence of pudding flaps, and one feels pity for them, pity mixed with mocking laughter. Sooner or later, I think, we are going to have to accept that we will never know how often the making of a pudding was done in a state of flap, certainly not to a statistically significant extent. The implications of this are, of course, that I may be able to say nothing pertinent about pudding flaps save for what I have already said, that they used to be more common than they are in the gilded paradise we live in today. And it is a sort of Eden, as we zoom around the glistening metropolis in bendy hoverbuses, primping our bouffants with space-age preening tweezers, scanning the electronic information silos for the latest diktats from our Supreme Leader, the Great Helmswoman Hazel Blears, plugging our pods into hubs, enduring cataclysmic hailstorms with undiminished joie de vivre, and taking our state-provided One-Pig-Per-Person-Policy pig for a brisk walk through the concrete underpasses below the boulevards. Yet some say it is a fool's paradise, and they may be right. Perhaps there is a deep, primeval human need to get into a flap when preparing a pudding, whether it is a pudding of suet or of plums or of greasy slops. Our loss of those flaps, at least in our daily lives, has cost us dear. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Pudding Flaps 04:33 Cargpan And Beppo 11:34 Huad Jardo 13:05 Six Lectures On Fruit 20:24 Whence Inspip Fled 23:47 Exemplary Slobbering Vignettes PUDDING FLAPS A while ago I wrote about hiking pickles, and today I want to address the equally important topic of pudding flaps. Flaps about pudding are rarer than they once were, chiefly because puddings play a less critical role in our diets than used to be the case. Time was when no meal was innocent of a pudding, and though of course not every pudding preparation was the occasion of a flap, the incidence of such flaps was obviously more frequent. One or two psychoculinary statisticians have attempted to put a precise figure on the occurrence of pudding flaps, and one feels pity for them, pity mixed with mocking laughter. Sooner or later, I think, we are going to have to accept that we will never know how often the making of a pudding was done in a state of flap, certainly not to a statistically significant extent. The implications of this are, of course, that I may be able to say nothing pertinent about pudding flaps save for what I have already said, that they used to be more common than they are in the gilded paradise we live in today. And it is a sort of Eden, as we zoom around the glistening metropolis in bendy hoverbuses, primping our bouffants with space-age preening tweezers, scanning the electronic information silos for the latest diktats from our Supreme Leader, the Great Helmswoman Hazel Blears, plugging our pods into hubs, enduring cataclysmic hailstorms with undiminished joie de vivre, and taking our state-provided One-Pig-Per-Person-Policy pig for a brisk walk through the concrete underpasses below the boulevards. Yet some say it is a fool's paradise, and they may be right. Perhaps there is a deep, primeval human need to get into a flap when preparing a pudding, whether it is a pudding of suet or of plums or of greasy slops. Our loss of those flaps, at least in our daily lives, has cost us dear. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-1330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-06Thu, 06 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 Advice Regarding Vinegar 07:03 Dobson's Blotter 14:58 Botany Lesson 19:18 Letter From A Wooden Child 25:23 Large Door ADVICE REGARDING VINEGAR The best thing to do, in certain circumstances, is to lie on your side, upon the grass, in a meadow, and have an acolyte pour vinegar into your ear through a funnel. When you stand up, in the middle of the meadow, and tilt your head, shaking it a little, the vinegar will be expelled from your ear and you will feel the benefits. It is important that you have an acolyte who can properly adjudge the amount of vinegar to pour into your ear. Too little, and the whole exercise is pointless. Too much, and you will be tilting your head and shaking it until the cows come home, and you will find it very difficult to expel all the vinegar. When the cows come home they may be disconcerted to find you in their meadow, with your tilted head, and some of them may become fractious. Fractious cows can be dangerous, so it will help if you have your acolyte armed with some sort of cow-protection device. This might be made of corrugated cardboard, or alternatively of tin foil. Best to consult a catalogue of cow-protection devices beforehand, with your acolyte at your side. Choosing an acolyte to whom you are prepared to entrust the pouring, and the cow-protection, is a fraught business, believe you me. It is a process during which you can expect much heightened emotion, many tears, a certain amount of wailing, and, now and then, fencing contests, with flashing epees. It has even been known for rival acolytes to bash each other about with spades, so it is advisable not to give them access to the keys to the potting shed. You will probably have at least one set of duplicate potting shed keys, hanging from a hook in the pantry, so make sure you keep the pantry out of bounds to your acolytes, save for those who need to enter it to fetch tins of tinned plums and tinned radishes and other tinned goods. It is a simple matter to give but one acolyte the responsibility for the fetching of tins, and that acolyte can be disqualified from even the possibility of pouring vinegar into your ears in the middle of the cow meadow, while you lie on your side, by having him blinded or having his legs broken and confining him to the house. Another thing to bear in mind when choosing the appropriate acolyte is that they must be able to get you from the house to the middle of the meadow with the minimum of fuss. Fuss is corrosive of the soul and has been known to result in horrible bodily eruptions such as sores and boils and suppurating patches of pus in such tender places as the groin and the armpits. You will want a level-headed and charming acolyte, one who, confronted by menacing geese on the way from the house to the meadow, will soothe them by singing something by Kevin Coyne in a deeply lovely voice. Geese are usually placated in this way, even the most ferocious ones. You will probably want to be carried from the house to the meadow on a palanquin, given your preening self-regard. You will thus require additional acolytes to do the carrying, one of whom can also be the vinegar-pouring acolyte, if you so wish. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 Advice Regarding Vinegar 07:03 Dobson's Blotter 14:58 Botany Lesson 19:18 Letter From A Wooden Child 25:23 Large Door ADVICE REGARDING VINEGAR The best thing to do, in certain circumstances, is to lie on your side, upon the grass, in a meadow, and have an acolyte pour vinegar into your ear through a funnel. When you stand up, in the middle of the meadow, and tilt your head, shaking it a little, the vinegar will be expelled from your ear and you will feel the benefits. It is important that you have an acolyte who can properly adjudge the amount of vinegar to pour into your ear. Too little, and the whole exercise is pointless. Too much, and you will be tilting your head and shaking it until the cows come home, and you will find it very difficult to expel all the vinegar. When the cows come home they may be disconcerted to find you in their meadow, with your tilted head, and some of them may become fractious. Fractious cows can be dangerous, so it will help if you have your acolyte armed with some sort of cow-protection device. This might be made of corrugated cardboard, or alternatively of tin foil. Best to consult a catalogue of cow-protection devices beforehand, with your acolyte at your side. Choosing an acolyte to whom you are prepared to entrust the pouring, and the cow-protection, is a fraught business, believe you me. It is a process during which you can expect much heightened emotion, many tears, a certain amount of wailing, and, now and then, fencing contests, with flashing epees. It has even been known for rival acolytes to bash each other about with spades, so it is advisable not to give them access to the keys to the potting shed. You will probably have at least one set of duplicate potting shed keys, hanging from a hook in the pantry, so make sure you keep the pantry out of bounds to your acolytes, save for those who need to enter it to fetch tins of tinned plums and tinned radishes and other tinned goods. It is a simple matter to give but one acolyte the responsibility for the fetching of tins, and that acolyte can be disqualified from even the possibility of pouring vinegar into your ears in the middle of the cow meadow, while you lie on your side, by having him blinded or having his legs broken and confining him to the house. Another thing to bear in mind when choosing the appropriate acolyte is that they must be able to get you from the house to the middle of the meadow with the minimum of fuss. Fuss is corrosive of the soul and has been known to result in horrible bodily eruptions such as sores and boils and suppurating patches of pus in such tender places as the groin and the armpits. You will want a level-headed and charming acolyte, one who, confronted by menacing geese on the way from the house to the meadow, will soothe them by singing something by Kevin Coyne in a deeply lovely voice. Geese are usually placated in this way, even the most ferocious ones. You will probably want to be carried from the house to the meadow on a palanquin, given your preening self-regard. You will thus require additional acolytes to do the carrying, one of whom can also be the vinegar-pouring acolyte, if you so wish. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-04-0630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-03-16Thu, 16 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:47 Plums In The Puddle 06:28 Tiptop Toofles 10:14 Imagine A Loopy Prig 14:51 Borp 20:56 Pillow Pamphlets PLUMS IN THE PUDDLE This is an outdoor game that will bring gleeful smiles to tinies and adults alike. Buy a bag of plums from the greengrocer's and whistle as you and your family stride purposefully to a place of puddles. It might be a canal towpath or a field or even a derelict shopping precinct, and there need only be a single puddle. Take the plums out of the bag and distribute them to the family members so that everyone has the same number. If the numbers of persons and plums do not match up, you can either put the plums back into the bag and go back to the greengrocer's to buy some more, or have one or more family members carted away by the secret police. Once you have that settled, the game can begin. Each takes their turn to throw their plum or plums into the puddle. If someone's plum misses the puddle, and lands on the towpath or the grass or the concrete, they can either take their turn again, or pay a forfeit, such as being carted away by the secret police. When all the plums are bobbing about in the puddle, the game is over and you can all go home, taking a short detour past the secret police interrogation centre to attempt to retrieve any family members who have been carted there. This will usually be pointless, however, as the secret policeman at the gate will deny any knowledge of your family members and insist that the interrogation centre is but an innocent warehouse or office building. Do not become jumpy or ill-tempered with the secret policeman or you are likely to become an unperson, after a period of interrogation, and you won't be throwing any plums into a puddle ever again. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-03-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:47 Plums In The Puddle 06:28 Tiptop Toofles 10:14 Imagine A Loopy Prig 14:51 Borp 20:56 Pillow Pamphlets PLUMS IN THE PUDDLE This is an outdoor game that will bring gleeful smiles to tinies and adults alike. Buy a bag of plums from the greengrocer's and whistle as you and your family stride purposefully to a place of puddles. It might be a canal towpath or a field or even a derelict shopping precinct, and there need only be a single puddle. Take the plums out of the bag and distribute them to the family members so that everyone has the same number. If the numbers of persons and plums do not match up, you can either put the plums back into the bag and go back to the greengrocer's to buy some more, or have one or more family members carted away by the secret police. Once you have that settled, the game can begin. Each takes their turn to throw their plum or plums into the puddle. If someone's plum misses the puddle, and lands on the towpath or the grass or the concrete, they can either take their turn again, or pay a forfeit, such as being carted away by the secret police. When all the plums are bobbing about in the puddle, the game is over and you can all go home, taking a short detour past the secret police interrogation centre to attempt to retrieve any family members who have been carted there. This will usually be pointless, however, as the secret policeman at the gate will deny any knowledge of your family members and insist that the interrogation centre is but an innocent warehouse or office building. Do not become jumpy or ill-tempered with the secret policeman or you are likely to become an unperson, after a period of interrogation, and you won't be throwing any plums into a puddle ever again. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-03-1630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-03-09Thu, 09 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:57 Plums 15:04 Gethsemane Picnic Time 20:53 Fruiterer's Gleam PLUMS One windy morning in the late 1950s, Dobson became fixated with the desire to have a type of plum named after him. "Imagine the thrill," he said to Marigold Chew, over breakfast, "going to the fruiterer's and asking for a half pound bag of Dobsons!" Marigold Chew said nothing in reply, merely casting her eye over Dobson in precisely the way a compositor might look at a pamphleteer. Dobson had a very flimsy grasp of matters botanical, and had never grown any fruit in his life. He was ready to acknowledge that these were distinct disadvantages. If the world was ever to be enhanced by a plum called Dobson, drastic activity was required. After breakfast, putting on a pair of secondhand winklepickers, he pranced off to the kiosk by the pylon on the patch of waste ground by the sewage plant, over which loomed the immensity of Pilgarlic Tor and, above it, a sky blue and clear and without any sign of an imminent hailstorm. Unaccountably, the kiosk was shut, and not simply shut but boarded up, covered over with large rectangular panels of reinforced hardboard hammered into place with dozens of big fat nails. No signage had been pasted on to any of the panels to explain this startling state of affairs. Whenever anything changed within his familiar bailiwick, however slightly, Dobson was avid to be told about it, greedy for details, and ever on the lookout for signs and announcements and bulletins, in the absence of which he was liable to have a neurasthenic attack, and emit little cries, just like Edgar Allan Poe when he got the jitters, or the Wild Boy of Aveyron when deprived of potatoes. On this day, however, so consumed was the out of print pamphleteer with his plum plan that he sailed on past the boarded-up kiosk, fleet in his winklepickers, and carried on along the lane abutting the sewage plant annexe, past the clown hospital and the vinegar distillery and the bottomless viper-pit, until, crossing Sawdust Bridge, he approached a tobacconist's. Here, thought Dobson, he might find the publication he was seeking, for in addition to a range of pungent cigarettes and cigarillos and pipe tobaccos from the more benighted regions of the earth, the shop stocked a few magazines and penny dreadfuls and hastily-pasted-together prog rock fanzines, alongside the complete works of John Ruskin in pirated editions. It was quite a tobacconist's. As he pranced closer to its gaudy doorway, however, the pamphleteer's path was blocked by a peasant leading an improbably numerous herd of goats to pasture. Dobson had no option but to stand and wait while goat after goat after goat after goat after goat passed slowly by. Just as our pamphleteer knew little of botany, it may be that the reader is ignorant of the goat world. Briefly, then, goats are cloven-hooved and Satanic and their milk has a peculiarly goaty flavour and they come in a number of varieties including the Nubian and the Toggenburg and the Anatolian Black and the Booted and the Fainting and the Finnish Landrace. Some such goats were among the flock that passed in front of Dobson, who sat down on a tuffet and ate some curds and whey, cartons of which he kept in his pockets as emergency snack solutions. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-03-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:57 Plums 15:04 Gethsemane Picnic Time 20:53 Fruiterer's Gleam PLUMS One windy morning in the late 1950s, Dobson became fixated with the desire to have a type of plum named after him. "Imagine the thrill," he said to Marigold Chew, over breakfast, "going to the fruiterer's and asking for a half pound bag of Dobsons!" Marigold Chew said nothing in reply, merely casting her eye over Dobson in precisely the way a compositor might look at a pamphleteer. Dobson had a very flimsy grasp of matters botanical, and had never grown any fruit in his life. He was ready to acknowledge that these were distinct disadvantages. If the world was ever to be enhanced by a plum called Dobson, drastic activity was required. After breakfast, putting on a pair of secondhand winklepickers, he pranced off to the kiosk by the pylon on the patch of waste ground by the sewage plant, over which loomed the immensity of Pilgarlic Tor and, above it, a sky blue and clear and without any sign of an imminent hailstorm. Unaccountably, the kiosk was shut, and not simply shut but boarded up, covered over with large rectangular panels of reinforced hardboard hammered into place with dozens of big fat nails. No signage had been pasted on to any of the panels to explain this startling state of affairs. Whenever anything changed within his familiar bailiwick, however slightly, Dobson was avid to be told about it, greedy for details, and ever on the lookout for signs and announcements and bulletins, in the absence of which he was liable to have a neurasthenic attack, and emit little cries, just like Edgar Allan Poe when he got the jitters, or the Wild Boy of Aveyron when deprived of potatoes. On this day, however, so consumed was the out of print pamphleteer with his plum plan that he sailed on past the boarded-up kiosk, fleet in his winklepickers, and carried on along the lane abutting the sewage plant annexe, past the clown hospital and the vinegar distillery and the bottomless viper-pit, until, crossing Sawdust Bridge, he approached a tobacconist's. Here, thought Dobson, he might find the publication he was seeking, for in addition to a range of pungent cigarettes and cigarillos and pipe tobaccos from the more benighted regions of the earth, the shop stocked a few magazines and penny dreadfuls and hastily-pasted-together prog rock fanzines, alongside the complete works of John Ruskin in pirated editions. It was quite a tobacconist's. As he pranced closer to its gaudy doorway, however, the pamphleteer's path was blocked by a peasant leading an improbably numerous herd of goats to pasture. Dobson had no option but to stand and wait while goat after goat after goat after goat after goat passed slowly by. Just as our pamphleteer knew little of botany, it may be that the reader is ignorant of the goat world. Briefly, then, goats are cloven-hooved and Satanic and their milk has a peculiarly goaty flavour and they come in a number of varieties including the Nubian and the Toggenburg and the Anatolian Black and the Booted and the Fainting and the Finnish Landrace. Some such goats were among the flock that passed in front of Dobson, who sat down on a tuffet and ate some curds and whey, cartons of which he kept in his pockets as emergency snack solutions. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-03-0930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-03-02Thu, 02 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:38 On And On And On 10:11 The Prolix Pirates 12:58 The Sea (An Abandoned Ditty) 13:51 Swarfega Pitfalls 22:08 Swarfega Pratfalls 23:32 Dim Tyrant (Revisited) ON AND ON AND ON One of the most unlikely stars of the golden age of the variety theatre was the monologuist Zoltan Jiffy. His monologues, delivered in a booming, robotic monotone, were notorious for going on and on and on and on and on and on. And on. Audiences listened as if spellbound as he told anecdotes, devoid of interest or incident or rhythm or punchlines or anything remotely worth listening to, about topics such as drains and straw and windswept coastal headlands and emus and rutting deer and porches and crumpled paper and tin foil and capercaillies and Wells Fargo and dust and cruise ships and pin cushions and slime and tofu and mental aberrations and hopelessness and armoires and corporate sponsorship and the Great Dismal maroons and hens and albinos and grease and tongue twisters and woodland sprites and goats and hats and court jesters and plumpness and ostriches and vainglory and canned fruits and ampersands and driftwood and macadamia nuts and the Chosen One and balconies and thirst and gravel and designated smoking zones and vodka and shrimps and antimony and the naming of racehorses and the old rugged cross and the Munich air disaster and Rumpelstiltskin and shadows and grains and misanthropy and carrots and podcasts and squeegee merchants and domes and the lives of the saints and putting things in alphabetical order and disarranging them so they were no longer in alphabetical order and rearranging them into qwertyuiop order and disarranging them again and chucking them all out of the window one by one and watching as they plummeted to earth hundreds of feet below, some landing on the unprotected heads of pedestrians, causing injury and in some cases death and then hearing the sirens of both ambulances and police cars and the thumping of boots on the staircase and the urgent pounding at the door, before it was bashed in with main force by a SWAT team and gristle and pangs and knitting needles and sin and egg yolks and bolts of cloth and hendiadys and the river Nile and shabbiness and gumption and freaks and pictures of Jap girls in synthesis and you want to know what happened after the SWAT team bashed the door in, slovenliness and ink patterns and swamps and sewing circles and spelling bees and bees and caster sugar and swimming pools and candour and ullage and slaughter and being placed under arrest and dragged down to the police station and interrogated at length and donkeys and volcanoes and imps and frost and soup and brooms and figs and din and hedges and ergot poisoning and orchards and swollen rivers and cheque stubs and ornithology and vinegar and lapis lazuli and supermarkets and boll weevils and champions and moustaches and confessing to the whole kit and kaboodle and entering a plea of befuddled stupidity and sandalwood and concussion and drip dry laundry and goblins and chalk and power stations and opopanax and brutes and gas and genuflection and full stop, full stop, dammit, I said full stop! Those in the audience who remained awake could sometimes discern, in Zoltan Jiffy's interminable monologues, scattered snatches of autobiography. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-03-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:38 On And On And On 10:11 The Prolix Pirates 12:58 The Sea (An Abandoned Ditty) 13:51 Swarfega Pitfalls 22:08 Swarfega Pratfalls 23:32 Dim Tyrant (Revisited) ON AND ON AND ON One of the most unlikely stars of the golden age of the variety theatre was the monologuist Zoltan Jiffy. His monologues, delivered in a booming, robotic monotone, were notorious for going on and on and on and on and on and on. And on. Audiences listened as if spellbound as he told anecdotes, devoid of interest or incident or rhythm or punchlines or anything remotely worth listening to, about topics such as drains and straw and windswept coastal headlands and emus and rutting deer and porches and crumpled paper and tin foil and capercaillies and Wells Fargo and dust and cruise ships and pin cushions and slime and tofu and mental aberrations and hopelessness and armoires and corporate sponsorship and the Great Dismal maroons and hens and albinos and grease and tongue twisters and woodland sprites and goats and hats and court jesters and plumpness and ostriches and vainglory and canned fruits and ampersands and driftwood and macadamia nuts and the Chosen One and balconies and thirst and gravel and designated smoking zones and vodka and shrimps and antimony and the naming of racehorses and the old rugged cross and the Munich air disaster and Rumpelstiltskin and shadows and grains and misanthropy and carrots and podcasts and squeegee merchants and domes and the lives of the saints and putting things in alphabetical order and disarranging them so they were no longer in alphabetical order and rearranging them into qwertyuiop order and disarranging them again and chucking them all out of the window one by one and watching as they plummeted to earth hundreds of feet below, some landing on the unprotected heads of pedestrians, causing injury and in some cases death and then hearing the sirens of both ambulances and police cars and the thumping of boots on the staircase and the urgent pounding at the door, before it was bashed in with main force by a SWAT team and gristle and pangs and knitting needles and sin and egg yolks and bolts of cloth and hendiadys and the river Nile and shabbiness and gumption and freaks and pictures of Jap girls in synthesis and you want to know what happened after the SWAT team bashed the door in, slovenliness and ink patterns and swamps and sewing circles and spelling bees and bees and caster sugar and swimming pools and candour and ullage and slaughter and being placed under arrest and dragged down to the police station and interrogated at length and donkeys and volcanoes and imps and frost and soup and brooms and figs and din and hedges and ergot poisoning and orchards and swollen rivers and cheque stubs and ornithology and vinegar and lapis lazuli and supermarkets and boll weevils and champions and moustaches and confessing to the whole kit and kaboodle and entering a plea of befuddled stupidity and sandalwood and concussion and drip dry laundry and goblins and chalk and power stations and opopanax and brutes and gas and genuflection and full stop, full stop, dammit, I said full stop! Those in the audience who remained awake could sometimes discern, in Zoltan Jiffy's interminable monologues, scattered snatches of autobiography. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-03-0230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-02-09Thu, 09 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:49 The Von Straubenzee Box Set 07:10 On Mad Axemen In Bell Towers 14:45 On Footnotes 24:47 A Cautionary Tale THE VON STRAUBENZEE BOX SET Lost trinket in ditch. Sky the colour of blubber. Elves darting from elm to elm. Time for pancakes. First, obtain a pan. Not the Great God Pan. He has other fish to fry. There are no fish in the ditch. It is a dry ditch, not a drainage ditch. Ah, drainage! The Great God Pan is wearing drainpipe trousers. It is his new look. He is standing next to a real drainpipe. The blubbery sky threatens rain. It will send water pouring down the drainpipe. Across the road, a clairvoyant is driving pigs to market. The trinket is a pig-shaped trinket. It belonged to one of the elves. The selves of elves are unreadable. They keep their distance. They laugh in the face of death. They keep their chins up. One elf has warts on his shins. They require ointment. That's right, oint. You can oint elvish shins with all manner of goo. Come get your goo, elf! It will cost a pretty penny. Or in exchange for a trinket. Maps and atlases chocker with elms. Elves unseen, because unreported by mappers. Soup and bridles. Bridles and soup. Odd sound of egg on wafer. The Great God Pan is riding pillion. Egg? Wafer? Morse code for both. What hath the Great God Pan wrought? Better drainage under blubber. It is no mean feat. Cox in boat with hacking cough. Given a lozenge. Given shrikes. Blue boat on Blubber Island Lake. Towelled down on Thursdays. To the sound of Petula Clark. Elves' eggs. Oh such yolks as unseen for centuries past! Dim, dim, dim. Boisterous blips. Devil take the blue tail fly. These are the words of Piffleboy. ON MAD AXEMEN IN BELL TOWERS France in the immediate aftermath of the revolution was not the only place in which a commissioner, seeking to climb a bell tower, would be deterred by the presence of an axe-wielding madman. It is a dilemma which has faced many commissioners, of differing stripes, in many lands at many times. What all the known and recorded instances have in common is the difficulty of ascertaining whether the woodcutter in the belfry is truly a madman, or is feigning madness as a ruse. No commissioner, it appears, has ever been able to say definitively, upon entering a bell tower with an axe-wielding woodcutter in situ, "Ah, a genuine madman!" or, conversely, "Oh ho, a perfectly sensible woodcutter pretending to be mad!" A recent scholarly analysis of the phenomenon sheds light on the methods commissioners and their minions have used to decide the question. It is not an incandescent light, nor even a bright one, for the past is suffused with a great darkness, as Pang Gong Loon demonstrated in his important paper on the subject, the title of which escapes me, understandably, as it was published long ago, in the past, and was thus suffused with a great darkness, which rather goes to prove Pang Gong Loon's point, if proof were needed. Me, I'll take him at his word. Even when the darkness is pitch black, we may still cast glimmers of light if we deploy what Pang Gong Loon called the "pointy torch of inquiry" into it. The author of the recent scholarly analysis clearly has such a pointy torch, for in the study we find such accounts as this: Hail to thee! I am a commissioner. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-02-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:49 The Von Straubenzee Box Set 07:10 On Mad Axemen In Bell Towers 14:45 On Footnotes 24:47 A Cautionary Tale THE VON STRAUBENZEE BOX SET Lost trinket in ditch. Sky the colour of blubber. Elves darting from elm to elm. Time for pancakes. First, obtain a pan. Not the Great God Pan. He has other fish to fry. There are no fish in the ditch. It is a dry ditch, not a drainage ditch. Ah, drainage! The Great God Pan is wearing drainpipe trousers. It is his new look. He is standing next to a real drainpipe. The blubbery sky threatens rain. It will send water pouring down the drainpipe. Across the road, a clairvoyant is driving pigs to market. The trinket is a pig-shaped trinket. It belonged to one of the elves. The selves of elves are unreadable. They keep their distance. They laugh in the face of death. They keep their chins up. One elf has warts on his shins. They require ointment. That's right, oint. You can oint elvish shins with all manner of goo. Come get your goo, elf! It will cost a pretty penny. Or in exchange for a trinket. Maps and atlases chocker with elms. Elves unseen, because unreported by mappers. Soup and bridles. Bridles and soup. Odd sound of egg on wafer. The Great God Pan is riding pillion. Egg? Wafer? Morse code for both. What hath the Great God Pan wrought? Better drainage under blubber. It is no mean feat. Cox in boat with hacking cough. Given a lozenge. Given shrikes. Blue boat on Blubber Island Lake. Towelled down on Thursdays. To the sound of Petula Clark. Elves' eggs. Oh such yolks as unseen for centuries past! Dim, dim, dim. Boisterous blips. Devil take the blue tail fly. These are the words of Piffleboy. ON MAD AXEMEN IN BELL TOWERS France in the immediate aftermath of the revolution was not the only place in which a commissioner, seeking to climb a bell tower, would be deterred by the presence of an axe-wielding madman. It is a dilemma which has faced many commissioners, of differing stripes, in many lands at many times. What all the known and recorded instances have in common is the difficulty of ascertaining whether the woodcutter in the belfry is truly a madman, or is feigning madness as a ruse. No commissioner, it appears, has ever been able to say definitively, upon entering a bell tower with an axe-wielding woodcutter in situ, "Ah, a genuine madman!" or, conversely, "Oh ho, a perfectly sensible woodcutter pretending to be mad!" A recent scholarly analysis of the phenomenon sheds light on the methods commissioners and their minions have used to decide the question. It is not an incandescent light, nor even a bright one, for the past is suffused with a great darkness, as Pang Gong Loon demonstrated in his important paper on the subject, the title of which escapes me, understandably, as it was published long ago, in the past, and was thus suffused with a great darkness, which rather goes to prove Pang Gong Loon's point, if proof were needed. Me, I'll take him at his word. Even when the darkness is pitch black, we may still cast glimmers of light if we deploy what Pang Gong Loon called the "pointy torch of inquiry" into it. The author of the recent scholarly analysis clearly has such a pointy torch, for in the study we find such accounts as this: Hail to thee! I am a commissioner. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-02-0930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-02-02Thu, 02 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 On The Tosspot 08:22 Episode 44 (Swan Registry Version) 10:04 Songs For Strangled Puppies 12:41 Bellowing Milksop 18:28 Horst Gack's Familiar 23:14 Piffleboy ON THE TOSSPOT I have been asked to compile a report on the Tosspot. It is a great honour and I hope to acquit myself with really fantastic splendour. That would be a feather in my cap. I decided the best way to approach the Tosspot is to tackle him fruit by fruit. It is not that fruit looms large in his tosspottery, but dimpus dempus, as they say in Latin, they being the Tosspot's acolytes. Before proceeding, with I hope fantastic splendour, it is meet to say a few words about those acolytes. Not every (lower case) tosspot has acolytes, but the definitively upper case Tosspot does. That goes without saying. So why did I say it? Aha! For the same reason that we are going to tackle him fruit by fruit. The Tosspot's acolytes come in a variety of caps and colours, but what they all have in common is possession of a key to the hillside sanctum. It is as fine a sanctum as anybody in search of a sanctum could wish for. Set halfway up a hillside, concealed by serried beds of hollyhocks, it is both stony and capacious. There is a joke going the rounds that the Tosspot is himself stony and capacious, and the acolytes guffaw, though it is unclear what, if anything, it means. I guffawed myself, when I first heard it, to seem one of the in-crowd, but so many and various were my slips and fumbles in other respects that I was always marked as an outsider. That is perhaps why I have been entrusted to write this report. An acolyte would just witter adoringly, like a moonstruck calf. With the fruit by fruit approach, it is essential to get the fruits in the correct order, otherwise even the most fantastically splendid report writer can get into all sorts of pickles. I know that to my cost. A while ago I was asked to write a report about bike wankers. You might think that is a topic that does not lend itself to the fruit by fruit approach, but you would be wrong, very very wrong. But I made the fatal mistake of starting off with plums, then bananas, and quite frankly after that I was done for. The report was binned, and justifiably so. I am not going to make the same mistake again, which is why for my Tosspot report I decided to place the fruits in a very specific order, one derived from a close reading of certain obscure texts by Madame Blavatsky. HPB herself does not actually refer to any fruits in the passages I consulted, but that is the point of my close reading, to eke from her words meanings which may not have been apparent even to her. You cannot read just any old writer using this method and expect results. I have tried it, for example, with H. Rider Haggard, Marie Corelli, and Dennis Wheatley, and in each case I ended up in a perfect flap. Either my fruits were in a blithering chaotic order or there was no hint of fruit or, come to that, of order. I ended up having to visit a greengrocer and buy one of each fruit and align them by hand across the table, which took hours, and even then I had no idea if the order was appropriate to my purposes. But I know I can trust Madame Blavatsky, at least in this regard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-02-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 On The Tosspot 08:22 Episode 44 (Swan Registry Version) 10:04 Songs For Strangled Puppies 12:41 Bellowing Milksop 18:28 Horst Gack's Familiar 23:14 Piffleboy ON THE TOSSPOT I have been asked to compile a report on the Tosspot. It is a great honour and I hope to acquit myself with really fantastic splendour. That would be a feather in my cap. I decided the best way to approach the Tosspot is to tackle him fruit by fruit. It is not that fruit looms large in his tosspottery, but dimpus dempus, as they say in Latin, they being the Tosspot's acolytes. Before proceeding, with I hope fantastic splendour, it is meet to say a few words about those acolytes. Not every (lower case) tosspot has acolytes, but the definitively upper case Tosspot does. That goes without saying. So why did I say it? Aha! For the same reason that we are going to tackle him fruit by fruit. The Tosspot's acolytes come in a variety of caps and colours, but what they all have in common is possession of a key to the hillside sanctum. It is as fine a sanctum as anybody in search of a sanctum could wish for. Set halfway up a hillside, concealed by serried beds of hollyhocks, it is both stony and capacious. There is a joke going the rounds that the Tosspot is himself stony and capacious, and the acolytes guffaw, though it is unclear what, if anything, it means. I guffawed myself, when I first heard it, to seem one of the in-crowd, but so many and various were my slips and fumbles in other respects that I was always marked as an outsider. That is perhaps why I have been entrusted to write this report. An acolyte would just witter adoringly, like a moonstruck calf. With the fruit by fruit approach, it is essential to get the fruits in the correct order, otherwise even the most fantastically splendid report writer can get into all sorts of pickles. I know that to my cost. A while ago I was asked to write a report about bike wankers. You might think that is a topic that does not lend itself to the fruit by fruit approach, but you would be wrong, very very wrong. But I made the fatal mistake of starting off with plums, then bananas, and quite frankly after that I was done for. The report was binned, and justifiably so. I am not going to make the same mistake again, which is why for my Tosspot report I decided to place the fruits in a very specific order, one derived from a close reading of certain obscure texts by Madame Blavatsky. HPB herself does not actually refer to any fruits in the passages I consulted, but that is the point of my close reading, to eke from her words meanings which may not have been apparent even to her. You cannot read just any old writer using this method and expect results. I have tried it, for example, with H. Rider Haggard, Marie Corelli, and Dennis Wheatley, and in each case I ended up in a perfect flap. Either my fruits were in a blithering chaotic order or there was no hint of fruit or, come to that, of order. I ended up having to visit a greengrocer and buy one of each fruit and align them by hand across the table, which took hours, and even then I had no idea if the order was appropriate to my purposes. But I know I can trust Madame Blavatsky, at least in this regard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-02-0230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-01-26Thu, 26 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Thumping An Owl 06:35 That Pot Or Vase I Think 11:10 Being Celia 18:21 Sparky Plover THUMPING AN OWL The other day I was woken from a much-needed nap by a screech. I identified it, instantly, as the screech of a screech owl, for I am ever alert to occurrences of an ornithological kidney. I peered out of the window and spotted the owl, perched on a picket fence. I pranced outside, went straight towards the owl, bunched my fist, and thumped it in what I supposed was its solar plexus. The owl toppled from the fence, looking mightily disconcerted. As soon as it hit the ground, it righted itself, unfurled its wings, and flew away. I watched until it had vanished in the blue empyrean, which in truth was grey and overcast rather than blue, but empyrean nonetheless, and then I returned indoors to resume my nap. The next day I answered a knock at the door to be confronted by a gangly beanpole wearing some sort of peaked cap with glittering metal insignia pinned to it. "Interrogative : would you be Mr Key?" he said. "C'est moi!" I replied, foolishly, for I was in foolish spirits. "Interrogative," he said, again, "Yesterday, did you thump an owl, knocking it from its perch?" "I did," I said, "It was a screech owl and its screech woke me from a much-needed nap." "Interrogative," he said yet again, and this time I interrupted him. "Why do you keep saying 'interrogative'?" "Don't get snippy with me, Mr Key, just answer my questions. Interrogative : are you aware that the thumping of owls is in contravention of the municipal bye-laws regarding conduct towards and/or in the presence of owls?" "What?" I said, so he repeated himself, so I did too, and he was about to rerepeat himself when I flicked at his face a morsel of smokers' poptart I happened to be holding and told him to go away. This was a mistake. He bunched his fist and thumped me in the solar plexus. When I was able to breathe again, he helped me inside, and we sat facing each other at the breakfast table. "A word of advice," he said, "It is never a good idea to try to stymie the activities of a senior officer of the Civic Owl Squad going about his lawful business. As you have learned. Now let there be no more nonsense from you. I am invested with powers more draconian, more merciless, than you could imagine in your wildest and most sweat-drenched, pillow-gnawing nightmares." "Erk-gah" was all I could say, for I was still winded. "Now. You have admitted to thumping an owl. I have it down on my pocket cassette recorder. Your nap is of no concern to us, by the way. By 'us' I mean myself and the screech owl you thumped. Though not present, I can assure you that it can hear every word you say, for screech owls are blessed with a tremendously good sense of hearing. I offer that tip in case you were minded to say something disobliging about the owl when you recover the power of speech. It will be listening carefully to everything you say for several months, until, that is, you have made complete restitution for your thumping." "Reugh?" I gasped. "Precisely," he said, "Restitution. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-01-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Thumping An Owl 06:35 That Pot Or Vase I Think 11:10 Being Celia 18:21 Sparky Plover THUMPING AN OWL The other day I was woken from a much-needed nap by a screech. I identified it, instantly, as the screech of a screech owl, for I am ever alert to occurrences of an ornithological kidney. I peered out of the window and spotted the owl, perched on a picket fence. I pranced outside, went straight towards the owl, bunched my fist, and thumped it in what I supposed was its solar plexus. The owl toppled from the fence, looking mightily disconcerted. As soon as it hit the ground, it righted itself, unfurled its wings, and flew away. I watched until it had vanished in the blue empyrean, which in truth was grey and overcast rather than blue, but empyrean nonetheless, and then I returned indoors to resume my nap. The next day I answered a knock at the door to be confronted by a gangly beanpole wearing some sort of peaked cap with glittering metal insignia pinned to it. "Interrogative : would you be Mr Key?" he said. "C'est moi!" I replied, foolishly, for I was in foolish spirits. "Interrogative," he said, again, "Yesterday, did you thump an owl, knocking it from its perch?" "I did," I said, "It was a screech owl and its screech woke me from a much-needed nap." "Interrogative," he said yet again, and this time I interrupted him. "Why do you keep saying 'interrogative'?" "Don't get snippy with me, Mr Key, just answer my questions. Interrogative : are you aware that the thumping of owls is in contravention of the municipal bye-laws regarding conduct towards and/or in the presence of owls?" "What?" I said, so he repeated himself, so I did too, and he was about to rerepeat himself when I flicked at his face a morsel of smokers' poptart I happened to be holding and told him to go away. This was a mistake. He bunched his fist and thumped me in the solar plexus. When I was able to breathe again, he helped me inside, and we sat facing each other at the breakfast table. "A word of advice," he said, "It is never a good idea to try to stymie the activities of a senior officer of the Civic Owl Squad going about his lawful business. As you have learned. Now let there be no more nonsense from you. I am invested with powers more draconian, more merciless, than you could imagine in your wildest and most sweat-drenched, pillow-gnawing nightmares." "Erk-gah" was all I could say, for I was still winded. "Now. You have admitted to thumping an owl. I have it down on my pocket cassette recorder. Your nap is of no concern to us, by the way. By 'us' I mean myself and the screech owl you thumped. Though not present, I can assure you that it can hear every word you say, for screech owls are blessed with a tremendously good sense of hearing. I offer that tip in case you were minded to say something disobliging about the owl when you recover the power of speech. It will be listening carefully to everything you say for several months, until, that is, you have made complete restitution for your thumping." "Reugh?" I gasped. "Precisely," he said, "Restitution. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-01-2630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-01-19Thu, 19 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Groovy Janitor 08:11 The Ornithologist And His Helpmeet 14:16 Dobson's Abortive Bandicoot Pamphlet 21:08 Sops And Fillips GROOVY JANITOR Once upon a time there was a groovy janitor. That is about all there is to say about him. He was groovy, and he was a janitor. Or, he was a janitor, and he was groovy. These two statements are not identical. We must be alert to nuance. Do we give more or less weight to his janitordom or to his grooviness? Much as we might wish to grant them equal importance, we know in our heart of hearts that to do so is blind idiocy. Oh come on, admit it. You are leaning, even if only slightly, in terms of your level of interest in this majestic piece of prose, towards the janitoriness or the groove. As a janitor, the groovy janitor was often to be found in a corridor, with a mop and a pail, rattling a bunch of keys, or perhaps bearing down upon a fixture or fitting armed with a hammer or a screwdriver or a wrench. As a person of groove, the groovy janitor, while so engaged, would often be snapping his fingers to the latest sounds from some of our top beat groups, a long but not exhaustive list of which has been compiled by Bernard Levin. Shall we refamiliarise ourselves with the roll call? Some [beat groups] were almost as famous, and successful, as the Beatles; some were known only to the most devoted aficionados. But all added to the atmosphere of the decade, and the isle was full of noises as never before, coming from, among others, the Rolling Stones, the Bee Gees, the Monkees, the Doors, the Cream, the Mothers of Invention, the Seekers, the Who, the Small Faces, the Pretty Things, the Animals, the Pink Floyd, the Scaffold, the Grateful Dead, the Tremoloes, the Family, the Supremes, the Holding Company, the Four Tops, the Led Zeppelin, the Shadows, the Exploding Galaxy, the Editors, the Fugs, the Gods, the Kinks, the Hermits, the Paper Dolls, the Breakaways, the Greaseband, the Casuals, the Amen Corner, the Big Sound, the Flirtations, the Herd, the Marbles, the Status Quo, the New York Public Library, the Hollies, the Foundations, the Electric Havens, the Four Seasons, the Bachelors, the Seychelles, the Love Affair, the Fifth Dimension, the Three Dog Night, the Equals, the Vagabonds, the Marmalade, the Mindbenders, the Moody Blues, the Mirettes, the Tuesday's Children, the Plastic Penny, the Procol Harum, the Troggs, the Fruit Machine, the Union Gap, the 1910 Fruitgum Co., the Beach Boys, the Fairport Convention, the Vanity Fair, the Harmony Grass, the Aces, the Young Tradition, the Nice, the Dubliners, the Tinkers, the Fleetwood Mac, the Incredible String Band, the Web, the Little Free Rock, the Blodwyn Pig, the Liverpool Scene, the Spooky Tooth, the Third Ear, the High Tide, the Mamas and Papas, the Carnations, the Pacemakers, the From Genesis to Revelation, the O'Hara Express, the Pentangle, the Chickenshack, the Blind Faith, the Fourmost, the Searchers, the Four Pennies, the Bar-Kays, the Unit Four Plus Two, the Hedgehoppers Anonymous, the Applejacks, the Box Tops, the Edison Lighthouse, the Blood, Sweat and Tears, the Vibrations, and the Rada Krishna Temple. From this we can adduce that our groovy janitor was being groovy, and a janitor, in the 1960s. But that was half a century ago! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-01-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Groovy Janitor 08:11 The Ornithologist And His Helpmeet 14:16 Dobson's Abortive Bandicoot Pamphlet 21:08 Sops And Fillips GROOVY JANITOR Once upon a time there was a groovy janitor. That is about all there is to say about him. He was groovy, and he was a janitor. Or, he was a janitor, and he was groovy. These two statements are not identical. We must be alert to nuance. Do we give more or less weight to his janitordom or to his grooviness? Much as we might wish to grant them equal importance, we know in our heart of hearts that to do so is blind idiocy. Oh come on, admit it. You are leaning, even if only slightly, in terms of your level of interest in this majestic piece of prose, towards the janitoriness or the groove. As a janitor, the groovy janitor was often to be found in a corridor, with a mop and a pail, rattling a bunch of keys, or perhaps bearing down upon a fixture or fitting armed with a hammer or a screwdriver or a wrench. As a person of groove, the groovy janitor, while so engaged, would often be snapping his fingers to the latest sounds from some of our top beat groups, a long but not exhaustive list of which has been compiled by Bernard Levin. Shall we refamiliarise ourselves with the roll call? Some [beat groups] were almost as famous, and successful, as the Beatles; some were known only to the most devoted aficionados. But all added to the atmosphere of the decade, and the isle was full of noises as never before, coming from, among others, the Rolling Stones, the Bee Gees, the Monkees, the Doors, the Cream, the Mothers of Invention, the Seekers, the Who, the Small Faces, the Pretty Things, the Animals, the Pink Floyd, the Scaffold, the Grateful Dead, the Tremoloes, the Family, the Supremes, the Holding Company, the Four Tops, the Led Zeppelin, the Shadows, the Exploding Galaxy, the Editors, the Fugs, the Gods, the Kinks, the Hermits, the Paper Dolls, the Breakaways, the Greaseband, the Casuals, the Amen Corner, the Big Sound, the Flirtations, the Herd, the Marbles, the Status Quo, the New York Public Library, the Hollies, the Foundations, the Electric Havens, the Four Seasons, the Bachelors, the Seychelles, the Love Affair, the Fifth Dimension, the Three Dog Night, the Equals, the Vagabonds, the Marmalade, the Mindbenders, the Moody Blues, the Mirettes, the Tuesday's Children, the Plastic Penny, the Procol Harum, the Troggs, the Fruit Machine, the Union Gap, the 1910 Fruitgum Co., the Beach Boys, the Fairport Convention, the Vanity Fair, the Harmony Grass, the Aces, the Young Tradition, the Nice, the Dubliners, the Tinkers, the Fleetwood Mac, the Incredible String Band, the Web, the Little Free Rock, the Blodwyn Pig, the Liverpool Scene, the Spooky Tooth, the Third Ear, the High Tide, the Mamas and Papas, the Carnations, the Pacemakers, the From Genesis to Revelation, the O'Hara Express, the Pentangle, the Chickenshack, the Blind Faith, the Fourmost, the Searchers, the Four Pennies, the Bar-Kays, the Unit Four Plus Two, the Hedgehoppers Anonymous, the Applejacks, the Box Tops, the Edison Lighthouse, the Blood, Sweat and Tears, the Vibrations, and the Rada Krishna Temple. From this we can adduce that our groovy janitor was being groovy, and a janitor, in the 1960s. But that was half a century ago! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-01-1930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2017-01-12Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Recipe 10:22 Tribulations Of The Buttonmaker 16:55 Ten Tarleton Tales--VIII 19:55 Monkey In Ice RECIPE For this recipe, I read, you will require a bag of frozen crinkle-cut oven chips, six cans of Squelcho!, a turnip, a parsnip, a punnet of Carlsbad plums, and the head of a pre-slaughtered pig. So I went to the shops and bought a bag of frozen crinkle-cut oven chips, six cans of Squelcho!, a turnip, a parsnip, and a punnet of Carlsbad plums. Obtaining the head of a pre-slaughtered pig proved more difficult. Not one among the parade of shops I frequented had any such thing in stock. The butcher's, which was my best hope, had its shutters down, and a scribbled sign posted on the shutters announcing closure due to rampant infectious disease, though it did not specify whether this referred to the butcher himself or to his supply of meat. Sitting on a municipal bench, eating one of the Carlsbad plums, I wondered if I might make a vegetarian version of the dish, using a pig's head fashioned from marzipan. But my skills as a sculptor or moulder have atrophied since the heady days of my youth at the Institute For Sculpting And Moulding, and I was not convinced my efforts with marzipan would yield anything that looked remotely akin to the head of a pig, By the time I had eaten a second Carlsbad plum, it was clear to me that I would have to go in search of a pre-slaughtered pig and remove its head. It is surprisingly difficult, in this day and age, to find a dead pig in a small town. I wandered into the countryside, keeping my eyes peeled, peering into bogs and ditches. This proving fruitless, I made my way to the top of a bluff, from where I could see for miles around. The climb was onerous, and when I reached the summit I was thirsty, so I opened one of the cans of Squelcho! and downed it in a single glug. Gazing out across the countryside, I shouted "Dead pig! Dead pig! Come out, come out, wherever you are!" I hoped, by this means, to coax into view a peasant, pushing a wheelbarrow in which rested a pre-slaughtered pig. Such a sight is not uncommon in the countryside, or so I am given to understand from my reading of various bucolic texts. In the pauses between my repeated shoutings, I fell to wondering--if an urban person could be urbane, was there an equivalent countryside quality, in which a rustic person could be rustice? I had no opportunity to find out, for after an hour or so atop the bluff, not a single peasant had appeared. The day was hot, and I noticed that my bag of frozen crinkle-cut oven ships was almost entirely thawed. I was also conscious that I had depleted my stocks of both Carlsbad plums and Squelcho! Unless I returned home in haste, I would end up consuming all the non-pig's head ingredients for the recipe, and my day would be wasted. I skittered down from the bluff, like a gambolling lamb, and headed back through the fields of muck towards town. All the while I was racking my brains trying to think of an acceptable substitute for the pre-slaughtered pig's head. What did I have in my cupboard? Pink wafer biscuits? Peas? A bowl of fayooz? A jar of pickles? Several contaminated cocktail sausages? Blubber? Somehow none of these seemed quite right, nor even remotely suitable. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-01-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Recipe 10:22 Tribulations Of The Buttonmaker 16:55 Ten Tarleton Tales--VIII 19:55 Monkey In Ice RECIPE For this recipe, I read, you will require a bag of frozen crinkle-cut oven chips, six cans of Squelcho!, a turnip, a parsnip, a punnet of Carlsbad plums, and the head of a pre-slaughtered pig. So I went to the shops and bought a bag of frozen crinkle-cut oven chips, six cans of Squelcho!, a turnip, a parsnip, and a punnet of Carlsbad plums. Obtaining the head of a pre-slaughtered pig proved more difficult. Not one among the parade of shops I frequented had any such thing in stock. The butcher's, which was my best hope, had its shutters down, and a scribbled sign posted on the shutters announcing closure due to rampant infectious disease, though it did not specify whether this referred to the butcher himself or to his supply of meat. Sitting on a municipal bench, eating one of the Carlsbad plums, I wondered if I might make a vegetarian version of the dish, using a pig's head fashioned from marzipan. But my skills as a sculptor or moulder have atrophied since the heady days of my youth at the Institute For Sculpting And Moulding, and I was not convinced my efforts with marzipan would yield anything that looked remotely akin to the head of a pig, By the time I had eaten a second Carlsbad plum, it was clear to me that I would have to go in search of a pre-slaughtered pig and remove its head. It is surprisingly difficult, in this day and age, to find a dead pig in a small town. I wandered into the countryside, keeping my eyes peeled, peering into bogs and ditches. This proving fruitless, I made my way to the top of a bluff, from where I could see for miles around. The climb was onerous, and when I reached the summit I was thirsty, so I opened one of the cans of Squelcho! and downed it in a single glug. Gazing out across the countryside, I shouted "Dead pig! Dead pig! Come out, come out, wherever you are!" I hoped, by this means, to coax into view a peasant, pushing a wheelbarrow in which rested a pre-slaughtered pig. Such a sight is not uncommon in the countryside, or so I am given to understand from my reading of various bucolic texts. In the pauses between my repeated shoutings, I fell to wondering--if an urban person could be urbane, was there an equivalent countryside quality, in which a rustic person could be rustice? I had no opportunity to find out, for after an hour or so atop the bluff, not a single peasant had appeared. The day was hot, and I noticed that my bag of frozen crinkle-cut oven ships was almost entirely thawed. I was also conscious that I had depleted my stocks of both Carlsbad plums and Squelcho! Unless I returned home in haste, I would end up consuming all the non-pig's head ingredients for the recipe, and my day would be wasted. I skittered down from the bluff, like a gambolling lamb, and headed back through the fields of muck towards town. All the while I was racking my brains trying to think of an acceptable substitute for the pre-slaughtered pig's head. What did I have in my cupboard? Pink wafer biscuits? Peas? A bowl of fayooz? A jar of pickles? Several contaminated cocktail sausages? Blubber? Somehow none of these seemed quite right, nor even remotely suitable. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2017-01-1230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-12-08Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Tremendous Potato Urgency 08:22 Dax 10:08 Winnipeg Janitor 13:54 Ice Chaos 22:51 Cow Byre Tsar TREMENDOUS POTATO URGENCY One morning Tiny Enid awoke from uneasy dreams with a sense of tremendous urgency related to potatoes. She was based in Winnipeg at the time, and had taken a room in a motel of undoubted seediness. "I could not pinpoint the reasons for my sense of breathless urgency on that grim March morning," she wrote, many years later, in her Memoirs, "All I knew was that potatoes had something to do with it." The heroic young adventuress eschewed the motel breakfast, a Winnipeg-style egg 'n' dough platter, sneaking out of a side entrance to avoid the man with the twisted lip at the front desk. The city was still new to her, and she had yet to locate any of the potato-related premises she felt such a tremendous urgency to visit. She limped across the plaza to her rented booster car and threw off its tarpaulin in one elegant sweep. Tiny Enid had been practising her elegant sweeping arm movements for some weeks, and the superb elegance with which she swept the tarpaulin off the car won her a round of applause from a nearby line of patient pastry persons queuing outside a pastry shop. Before revving up the engine of her booster car, Tiny Enid tramped over to the queue. She wanted to find out if she would sense an aura of potato urgency here, so close to her motel. It was possible, after all, that among the pastries sold by the pastry shop could be pastries with a potato filling. Was that urgency that cracked her awake a premonition that a Winnipeg-based criminal mad person had poisoned the potato pastries? If so, it would make sense for her to be bang on the scene rather than having to speed around the city, lost, unnerved, and not knowing quite what she was seeking, nor why. So many of the adventures of the tiny adventuress had begun from these moments of curious intuition. But it was still early in the day, and the pastry shop proprietor had not yet hoisted the shutters, hence the queue. Tiny Enid was hopeless at small talk, and she was at a loss how to engage with the still-clapping queue which was so impressed with the elegance of her sweeping arm movements. She pulled her sprightly black gold green crushed crepe hat down low, and pretended an interest in pebbles piled close to the pastry shop shutters. If her instincts were correct, she must be first into the shop when the shutters went up, before a poor innocent Winnipegite was felled by a poisoned potato pastry pie. Tiny Enid was a girl of impeccable manners, and she flushed with shame in anticipation of having to push aside the unkempt hobbledehoy who was first in the queue and who looked as if he had not eaten for a month. Luckily, as the pastry shop proprietor appeared with a hook on the end of a wooden pole with which by some shenanigans he hoisted the shutters, there was a distraction. Over by the statue of prominent Winnipegite Elias Conklin, who had been the city's mayor in 1881, a swarm of killer bees appeared out of the blue and set upon a defenceless old woman wearing her widow's weeds. The massed buzzing of the bees was nauseatingly loud, and the reaction of the pastry shop queue was instantaneous. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-12-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Tremendous Potato Urgency 08:22 Dax 10:08 Winnipeg Janitor 13:54 Ice Chaos 22:51 Cow Byre Tsar TREMENDOUS POTATO URGENCY One morning Tiny Enid awoke from uneasy dreams with a sense of tremendous urgency related to potatoes. She was based in Winnipeg at the time, and had taken a room in a motel of undoubted seediness. "I could not pinpoint the reasons for my sense of breathless urgency on that grim March morning," she wrote, many years later, in her Memoirs, "All I knew was that potatoes had something to do with it." The heroic young adventuress eschewed the motel breakfast, a Winnipeg-style egg 'n' dough platter, sneaking out of a side entrance to avoid the man with the twisted lip at the front desk. The city was still new to her, and she had yet to locate any of the potato-related premises she felt such a tremendous urgency to visit. She limped across the plaza to her rented booster car and threw off its tarpaulin in one elegant sweep. Tiny Enid had been practising her elegant sweeping arm movements for some weeks, and the superb elegance with which she swept the tarpaulin off the car won her a round of applause from a nearby line of patient pastry persons queuing outside a pastry shop. Before revving up the engine of her booster car, Tiny Enid tramped over to the queue. She wanted to find out if she would sense an aura of potato urgency here, so close to her motel. It was possible, after all, that among the pastries sold by the pastry shop could be pastries with a potato filling. Was that urgency that cracked her awake a premonition that a Winnipeg-based criminal mad person had poisoned the potato pastries? If so, it would make sense for her to be bang on the scene rather than having to speed around the city, lost, unnerved, and not knowing quite what she was seeking, nor why. So many of the adventures of the tiny adventuress had begun from these moments of curious intuition. But it was still early in the day, and the pastry shop proprietor had not yet hoisted the shutters, hence the queue. Tiny Enid was hopeless at small talk, and she was at a loss how to engage with the still-clapping queue which was so impressed with the elegance of her sweeping arm movements. She pulled her sprightly black gold green crushed crepe hat down low, and pretended an interest in pebbles piled close to the pastry shop shutters. If her instincts were correct, she must be first into the shop when the shutters went up, before a poor innocent Winnipegite was felled by a poisoned potato pastry pie. Tiny Enid was a girl of impeccable manners, and she flushed with shame in anticipation of having to push aside the unkempt hobbledehoy who was first in the queue and who looked as if he had not eaten for a month. Luckily, as the pastry shop proprietor appeared with a hook on the end of a wooden pole with which by some shenanigans he hoisted the shutters, there was a distraction. Over by the statue of prominent Winnipegite Elias Conklin, who had been the city's mayor in 1881, a swarm of killer bees appeared out of the blue and set upon a defenceless old woman wearing her widow's weeds. The massed buzzing of the bees was nauseatingly loud, and the reaction of the pastry shop queue was instantaneous. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-12-0830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-12-01Thu, 01 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 The Central Lever 06:17 On The Ebbing Away Of The Age Of Gilded Tin Baths 15:56 Hiking Pickle Revisited 24:34 Strictly Pamphleteering 26:16 Zoo Library News Update THE CENTRAL LEVER "The days of pulling the central lever are behind us"--Hazel Blears, quoted in The Guardian, 23 February 2007 Readers of a certain age will remember the levers. There was a row of them, colour-coded, black and pink and orange and cerise and yellow and golden and dun and red and lavender and green and mauve and coffee and blue and wheat and white. They had to be pulled in a precise order, of course, which changed from hour to hour. It was not well-paid work, being a lever pulling person, but it was dignified and responsible and important work, and those who pulled the levers were accorded due respect. And none gained as much respect as the puller of the central lever, the only one which changed colour, or rather was wrapped in burlap sheaths of different colours, hour by hour, and sometimes minute by minute, by dint of a scheme so abstruse, so utterly bewildering, that those responsible for it rarely lasted more than a couple of months in the job before they had to be retired off to a seaside resort. Pebblehead's bestselling paperback They Selected The Burlap Sheaths For The Central Lever : True Stories Of Heroic Colour-Coding is a useful, if failed, attempt to demystify the whole shenanigans in words of one syllable. It is sometimes hard to comprehend just how important the levers were. Nowadays, we are able to live happy and fulfilling lives without them, without the relentless pulling of them... or so it seems. I have my doubts. It is not mere nostalgia that makes me hanker for the days when the pulling of the levers, and particularly the pulling of the central lever, was uppermost in people's minds, drawing us together, binding us, giving us a sense of common purpose. Blodgett always remembered his time as the puller of the central lever as the happiest period of his life. His enemies said--still say!--that he only did the job for the free toffee apples, and normally one would agree. I have had stern words to say about Blodgettian gluttony myself, but for once I think his motives were pure. After an apprenticeship on the golden and pink levers, he stepped up to the central lever pulling position on St Gertrude's Day in 1952, and none who saw it will ever forget the beam of fantastic glee on his pockmarked and greasy face as he stood there, on his plinth, as the duty cadet swapped a blue for a slightly different shade of blue dyed burlap sheath on the central lever. The flock of trained nightingales on the railings burst into joyous song. Fiery stars flamed in the sky. Blodgett waited for the parp of a cornet which would be his signal to pull the central lever for the first time. Just thinking about it makes me want to weep, so please forgive my snufflings, as I forgive those who snuffle before me. Who would have thought that Blodgett would be the last person ever to pull the central lever? He did so for many, many years of course, with gusto and vim, to the applause of those who were, very occasionally, allowed past the railings to watch. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-12-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 The Central Lever 06:17 On The Ebbing Away Of The Age Of Gilded Tin Baths 15:56 Hiking Pickle Revisited 24:34 Strictly Pamphleteering 26:16 Zoo Library News Update THE CENTRAL LEVER "The days of pulling the central lever are behind us"--Hazel Blears, quoted in The Guardian, 23 February 2007 Readers of a certain age will remember the levers. There was a row of them, colour-coded, black and pink and orange and cerise and yellow and golden and dun and red and lavender and green and mauve and coffee and blue and wheat and white. They had to be pulled in a precise order, of course, which changed from hour to hour. It was not well-paid work, being a lever pulling person, but it was dignified and responsible and important work, and those who pulled the levers were accorded due respect. And none gained as much respect as the puller of the central lever, the only one which changed colour, or rather was wrapped in burlap sheaths of different colours, hour by hour, and sometimes minute by minute, by dint of a scheme so abstruse, so utterly bewildering, that those responsible for it rarely lasted more than a couple of months in the job before they had to be retired off to a seaside resort. Pebblehead's bestselling paperback They Selected The Burlap Sheaths For The Central Lever : True Stories Of Heroic Colour-Coding is a useful, if failed, attempt to demystify the whole shenanigans in words of one syllable. It is sometimes hard to comprehend just how important the levers were. Nowadays, we are able to live happy and fulfilling lives without them, without the relentless pulling of them... or so it seems. I have my doubts. It is not mere nostalgia that makes me hanker for the days when the pulling of the levers, and particularly the pulling of the central lever, was uppermost in people's minds, drawing us together, binding us, giving us a sense of common purpose. Blodgett always remembered his time as the puller of the central lever as the happiest period of his life. His enemies said--still say!--that he only did the job for the free toffee apples, and normally one would agree. I have had stern words to say about Blodgettian gluttony myself, but for once I think his motives were pure. After an apprenticeship on the golden and pink levers, he stepped up to the central lever pulling position on St Gertrude's Day in 1952, and none who saw it will ever forget the beam of fantastic glee on his pockmarked and greasy face as he stood there, on his plinth, as the duty cadet swapped a blue for a slightly different shade of blue dyed burlap sheath on the central lever. The flock of trained nightingales on the railings burst into joyous song. Fiery stars flamed in the sky. Blodgett waited for the parp of a cornet which would be his signal to pull the central lever for the first time. Just thinking about it makes me want to weep, so please forgive my snufflings, as I forgive those who snuffle before me. Who would have thought that Blodgett would be the last person ever to pull the central lever? He did so for many, many years of course, with gusto and vim, to the applause of those who were, very occasionally, allowed past the railings to watch. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-12-0130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-11-17Thu, 17 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Heroes In The Seaweed 10:32 Istvan & Zoltan 13:47 Zoltan & Istvan 16:47 Istvan, Zoltan or Zoltan, Istvan 19:26 Films on Television 22:54 Cormorant Patrol 25:51 VerEecke Revisited HEROES IN THE SEAWEED Apologies for the lengthy silence. I'll tell you all about it at another time. For now, in light of the passing of Leonard Cohen, here is a piece I wrote for The Dabbler five years ago. Cohen tells us, in his song Suzanne, that "there are heroes in the seaweed". Oh really?, I asked myself, not without a dash of skepticism, And what precisely would heroes be doing, disporting themselves in the sargassum and the kelp? Still, one does not wish to dismiss out of hand the words of a figure of such stature, so I summoned my sidekick and went to investigate. Out by the aerodrome, we boarded a charabanc heading for the seashore, but not before arming ourselves each with a long and pointy stick. These, I explained to my somewhat dim sidekick, we would use to poke about the seaweed in search of heroes. He seemed satisfied with this intelligence, but as the charabanc gathered speed crossing the wild and windy moors, he babbled questions at me. Which particular heroes were they, that were to be found in the seaweed? Heroes of Ancient Greece, such as Heracles and Theseus and Jason and Bellerophon? Tragic heroes such as Orestes and Oedipus and Hamlet? Byronic heroes? Guitar heroes? Boys' Own Paper heroes? Or modern-day superheroes such as Batman and Spiderman and Unconscious Squirrel!, The Unconscious Squirrel? Or would we find, entangled in the seaweed, representatives of all these types of hero, and more? And were they trapped in the seaweed, struggling heroically to escape from it, or had they made it their natural habitat, nesting in it, as it were, even perhaps feeding off it? I was fairly sure Cohen had not addressed these questions in his song, but to be on the safe side I decided to listen to it again. Pointing out of the charabanc window at a flock of starlings to distract my sidekick's attention and shut him up, I jammed into my ears the tiny headphones of my iLeonard and pressed "play". Precisely three minutes and forty-nine seconds later, I removed the headphones and turned to my sidekick, who was still staring out of the window, mouth open, dribbling, though the starlings had long vanished, and the only bird visible in the sky was a lone lark, or it might have been a swift or even an avocet. I know nothing of ornithology. "Cohen does not expand upon his assertion," I said, "So we shall have to poke about with our long pointy sticks and see what we shall see. First, though, I think we are both in need of refreshments, so we shall stop at the seaside kiosk for some tea and oranges that come all the way from China." My sidekick was happy with this suggestion, and he grinned. It is never a pretty sight, so I closed my eyes. Earlier that day I had climbed a whole mountainside to wash my eyelids in the rain, which had puffed me out something awful, and no sooner were my eyes shut than I fell into a snooze. When I woke the charabanc was parked in a lay-by at the seashore. I was the only passenger still aboard. Even my sidekick had gone. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-11-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Heroes In The Seaweed 10:32 Istvan & Zoltan 13:47 Zoltan & Istvan 16:47 Istvan, Zoltan or Zoltan, Istvan 19:26 Films on Television 22:54 Cormorant Patrol 25:51 VerEecke Revisited HEROES IN THE SEAWEED Apologies for the lengthy silence. I'll tell you all about it at another time. For now, in light of the passing of Leonard Cohen, here is a piece I wrote for The Dabbler five years ago. Cohen tells us, in his song Suzanne, that "there are heroes in the seaweed". Oh really?, I asked myself, not without a dash of skepticism, And what precisely would heroes be doing, disporting themselves in the sargassum and the kelp? Still, one does not wish to dismiss out of hand the words of a figure of such stature, so I summoned my sidekick and went to investigate. Out by the aerodrome, we boarded a charabanc heading for the seashore, but not before arming ourselves each with a long and pointy stick. These, I explained to my somewhat dim sidekick, we would use to poke about the seaweed in search of heroes. He seemed satisfied with this intelligence, but as the charabanc gathered speed crossing the wild and windy moors, he babbled questions at me. Which particular heroes were they, that were to be found in the seaweed? Heroes of Ancient Greece, such as Heracles and Theseus and Jason and Bellerophon? Tragic heroes such as Orestes and Oedipus and Hamlet? Byronic heroes? Guitar heroes? Boys' Own Paper heroes? Or modern-day superheroes such as Batman and Spiderman and Unconscious Squirrel!, The Unconscious Squirrel? Or would we find, entangled in the seaweed, representatives of all these types of hero, and more? And were they trapped in the seaweed, struggling heroically to escape from it, or had they made it their natural habitat, nesting in it, as it were, even perhaps feeding off it? I was fairly sure Cohen had not addressed these questions in his song, but to be on the safe side I decided to listen to it again. Pointing out of the charabanc window at a flock of starlings to distract my sidekick's attention and shut him up, I jammed into my ears the tiny headphones of my iLeonard and pressed "play". Precisely three minutes and forty-nine seconds later, I removed the headphones and turned to my sidekick, who was still staring out of the window, mouth open, dribbling, though the starlings had long vanished, and the only bird visible in the sky was a lone lark, or it might have been a swift or even an avocet. I know nothing of ornithology. "Cohen does not expand upon his assertion," I said, "So we shall have to poke about with our long pointy sticks and see what we shall see. First, though, I think we are both in need of refreshments, so we shall stop at the seaside kiosk for some tea and oranges that come all the way from China." My sidekick was happy with this suggestion, and he grinned. It is never a pretty sight, so I closed my eyes. Earlier that day I had climbed a whole mountainside to wash my eyelids in the rain, which had puffed me out something awful, and no sooner were my eyes shut than I fell into a snooze. When I woke the charabanc was parked in a lay-by at the seashore. I was the only passenger still aboard. Even my sidekick had gone. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-11-1730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-11-10Thu, 10 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Blodgett And Trubshaw 12:45 Meetings With Remarkable Owls 22:21 Colossus BLODGETT AND TRUBSHAW Blodgett had a certain militaristic cast to his character, so when he was given command of a pocket battleship it was understandable that he got slightly carried away. He fretted and fussed over his epaulettes and other trimmings of his uniform to a somewhat embarrassing degree, so much so that he neglected more critical aspects of his duty such as keeping a proper log. Thus it is that we do not have a reliable record of his one and only voyage. This was a time of gunboat diplomacy, and Blodgett's mission was to anchor his ship in a faraway bay, train his guns on the coast, and to threaten to blow the township there to smithereens unless certain conditions were met. All very straightforward, or it would have been had the ship not had for its navigator a man who had lost his wits. This fellow's name was Trubshaw, and it is a wonder that he still had the confidence of the Admiralty, for he had been bonkers for years. Instead of steering the ship towards the faraway bay, Trubshaw pored over his charts and barked instructions through a pneumatic funnel that led to the ship becoming encased in pack ice thousands of nautical miles away from its proper destination. There was no township upon which to train the guns, leaving Blodgett at a loss what to do, other than to preen his epaulettes and other trimmings with a little brush. Trubshaw, meanwhile, was following his own demented star. He took to pacing up and down the poop deck shouting at the sky. Icicles formed on the brim of his navigator's cap, but he seemed impervious to the cold. Not so the rest of the crew, huddled below decks wrapped in blankets and keeping their spirits up by playing board games and eating sausages. Blodgett kept to his cabin, using his log as a pad for doodling. He had lost radio contact with the Admiralty weeks ago. There was nothing for it but to sit the winter out and wait for the ice to melt. At this point, I expect the majority of readers will be avid for further details of the board games and the sausages, and I will not disappoint. However, before dealing with those crucial topics, perhaps it is wise to say a few more words about Trubshaw. His insanity was not in doubt, but what has never been established is whether he deliberately stranded the ship in Antarctic waters, or whether within the vaporous murk of his mad brain he honestly believed the ship was heading for that faraway bay. There may be a clue in the words he was shouting at the sky while pacing the poop deck, and by chance we do have a record, albeit fragmentary, of what they were, or some of them at least. By chance an airship packed to the gills with the very latest magnetic cylinder recording technology passed overhead one day, and some of Trubshaw's shouting was picked up by its monitors and etched onto a cylinder, preserved forever. If you get a special coupon for entry to the sound recordings rooms of the Museum At-Or-Near-Ack-On-The-Vug, you can listen to this bewildering caterwaul. Dobson once planned a pamphlet on Blodgett's voyage, and transcribed part of Trubshaw's tirade, but abandoned the essay in favour of his justly famous Bilgewater Elegies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-11-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Blodgett And Trubshaw 12:45 Meetings With Remarkable Owls 22:21 Colossus BLODGETT AND TRUBSHAW Blodgett had a certain militaristic cast to his character, so when he was given command of a pocket battleship it was understandable that he got slightly carried away. He fretted and fussed over his epaulettes and other trimmings of his uniform to a somewhat embarrassing degree, so much so that he neglected more critical aspects of his duty such as keeping a proper log. Thus it is that we do not have a reliable record of his one and only voyage. This was a time of gunboat diplomacy, and Blodgett's mission was to anchor his ship in a faraway bay, train his guns on the coast, and to threaten to blow the township there to smithereens unless certain conditions were met. All very straightforward, or it would have been had the ship not had for its navigator a man who had lost his wits. This fellow's name was Trubshaw, and it is a wonder that he still had the confidence of the Admiralty, for he had been bonkers for years. Instead of steering the ship towards the faraway bay, Trubshaw pored over his charts and barked instructions through a pneumatic funnel that led to the ship becoming encased in pack ice thousands of nautical miles away from its proper destination. There was no township upon which to train the guns, leaving Blodgett at a loss what to do, other than to preen his epaulettes and other trimmings with a little brush. Trubshaw, meanwhile, was following his own demented star. He took to pacing up and down the poop deck shouting at the sky. Icicles formed on the brim of his navigator's cap, but he seemed impervious to the cold. Not so the rest of the crew, huddled below decks wrapped in blankets and keeping their spirits up by playing board games and eating sausages. Blodgett kept to his cabin, using his log as a pad for doodling. He had lost radio contact with the Admiralty weeks ago. There was nothing for it but to sit the winter out and wait for the ice to melt. At this point, I expect the majority of readers will be avid for further details of the board games and the sausages, and I will not disappoint. However, before dealing with those crucial topics, perhaps it is wise to say a few more words about Trubshaw. His insanity was not in doubt, but what has never been established is whether he deliberately stranded the ship in Antarctic waters, or whether within the vaporous murk of his mad brain he honestly believed the ship was heading for that faraway bay. There may be a clue in the words he was shouting at the sky while pacing the poop deck, and by chance we do have a record, albeit fragmentary, of what they were, or some of them at least. By chance an airship packed to the gills with the very latest magnetic cylinder recording technology passed overhead one day, and some of Trubshaw's shouting was picked up by its monitors and etched onto a cylinder, preserved forever. If you get a special coupon for entry to the sound recordings rooms of the Museum At-Or-Near-Ack-On-The-Vug, you can listen to this bewildering caterwaul. Dobson once planned a pamphlet on Blodgett's voyage, and transcribed part of Trubshaw's tirade, but abandoned the essay in favour of his justly famous Bilgewater Elegies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-11-1030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-11-03Thu, 03 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 15:30 Sappensopp Days SAPPENSOPP DAYS Kloppstock's Jugband Crumpled Baize Tarboosh, the latest bestselling paperback by Pebblehead, is a wonderful evocation of those much lamented Sappensopp Days. "Tipping, tapping, flimflam... goose grease and lavender and a tin of polish for the porch... the light in the tunnels and the flap of the flaps in the flappery out by the byre... those endless bowls of piping hot porridge... such were the joys of the Sappensopp Days", he writes, and if, like me, you are an unreconstructed Sappensoppist, it all comes flooding back. There was an earlier book, of course, by Inspip, and I stand by my review when it first came out in hardback, where I wrote "This book is shoddy and inadequate and inadequate! It is thoroughly inadequate!" Inspip had the temerity to write what he called A Thorough And Adequate Account Of Those Sappensopp Days, despite being a secret Soppensappist. When I revealed this gruesome truth Inspip was discredited and his bones were thrown off a cliff into the churning ocean. Good riddance to him, say I. Pebblehead, by contrast, has the measure of those Sappensopp Days. It seems he has listened to contemporary tape recordings of claimants and wardens and tosspots, and although his tone is often desperate, when it is not twittering, he nails it. By "it" I mean a very concrete sense of urbane jugband merriment. And the names you would expect are all here, though I cannot repeat any of them for legal reasons. I don't want my bones to follow Inspip's off that gaunt and mighty cliff. The point about Pebblehead's prose in his examination of Sappensoppism is that he chugs along, chug chug chug, in a way that is attractive to those who like their prose to have that kind of locomotive trundling rhythm. Pale poets may skip and prance, and paler poets may gambol 'cross verdant sward, but generally such pale poetasters have a whiff of the Soppensapp about them. I do not make the charge lightly. I would say the same were I standing on the beach, at dusk, surrounded by gulls scavenging among the bleached bones of Inspip. There are worse ways to end one's day. I have loafed and been bitter, sometimes, when recalling those Sappensopp Days, the gleaming lanterns, the flint hearts, the barbicans atop the tors. Some come to genuflect and some come to keen, and those are their ways, and I shall not gainsay them, or, if I do, I shall crunch across their own gravel, on my hands and knees, to prove my point. You will not hear such claims from the Inspips of this world, this spinning globe, this dispensation. Inspip was at Innsmouth when his horrible book came out, and he was betrayed by a clairvoyant. That is often how these things turn out, how tangled skeins unravel. The clairvoyant was unbridled, certainly, and mouthy, but that made a welcome change. Guttural imprecations and gargling were her mode of speech, if speech it can be called, and as soon as he heard what was being said about him the wretched Inspip tried to flee. Typical, I may say, of those who observe the Soppensappist debaucheries, for debaucheries they are. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-11-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 15:30 Sappensopp Days SAPPENSOPP DAYS Kloppstock's Jugband Crumpled Baize Tarboosh, the latest bestselling paperback by Pebblehead, is a wonderful evocation of those much lamented Sappensopp Days. "Tipping, tapping, flimflam... goose grease and lavender and a tin of polish for the porch... the light in the tunnels and the flap of the flaps in the flappery out by the byre... those endless bowls of piping hot porridge... such were the joys of the Sappensopp Days", he writes, and if, like me, you are an unreconstructed Sappensoppist, it all comes flooding back. There was an earlier book, of course, by Inspip, and I stand by my review when it first came out in hardback, where I wrote "This book is shoddy and inadequate and inadequate! It is thoroughly inadequate!" Inspip had the temerity to write what he called A Thorough And Adequate Account Of Those Sappensopp Days, despite being a secret Soppensappist. When I revealed this gruesome truth Inspip was discredited and his bones were thrown off a cliff into the churning ocean. Good riddance to him, say I. Pebblehead, by contrast, has the measure of those Sappensopp Days. It seems he has listened to contemporary tape recordings of claimants and wardens and tosspots, and although his tone is often desperate, when it is not twittering, he nails it. By "it" I mean a very concrete sense of urbane jugband merriment. And the names you would expect are all here, though I cannot repeat any of them for legal reasons. I don't want my bones to follow Inspip's off that gaunt and mighty cliff. The point about Pebblehead's prose in his examination of Sappensoppism is that he chugs along, chug chug chug, in a way that is attractive to those who like their prose to have that kind of locomotive trundling rhythm. Pale poets may skip and prance, and paler poets may gambol 'cross verdant sward, but generally such pale poetasters have a whiff of the Soppensapp about them. I do not make the charge lightly. I would say the same were I standing on the beach, at dusk, surrounded by gulls scavenging among the bleached bones of Inspip. There are worse ways to end one's day. I have loafed and been bitter, sometimes, when recalling those Sappensopp Days, the gleaming lanterns, the flint hearts, the barbicans atop the tors. Some come to genuflect and some come to keen, and those are their ways, and I shall not gainsay them, or, if I do, I shall crunch across their own gravel, on my hands and knees, to prove my point. You will not hear such claims from the Inspips of this world, this spinning globe, this dispensation. Inspip was at Innsmouth when his horrible book came out, and he was betrayed by a clairvoyant. That is often how these things turn out, how tangled skeins unravel. The clairvoyant was unbridled, certainly, and mouthy, but that made a welcome change. Guttural imprecations and gargling were her mode of speech, if speech it can be called, and as soon as he heard what was being said about him the wretched Inspip tried to flee. Typical, I may say, of those who observe the Soppensappist debaucheries, for debaucheries they are. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-11-0330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-10-13Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-10-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-10-1330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-10-06Thu, 06 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-10-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-10-0629:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-29Thu, 29 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:28 (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais 22:48 Sausage Semaphore (WHITE MAN) IN HAMMERSMITH PALAIS In order to fully appreciate (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, a song written and recorded by The Clash in 1978, we must get a firm grasp upon the words in the title. Before we do so, let me be quite clear that I am going to pay no attention whatsoever to the parentheses. In my view--and I grant that I may be in error here--placing "White Man" in parentheses is a mere affectation, and has no significance whatsoever. The truth of this can be underlined by removing the parentheses and judging if it makes any difference. Thus, (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, or--pfft!, there!, gone!--White Man In Hammersmith Palais. I challenge anybody to insert a very very thin thing, like a cigarette paper, between the two. We may now press on, indomitably. White. What do we mean by white? Is it a colour or, as some would have it, the absence of colour? The white of an egg--the albumen--is more translucent than white, in its raw state. But fry the egg, in a pan, and voila!, it is indeed white. By the way, it would be a mistake to infer from this that all fried things are white. Most are not. To gain a sense of overwhelming whiteness, it is well worth reading the closing passages of The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe. If you read it while drinking a glass of milk, the effect of whiteness will be redoubled. If, in addition, you tip the entire contents of a tub of talcum powder over your head and look up from your book, from time to time, into a mirror, you will be left in no doubt about what white means. Next, Man. Man is the male of the species homo sapiens. In most cases, he is a biped, but not invariably. For example, Ian Anderson, the front man--man!--of the band Jethro Tull, prefers to stand on one leg when playing his flute. He is thus, at least temporarily, a monopod. What else can we say, usefully, about a man? Well, for one thing, we can differentiate between types of men (plural) by placing a qualifying adjective before "man". This might be in the form of prefix jammed up against "man", with no space between, as for example "Frenchman" or "postman", or it might be a discrete, separate, interchangeable word, as in "grunty man" or "stricken man". Off the coast of England there is a place called the Isle of Man, but we had better avoid that, particularly as its flag is a triskelion of three armoured legs. That is one and a half standard issue bipedal men, or three Jethro Tull flautists, the thought of which begins to dizzy the brain. In we can dispatch fairly rapidly. It is a short word indicating that something is contained within something else, for example the talcum powder was in the tub before we upended it over our head. Now, the talcum powder is no longer in the tub. It really is as simple as that. Just be careful not to confuse in with inn. The latter is a tavern or hostelry. If a man enters one, parched and thirsty and covered in talcum powder, he is said to be in an inn. Conversely, if he engages in fisticuffs with another customer, because he is teased for being covered in talcum powder, he risks being thrown out of the inn. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:28 (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais 22:48 Sausage Semaphore (WHITE MAN) IN HAMMERSMITH PALAIS In order to fully appreciate (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, a song written and recorded by The Clash in 1978, we must get a firm grasp upon the words in the title. Before we do so, let me be quite clear that I am going to pay no attention whatsoever to the parentheses. In my view--and I grant that I may be in error here--placing "White Man" in parentheses is a mere affectation, and has no significance whatsoever. The truth of this can be underlined by removing the parentheses and judging if it makes any difference. Thus, (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, or--pfft!, there!, gone!--White Man In Hammersmith Palais. I challenge anybody to insert a very very thin thing, like a cigarette paper, between the two. We may now press on, indomitably. White. What do we mean by white? Is it a colour or, as some would have it, the absence of colour? The white of an egg--the albumen--is more translucent than white, in its raw state. But fry the egg, in a pan, and voila!, it is indeed white. By the way, it would be a mistake to infer from this that all fried things are white. Most are not. To gain a sense of overwhelming whiteness, it is well worth reading the closing passages of The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe. If you read it while drinking a glass of milk, the effect of whiteness will be redoubled. If, in addition, you tip the entire contents of a tub of talcum powder over your head and look up from your book, from time to time, into a mirror, you will be left in no doubt about what white means. Next, Man. Man is the male of the species homo sapiens. In most cases, he is a biped, but not invariably. For example, Ian Anderson, the front man--man!--of the band Jethro Tull, prefers to stand on one leg when playing his flute. He is thus, at least temporarily, a monopod. What else can we say, usefully, about a man? Well, for one thing, we can differentiate between types of men (plural) by placing a qualifying adjective before "man". This might be in the form of prefix jammed up against "man", with no space between, as for example "Frenchman" or "postman", or it might be a discrete, separate, interchangeable word, as in "grunty man" or "stricken man". Off the coast of England there is a place called the Isle of Man, but we had better avoid that, particularly as its flag is a triskelion of three armoured legs. That is one and a half standard issue bipedal men, or three Jethro Tull flautists, the thought of which begins to dizzy the brain. In we can dispatch fairly rapidly. It is a short word indicating that something is contained within something else, for example the talcum powder was in the tub before we upended it over our head. Now, the talcum powder is no longer in the tub. It really is as simple as that. Just be careful not to confuse in with inn. The latter is a tavern or hostelry. If a man enters one, parched and thirsty and covered in talcum powder, he is said to be in an inn. Conversely, if he engages in fisticuffs with another customer, because he is teased for being covered in talcum powder, he risks being thrown out of the inn. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-2930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-22Thu, 22 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:54 Tugboat Skipper 09:09 Plague-Infected Squirrel Of Doom 18:47 Marmaladeless Mornings 24:23 Ceramic Birds TUGBOAT SKIPPER Some years ago, Outa_Spaceman described Hooting Yard thus: "a world of heroic infants rubbing shoulders with tugboat captains, extravagantly bouffanted composers drinking and fighting in seedy dockside taverns, Jesuit priests lurking in kiosks on abandoned seaside piers, bat gods haunting abandoned potato research stations, huge grunting ogres drinking from cisterns in horrible caves, and where diktats are being issued to Community Learning Hubs by suburban shamans". Rereading this, recently, I thought to myself, "How right he is!". But then I thought, "Hmm. We have not seen many tugboat captains hereabouts of late!". My thoughts are not always followed by exclamation marks, but those two were. Casting around in my mind for a tugboat captain I could tell you about, I recalled the skipper of the tugboat Blavatsky. This fellow was neurasthenic and highly-strung, character traits which are quite undesirable in a tugboat captain, and led to several unfortunate episodes. Big majestic ships being tugged by the Blavatsky suffered a series of minor and major calamities, from dents below the plimsoll line to scuppering upon sandbanks to attacks by enormous flocks of deranged guillemots. These incidents were not always the result of the tugboat skipper's mental weakness, but whether he was responsible or no, when the big ships' captains gathered in conclave they laid the blame firmly at his door. "He is neurasthenic and highly-strung," they said, "He cannot be allowed to tug our ships." With no big majestic ships to tug, the Blavatsky lost its purpose, and so too did its skipper. He took to traipsing the deck of the tugboat wailing and keening, driving the rest of the crew crackers. Eventually his second-in-command, the science officer, took him aside, bundled him into a cabin, and gave him a talking-to. Like several seconds-in-command, he was half-Vulcan, with pointy ears, and he spoke with compelling logic. "The Blavatsky is a tugboat, Captain," he said, "And therefore it must tug something. If we cannot tug big majestic ships we will have to find something else to tug." "But what?, dammit, what?" yelled the skipper, who was clearly close to the end of his already frayed tether. "Well, Captain," replied his pointy-eared science officer, "It so happens I have been reading some back numbers of the Daily Pony Predations Digest. It seems there is, loose in the land, but happily close to the coast, an enormous squid named Neville Mossop. It is already responsible for slobberingly devouring one twee little pony, and logically one must assume it will go on to consume others in its awful hideous Lovecraftian manner. We can stop it, Captain. I suggest we send a landing party, capture the squid, drag it to shore, then attach it to our tugboat with chains, and tug it far out to sea so it can no longer prey upon ponies." "That's a fantastic idea!" cried the skipper, and at once his mood lifted and he ceased keening. Without further ado, he sent a landing party which captured the squid, dragged it to shore, attached it to the tugboat with chains, and tugged it far out to sea. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:54 Tugboat Skipper 09:09 Plague-Infected Squirrel Of Doom 18:47 Marmaladeless Mornings 24:23 Ceramic Birds TUGBOAT SKIPPER Some years ago, Outa_Spaceman described Hooting Yard thus: "a world of heroic infants rubbing shoulders with tugboat captains, extravagantly bouffanted composers drinking and fighting in seedy dockside taverns, Jesuit priests lurking in kiosks on abandoned seaside piers, bat gods haunting abandoned potato research stations, huge grunting ogres drinking from cisterns in horrible caves, and where diktats are being issued to Community Learning Hubs by suburban shamans". Rereading this, recently, I thought to myself, "How right he is!". But then I thought, "Hmm. We have not seen many tugboat captains hereabouts of late!". My thoughts are not always followed by exclamation marks, but those two were. Casting around in my mind for a tugboat captain I could tell you about, I recalled the skipper of the tugboat Blavatsky. This fellow was neurasthenic and highly-strung, character traits which are quite undesirable in a tugboat captain, and led to several unfortunate episodes. Big majestic ships being tugged by the Blavatsky suffered a series of minor and major calamities, from dents below the plimsoll line to scuppering upon sandbanks to attacks by enormous flocks of deranged guillemots. These incidents were not always the result of the tugboat skipper's mental weakness, but whether he was responsible or no, when the big ships' captains gathered in conclave they laid the blame firmly at his door. "He is neurasthenic and highly-strung," they said, "He cannot be allowed to tug our ships." With no big majestic ships to tug, the Blavatsky lost its purpose, and so too did its skipper. He took to traipsing the deck of the tugboat wailing and keening, driving the rest of the crew crackers. Eventually his second-in-command, the science officer, took him aside, bundled him into a cabin, and gave him a talking-to. Like several seconds-in-command, he was half-Vulcan, with pointy ears, and he spoke with compelling logic. "The Blavatsky is a tugboat, Captain," he said, "And therefore it must tug something. If we cannot tug big majestic ships we will have to find something else to tug." "But what?, dammit, what?" yelled the skipper, who was clearly close to the end of his already frayed tether. "Well, Captain," replied his pointy-eared science officer, "It so happens I have been reading some back numbers of the Daily Pony Predations Digest. It seems there is, loose in the land, but happily close to the coast, an enormous squid named Neville Mossop. It is already responsible for slobberingly devouring one twee little pony, and logically one must assume it will go on to consume others in its awful hideous Lovecraftian manner. We can stop it, Captain. I suggest we send a landing party, capture the squid, drag it to shore, then attach it to our tugboat with chains, and tug it far out to sea so it can no longer prey upon ponies." "That's a fantastic idea!" cried the skipper, and at once his mood lifted and he ceased keening. Without further ado, he sent a landing party which captured the squid, dragged it to shore, attached it to the tugboat with chains, and tugged it far out to sea. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-2229:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-15Thu, 15 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:53 The Smothered Chicken Of Greaselbow 08:39 The Big Fairy 13:04 The Tale Of Popsy The Pony 17:18 Neville Mossop 20:55 A Letter From Neville Mossop 29:39 Tableaux Vivants THE SMOTHERED CHICKEN OF GREASELBOW The legend of the smothered chicken of Greaselbow has been told and retold for over a thousand years. The core details seldom vary. In the rustic backwater of Greaselbow, a child, usually but not always an orphan, is settling in to its cot one wild and windy night when it senses an unusual lump under its pillow. Lifting the pillow, the child finds a chicken, often but not always a Vanburgh chicken, which has expired due to smothering. The child picks up the chicken by one of its feet, and chucks it out of the bedroom window. The instant it is let go, the chicken springs to life, utters a shrill squawk, and hurtles heavenward. When the child returns to bed, it finds the pillow vanished, replaced by a large egg. The child climbs into the egg--somehow--and the shell then closes around it. Interpretations of the legend by folklorists have tended to concentrate on the egg and the child, but of more interest is the smothered chicken. That is particularly the case if one has a penchant for poultry. And which of us does not? Well, you might counter, there are plenty of people who don't give a fig about poultry. Even keen egg-eaters, who rarely let a breakfast go by without scoffing an egg or two, might be utterly uninterested in the provenance of their eggs, id est poultry of one kind or another. This is a lamentable state of affairs, and is the reason I carry a pillow with me whenever I am in the vicinity of someone eating eggs. "Oi!", I shout, "Where did those eggs come from?" Unless I receive a full and frank reply, acknowledging the eggs' origins, I bundle the egg-eater to the ground and smother them with the pillow. Oh Lord, save us and protect us, for we know not what we do. That was a Thought For The Day by the Reverend Joost Van Dongelbraacke, vicar prebendary of St Bibblybibdib's. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:53 The Smothered Chicken Of Greaselbow 08:39 The Big Fairy 13:04 The Tale Of Popsy The Pony 17:18 Neville Mossop 20:55 A Letter From Neville Mossop 29:39 Tableaux Vivants THE SMOTHERED CHICKEN OF GREASELBOW The legend of the smothered chicken of Greaselbow has been told and retold for over a thousand years. The core details seldom vary. In the rustic backwater of Greaselbow, a child, usually but not always an orphan, is settling in to its cot one wild and windy night when it senses an unusual lump under its pillow. Lifting the pillow, the child finds a chicken, often but not always a Vanburgh chicken, which has expired due to smothering. The child picks up the chicken by one of its feet, and chucks it out of the bedroom window. The instant it is let go, the chicken springs to life, utters a shrill squawk, and hurtles heavenward. When the child returns to bed, it finds the pillow vanished, replaced by a large egg. The child climbs into the egg--somehow--and the shell then closes around it. Interpretations of the legend by folklorists have tended to concentrate on the egg and the child, but of more interest is the smothered chicken. That is particularly the case if one has a penchant for poultry. And which of us does not? Well, you might counter, there are plenty of people who don't give a fig about poultry. Even keen egg-eaters, who rarely let a breakfast go by without scoffing an egg or two, might be utterly uninterested in the provenance of their eggs, id est poultry of one kind or another. This is a lamentable state of affairs, and is the reason I carry a pillow with me whenever I am in the vicinity of someone eating eggs. "Oi!", I shout, "Where did those eggs come from?" Unless I receive a full and frank reply, acknowledging the eggs' origins, I bundle the egg-eater to the ground and smother them with the pillow. Oh Lord, save us and protect us, for we know not what we do. That was a Thought For The Day by the Reverend Joost Van Dongelbraacke, vicar prebendary of St Bibblybibdib's. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-1529:54fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-08Thu, 08 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--I 15:52 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--III GIGANTIC BOLIVIAN ARCHITECTURAL DIAGRAMS--I I am minded to post an old, old story from the last century. Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams is divided into three parts. The first part follows. Parts two and three will appear over the coming weekend. I. September 1894 I had been marooned on the island for eleven weeks when I discovered the gigantic Bolivian architectural diagrams, rolled into a metal canister and wedged in a narrow crevice between two rocks. Taking a swig from my bag of turtle's blood, I squatted on the ground and removed the diagrams from the canister. There were about a dozen large sheets, rather frayed around the edges but perfectly legible. The top left corner of each sheet had been stamped with an official device of the Bolivian administration, showing an escutcheon, a ziggurat, the helmet of a conquistador, the hand of God, and abbreviations in neat italic lettering. The signature of what I supposed to be a petty official had been scratched across each of the stamps in mauve ink. Munching a whelk, I turned my attentions to the diagrams themselves. They were fearfully complicated. I am no architect, and at first all I could make out were miriad lines meeting at angles and criss-crossing each other seemingly at random. Most of the diagrams had been subjected to revision, and there was much evidence of erasure, overprinting and churlish emendation. My studies were interrupted by a sudden and ferocious thunderstorm. Shoving the diagrams hastily back into the canister, unfortunately tearing one of them, I hobbled back to my shelter, where my viper was busy biting the head off an unidentified rodent. Tossing my crutches into the corner, I lay back on my pallet and spent a profitable hour mucking about with bits of wire and driftwood to make a trap for bats. The life of a maroon, on an island such as this, is not unpleasing. Food is plentiful and easily gathered, or slaughtered. The vegetation is lush and the animals are slow-witted and trusting. On my very first day I was able to bash out the brains of a badger which trundled innocently towards me as I sat on the beach idling with my club. Quite what a badger was doing on the island is beyond me. I have not come across any others. But I am ever vigilant. I will not risk boring you by listing the stupendous array of equipment I managed to salvage from the wreck of the HMS Tot of Magnesium. Suffice to say the club was not my only weapon; nor am I at a loss for a change of trousers. I have told you that I am not an architect. The truth is, I cannot remember what I am, what trade or business I followed on dry land. Perhaps I was a jolly jack tar; but I think it unlikely. I like to think that I was aboard the Tot of Magnesium as a supernumerary passenger, a merchant of sorts, my cabin crammed with samples of tea, or silk, or mustard. In the final desperate moments, as the ship pitched and rolled and smashed against gleaming rocks, I received a blow to the head which has impaired my memory. It was not the only injury I received. My right leg is only just recovering. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--I 15:52 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--III GIGANTIC BOLIVIAN ARCHITECTURAL DIAGRAMS--I I am minded to post an old, old story from the last century. Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams is divided into three parts. The first part follows. Parts two and three will appear over the coming weekend. I. September 1894 I had been marooned on the island for eleven weeks when I discovered the gigantic Bolivian architectural diagrams, rolled into a metal canister and wedged in a narrow crevice between two rocks. Taking a swig from my bag of turtle's blood, I squatted on the ground and removed the diagrams from the canister. There were about a dozen large sheets, rather frayed around the edges but perfectly legible. The top left corner of each sheet had been stamped with an official device of the Bolivian administration, showing an escutcheon, a ziggurat, the helmet of a conquistador, the hand of God, and abbreviations in neat italic lettering. The signature of what I supposed to be a petty official had been scratched across each of the stamps in mauve ink. Munching a whelk, I turned my attentions to the diagrams themselves. They were fearfully complicated. I am no architect, and at first all I could make out were miriad lines meeting at angles and criss-crossing each other seemingly at random. Most of the diagrams had been subjected to revision, and there was much evidence of erasure, overprinting and churlish emendation. My studies were interrupted by a sudden and ferocious thunderstorm. Shoving the diagrams hastily back into the canister, unfortunately tearing one of them, I hobbled back to my shelter, where my viper was busy biting the head off an unidentified rodent. Tossing my crutches into the corner, I lay back on my pallet and spent a profitable hour mucking about with bits of wire and driftwood to make a trap for bats. The life of a maroon, on an island such as this, is not unpleasing. Food is plentiful and easily gathered, or slaughtered. The vegetation is lush and the animals are slow-witted and trusting. On my very first day I was able to bash out the brains of a badger which trundled innocently towards me as I sat on the beach idling with my club. Quite what a badger was doing on the island is beyond me. I have not come across any others. But I am ever vigilant. I will not risk boring you by listing the stupendous array of equipment I managed to salvage from the wreck of the HMS Tot of Magnesium. Suffice to say the club was not my only weapon; nor am I at a loss for a change of trousers. I have told you that I am not an architect. The truth is, I cannot remember what I am, what trade or business I followed on dry land. Perhaps I was a jolly jack tar; but I think it unlikely. I like to think that I was aboard the Tot of Magnesium as a supernumerary passenger, a merchant of sorts, my cabin crammed with samples of tea, or silk, or mustard. In the final desperate moments, as the ship pitched and rolled and smashed against gleaming rocks, I received a blow to the head which has impaired my memory. It was not the only injury I received. My right leg is only just recovering. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-0829:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-01Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Collapsed Puffin 02:08 Homework 04:29 Lars Talc, Lars Talc 09:12 Eye Eye (Again) 15:47 In The Hamlet Of Glebe 19:34 Pirouette And Volte Face COLLAPSED PUFFIN Oh look, a puffin has collapsed on that floe. Wipe the steam from your goggles and you will see it too. We should airlift it to the puffin hospital yonder in our chopper. Take those corks out of your ears so you can hear me speak. Love is a mighty power, and I love puffins, as I love guillemots and auks and bonxies. Snap those icicles dangling from your nose and you will breathe easier. Here comes a blizzard. Oh, puffin, don't die. Stamp your feet in your furry boots, my companion. Two men and a collapsed puffin in a white wasteland. Allegory of something or other. The chopper blades are frozen, and we are stranded, or marooned. Come, Squiffy, plod with me towards the puffin, that we may give it succour. Love conquers all, if you will wipe those damned goggles! HOMEWORK Read and digest the piece Collapsed Puffin, below. Then reread it and redigest it. If necessary, rereread it and reredigest it. Now, using a sharpened pencil and a sheet of foolscap paper, write a variation of the piece from the point of view of the companion, Squiffy. You should aim to address the following matters: 1. Why do you think the narrator keeps nagging Squiffy regarding his goggles, ear-corks, nasal icicles, and furry boots? 2. Which of the pair do you think is the pilot of the chopper? 3. Does the collapsed puffin actually exist or is it an hallucination borne of cold, exhaustion, or even piblokto? 4. Do you think the narrator's love of puffins, guillemots, auks, and bonxies is sincere and unreserved, or is it an affectation? 5. Can you recall any nursery rhymes in which bonxies appear? When you have finished, turn over the piece of foolscap paper and, on the reverse, write an even more compelling variation from the point of view of the collapsed puffin. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Collapsed Puffin 02:08 Homework 04:29 Lars Talc, Lars Talc 09:12 Eye Eye (Again) 15:47 In The Hamlet Of Glebe 19:34 Pirouette And Volte Face COLLAPSED PUFFIN Oh look, a puffin has collapsed on that floe. Wipe the steam from your goggles and you will see it too. We should airlift it to the puffin hospital yonder in our chopper. Take those corks out of your ears so you can hear me speak. Love is a mighty power, and I love puffins, as I love guillemots and auks and bonxies. Snap those icicles dangling from your nose and you will breathe easier. Here comes a blizzard. Oh, puffin, don't die. Stamp your feet in your furry boots, my companion. Two men and a collapsed puffin in a white wasteland. Allegory of something or other. The chopper blades are frozen, and we are stranded, or marooned. Come, Squiffy, plod with me towards the puffin, that we may give it succour. Love conquers all, if you will wipe those damned goggles! HOMEWORK Read and digest the piece Collapsed Puffin, below. Then reread it and redigest it. If necessary, rereread it and reredigest it. Now, using a sharpened pencil and a sheet of foolscap paper, write a variation of the piece from the point of view of the companion, Squiffy. You should aim to address the following matters: 1. Why do you think the narrator keeps nagging Squiffy regarding his goggles, ear-corks, nasal icicles, and furry boots? 2. Which of the pair do you think is the pilot of the chopper? 3. Does the collapsed puffin actually exist or is it an hallucination borne of cold, exhaustion, or even piblokto? 4. Do you think the narrator's love of puffins, guillemots, auks, and bonxies is sincere and unreserved, or is it an affectation? 5. Can you recall any nursery rhymes in which bonxies appear? When you have finished, turn over the piece of foolscap paper and, on the reverse, write an even more compelling variation from the point of view of the collapsed puffin. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-09-0129:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-07-28Thu, 28 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 13:03 More From The Midden 23:07 On This Day 24:03 Not Gone Yet 27:01 An Owl In A Sack Troubles No Man MORE FROM THE MIDDEN A further find in the paper-midden: a scrap dated 16th February 1992. Yesterday I considered a string of words to form an alphabet, words beginning and ending a-b, b-c, c-d and so on. Let's see if I can remember it. Alb, basic, cod, drone, earmuff, flailing, garish, hoi-polloi, [imaj?], jack, kernel, loom, marzipan, no, orlop, [p-q], quiver, railings, squirt, tofu, [u-v], vow, wax, xerophilously, [y-z], zeugma. The idea is (after finding something for the missing words--invented proper names if necessary) to write a story which mentions all those in order. This story was never written, twenty years ago, but perhaps I shall apply myself to it now, or in the near future. ON THIS DAY On this day, three years ago, I noted a startling insight from the Today programme on Radio Four: There are differences in the ways serial killers and bees behave, obviously. Thus spake serial-killer-and-bee expert Dr Nigel Rayne. Obviously. NOT GONE YET Mr Key has not yet fled the country--I will be leaving at some ungodly hour tomorrow--so my hiatus announcement was a little premature. I thought I would feel bereft at neglecting important Hooting Yard business for a few days, but in fact I feel immensely relieved. A few days ago I mentioned the Quaker I knew who was cheered by having a complete absence of activity in his brainpans, and I now understand what he meant. But fear not, I will return to the fray upon my return to Blighty. In the meantime, here is a letter that plopped into my inbox yesterday. Dear Sir or Madam, Liaocheng Dongying Hengtong Metal Manufacturing Co., Ltd here. Glad to hear that you are on the market for Automatic chicken cage. We are a professional producer of the complete sets of equipment for raising birds. At present, it is an enterprise which has the import-export license and exports a batch of comp-lete sets of automatic equipment for raising chickens. These products gained good prestige among customers and they are not only used in great-scaled biological raising farms in domestic provinces, but also exported to Middle Asia, South and East regions, Australia, South America, Middle East areas, Africa mainland and so on in great lot. We are willing to wholehearted with all the friends and customers to establish good relations of cooperation, realize a win-win benefits, and create a magnificent performance. If any interest, feel free to contact me. Best regards, Senior Sales Manager, Fatma AN OWL IN A SACK TROUBLES NO MAN Over at The Dabbler this week I take Peter Hitchens to task over the important subjects of knapsacks and trained owls. I am suddenly reminded of the saying An owl in a sack troubles no man, which as far as I remember was a winning entry in a long ago New Statesman competition to devise plausible-sounding yet wholly spurious proverbs. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-07-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 13:03 More From The Midden 23:07 On This Day 24:03 Not Gone Yet 27:01 An Owl In A Sack Troubles No Man MORE FROM THE MIDDEN A further find in the paper-midden: a scrap dated 16th February 1992. Yesterday I considered a string of words to form an alphabet, words beginning and ending a-b, b-c, c-d and so on. Let's see if I can remember it. Alb, basic, cod, drone, earmuff, flailing, garish, hoi-polloi, [imaj?], jack, kernel, loom, marzipan, no, orlop, [p-q], quiver, railings, squirt, tofu, [u-v], vow, wax, xerophilously, [y-z], zeugma. The idea is (after finding something for the missing words--invented proper names if necessary) to write a story which mentions all those in order. This story was never written, twenty years ago, but perhaps I shall apply myself to it now, or in the near future. ON THIS DAY On this day, three years ago, I noted a startling insight from the Today programme on Radio Four: There are differences in the ways serial killers and bees behave, obviously. Thus spake serial-killer-and-bee expert Dr Nigel Rayne. Obviously. NOT GONE YET Mr Key has not yet fled the country--I will be leaving at some ungodly hour tomorrow--so my hiatus announcement was a little premature. I thought I would feel bereft at neglecting important Hooting Yard business for a few days, but in fact I feel immensely relieved. A few days ago I mentioned the Quaker I knew who was cheered by having a complete absence of activity in his brainpans, and I now understand what he meant. But fear not, I will return to the fray upon my return to Blighty. In the meantime, here is a letter that plopped into my inbox yesterday. Dear Sir or Madam, Liaocheng Dongying Hengtong Metal Manufacturing Co., Ltd here. Glad to hear that you are on the market for Automatic chicken cage. We are a professional producer of the complete sets of equipment for raising birds. At present, it is an enterprise which has the import-export license and exports a batch of comp-lete sets of automatic equipment for raising chickens. These products gained good prestige among customers and they are not only used in great-scaled biological raising farms in domestic provinces, but also exported to Middle Asia, South and East regions, Australia, South America, Middle East areas, Africa mainland and so on in great lot. We are willing to wholehearted with all the friends and customers to establish good relations of cooperation, realize a win-win benefits, and create a magnificent performance. If any interest, feel free to contact me. Best regards, Senior Sales Manager, Fatma AN OWL IN A SACK TROUBLES NO MAN Over at The Dabbler this week I take Peter Hitchens to task over the important subjects of knapsacks and trained owls. I am suddenly reminded of the saying An owl in a sack troubles no man, which as far as I remember was a winning entry in a long ago New Statesman competition to devise plausible-sounding yet wholly spurious proverbs. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-07-2829:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-07-07Thu, 07 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 06:26 Fashion Sequence 13:57 On The Abnormal Butcher FASHION SEQUENCE Here is another magnificent extract from Further Science : Book 20 by Norman Davies. (See here.) FASHION SEQUENCE 1. That from 1272/1327, there was a simple monk style. 2. 1327/99--pointed shoes and sleeves. 3. 1399/1461--bull horn hats--hence narrow central next/theatrical. 4. 1461/85--Welsh witchy narrow central hats. 5. 1485/1509--square curtained bed fashion peak/tall thin people. 6. 1509/47--square wooden Henry 8th puff sleeves. 7. 1547/58--dark fan skirt--Spanish. 8. 1558/1603--Elizabethan/Drake bearded pirate/big tent waists and shoulders. 9. 1603/25--Odd--big waists and metal narrow thorax. 10. 1625/49--Van Dyke Cavalier/untrustworthy/lax floppy. 11. 1649/60--dark Welsh witchy. 12. 1660/89--dark brigand/Quaker hats. 13. 1689/1714--tall narrow heads reaction. 14. 1714/27--black Red Riding Hood. 15. 1727/60--big waists. 16. 1760/90--big heads. 17. 1790/1837--long and thick/squashed. 18. 1837/60--wooden thick. 19. 1860/80--overdone. 20. 1880/1900--odd. 21. 1901/18--contrived. 22. 1918/30s--flighty freaks. 23. 1940/5--War/frenzied mean to lower Middle class on. 24. 1946/8--peak fine simple bold quality Middle class fashion. 25. Peak fine fashions occurred in the 14th Century/semi late 15th century /late 15th century / 1515 / 1695 / 1896 / 1946/8. ON THE ABNORMAL BUTCHER The Abnormal Butcher is the first in a series of potboilers bashed out by Pebblehead in a frenzied fortnight of potboiling. He wrote a complete novel each day for thirteen days and then, as he put it, "on the fourteenth day, I rested". It is not the first time Pebblehead has blasphemously compared himself to the Almighty God, and it will not be the last. The central character in the series is Ned Mossop, the so-called "gluten-intolerant private eye". The matter of his gluten intolerance is not explored by Pebblehead, merely stated. This is not the only exasperating thing about the books. Were I to list the other exasperations it would come to many more than thirteen items so, time being short, instead I shall give a full list of all the titles in the series. They are, in order of both composition and publication, The Abnormal Butcher, The Cow Detective, The Egg Freak, The Greasy Hinges, The Idiot Jar, The Knackered Latvian, The Mud-caked Nuns, The Oblivious Pipsqueak, The Queasy Ratcatcher, The Snodgrass Thermometer, The Uncanny Vase, The Wax Xylophone, and The Yobbo Zoo. Although, as the central character, Ned Mossop is the only one to appear in all thirteen books, others crop up here and there, having walk-on parts or popping their heads above the parapet or being glimpsed in the distance getting up to some sort of mischief. Thus for example, in The Snodgrass Thermometer, when Ned Mossop and Caligula Snodgrass are engaged in a fight to the death on the edge of an Alpine crevasse, Pebblehead turns his attention, for several pages, to Sister Assumpta, one of the mud-caked nuns we met in the novel of that title. She is picking edelweiss a hundred yards away from the crevasse, on a slightly higher slope. As readers, all we care about is finding out who wins the impromptu boxing match between Mossop and Snodgrass. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-07-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 06:26 Fashion Sequence 13:57 On The Abnormal Butcher FASHION SEQUENCE Here is another magnificent extract from Further Science : Book 20 by Norman Davies. (See here.) FASHION SEQUENCE 1. That from 1272/1327, there was a simple monk style. 2. 1327/99--pointed shoes and sleeves. 3. 1399/1461--bull horn hats--hence narrow central next/theatrical. 4. 1461/85--Welsh witchy narrow central hats. 5. 1485/1509--square curtained bed fashion peak/tall thin people. 6. 1509/47--square wooden Henry 8th puff sleeves. 7. 1547/58--dark fan skirt--Spanish. 8. 1558/1603--Elizabethan/Drake bearded pirate/big tent waists and shoulders. 9. 1603/25--Odd--big waists and metal narrow thorax. 10. 1625/49--Van Dyke Cavalier/untrustworthy/lax floppy. 11. 1649/60--dark Welsh witchy. 12. 1660/89--dark brigand/Quaker hats. 13. 1689/1714--tall narrow heads reaction. 14. 1714/27--black Red Riding Hood. 15. 1727/60--big waists. 16. 1760/90--big heads. 17. 1790/1837--long and thick/squashed. 18. 1837/60--wooden thick. 19. 1860/80--overdone. 20. 1880/1900--odd. 21. 1901/18--contrived. 22. 1918/30s--flighty freaks. 23. 1940/5--War/frenzied mean to lower Middle class on. 24. 1946/8--peak fine simple bold quality Middle class fashion. 25. Peak fine fashions occurred in the 14th Century/semi late 15th century /late 15th century / 1515 / 1695 / 1896 / 1946/8. ON THE ABNORMAL BUTCHER The Abnormal Butcher is the first in a series of potboilers bashed out by Pebblehead in a frenzied fortnight of potboiling. He wrote a complete novel each day for thirteen days and then, as he put it, "on the fourteenth day, I rested". It is not the first time Pebblehead has blasphemously compared himself to the Almighty God, and it will not be the last. The central character in the series is Ned Mossop, the so-called "gluten-intolerant private eye". The matter of his gluten intolerance is not explored by Pebblehead, merely stated. This is not the only exasperating thing about the books. Were I to list the other exasperations it would come to many more than thirteen items so, time being short, instead I shall give a full list of all the titles in the series. They are, in order of both composition and publication, The Abnormal Butcher, The Cow Detective, The Egg Freak, The Greasy Hinges, The Idiot Jar, The Knackered Latvian, The Mud-caked Nuns, The Oblivious Pipsqueak, The Queasy Ratcatcher, The Snodgrass Thermometer, The Uncanny Vase, The Wax Xylophone, and The Yobbo Zoo. Although, as the central character, Ned Mossop is the only one to appear in all thirteen books, others crop up here and there, having walk-on parts or popping their heads above the parapet or being glimpsed in the distance getting up to some sort of mischief. Thus for example, in The Snodgrass Thermometer, when Ned Mossop and Caligula Snodgrass are engaged in a fight to the death on the edge of an Alpine crevasse, Pebblehead turns his attention, for several pages, to Sister Assumpta, one of the mud-caked nuns we met in the novel of that title. She is picking edelweiss a hundred yards away from the crevasse, on a slightly higher slope. As readers, all we care about is finding out who wins the impromptu boxing match between Mossop and Snodgrass. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-07-0730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-30Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:22 Lecture From Long Ago 16:07 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon LECTURE FROM LONG AGO Here is a story from the last century, which I am posting because whimsy told me to. It first appeared in Tales Of Hoon (1987), and reappeared in Twitching And Shattered (1989), Malice Aforethought Press publications both of which are decisively out of print. It is called "A Lecture Delivered In The Big Tent At Hoon". For younger readers in the UK, I should point out that back in 1987, none of us had heard of the ludicrous ex-MP Geoff Hoon. Good evening. I find it difficult to express how pleased I am to see so many of you gathered here, squatting on rough-hewn wooden stools. And how gladdening it is that most of you have managed to bring along a fine selection of farm implements. They may well come in useful as illustrative material later on, if I manage to fit in the 'audience participation' segment of my lecture. But there may not be time--we have to be out of the tent at nine-thirty, as apparently it's needed for a big display of pencil-crushing equipment. Still, we have until then, so let me waste no more time burbling preliminaries. [Clears throat.] Seldom have criminality and wickedness been better personified than by Curpin and Flubb, the evil duo whose careers I wish to address this evening. Let me begin by outlining the panjandrums... I'm sorry, that doesn't mean anything. [Shuffles papers. Winces.] Let me begin by reading from the judge's summing-up at Curpin's trial. "Curpin has suffered tortures best left to the imagination, drawn his breath in shaking sobs, turned the animals loose, and has a power that men know not. He held the boards for seven terrible weeks. He burned fish. Approaching the startled cellists, he was seen grinding the pressure ridges, smashing great blocks of ice. He did not have time to rest. At the corral, under some sheaves of oats, and very snugly wrapped, he dropped his biscuit. Soon, he was dreaming of all sorts of extraordinary things. I saw him lift a man by the seat of government, rub down his horse, and feed him apples. He even went so far as to hire a top-rig buggy to take a little spin along the banks of foreign streams, procuring big booty and professing to be a detective. It was, indeed, a wild sabbath night. Curpin was furious with rage: one foot upon the iron rail, an enormous net of steel, and his pack-pony became visible. The time of winter dog travel was now approaching. The earth, gritty and metallic, could have bidden a gondola. Living rooms flanked the peristyle, and webs of incandescent tubular lamps shone ahead of the damp, grey relics. Curpin tracked down reports of locust swarms. He honked twice, slipped beneath the sea, went to work on a huge pile of food, and tore up lettuce, his pouch unfolding. His rattling became a sizzling. Even the nearby gravel-crushers were keenly aware of Curpin's bone finger ring, embedded in mud. Gently, in order not to raise clouds of ooze, he blocked its incredible roped sledge and ox-hoof. Caught in a fish-hook curve, or pumped into the expensive bicycle crates, he touched up the ginger facade, decked his troublesome horse, and tampered no more with the tin roof. In fear and chaos, under a bridge or a water-tower, he became dusty blue with age. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:22 Lecture From Long Ago 16:07 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon LECTURE FROM LONG AGO Here is a story from the last century, which I am posting because whimsy told me to. It first appeared in Tales Of Hoon (1987), and reappeared in Twitching And Shattered (1989), Malice Aforethought Press publications both of which are decisively out of print. It is called "A Lecture Delivered In The Big Tent At Hoon". For younger readers in the UK, I should point out that back in 1987, none of us had heard of the ludicrous ex-MP Geoff Hoon. Good evening. I find it difficult to express how pleased I am to see so many of you gathered here, squatting on rough-hewn wooden stools. And how gladdening it is that most of you have managed to bring along a fine selection of farm implements. They may well come in useful as illustrative material later on, if I manage to fit in the 'audience participation' segment of my lecture. But there may not be time--we have to be out of the tent at nine-thirty, as apparently it's needed for a big display of pencil-crushing equipment. Still, we have until then, so let me waste no more time burbling preliminaries. [Clears throat.] Seldom have criminality and wickedness been better personified than by Curpin and Flubb, the evil duo whose careers I wish to address this evening. Let me begin by outlining the panjandrums... I'm sorry, that doesn't mean anything. [Shuffles papers. Winces.] Let me begin by reading from the judge's summing-up at Curpin's trial. "Curpin has suffered tortures best left to the imagination, drawn his breath in shaking sobs, turned the animals loose, and has a power that men know not. He held the boards for seven terrible weeks. He burned fish. Approaching the startled cellists, he was seen grinding the pressure ridges, smashing great blocks of ice. He did not have time to rest. At the corral, under some sheaves of oats, and very snugly wrapped, he dropped his biscuit. Soon, he was dreaming of all sorts of extraordinary things. I saw him lift a man by the seat of government, rub down his horse, and feed him apples. He even went so far as to hire a top-rig buggy to take a little spin along the banks of foreign streams, procuring big booty and professing to be a detective. It was, indeed, a wild sabbath night. Curpin was furious with rage: one foot upon the iron rail, an enormous net of steel, and his pack-pony became visible. The time of winter dog travel was now approaching. The earth, gritty and metallic, could have bidden a gondola. Living rooms flanked the peristyle, and webs of incandescent tubular lamps shone ahead of the damp, grey relics. Curpin tracked down reports of locust swarms. He honked twice, slipped beneath the sea, went to work on a huge pile of food, and tore up lettuce, his pouch unfolding. His rattling became a sizzling. Even the nearby gravel-crushers were keenly aware of Curpin's bone finger ring, embedded in mud. Gently, in order not to raise clouds of ooze, he blocked its incredible roped sledge and ox-hoof. Caught in a fish-hook curve, or pumped into the expensive bicycle crates, he touched up the ginger facade, decked his troublesome horse, and tampered no more with the tin roof. In fear and chaos, under a bridge or a water-tower, he became dusty blue with age. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-3029:54fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-23Thu, 23 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 On The Ascent Of The Mountain At Hoon ON THE ASCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN AT HOON A story from the last century ... There were four hundred of us. Lars carried the water in a shallow basin, spilling a small amount of our vital supply each time he stumbled over concealed heaps of bauxite or other points of geological interest. Helga was able to top up the basin by melting patches of snow with her bunsen burner, but there was very little snow on the lower slopes, and what there was had invariably been shat on by pigs, wildebeeste, geese, and bats. By the second day, Lars had managed not only to spill the entire water supply, but had also cracked the basin in half by accidentally bashing it against a rogue shard of basalt. The rest of us were furious. Venables wanted to hurl Lars over a precipice. Van Gob brandished his rifle with menace, muttering threats. Lars merely sulked, squatting in the bracken and whittling away at a small piece of wood he had painted crimson some years earlier. The tension mounted. Then Horst discovered some strange blueish flecks in a piece of rock. Gritting his teeth, he set about it with his iron hammers, and we were astonished to watch incandescent liquid spurt forth, forming a bright arc over the ramshackle encampment of pitched tents we called home. Glubb was the first to drink the liquid, for his thirst was the stuff of legend. He collected some in a battered tin cup and swallowed it at a gulp. Moments later, just as we were lighting a bonfire, his eyes glazed over and he stamped his feet in a demented rhythm. He began to declaim, slowly, in a booming voice quite unlike his usual prissy prating. He said: "I have seen red shelves stacked with a thousand corks. The corks have teeth-marks in them, as if they have been gnawed, by a billy-goat or other beast of the field. Then, and only then, a vision of mud. I have listened to the sound made by chaffinches, and walked a hundred miles in driving rain, burning clay until it explodes, tying endless knots in brown canvas flags. My breath is the breath of a man who has the gift of tongues, a man who has spoken with corncrakes. Gemstones have I for ears, and putty for a hat. Wrap me in chrysanthemums, inveigle me with truncated proverbs--I shall not hear, for I hear only the clanking of broken churchbells set swinging high in towers when the air is still and the sky has vanished. I say to you that I am as of Ack, that which has a light known not unto you. Nor shall it ever be known unto you, for yours are the eyes and ears of pebbles lying scattered on the floor of the vasty deep. I have lavished you with ice and wood and Ack, and now I must begone from your sight. Farewell." So saying, Glubb marched away, uphill, towards the summit. He did not look back. We never saw him again. The next morning, Lars was detailed to return to the sordid village at the foot of the mountain to get a new supply of water and a new basin in which to carry it. Lip's attempt to glue the cracked basin back into one piece had failed, because the paste he used was contaminated. Waving farewell to Lars, and leaving Lip to catch up with us after extricating his arm from a narrow vertical crevice in the mountainside, we pressed on. Brabant took snapshots along various stages of the climb. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 On The Ascent Of The Mountain At Hoon ON THE ASCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN AT HOON A story from the last century ... There were four hundred of us. Lars carried the water in a shallow basin, spilling a small amount of our vital supply each time he stumbled over concealed heaps of bauxite or other points of geological interest. Helga was able to top up the basin by melting patches of snow with her bunsen burner, but there was very little snow on the lower slopes, and what there was had invariably been shat on by pigs, wildebeeste, geese, and bats. By the second day, Lars had managed not only to spill the entire water supply, but had also cracked the basin in half by accidentally bashing it against a rogue shard of basalt. The rest of us were furious. Venables wanted to hurl Lars over a precipice. Van Gob brandished his rifle with menace, muttering threats. Lars merely sulked, squatting in the bracken and whittling away at a small piece of wood he had painted crimson some years earlier. The tension mounted. Then Horst discovered some strange blueish flecks in a piece of rock. Gritting his teeth, he set about it with his iron hammers, and we were astonished to watch incandescent liquid spurt forth, forming a bright arc over the ramshackle encampment of pitched tents we called home. Glubb was the first to drink the liquid, for his thirst was the stuff of legend. He collected some in a battered tin cup and swallowed it at a gulp. Moments later, just as we were lighting a bonfire, his eyes glazed over and he stamped his feet in a demented rhythm. He began to declaim, slowly, in a booming voice quite unlike his usual prissy prating. He said: "I have seen red shelves stacked with a thousand corks. The corks have teeth-marks in them, as if they have been gnawed, by a billy-goat or other beast of the field. Then, and only then, a vision of mud. I have listened to the sound made by chaffinches, and walked a hundred miles in driving rain, burning clay until it explodes, tying endless knots in brown canvas flags. My breath is the breath of a man who has the gift of tongues, a man who has spoken with corncrakes. Gemstones have I for ears, and putty for a hat. Wrap me in chrysanthemums, inveigle me with truncated proverbs--I shall not hear, for I hear only the clanking of broken churchbells set swinging high in towers when the air is still and the sky has vanished. I say to you that I am as of Ack, that which has a light known not unto you. Nor shall it ever be known unto you, for yours are the eyes and ears of pebbles lying scattered on the floor of the vasty deep. I have lavished you with ice and wood and Ack, and now I must begone from your sight. Farewell." So saying, Glubb marched away, uphill, towards the summit. He did not look back. We never saw him again. The next morning, Lars was detailed to return to the sordid village at the foot of the mountain to get a new supply of water and a new basin in which to carry it. Lip's attempt to glue the cracked basin back into one piece had failed, because the paste he used was contaminated. Waving farewell to Lars, and leaving Lip to catch up with us after extricating his arm from a narrow vertical crevice in the mountainside, we pressed on. Brabant took snapshots along various stages of the climb. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-2329:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-16Thu, 16 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:43 The Ogsby Steering Panel 05:15 Haircut 14:09 Specks In The Sky 21:29 Bonkers Alibis 27:09 "Among the earliest natural marvels that modernity..." THE OGSBY STEERING PANEL Last week I had an extraordinary stroke of good fortune. Ever since the afternoon of Friday last, I have been engulfed in a flood of memories, and I am discombobulated and a-dither, quite unlike my usual self. I was wandering the streets of Pointy Town, somewhat aimlessly, and as I turned a particular corner I felt compelled--there is no other word for it--to head off down a dark, narrow alleyway where lurked a strange little shop. Do you remember the scene towards the end of Random Harvest (1942), where Charles Rainier, played by Ronald Colman, turns down a side-street to go to a tobacconist, and then wonders how he knew it was there, this being a town he has never knowingly visited before, and how his consternation is the spur to his gradual recollection of the life that a traffic accident has wiped from his memory, leading, within a few minutes of film-time, to the tear-stained scene where he and Paula (Greer Garson) are reunited at the gates of their idyllic country cottage? Well, as I entered the shop in that Pointy Town alleyway, I had a very similar jolt to my memory, although I am not a veteran of the First World War whose shell shock had led to total amnesia and a reluctance to speak, like Charles Rainier. Readers who have no idea what I am gabbling on about should take steps to see this magnificent film at the earliest opportunity. I guarantee that even those with the flintiest of hearts will be sobbing copiously by the end, not that Hooting Yard readers tend to be flinty-hearted, as a general rule, according to the latest readership profiles gathered by Fatima Gilliblat and her team of wastrels. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:43 The Ogsby Steering Panel 05:15 Haircut 14:09 Specks In The Sky 21:29 Bonkers Alibis 27:09 "Among the earliest natural marvels that modernity..." THE OGSBY STEERING PANEL Last week I had an extraordinary stroke of good fortune. Ever since the afternoon of Friday last, I have been engulfed in a flood of memories, and I am discombobulated and a-dither, quite unlike my usual self. I was wandering the streets of Pointy Town, somewhat aimlessly, and as I turned a particular corner I felt compelled--there is no other word for it--to head off down a dark, narrow alleyway where lurked a strange little shop. Do you remember the scene towards the end of Random Harvest (1942), where Charles Rainier, played by Ronald Colman, turns down a side-street to go to a tobacconist, and then wonders how he knew it was there, this being a town he has never knowingly visited before, and how his consternation is the spur to his gradual recollection of the life that a traffic accident has wiped from his memory, leading, within a few minutes of film-time, to the tear-stained scene where he and Paula (Greer Garson) are reunited at the gates of their idyllic country cottage? Well, as I entered the shop in that Pointy Town alleyway, I had a very similar jolt to my memory, although I am not a veteran of the First World War whose shell shock had led to total amnesia and a reluctance to speak, like Charles Rainier. Readers who have no idea what I am gabbling on about should take steps to see this magnificent film at the earliest opportunity. I guarantee that even those with the flintiest of hearts will be sobbing copiously by the end, not that Hooting Yard readers tend to be flinty-hearted, as a general rule, according to the latest readership profiles gathered by Fatima Gilliblat and her team of wastrels. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-1629:54fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-09Thu, 09 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dream Diary (II) 03:32 Our Lady Of The Bumpkins 06:32 The Tarpaulins Of Goosbeck 08:54 Tie A Yellow Ribbon 12:10 Saving Your Swan 18:25 "If his experiences of the previous evening..." 19:44 Gluten-free Jabbering Man 21:51 The Ogsby Steering Panel DREAM DIARY (II) Last night I was invited to Buckingham Palace to visit the pangolin. It was kept in a grand state room along with two rather sleepy full-grown tigers and a governess. The governess spoke to the pangolin--which was wearing a little red pill-box hat--in French. After observing these arrangements, I was escorted from the Palace down a tree-lined pathway by the royal zookeeper, a grey-haired man who expressed an interest in travelling to New York. OUR LADY OF THE BUMPKINS Our Lady of the Bumpkins is the object of dribbling veneration by the peasantry hereabouts. That is pretty much all you need to know about her. More pertinent, perhaps, is why the peasants' veneration is accompanied, always, by dribbling. To find out, let us enter a peasant hovel. I would recommend a powerfully fragrant nosegay. Once our eyes become accustomed to the gloom, we can see a midden of unutterable filth. Such is the home life of our own dear peasantry. Well, mayhap not so dear. You will be thankful for the nosegay. You may also wish to have armed yourself with a sharp pointy stick, to keep the peasant at bay should he approach you. But there is little danger of that, because he is wholly occupied with veneration. He is sprawled on the ground, mouth open, dribbling freely, his idiot gaze fixated upon a statue of Our Lady of the Bumpkins. It is raised above the piles of gruesome clutter, resting on a sort of shrine or altar. It emits an unearthly glow, and is the one clean thing for miles around. When he is not venerating it, the dribbling peasant spends untold hours spraying it with polish from an aerosol canister and buffing it with rags. We poke him with the pointy stick to gain his attention. Still dribbling, he turns his head to look at us. "Can you not venerate Our Lady of the Bumpkins with your mouth closed?" we ask. In reply, the peasant grunts, and returns to his dribbling veneration. Before leaving, we note that he collects his dribbles in a rough-hewn wooden cup, artfully placed beneath his chin. And later, when we call in to the village's one-stop-shop to return our rented nosegay and pointy stick, we note that there are shelves stacked with similar cups of dribble. These are for sale, at a hefty price, to pilgrims who come from far and wide. Thus does the One True Faith maintain the rural economy in times of blight. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dream Diary (II) 03:32 Our Lady Of The Bumpkins 06:32 The Tarpaulins Of Goosbeck 08:54 Tie A Yellow Ribbon 12:10 Saving Your Swan 18:25 "If his experiences of the previous evening..." 19:44 Gluten-free Jabbering Man 21:51 The Ogsby Steering Panel DREAM DIARY (II) Last night I was invited to Buckingham Palace to visit the pangolin. It was kept in a grand state room along with two rather sleepy full-grown tigers and a governess. The governess spoke to the pangolin--which was wearing a little red pill-box hat--in French. After observing these arrangements, I was escorted from the Palace down a tree-lined pathway by the royal zookeeper, a grey-haired man who expressed an interest in travelling to New York. OUR LADY OF THE BUMPKINS Our Lady of the Bumpkins is the object of dribbling veneration by the peasantry hereabouts. That is pretty much all you need to know about her. More pertinent, perhaps, is why the peasants' veneration is accompanied, always, by dribbling. To find out, let us enter a peasant hovel. I would recommend a powerfully fragrant nosegay. Once our eyes become accustomed to the gloom, we can see a midden of unutterable filth. Such is the home life of our own dear peasantry. Well, mayhap not so dear. You will be thankful for the nosegay. You may also wish to have armed yourself with a sharp pointy stick, to keep the peasant at bay should he approach you. But there is little danger of that, because he is wholly occupied with veneration. He is sprawled on the ground, mouth open, dribbling freely, his idiot gaze fixated upon a statue of Our Lady of the Bumpkins. It is raised above the piles of gruesome clutter, resting on a sort of shrine or altar. It emits an unearthly glow, and is the one clean thing for miles around. When he is not venerating it, the dribbling peasant spends untold hours spraying it with polish from an aerosol canister and buffing it with rags. We poke him with the pointy stick to gain his attention. Still dribbling, he turns his head to look at us. "Can you not venerate Our Lady of the Bumpkins with your mouth closed?" we ask. In reply, the peasant grunts, and returns to his dribbling veneration. Before leaving, we note that he collects his dribbles in a rough-hewn wooden cup, artfully placed beneath his chin. And later, when we call in to the village's one-stop-shop to return our rented nosegay and pointy stick, we note that there are shelves stacked with similar cups of dribble. These are for sale, at a hefty price, to pilgrims who come from far and wide. Thus does the One True Faith maintain the rural economy in times of blight. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-0929:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-02Thu, 02 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 "Experiment : Procure a wide-mouthed bottle, an..." 05:26 Colossus 10:54 Bucephalus and the Cephalopods in the Bosphorus 18:19 Hooting Yard on the Air : The Podcasts "EXPERIMENT : PROCURE A WIDE-MOUTHED BOTTLE, AN..." "Experiment : Procure a wide-mouthed bottle, an egg, a glass tube about three inches long and a quarter-inch in diameter, a candle, and a piece of wire a little longer than the tube. Remove a part of the shell from the large end of the egg without breaking the skin beneath. This is easily done by gently tapping the shell with the handle of a pocket-knife until it is full of small cracks, and then, with the blade of the knife, picking off the small pieces. In this way remove the shell from the space about the size of a nickel. Remove the shell from the small end of the egg over a space about as large as the end of the glass tube. Next, from the lower end of the candle cut a piece about one-half inch long. Bore a hole in this just the size of the glass tube. Now soften one end of the piece of candle with the hole in it and stick it on to the small end of the egg so that the hole in the candle comes over the hole in the egg. Heat the wire, and with it solder the piece of candle more firmly to the egg, making a water-tight joint. Place the glass tube in the hole in the piece of candle, pushing it down till it touches the egg. Then, with the heated wire, solder the tube firmly in place. Now run the wire down the tube and break the skin of the egg just under the end of the tube. Fill the bottle with water till it overflows, and set the egg on the bottle, the large end in contact with the water. In an hour or so the contents of the egg will be seen rising in the glass tube." -- Charles L Goodrich, The First Book Of Farming […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 "Experiment : Procure a wide-mouthed bottle, an..." 05:26 Colossus 10:54 Bucephalus and the Cephalopods in the Bosphorus 18:19 Hooting Yard on the Air : The Podcasts "EXPERIMENT : PROCURE A WIDE-MOUTHED BOTTLE, AN..." "Experiment : Procure a wide-mouthed bottle, an egg, a glass tube about three inches long and a quarter-inch in diameter, a candle, and a piece of wire a little longer than the tube. Remove a part of the shell from the large end of the egg without breaking the skin beneath. This is easily done by gently tapping the shell with the handle of a pocket-knife until it is full of small cracks, and then, with the blade of the knife, picking off the small pieces. In this way remove the shell from the space about the size of a nickel. Remove the shell from the small end of the egg over a space about as large as the end of the glass tube. Next, from the lower end of the candle cut a piece about one-half inch long. Bore a hole in this just the size of the glass tube. Now soften one end of the piece of candle with the hole in it and stick it on to the small end of the egg so that the hole in the candle comes over the hole in the egg. Heat the wire, and with it solder the piece of candle more firmly to the egg, making a water-tight joint. Place the glass tube in the hole in the piece of candle, pushing it down till it touches the egg. Then, with the heated wire, solder the tube firmly in place. Now run the wire down the tube and break the skin of the egg just under the end of the tube. Fill the bottle with water till it overflows, and set the egg on the bottle, the large end in contact with the water. In an hour or so the contents of the egg will be seen rising in the glass tube." -- Charles L Goodrich, The First Book Of Farming […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-06-0229:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-05-19Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Surgeon's Biscuit 06:37 Stunned Starlings 24:06 "As I searched feebly among the unmaterial..." 25:17 "I see the children growing up. I..." 26:35 "Now, if the tuning hammer is placed..." SURGEON'S BISCUIT Some people think Surgeon's Biscuit is the name of a town near Kakadamm. Others believe it is an old parlour game popular in the boarding houses of seaside resorts during the 1930s. There are those who suspect it to be the name of a racehorse, or perhaps a racing pigeon, or some other bird or beast of swiftness. Surgeon's Biscuit is, of course, none of these things. It is simply a biscuit that belonged to a surgeon. But what a biscuit! And what a surgeon! As biscuits go, it was the finest specimen the surgeon had ever seen. Two thirds of the way down a perfectly ordinary-looking packet of digestive crumblies, there it nestled, a numinous, almost golden thing, some quirk in its baking making it unutterably different from its fellows in the batch. He remembered when he first handled it. He was not a man to transfer his newly-purchased biscuits into a so-called "biscuit tin" or similar container. He ate them straight from the packet, as he had been brought up to do by his rough, tough parents in their rough, tough hovel, who can never have expected little Vladimir to grow up to become an important surgeon. So on that day, during the last pathetic gasps of the Nixon administration, he took the next biscuit from the pack without even looking at it. Sitting at his large important desk in his spacious important consulting rooms, his attention was fixed on page forty six, column two, line fifteen of The Haemoglobin Monitor, where his name appeared, misspelled yet again! Why was it, he wondered, slowly moving the fabulous biscuit from the opened packet towards his mouth, that despite being the country's most famous surgeon, despite being referred to in virtually every haemoglobin-related article of note for the past three decades, not a single medical journal ever managed to spell his name correctly? He was about to bite his biscuit when something stopped him. A black beetle crawled across the magazine page, and came to a dead halt on his name. Vladimir shuddered, as if this were some presentiment of doom (which it was) and ditched his biscuit-eating plan. And it was then that he looked at the biscuit for the first time. He had been holding it for perhaps eight or nine seconds without paying it the least attention. Now, as the black beetle sat still on his misspelled name, dying of a rare black beetle disease, he not only saw the biscuit but felt it. Indeed, all his senses apprehended this majestic biscuit. And a spark lit up in his brain, just as the last spark in the black beetle's brain was extinguished, and he said to himself, "I am a great surgeon, and this is a great biscuit! Rather than bite into it and chew it and digest this digestive crumbly, I am going to put it in a box and preserve it, and it will forever after be known as the Surgeon's Biscuit!" Some say the soul of the black beetle escaped its dead shell and imbued the biscuit at that very instant. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-05-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Surgeon's Biscuit 06:37 Stunned Starlings 24:06 "As I searched feebly among the unmaterial..." 25:17 "I see the children growing up. I..." 26:35 "Now, if the tuning hammer is placed..." SURGEON'S BISCUIT Some people think Surgeon's Biscuit is the name of a town near Kakadamm. Others believe it is an old parlour game popular in the boarding houses of seaside resorts during the 1930s. There are those who suspect it to be the name of a racehorse, or perhaps a racing pigeon, or some other bird or beast of swiftness. Surgeon's Biscuit is, of course, none of these things. It is simply a biscuit that belonged to a surgeon. But what a biscuit! And what a surgeon! As biscuits go, it was the finest specimen the surgeon had ever seen. Two thirds of the way down a perfectly ordinary-looking packet of digestive crumblies, there it nestled, a numinous, almost golden thing, some quirk in its baking making it unutterably different from its fellows in the batch. He remembered when he first handled it. He was not a man to transfer his newly-purchased biscuits into a so-called "biscuit tin" or similar container. He ate them straight from the packet, as he had been brought up to do by his rough, tough parents in their rough, tough hovel, who can never have expected little Vladimir to grow up to become an important surgeon. So on that day, during the last pathetic gasps of the Nixon administration, he took the next biscuit from the pack without even looking at it. Sitting at his large important desk in his spacious important consulting rooms, his attention was fixed on page forty six, column two, line fifteen of The Haemoglobin Monitor, where his name appeared, misspelled yet again! Why was it, he wondered, slowly moving the fabulous biscuit from the opened packet towards his mouth, that despite being the country's most famous surgeon, despite being referred to in virtually every haemoglobin-related article of note for the past three decades, not a single medical journal ever managed to spell his name correctly? He was about to bite his biscuit when something stopped him. A black beetle crawled across the magazine page, and came to a dead halt on his name. Vladimir shuddered, as if this were some presentiment of doom (which it was) and ditched his biscuit-eating plan. And it was then that he looked at the biscuit for the first time. He had been holding it for perhaps eight or nine seconds without paying it the least attention. Now, as the black beetle sat still on his misspelled name, dying of a rare black beetle disease, he not only saw the biscuit but felt it. Indeed, all his senses apprehended this majestic biscuit. And a spark lit up in his brain, just as the last spark in the black beetle's brain was extinguished, and he said to himself, "I am a great surgeon, and this is a great biscuit! Rather than bite into it and chew it and digest this digestive crumbly, I am going to put it in a box and preserve it, and it will forever after be known as the Surgeon's Biscuit!" Some say the soul of the black beetle escaped its dead shell and imbued the biscuit at that very instant. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-05-1929:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-05-12Thu, 12 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Vox Pop : A Pang Hill Orphan Speaks 03:12 Some Notes on Compartments 07:26 A Series of Unfortunate Cows 12:38 Cow Homework 16:57 The Gnawed and the Chewed VOX POP : A PANG HILL ORPHAN SPEAKS My name is Sago and I am a glum inmate of Pang Hill Orphanage. I was born in a faraway land. My papa was a crusty man who fell into a pond and never surfaced. Later they found a vent at the bottom of the pond which led to a chute which in turn led to a hideous abode of Doom. My mama collected flies and fleas and similar wee beasts, often but not always winged ones. One day, soon after papa plunged down the chute at the bottom of the pond, she took a little paper bag with some of her flies in it to the parliament building of that faraway land, and when she showed reluctance to open the bag to the security guards at the magnetic barrier in the lobby, they shot her dead. That is the kind of land I come from. I spent a few months living off berries and rainwater and living in a cave on the coastline. Then the captain of an illegal fishing smack scooped me out of the tide pool where I was happily paddling and brought me thousands of miles across the storm-tossed ocean and delivered me to the gates of Pang Hill Orphanage. That is my story in its broad outlines. I would tell you more, but it is time for my morning brain scan. No one at the Orphanage has ever explained to me why each orphan's brain is scanned three times a day, but I have made a plasticine copy of the key to the room behind the canteen in which lurk the filing cabinets where the brain scan results are stored, and soon I am going to skulk in there at dead of night and examine all the results very, very closely and then I am going to shred them, for I fear nobody and nothing. I am glum but stupendously brave and clever, and my name is Sago. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-05-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Vox Pop : A Pang Hill Orphan Speaks 03:12 Some Notes on Compartments 07:26 A Series of Unfortunate Cows 12:38 Cow Homework 16:57 The Gnawed and the Chewed VOX POP : A PANG HILL ORPHAN SPEAKS My name is Sago and I am a glum inmate of Pang Hill Orphanage. I was born in a faraway land. My papa was a crusty man who fell into a pond and never surfaced. Later they found a vent at the bottom of the pond which led to a chute which in turn led to a hideous abode of Doom. My mama collected flies and fleas and similar wee beasts, often but not always winged ones. One day, soon after papa plunged down the chute at the bottom of the pond, she took a little paper bag with some of her flies in it to the parliament building of that faraway land, and when she showed reluctance to open the bag to the security guards at the magnetic barrier in the lobby, they shot her dead. That is the kind of land I come from. I spent a few months living off berries and rainwater and living in a cave on the coastline. Then the captain of an illegal fishing smack scooped me out of the tide pool where I was happily paddling and brought me thousands of miles across the storm-tossed ocean and delivered me to the gates of Pang Hill Orphanage. That is my story in its broad outlines. I would tell you more, but it is time for my morning brain scan. No one at the Orphanage has ever explained to me why each orphan's brain is scanned three times a day, but I have made a plasticine copy of the key to the room behind the canteen in which lurk the filing cabinets where the brain scan results are stored, and soon I am going to skulk in there at dead of night and examine all the results very, very closely and then I am going to shred them, for I fear nobody and nothing. I am glum but stupendously brave and clever, and my name is Sago. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-05-1229:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-05-05Thu, 05 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 A Catalogue of 53 Birds 18:49 On The Thing That Smelled Of Birds 26:06 "Once, in passing through my chamber, my..." A CATALOGUE OF 53 BIRDS The Godwit. Like Italo Calvino, the godwit has a seething hatred of cement. It has been known to burrow. Prone to desperate sneezing, the godwit chews dandelions & lacks any sense of pottery. The Wan Clump. An extraordinary bird, the wan clump is best known for its habit of swooping upon film premieres attended by the likes of Cloris Leachman, Troy Donahue & Tab Hunter. But not Tuesday Weld. Third bird. The Quint. Vercingetorix Sepulveda wrote about quints in one of his majestic tracts. Unfortunately, scholars have to date been unable to read any of them, as his penmanship was execrable. The Lopwit. Omitted from most biographies of Ezra Pound is the startling fact that he was an indefatigable trapper of lopwits. Such was his mania that he was fired from the joint US-Italian Lopwit Monitoring Committee in 1949. The Tult. Sadly, the tult is an irrelevant bird. The Fristiglip. What a joy to behold a flock of fristiglips on the wing, as they set off on their annual migration from Penge to Uttoxeter! The Snote. The following is a quotation from Eric Wheat's "Notes On That Bad Man Dobson & Some Birds": "This morning on my way to church I noted the nest of a snote atop the timber-framed hut in which the malefactor Dobson plots his dark deeds. The nest was empty. Yet upon my return from worship, it was absolutely crammed with innumerable sickly snotes." The Churter. The churter is able to mimic the sound of klaxons, sirens & tocsins, but does not often do so. It feeds on dew & flax. The Arpad. Many top ornithologists contend that the arpad is a kind of nightjar. Certainly its beak & wings give that impression. Arpads, both in flight & roosting, have been a popular subject for recent postage stamps in Finland. The Hoogoo. There are a number of interesting facts about the hoogoo, a tiny bird much smaller than the wren, or even the hummingbird. The hoogoo is, as far as I know, the only bird which has magnetic feet. For this reason, hoogoos avoid sites such as ironworks, blacksmiths, smelting yards, tin mines & other locations of metallurgical interest. The Pale Auk. Aerodynamically unsound, the pale auk is only capable of flight on Wednesdays, except Ash Wednesday. Its characteristic cry is a wild & deafening ululation, not unlike a hoarse muezzin. The Catsob. Catsobs were once numerous in Java & Batavia, but they have been almost wiped out, possibly because they resemble stalks of wheat. The Shoveller Wreck. A shy bird, the shoveller wreck feeds mainly on bags of suet eked from shipwrecks. It tears the bags open with its huge, lacerating beak. The Ip. The ip is treasured by tiny & bewildered orphans, for at harvest time it will roost atop unlikely clumps of foliage & sing oh so sweetly, which provides a diversion in the poor unfortunates' otherwise dismal lives. The Immense Floon. The nomenclature of the immense floon is one of those endlessly fascinating ornithological puzzles tabulated by the Jesuit bird-fancier Father F X Curpin in his exhaustive book "Eggs & Talons". The immense floon is neither immense, nor is it a floon. Nor a bird. The Plint. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-05-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 A Catalogue of 53 Birds 18:49 On The Thing That Smelled Of Birds 26:06 "Once, in passing through my chamber, my..." A CATALOGUE OF 53 BIRDS The Godwit. Like Italo Calvino, the godwit has a seething hatred of cement. It has been known to burrow. Prone to desperate sneezing, the godwit chews dandelions & lacks any sense of pottery. The Wan Clump. An extraordinary bird, the wan clump is best known for its habit of swooping upon film premieres attended by the likes of Cloris Leachman, Troy Donahue & Tab Hunter. But not Tuesday Weld. Third bird. The Quint. Vercingetorix Sepulveda wrote about quints in one of his majestic tracts. Unfortunately, scholars have to date been unable to read any of them, as his penmanship was execrable. The Lopwit. Omitted from most biographies of Ezra Pound is the startling fact that he was an indefatigable trapper of lopwits. Such was his mania that he was fired from the joint US-Italian Lopwit Monitoring Committee in 1949. The Tult. Sadly, the tult is an irrelevant bird. The Fristiglip. What a joy to behold a flock of fristiglips on the wing, as they set off on their annual migration from Penge to Uttoxeter! The Snote. The following is a quotation from Eric Wheat's "Notes On That Bad Man Dobson & Some Birds": "This morning on my way to church I noted the nest of a snote atop the timber-framed hut in which the malefactor Dobson plots his dark deeds. The nest was empty. Yet upon my return from worship, it was absolutely crammed with innumerable sickly snotes." The Churter. The churter is able to mimic the sound of klaxons, sirens & tocsins, but does not often do so. It feeds on dew & flax. The Arpad. Many top ornithologists contend that the arpad is a kind of nightjar. Certainly its beak & wings give that impression. Arpads, both in flight & roosting, have been a popular subject for recent postage stamps in Finland. The Hoogoo. There are a number of interesting facts about the hoogoo, a tiny bird much smaller than the wren, or even the hummingbird. The hoogoo is, as far as I know, the only bird which has magnetic feet. For this reason, hoogoos avoid sites such as ironworks, blacksmiths, smelting yards, tin mines & other locations of metallurgical interest. The Pale Auk. Aerodynamically unsound, the pale auk is only capable of flight on Wednesdays, except Ash Wednesday. Its characteristic cry is a wild & deafening ululation, not unlike a hoarse muezzin. The Catsob. Catsobs were once numerous in Java & Batavia, but they have been almost wiped out, possibly because they resemble stalks of wheat. The Shoveller Wreck. A shy bird, the shoveller wreck feeds mainly on bags of suet eked from shipwrecks. It tears the bags open with its huge, lacerating beak. The Ip. The ip is treasured by tiny & bewildered orphans, for at harvest time it will roost atop unlikely clumps of foliage & sing oh so sweetly, which provides a diversion in the poor unfortunates' otherwise dismal lives. The Immense Floon. The nomenclature of the immense floon is one of those endlessly fascinating ornithological puzzles tabulated by the Jesuit bird-fancier Father F X Curpin in his exhaustive book "Eggs & Talons". The immense floon is neither immense, nor is it a floon. Nor a bird. The Plint. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-05-0529:53fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-04-28Thu, 28 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:19 Attempted Seduction of Dobson by a Floozie 09:52 On Fiends Of The Farmyard 17:59 Fort Hoity 26:56 "It would be absurd and ridiculous to..." ATTEMPTED SEDUCTION OF DOBSON BY A FLOOZIE So here is Dobson, reclining in an arbour on a bright, fresh morning. The grass is dew-dappled. Dobson has an air of lassitude. In his right hand he holds a slim volume of twee verse, but he is not reading. He is gazing into the middle distance, rapt in thought. Little birds are perched on a bower above him, and they are singing sweet and mellifluous airs. I'm sorry, that is wholly inaccurate. Let's start again. It is pouring with rain. Dobson, windswept and dejected, is trudging along the muddy towpath of the canal. He has a scowl on his face. Suddenly, he stops, and peers at something floating in the canal, something fetid and rotting and quite unidentifiable. So fascinating does Dobson find this soggy nothing that he does not notice the approach of Popsie Shadrach, the notorious floozie. "You were absorbed in thought, Dobson," observes the wanton, planting herself in front of him and twirling some taffeta frippery through her long fingers, the nails of which are painted crimson or scarlet or some other garish colour suitable for a floozie's manicure. "I was indeed" replies the pamphleteer, after clearing his throat and spitting into the canal. There is a slim volume of twee verse by Dennis Beerpint poking out of the pocket of his grubby jacket, and it does not go unremarked by Popsie. "You were thinking of her you love, I would wager" she says, and sighs. It is a startlingly impassioned sigh, but Dobson appears not to take a blind bit of notice. Instead, he begins trying to dislodge a shred of cabbage from his teeth, at first by probing with his tongue, and then by shoving a calloused finger into his gob. Dobson's nails are unpainted. In fact, they are hideously gnawed. Popsie Shadrach sighs again, languidly this time. "You are beloved in return--yes, Dobson, most charming of out of print pamphleteers, you are indeed beloved," she says. There is a tremulousness in her voice, a throbbing in her breast, and a fleeting shudder as Dobson finally manages to extract the shred of cabbage and inadvertently flicks it into her face. She blinks, but regains her sultriness and edges closer to the pamphleteer. "Are you certain?" he replies, eventually, though he is still peering at the decaying matter which is bobbing in the water. "Oh, I am but too certain. You are beloved--oh, how madly, by me!" cries Popsie, and she flings herself at his feet, caring not a jot that her gaudy red dress is now covered in muck. "By you, Popsie Shadrach, notorious floozie that you are? You jest surely--Rise, rise, I beseech you from your unbecoming posture--unbecoming towards me" shouts Dobson, turning to look at Popsie for the first time. As he does so, a maniac crow flies past very close to his head, attracted perhaps by the beetles which crawl through his unkempt hair. "Oh, Dobson, I love you, I adore you! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-04-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:19 Attempted Seduction of Dobson by a Floozie 09:52 On Fiends Of The Farmyard 17:59 Fort Hoity 26:56 "It would be absurd and ridiculous to..." ATTEMPTED SEDUCTION OF DOBSON BY A FLOOZIE So here is Dobson, reclining in an arbour on a bright, fresh morning. The grass is dew-dappled. Dobson has an air of lassitude. In his right hand he holds a slim volume of twee verse, but he is not reading. He is gazing into the middle distance, rapt in thought. Little birds are perched on a bower above him, and they are singing sweet and mellifluous airs. I'm sorry, that is wholly inaccurate. Let's start again. It is pouring with rain. Dobson, windswept and dejected, is trudging along the muddy towpath of the canal. He has a scowl on his face. Suddenly, he stops, and peers at something floating in the canal, something fetid and rotting and quite unidentifiable. So fascinating does Dobson find this soggy nothing that he does not notice the approach of Popsie Shadrach, the notorious floozie. "You were absorbed in thought, Dobson," observes the wanton, planting herself in front of him and twirling some taffeta frippery through her long fingers, the nails of which are painted crimson or scarlet or some other garish colour suitable for a floozie's manicure. "I was indeed" replies the pamphleteer, after clearing his throat and spitting into the canal. There is a slim volume of twee verse by Dennis Beerpint poking out of the pocket of his grubby jacket, and it does not go unremarked by Popsie. "You were thinking of her you love, I would wager" she says, and sighs. It is a startlingly impassioned sigh, but Dobson appears not to take a blind bit of notice. Instead, he begins trying to dislodge a shred of cabbage from his teeth, at first by probing with his tongue, and then by shoving a calloused finger into his gob. Dobson's nails are unpainted. In fact, they are hideously gnawed. Popsie Shadrach sighs again, languidly this time. "You are beloved in return--yes, Dobson, most charming of out of print pamphleteers, you are indeed beloved," she says. There is a tremulousness in her voice, a throbbing in her breast, and a fleeting shudder as Dobson finally manages to extract the shred of cabbage and inadvertently flicks it into her face. She blinks, but regains her sultriness and edges closer to the pamphleteer. "Are you certain?" he replies, eventually, though he is still peering at the decaying matter which is bobbing in the water. "Oh, I am but too certain. You are beloved--oh, how madly, by me!" cries Popsie, and she flings herself at his feet, caring not a jot that her gaudy red dress is now covered in muck. "By you, Popsie Shadrach, notorious floozie that you are? You jest surely--Rise, rise, I beseech you from your unbecoming posture--unbecoming towards me" shouts Dobson, turning to look at Popsie for the first time. As he does so, a maniac crow flies past very close to his head, attracted perhaps by the beetles which crawl through his unkempt hair. "Oh, Dobson, I love you, I adore you! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-04-2829:52fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-04-21Thu, 21 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 That Dobson-hubbard Slur 06:31 The Potato Clock : History and Prospects 17:24 Stoat in a Bog 21:42 Wish Upon a Star 26:42 "There seems to be no good reason..." THAT DOBSON-HUBBARD SLUR Speaking of Scientology, I read somewhere recently an article claiming that Dobson, the out of print pamphleteer, had pretensions to being some sort of L Ron Hubbard figure, or "Enron" Hubbard, as some wags have taken to calling the old rogue. This is a terrible slur on Dobson who, if not exactly saintly, was by no means a money-grubbing charlatan. It is true that he wrote a "guide to life" entitled Dobsonetics, and devised a "personality test" with which he would attempt to entice passers-by on street corners, but there the similarities end. Much as he might have wanted to, Dobson was never able to buy a small fleet of ships and spend years sailing the oceans with a private navy (the "Sea Organisation") as a tax-avoidance scheme. The Dobsonetics personality test survives only in fragmentary form, for the simple reason that most of those invited to take it judged it a piece of blithering inanity and tore it to shreds. To his credit, the pamphleteer did not condemn such folk as apostates who should be abominated, threatened, and shunned. Instead, he looked on sadly as the torn-up scraps of yet another uncompleted test fell to the ground, only to be picked up by the howling winds and carried off, fluttering away in the air. He would watch until they disappeared, and then trudge home, fix himself a cup of piping hot tea, and sit at his escritoire to devise more questions. It is worth pointing out that, as with so much else Dobsonian, the personality test was a fleeting fad, and he soon moved on to pastures new. Years later he penned a pamphlet entitled A Recantation Of Dobsonetics, which has the dubious distinction of having sold precisely nil copies. It is estimated that there were two hundred questions in the original Dobsonetics personality test. Of these, only seven have survived. As an act of historical curiosity, you may wish to answer them. 1. Complete the following sequence: thumping headache ... spinach ... creosote ... viper ... Helen Shapiro ... 2. Do you prefer a flip-top lid to a twist-off cap? 3. Have you ever been mistaken for Stalin? 4. Do you tremble in the presence of coat hangers? 5. "Men are from Uttoxeter, women are from Didcot." True or false? 6. The best thing to do with a plastic basin full of bird feathers is.... what? 7. Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about L Ron Hubbard? DETOURS : The History Of Phrenology ... Germander Speedwell ... The Stingy Scholar […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-04-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 That Dobson-hubbard Slur 06:31 The Potato Clock : History and Prospects 17:24 Stoat in a Bog 21:42 Wish Upon a Star 26:42 "There seems to be no good reason..." THAT DOBSON-HUBBARD SLUR Speaking of Scientology, I read somewhere recently an article claiming that Dobson, the out of print pamphleteer, had pretensions to being some sort of L Ron Hubbard figure, or "Enron" Hubbard, as some wags have taken to calling the old rogue. This is a terrible slur on Dobson who, if not exactly saintly, was by no means a money-grubbing charlatan. It is true that he wrote a "guide to life" entitled Dobsonetics, and devised a "personality test" with which he would attempt to entice passers-by on street corners, but there the similarities end. Much as he might have wanted to, Dobson was never able to buy a small fleet of ships and spend years sailing the oceans with a private navy (the "Sea Organisation") as a tax-avoidance scheme. The Dobsonetics personality test survives only in fragmentary form, for the simple reason that most of those invited to take it judged it a piece of blithering inanity and tore it to shreds. To his credit, the pamphleteer did not condemn such folk as apostates who should be abominated, threatened, and shunned. Instead, he looked on sadly as the torn-up scraps of yet another uncompleted test fell to the ground, only to be picked up by the howling winds and carried off, fluttering away in the air. He would watch until they disappeared, and then trudge home, fix himself a cup of piping hot tea, and sit at his escritoire to devise more questions. It is worth pointing out that, as with so much else Dobsonian, the personality test was a fleeting fad, and he soon moved on to pastures new. Years later he penned a pamphlet entitled A Recantation Of Dobsonetics, which has the dubious distinction of having sold precisely nil copies. It is estimated that there were two hundred questions in the original Dobsonetics personality test. Of these, only seven have survived. As an act of historical curiosity, you may wish to answer them. 1. Complete the following sequence: thumping headache ... spinach ... creosote ... viper ... Helen Shapiro ... 2. Do you prefer a flip-top lid to a twist-off cap? 3. Have you ever been mistaken for Stalin? 4. Do you tremble in the presence of coat hangers? 5. "Men are from Uttoxeter, women are from Didcot." True or false? 6. The best thing to do with a plastic basin full of bird feathers is.... what? 7. Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about L Ron Hubbard? DETOURS : The History Of Phrenology ... Germander Speedwell ... The Stingy Scholar […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-04-2129:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-04-14Thu, 14 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Dobson the Convict 04:24 "To make Stars that will expand in..." 05:37 How to Stick Pins Into a Wax Doll of Your Enemy 14:39 The Slovenly Gibbets 20:21 O Cure Me DOBSON THE CONVICT Today's quotation, which you will have read attentively, is from Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot's 1917 memoir Sixteen Months In Four German Prisons. Dobson was a great admirer of this book and planned to write a sequel entitled Four Months In Sixteen German Prisons. To this end, he arrived in Ulm on a bright spring morning and began to write an inflammatory pamphlet, hoping to be placed under arrest. His plan succeeded brilliantly, and by midday he had been banged up in the jug. He lay back on the cold stone bench in his cell and smiled. Then, before a guard arrived with a tin bowl of evil-looking and worse-smelling soup, the pamphleteer took from a secret compartment in his shoe a notepad and pencil and wrote: Day one. In prison in Ulm. One down, fifteen prisons to go. Soup due soon. At the time of which I write, Dobson was young and impetuous, and he had not bothered to research the German penal system, particularly that part of it related to the transfer of convicts between prisons. He was later to reflect ruefully on his naivety. I thought I would be able to get myself moved from prison to prison just by asking nicely, he wrote, but I reckoned without the inhuman, mechanically creaking wheels of Teutonic jurisprudence. It must be said that this is a somewhat melodramatic evasion. What actually happened was that, hauled before a court within two hours of his incarceration, Dobson was condemned as an "idiotic nuisance" and ejected from the country. He was placed on a prison ship which sailed him home in time for tea. A ship a bit like the one that sailed Dobson home from prison "TO MAKE STARS THAT WILL EXPAND IN..." "To make Stars that will expand in Flame, and appear like natural Stars in the Firmament for a time: Take half a Pound of Salt-peter, the like quantity of Brimstone, finely beaten together, sifted and mingled with a quarter of a Pound of Gunpowder so ordered: Then wrap up the Composition in Linnen Rags or fine Paper, to the quantity of a Walnut, bind them with small Thread, and prick holes in the Rag or Paper with a Bodkin, and place six or ten of them on the Head of a great Rocket, as you did the Quills, and when the Rocket expires, they take fire and spread into a Flame, hovering in the Air like Stars, and descend leisurely till the matter is spent that gives them light." -- Robert Howlett, The School Of Recreation […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-04-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Dobson the Convict 04:24 "To make Stars that will expand in..." 05:37 How to Stick Pins Into a Wax Doll of Your Enemy 14:39 The Slovenly Gibbets 20:21 O Cure Me DOBSON THE CONVICT Today's quotation, which you will have read attentively, is from Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot's 1917 memoir Sixteen Months In Four German Prisons. Dobson was a great admirer of this book and planned to write a sequel entitled Four Months In Sixteen German Prisons. To this end, he arrived in Ulm on a bright spring morning and began to write an inflammatory pamphlet, hoping to be placed under arrest. His plan succeeded brilliantly, and by midday he had been banged up in the jug. He lay back on the cold stone bench in his cell and smiled. Then, before a guard arrived with a tin bowl of evil-looking and worse-smelling soup, the pamphleteer took from a secret compartment in his shoe a notepad and pencil and wrote: Day one. In prison in Ulm. One down, fifteen prisons to go. Soup due soon. At the time of which I write, Dobson was young and impetuous, and he had not bothered to research the German penal system, particularly that part of it related to the transfer of convicts between prisons. He was later to reflect ruefully on his naivety. I thought I would be able to get myself moved from prison to prison just by asking nicely, he wrote, but I reckoned without the inhuman, mechanically creaking wheels of Teutonic jurisprudence. It must be said that this is a somewhat melodramatic evasion. What actually happened was that, hauled before a court within two hours of his incarceration, Dobson was condemned as an "idiotic nuisance" and ejected from the country. He was placed on a prison ship which sailed him home in time for tea. A ship a bit like the one that sailed Dobson home from prison "TO MAKE STARS THAT WILL EXPAND IN..." "To make Stars that will expand in Flame, and appear like natural Stars in the Firmament for a time: Take half a Pound of Salt-peter, the like quantity of Brimstone, finely beaten together, sifted and mingled with a quarter of a Pound of Gunpowder so ordered: Then wrap up the Composition in Linnen Rags or fine Paper, to the quantity of a Walnut, bind them with small Thread, and prick holes in the Rag or Paper with a Bodkin, and place six or ten of them on the Head of a great Rocket, as you did the Quills, and when the Rocket expires, they take fire and spread into a Flame, hovering in the Air like Stars, and descend leisurely till the matter is spent that gives them light." -- Robert Howlett, The School Of Recreation […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-04-1429:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-31Thu, 31 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:10 Elbow Room 05:57 Cranky Pagan Pudding Recipe 12:04 He Preened, Eating Bloaters 21:39 Epoch of Snares ELBOW ROOM Elbow Room can be defined as free space on either side of a human body into which the elbows can be extended outwards. You can test whether you have Elbow Room by standing up, with your arms at your sides, and then raising your hands, keeping them to the side of your body. Your arms will form an angle with the elbows at the apex. I am not familiar with many standard geometrical terms, so apex may be the incorrect word, but I am sure you know what I mean. In my view, a lack of precise knowledge ought not prevent me from applying my puny yet pulsating brain to matters of interest. You may retort, with some justification, that it would be easy enough for me to look up the information about which I am unclear, either in a reference book or on the internet. I cannot really argue with that, but if I started checking up on everything of which I am ignorant, I would be kept busy for ever and a day, and would not have any time to actually write anything. Do not, please, tell me to confine myself to writing about things I already know, or that I am confident enough to babble on about without corroborating the facts. There are indeed statements I can make which I do not need to verify, assertions which I would challenge anyone to disprove. I know, for example, that the character played by David McCallum in The Man From UNCLE was named Ilya Kuryakin. I know that Robert Burton wrote The Anatomy Of Melancholy under the pseudonym Democritus Junior. I know that I can find eternity in a grain of sand. Were I to limit myself to that which I already know, not only would I get bored, but so would you, the reader, still standing, I trust, with your elbows akimbo, relishing the free space on either side of your body, and knowing that this is what we call Elbow Room. Now you can draw your elbows in and sit down again. I have of course made the assumption that you were able to extend your elbows outwards as suggested. But it may be that you do not have Elbow Room. Perhaps you are a dangerous and brainsick criminal and you have been confined, for the safety of both yourself and others, to a tiny, tiny cell. Maybe you are a fanatical adherent of some cause, and have gathered together with your fellows en masse, scrunched up against one another and shouting your heads off in protest, pinned to a designated section of the market square by riot police kitted out with helmets, batons and shields. Or you may be out in open country, taking the air, with plenty of Elbow Room and a vast amount of space besides, and you may have taken a wrong turn and found yourself engulfed by a herd of cows being driven slowly along the lane by a peasant. These thing happen, believe you me. In the unlikely event that you are reading this in any of these circumstances, or in any other situation which does not afford you Elbow Room, you can always test the validity of my argument next time you are less squashed up.Bear in mind that you should never take Elbow Room for granted. It is a precious thing, and you would do well to treasure it. Next week, I will be writing about something else of which I am not one hundred percent certain. Doing so will benefit both me and you. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:10 Elbow Room 05:57 Cranky Pagan Pudding Recipe 12:04 He Preened, Eating Bloaters 21:39 Epoch of Snares ELBOW ROOM Elbow Room can be defined as free space on either side of a human body into which the elbows can be extended outwards. You can test whether you have Elbow Room by standing up, with your arms at your sides, and then raising your hands, keeping them to the side of your body. Your arms will form an angle with the elbows at the apex. I am not familiar with many standard geometrical terms, so apex may be the incorrect word, but I am sure you know what I mean. In my view, a lack of precise knowledge ought not prevent me from applying my puny yet pulsating brain to matters of interest. You may retort, with some justification, that it would be easy enough for me to look up the information about which I am unclear, either in a reference book or on the internet. I cannot really argue with that, but if I started checking up on everything of which I am ignorant, I would be kept busy for ever and a day, and would not have any time to actually write anything. Do not, please, tell me to confine myself to writing about things I already know, or that I am confident enough to babble on about without corroborating the facts. There are indeed statements I can make which I do not need to verify, assertions which I would challenge anyone to disprove. I know, for example, that the character played by David McCallum in The Man From UNCLE was named Ilya Kuryakin. I know that Robert Burton wrote The Anatomy Of Melancholy under the pseudonym Democritus Junior. I know that I can find eternity in a grain of sand. Were I to limit myself to that which I already know, not only would I get bored, but so would you, the reader, still standing, I trust, with your elbows akimbo, relishing the free space on either side of your body, and knowing that this is what we call Elbow Room. Now you can draw your elbows in and sit down again. I have of course made the assumption that you were able to extend your elbows outwards as suggested. But it may be that you do not have Elbow Room. Perhaps you are a dangerous and brainsick criminal and you have been confined, for the safety of both yourself and others, to a tiny, tiny cell. Maybe you are a fanatical adherent of some cause, and have gathered together with your fellows en masse, scrunched up against one another and shouting your heads off in protest, pinned to a designated section of the market square by riot police kitted out with helmets, batons and shields. Or you may be out in open country, taking the air, with plenty of Elbow Room and a vast amount of space besides, and you may have taken a wrong turn and found yourself engulfed by a herd of cows being driven slowly along the lane by a peasant. These thing happen, believe you me. In the unlikely event that you are reading this in any of these circumstances, or in any other situation which does not afford you Elbow Room, you can always test the validity of my argument next time you are less squashed up.Bear in mind that you should never take Elbow Room for granted. It is a precious thing, and you would do well to treasure it. Next week, I will be writing about something else of which I am not one hundred percent certain. Doing so will benefit both me and you. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-3129:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-24Thu, 24 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Fear Eats the Soul 12:23 "Does any boy's conscience smite him at..." 13:20 Dances With Blodgett 19:03 "The door opened, and a figure representing..." 20:40 Basil And Guido's Kropotkin Fanfaronade FEAR EATS THE SOUL There is a story told that one night Tiny Enid awoke from troubled dreams, went downstairs to get a glass of milk, and was amazed, when looking out of the kitchen window, to see the Burning Wheel Of Doom in the fields beyond the bottom of her garden. It was turning slowly, with hideous creaks, its huge flames licking the sky. Tiny Enid drained her glass, draped a shawl over her dressing-gown, slipped into her Uruguayan Mountain Ranger boots, and unlocked the back door. She walked down to the wicket gate, marvelling that the fierceness of the fire was such that night was banished, and the sky as bright as day. As Tiny Enid unlatched the gate, her pet crow hopped along the path to follow her. He could not fly, for he was a crippled crow. Hearing the tap tap tap of his talons on the paving, Tiny Enid turned, and whispered, "You must stay indoors, Ilya Kuryakin, it is not safe for you". No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a snaggle-toothed ruffian stole out of the bushes and hoisted Tiny Enid over his shoulder, cackling as he carried her off towards the Burning Wheel Of Doom. Let us not judge the snaggle-toothed ruffian too harshly. He was a poor half-witted hobbledehoy whose moral compass had been skewed, growing up as he did during the sorry years of the John Major government, in which his father had served. Have compassion for him, children, for he had no Hoons nor Blunketts to swaddle him against a cruel world. Indeed, have more compassion for him than Tiny Enid showed on that wild and strange night. Reasoning that she may as well take advantage of being carried across the mud-splattered fields, she waited until they were three quarters of the way to the Burning Wheel Of Doom before reaching up, pushing aside a greasy strand of hair from the snaggle-toothed ruffian's ear, and saying loudly "Unhand me now, sir, or I shall wring your neck". The snaggle-toothed ruffian cackled again, and plodded onward, so Tiny Enid swung herself off his shoulder and wrung his neck. Dusting off her hands, she looked back towards the house to make sure her pet crow had stayed indoors, and then turned to face the Burning Wheel Of Doom. The creaks were that much louder now, the flames higher and more terrible. Imagine you were at her side, clutching her hand in your fright, and you asked her "What do you see, Tiny Enid?" This is what she might say: "This is a strange night, and grows stranger still, for I do not see what I thought I would see at the base of the Burning Wheel Of Doom. I have heard many tales of it, and always there are peasants dancing in a circle around it, their brains bedizened by ergot poisoning, and as they reel, they pass from hand to hand a flagon filled with the blood of ducks, and they each drink of it, and they babble and screech and wail. And over to their left should be a band of other peasants, tooting pipes and horns and plucking harps and beating drums. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Fear Eats the Soul 12:23 "Does any boy's conscience smite him at..." 13:20 Dances With Blodgett 19:03 "The door opened, and a figure representing..." 20:40 Basil And Guido's Kropotkin Fanfaronade FEAR EATS THE SOUL There is a story told that one night Tiny Enid awoke from troubled dreams, went downstairs to get a glass of milk, and was amazed, when looking out of the kitchen window, to see the Burning Wheel Of Doom in the fields beyond the bottom of her garden. It was turning slowly, with hideous creaks, its huge flames licking the sky. Tiny Enid drained her glass, draped a shawl over her dressing-gown, slipped into her Uruguayan Mountain Ranger boots, and unlocked the back door. She walked down to the wicket gate, marvelling that the fierceness of the fire was such that night was banished, and the sky as bright as day. As Tiny Enid unlatched the gate, her pet crow hopped along the path to follow her. He could not fly, for he was a crippled crow. Hearing the tap tap tap of his talons on the paving, Tiny Enid turned, and whispered, "You must stay indoors, Ilya Kuryakin, it is not safe for you". No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a snaggle-toothed ruffian stole out of the bushes and hoisted Tiny Enid over his shoulder, cackling as he carried her off towards the Burning Wheel Of Doom. Let us not judge the snaggle-toothed ruffian too harshly. He was a poor half-witted hobbledehoy whose moral compass had been skewed, growing up as he did during the sorry years of the John Major government, in which his father had served. Have compassion for him, children, for he had no Hoons nor Blunketts to swaddle him against a cruel world. Indeed, have more compassion for him than Tiny Enid showed on that wild and strange night. Reasoning that she may as well take advantage of being carried across the mud-splattered fields, she waited until they were three quarters of the way to the Burning Wheel Of Doom before reaching up, pushing aside a greasy strand of hair from the snaggle-toothed ruffian's ear, and saying loudly "Unhand me now, sir, or I shall wring your neck". The snaggle-toothed ruffian cackled again, and plodded onward, so Tiny Enid swung herself off his shoulder and wrung his neck. Dusting off her hands, she looked back towards the house to make sure her pet crow had stayed indoors, and then turned to face the Burning Wheel Of Doom. The creaks were that much louder now, the flames higher and more terrible. Imagine you were at her side, clutching her hand in your fright, and you asked her "What do you see, Tiny Enid?" This is what she might say: "This is a strange night, and grows stranger still, for I do not see what I thought I would see at the base of the Burning Wheel Of Doom. I have heard many tales of it, and always there are peasants dancing in a circle around it, their brains bedizened by ergot poisoning, and as they reel, they pass from hand to hand a flagon filled with the blood of ducks, and they each drink of it, and they babble and screech and wail. And over to their left should be a band of other peasants, tooting pipes and horns and plucking harps and beating drums. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-2429:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-10Thu, 10 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 The Imitation Of Christ 08:56 Moptop Of Gath 13:16 These Plastic Betrayals 17:23 Undone By Foxgloves 22:30 An Outing THE IMITATION OF CHRIST At a loose end, I signed up for Pilbeam's Crash-Course in the Imitation of Christ. Earlier in the day, plodding through the streets, I had been given a leaflet. The hawker who handed it to me was a person of regrettable grubbiness, and some of his filth inevitably besmirched the leaflet, which was smudged, with the effect that I misread The Imitation of Christ as The Imitation of Chris. Chris who?, I wondered, hoping that Pilbeam was taking an overfamiliar tone with regard to the actor Christopher Plummer. It so happened that I was wearing a Tyrolean jacket not unlike the one sported by Plummer in his career-defining role as Captain Von Trapp in the film version of The Sound of Music. Dressed so, I felt I would have an excellent chance of crashing through the crash course and perhaps winning a plaudit or two. Alas, a falling raindrop washed away the smudge and I realised the course was about Christ rather than Christopher Plummer. Still, I was, as I said, at a loose end, so I headed for the hall where the course was to be held, and I signed up. Throng and hubbub packed the hall, but I found an empty seat and sat down. Soon enough, a fellow I assumed to be Pilbeam appeared on a dais at the front. The first thing he said was "I am not Pilbeam" Had I been lured here under false pretences? The speaker cut a pale and widdershins figure and was almost as grime-splattered as the hawker in the street. It may even have been the same man, no doubt a rascal. But I had nothing better to do, so I continued to sit and listen. "I am sorry to say that Pilbeam is not able to be with us today. He has been incapacitated by Mitteleuropean pig flu, and has asked me to deputise for him. While I would never make so bold as to compare myself to Pilbeam, please be assured that you are in good hands. I have spent many years studying under Pilbeam, eating from the same table, having my hair cut at the same barber's, with the same pair of scissors, and wearing the same size shoes, like Beckett and Joyce. My name is Lars, rather than Pilbeam, but I can say truthfully that I am the next best thing to Pilbeam when it comes to delivering this crash course. "So let us turn now to the crash course itself, the aim of which is to furnish you with the skills necessary to imitate Christ. As it is a crash course, we will not be seeking to imitate Christ in every particular. If we tried that"--he chuckled--"we would become so Christ-like there would be a risk of blasphemy. Far better, according to Pilbeam's precepts, to imitate Christ in a limited way, enough for us to benefit and to become holier than we are, but not so much that we threaten the unique and ineffable goodness of Christ Our Lord Himself. "I trust you are all keeping up. Excellent. In what way, then, shall we imitate Christ? You will all, I hope, be familiar with the story of the Gadarene swine. It is to be found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, in Matthew 8 : 28-32, in Mark 5 : 1-13, and in Luke 8 : 26-33. Briefly put, a poor man possessed by demons begs Christ to release him from his torment. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 The Imitation Of Christ 08:56 Moptop Of Gath 13:16 These Plastic Betrayals 17:23 Undone By Foxgloves 22:30 An Outing THE IMITATION OF CHRIST At a loose end, I signed up for Pilbeam's Crash-Course in the Imitation of Christ. Earlier in the day, plodding through the streets, I had been given a leaflet. The hawker who handed it to me was a person of regrettable grubbiness, and some of his filth inevitably besmirched the leaflet, which was smudged, with the effect that I misread The Imitation of Christ as The Imitation of Chris. Chris who?, I wondered, hoping that Pilbeam was taking an overfamiliar tone with regard to the actor Christopher Plummer. It so happened that I was wearing a Tyrolean jacket not unlike the one sported by Plummer in his career-defining role as Captain Von Trapp in the film version of The Sound of Music. Dressed so, I felt I would have an excellent chance of crashing through the crash course and perhaps winning a plaudit or two. Alas, a falling raindrop washed away the smudge and I realised the course was about Christ rather than Christopher Plummer. Still, I was, as I said, at a loose end, so I headed for the hall where the course was to be held, and I signed up. Throng and hubbub packed the hall, but I found an empty seat and sat down. Soon enough, a fellow I assumed to be Pilbeam appeared on a dais at the front. The first thing he said was "I am not Pilbeam" Had I been lured here under false pretences? The speaker cut a pale and widdershins figure and was almost as grime-splattered as the hawker in the street. It may even have been the same man, no doubt a rascal. But I had nothing better to do, so I continued to sit and listen. "I am sorry to say that Pilbeam is not able to be with us today. He has been incapacitated by Mitteleuropean pig flu, and has asked me to deputise for him. While I would never make so bold as to compare myself to Pilbeam, please be assured that you are in good hands. I have spent many years studying under Pilbeam, eating from the same table, having my hair cut at the same barber's, with the same pair of scissors, and wearing the same size shoes, like Beckett and Joyce. My name is Lars, rather than Pilbeam, but I can say truthfully that I am the next best thing to Pilbeam when it comes to delivering this crash course. "So let us turn now to the crash course itself, the aim of which is to furnish you with the skills necessary to imitate Christ. As it is a crash course, we will not be seeking to imitate Christ in every particular. If we tried that"--he chuckled--"we would become so Christ-like there would be a risk of blasphemy. Far better, according to Pilbeam's precepts, to imitate Christ in a limited way, enough for us to benefit and to become holier than we are, but not so much that we threaten the unique and ineffable goodness of Christ Our Lord Himself. "I trust you are all keeping up. Excellent. In what way, then, shall we imitate Christ? You will all, I hope, be familiar with the story of the Gadarene swine. It is to be found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, in Matthew 8 : 28-32, in Mark 5 : 1-13, and in Luke 8 : 26-33. Briefly put, a poor man possessed by demons begs Christ to release him from his torment. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-1029:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-03Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 A Fleeting Glimpse Of The Grunty Man 11:13 Recipe 17:58 The Kibbo Kift Universe 23:10 Reds Under The Bed A FLEETING GLIMPSE OF THE GRUNTY MAN One of the incidental pleasures of reading the long-forgotten memoirs of obscure figures from our island history is to stumble upon fleeting mentions of that gruesome ogre of children's nightmares, the Grunty Man. All of us, I think, can recall the shiver that ran down our spine when we sat at mama's knee and she read to us tales of the fearsome Grunty Man, lurking in his cave and occasionally emerging into the light to grunt and grunt and lay waste the earth and grunt some more. Now we are grown we can look back with fondness on this loathsome fantastical creature, safe in the knowledge that he never really existed ... or did he? The other day, I was reading the long-forgotten memoirs of an obscure figure in our island history, the expatriate Hollander Joost Van Dongelbraacke. It is an unfathomably dull book, or I should say books, for Van Dongelbraacke managed to eke seven fat closely-printed volumes from what was, by any measure, a fairly uneventful life. I love this stuff and could read it until the cows come home. I was about half-way through volume three when, to my delight and consternation, I came upon this passage: At luncheon that day I ate a goodly amount of My Lady Kent's Pudding, but it had not been sufficiently boiled, or perhaps it had been boiled for too long, for shortly after digesting my third bowl-ful I suffered the most terrible mortification of the bowels and had to be carried from my place by the servants and deposited on an an ottoman in the smoking room where I moaned weakly and cursed heaven. Thereafter, to make recompense, when I was able to move I repaired to my private chapel and offered orisons to the Almighty that he might spare me from the horrors inflicted by skittish cooks. I then determined to berate said cook, and had her summoned from the pantry, only to be told she was not to be found there. I strongly suspected her of being involved in unseemly canoodling with Mr Snippage, the gardener, and so I pulled on my out of doors boots and went striding through the grounds, past the filbert hedges and towards the ha-ha, where Snippage had his hut. While I was walking thus, waving my stick, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the Grunty Man, darting between the elms. When I reached the hut I banged my fist on the door, hoping to disturb the gardener and the cook. But there was no response, and when I opened the door to peer inside, I found the hut was empty. My mood was now tempestuous, so on my way back to the house I berated one of the estate peasants who was pushing a wheelbarrow full of dead toads from one pond to another. Shouting my head off did me the world of good. Back in the house, I settled in the library and spent a profitable hour reading a collection of sermons by Parson Freakpit. Outside the sky was louring and there were hints of English drizzle. I closed the book and thought longingly of the canals of my homeland. These thoughts were interrupted by a servant who came to inform me that the cook and Mr Snippage had been seen boarding the mail coach heading for the coast. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 A Fleeting Glimpse Of The Grunty Man 11:13 Recipe 17:58 The Kibbo Kift Universe 23:10 Reds Under The Bed A FLEETING GLIMPSE OF THE GRUNTY MAN One of the incidental pleasures of reading the long-forgotten memoirs of obscure figures from our island history is to stumble upon fleeting mentions of that gruesome ogre of children's nightmares, the Grunty Man. All of us, I think, can recall the shiver that ran down our spine when we sat at mama's knee and she read to us tales of the fearsome Grunty Man, lurking in his cave and occasionally emerging into the light to grunt and grunt and lay waste the earth and grunt some more. Now we are grown we can look back with fondness on this loathsome fantastical creature, safe in the knowledge that he never really existed ... or did he? The other day, I was reading the long-forgotten memoirs of an obscure figure in our island history, the expatriate Hollander Joost Van Dongelbraacke. It is an unfathomably dull book, or I should say books, for Van Dongelbraacke managed to eke seven fat closely-printed volumes from what was, by any measure, a fairly uneventful life. I love this stuff and could read it until the cows come home. I was about half-way through volume three when, to my delight and consternation, I came upon this passage: At luncheon that day I ate a goodly amount of My Lady Kent's Pudding, but it had not been sufficiently boiled, or perhaps it had been boiled for too long, for shortly after digesting my third bowl-ful I suffered the most terrible mortification of the bowels and had to be carried from my place by the servants and deposited on an an ottoman in the smoking room where I moaned weakly and cursed heaven. Thereafter, to make recompense, when I was able to move I repaired to my private chapel and offered orisons to the Almighty that he might spare me from the horrors inflicted by skittish cooks. I then determined to berate said cook, and had her summoned from the pantry, only to be told she was not to be found there. I strongly suspected her of being involved in unseemly canoodling with Mr Snippage, the gardener, and so I pulled on my out of doors boots and went striding through the grounds, past the filbert hedges and towards the ha-ha, where Snippage had his hut. While I was walking thus, waving my stick, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the Grunty Man, darting between the elms. When I reached the hut I banged my fist on the door, hoping to disturb the gardener and the cook. But there was no response, and when I opened the door to peer inside, I found the hut was empty. My mood was now tempestuous, so on my way back to the house I berated one of the estate peasants who was pushing a wheelbarrow full of dead toads from one pond to another. Shouting my head off did me the world of good. Back in the house, I settled in the library and spent a profitable hour reading a collection of sermons by Parson Freakpit. Outside the sky was louring and there were hints of English drizzle. I closed the book and thought longingly of the canals of my homeland. These thoughts were interrupted by a servant who came to inform me that the cook and Mr Snippage had been seen boarding the mail coach heading for the coast. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-03-0329:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-02-25Thu, 25 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Soup-In-The-Beard 05:34 Ten Tarleton Tales--IX 09:03 Scheme Of Things 12:14 Flipping Heck 18:37 Binder : The 39 Piano Concertos SOUP-IN-THE-BEARD Soup-in-the-beard was a condition which affected many Victorian gentlemen possessed of disgusting table manners. It commonly took the form of patches of beard hair becoming soaked in spilled soup, which then dried out, causing the hairs to become matted and malodorous. The spillage would usually occur at the point where the Victorian gentleman, wielding a spoonful of soup and aiming to transfer the full amount into his mouth, would fall at the last hurdle, and send some or all of the spoonful dribbling down his beard. If the bowl of soup was a generous one, as it often was at Victorian banquets, repetitions of this manoeuvre could result in the beard being absolutely drenched, with droplets of the spilled soup dripping on to the elegantly embroidered tablecloth. Although we do not have precise figures, it is believed that a significant proportion of cases of soup-in-the-beard were caused by uncontrollable tremors of the hand, symptoms of withdrawal from the gargantuan doses of opium favoured by almost all Victorian gentlemen. This does not, of course, excuse their disgusting table manners, which were disgusting, almost as disgusting as--at another time, in another place--those of Franz Kafka. Contemporary written accounts of soup-in-the-beard are surprisingly few, possibly because it was so prevalent, so much a commonplace, that chroniclers of the time did not consider it worthy of remark. A vivid exception is contained in a letter written by the Dowager Duchess Dipsy of Poxhaven, dated 14 January 1868: Last night I attended a dinner to raise funds for the Society for the Promotion of Sending Working Class Orphans Down Mineshafts, held at Soot-Blackened House. I was seated next to Walter Mad, whose beard is prodigious. The poor man's hands were shaking badly, and he confessed to me that he had not had a dose of opium for a full half hour. During the soup course--mulligatawny, to my horror--Walter Mad had a great deal of difficulty transferring the soup from bowl to mouth by means of a spoon, and after a minute or two his beard was sopping wet, almost more soup than hair. I was amused to note that he summoned his valet, who proceeded to wring out the beard, much like a janitor with a mop. Cleverly, Walter Mad commanded him to do this directly over the bowl, so that the soup in the beard replenished the soup in the bowl. By this means, and by several further wringings-out, Walter Mad was still busy with his soup while the rest of us had moved on to the jugged hare and the strangled weasel. His table manners are disgusting, but he gave ten shillings to send urchins from the lower orders down the mines, so his cold black heart is in the right place. Next week : Egg-On-The-Waistcoat. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-02-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Soup-In-The-Beard 05:34 Ten Tarleton Tales--IX 09:03 Scheme Of Things 12:14 Flipping Heck 18:37 Binder : The 39 Piano Concertos SOUP-IN-THE-BEARD Soup-in-the-beard was a condition which affected many Victorian gentlemen possessed of disgusting table manners. It commonly took the form of patches of beard hair becoming soaked in spilled soup, which then dried out, causing the hairs to become matted and malodorous. The spillage would usually occur at the point where the Victorian gentleman, wielding a spoonful of soup and aiming to transfer the full amount into his mouth, would fall at the last hurdle, and send some or all of the spoonful dribbling down his beard. If the bowl of soup was a generous one, as it often was at Victorian banquets, repetitions of this manoeuvre could result in the beard being absolutely drenched, with droplets of the spilled soup dripping on to the elegantly embroidered tablecloth. Although we do not have precise figures, it is believed that a significant proportion of cases of soup-in-the-beard were caused by uncontrollable tremors of the hand, symptoms of withdrawal from the gargantuan doses of opium favoured by almost all Victorian gentlemen. This does not, of course, excuse their disgusting table manners, which were disgusting, almost as disgusting as--at another time, in another place--those of Franz Kafka. Contemporary written accounts of soup-in-the-beard are surprisingly few, possibly because it was so prevalent, so much a commonplace, that chroniclers of the time did not consider it worthy of remark. A vivid exception is contained in a letter written by the Dowager Duchess Dipsy of Poxhaven, dated 14 January 1868: Last night I attended a dinner to raise funds for the Society for the Promotion of Sending Working Class Orphans Down Mineshafts, held at Soot-Blackened House. I was seated next to Walter Mad, whose beard is prodigious. The poor man's hands were shaking badly, and he confessed to me that he had not had a dose of opium for a full half hour. During the soup course--mulligatawny, to my horror--Walter Mad had a great deal of difficulty transferring the soup from bowl to mouth by means of a spoon, and after a minute or two his beard was sopping wet, almost more soup than hair. I was amused to note that he summoned his valet, who proceeded to wring out the beard, much like a janitor with a mop. Cleverly, Walter Mad commanded him to do this directly over the bowl, so that the soup in the beard replenished the soup in the bowl. By this means, and by several further wringings-out, Walter Mad was still busy with his soup while the rest of us had moved on to the jugged hare and the strangled weasel. His table manners are disgusting, but he gave ten shillings to send urchins from the lower orders down the mines, so his cold black heart is in the right place. Next week : Egg-On-The-Waistcoat. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-02-2530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-02-11Thu, 11 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:10 Lars And Maud 04:55 Tosspot In A Bivouac 11:45 Meetings With Remarkable Buntings 19:41 I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing 24:28 Knud Padde LARS AND MAUD Lars and Maud went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Lars fell down and clonked his crown and Maud came tumbling after. They rolled and tumbled further down, tumbling pell mell, 'Til they came bumping to a halt down in the dingly dell. In the dell lurked the Grunty Man, who carried them off to his cave. But fear not, tinies! For Lars was bold and Maud was very brave. They shook their little fists and bawled and rent the sky asunder, And made the Grunty Man commit a very foolish blunder. He dropped them at the cave-mouth while he went to have a fight, An illegal boxing match under the cover of the night. The Grunty Man was pitted 'gainst an awful, dreadful foe - None other than Miss Peep, affectionately known as "Little Bo". She looked so pale and timorous, yet she packed a hefty punch, And often bashed a dozen ogres before she had her lunch. So when the Grunty Man stalked off to meet his Nemesis, Lars and Maud ran off into the arms of Alger Hiss. Yes, Alger Hiss, the communist spy from Washington DC! Urbane and droll and stylish, dressed up to a T. He took the tots to a meeting of his fellow-travelling Reds, Where Stalinist propaganda turned their pointy little heads. They went back to the cave and found the Grunty Man covered in gore. Little Bo Peep had bashed him up, then bashed him up some more. They recruited him to their cause, to overthrow the state. Said Lars (or Maud) "We must act before it is too late!" So Lars and Maud and the Grunty Man went back to the dingly dell, And hid some microfilmed secrets at the bottom of the well. But they were caught by Nixon, indefatigable in his zest To place as many Reds as possible under house arrest. He confined them to a house atop the hill they climbed for water, A solid and a sturdy house well built from bricks and mortar, Like the house of the three little pigs that withstood lupine huff and puff. But Lars and Maud and the Grunty Man were Communists, sure enough. So when the big bad wolf hove into view from o'er the hills, They sang in praise of Stalin and then swallowed their cyanide pills. And so the state was safe once more from Communist infiltration, And Nixon was bathed in the praise of a relieved and grateful nation. The Grunty Man and Lars and Maud were buried and forgot. But Richard Milhous Nixon--he is not. Originally posted in 2011. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-02-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:10 Lars And Maud 04:55 Tosspot In A Bivouac 11:45 Meetings With Remarkable Buntings 19:41 I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing 24:28 Knud Padde LARS AND MAUD Lars and Maud went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Lars fell down and clonked his crown and Maud came tumbling after. They rolled and tumbled further down, tumbling pell mell, 'Til they came bumping to a halt down in the dingly dell. In the dell lurked the Grunty Man, who carried them off to his cave. But fear not, tinies! For Lars was bold and Maud was very brave. They shook their little fists and bawled and rent the sky asunder, And made the Grunty Man commit a very foolish blunder. He dropped them at the cave-mouth while he went to have a fight, An illegal boxing match under the cover of the night. The Grunty Man was pitted 'gainst an awful, dreadful foe - None other than Miss Peep, affectionately known as "Little Bo". She looked so pale and timorous, yet she packed a hefty punch, And often bashed a dozen ogres before she had her lunch. So when the Grunty Man stalked off to meet his Nemesis, Lars and Maud ran off into the arms of Alger Hiss. Yes, Alger Hiss, the communist spy from Washington DC! Urbane and droll and stylish, dressed up to a T. He took the tots to a meeting of his fellow-travelling Reds, Where Stalinist propaganda turned their pointy little heads. They went back to the cave and found the Grunty Man covered in gore. Little Bo Peep had bashed him up, then bashed him up some more. They recruited him to their cause, to overthrow the state. Said Lars (or Maud) "We must act before it is too late!" So Lars and Maud and the Grunty Man went back to the dingly dell, And hid some microfilmed secrets at the bottom of the well. But they were caught by Nixon, indefatigable in his zest To place as many Reds as possible under house arrest. He confined them to a house atop the hill they climbed for water, A solid and a sturdy house well built from bricks and mortar, Like the house of the three little pigs that withstood lupine huff and puff. But Lars and Maud and the Grunty Man were Communists, sure enough. So when the big bad wolf hove into view from o'er the hills, They sang in praise of Stalin and then swallowed their cyanide pills. And so the state was safe once more from Communist infiltration, And Nixon was bathed in the praise of a relieved and grateful nation. The Grunty Man and Lars and Maud were buried and forgot. But Richard Milhous Nixon--he is not. Originally posted in 2011. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-02-1129:54fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-28Thu, 28 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Fear Of Putti 04:41 Talc Eclat 09:09 The Unsucked Toffee 16:02 Seething Dobson 18:50 Tribulations Of The Buttonmaker 23:06 Gunner Pitkin 26:18 Self-Indulgence At Croydon In Fruit FEAR OF PUTTI It has become something of a cliche for people to say they are frightened of clowns. Far more terrifying, to my mind, are putti. You know where you are with a clown--in the Big Top, where he galumphs across the sawdust with a bucket and a hooter. But those damnable putti! Let's be honest, if you were out and about, sashaying along the street, taking the air, and you saw, swooping through that air and coming to rest, hovering just above your head, a chubby baby with a full head of curly hair, and wings, and possibly armed with a bow and arrow, I think you would shriek in terror and run screaming for the hills. This would be a mistake. The wiser thing to do, in the circumstances, would be to run screaming for shelter, inside an enclosed building, where you could barricade yourself in. Putti can fly, but they cannot fly through brick walls. If you run for the hills, the putti will follow you, calling out to their putti pals to join them. And that call! These are babies, remember, so their call is a godawful infant squeal, accompanied by gurgling. By the time you get to the hills, bedraggled and panting, there might be dozens or hundreds of putti hovering around you, like drones. If, in your terror, you piddle in your pants, as you are likely to do, the putti will giggle, in that horrible babyish way that is more like hiccups. Do you really want to find yourself alone in the hills beset by a swarm of hiccuping flying babies, some of whom have bows and arrows? The wards of our lunatic asylums are crammed with poor souls who made the mistake of trying to flee from putti in the open air. The other mistake people sometimes make is to think they can turn the tables on the armed putti by shooting arrows at them so they drop, fatally wounded, from the sky. This doesn't work. You cannot kill a putto. Unlike Ploppo the Clown, they are immortal. Thankfully, since Renaissance times, we have seen rather less of the putti than we used to. Scientists are not sure what has caused the drop in numbers. It could be something to do with smog. But they are still out there, cherubic and terrifying and swooping through the air--flying babies!--and you would do well to be on your guard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Fear Of Putti 04:41 Talc Eclat 09:09 The Unsucked Toffee 16:02 Seething Dobson 18:50 Tribulations Of The Buttonmaker 23:06 Gunner Pitkin 26:18 Self-Indulgence At Croydon In Fruit FEAR OF PUTTI It has become something of a cliche for people to say they are frightened of clowns. Far more terrifying, to my mind, are putti. You know where you are with a clown--in the Big Top, where he galumphs across the sawdust with a bucket and a hooter. But those damnable putti! Let's be honest, if you were out and about, sashaying along the street, taking the air, and you saw, swooping through that air and coming to rest, hovering just above your head, a chubby baby with a full head of curly hair, and wings, and possibly armed with a bow and arrow, I think you would shriek in terror and run screaming for the hills. This would be a mistake. The wiser thing to do, in the circumstances, would be to run screaming for shelter, inside an enclosed building, where you could barricade yourself in. Putti can fly, but they cannot fly through brick walls. If you run for the hills, the putti will follow you, calling out to their putti pals to join them. And that call! These are babies, remember, so their call is a godawful infant squeal, accompanied by gurgling. By the time you get to the hills, bedraggled and panting, there might be dozens or hundreds of putti hovering around you, like drones. If, in your terror, you piddle in your pants, as you are likely to do, the putti will giggle, in that horrible babyish way that is more like hiccups. Do you really want to find yourself alone in the hills beset by a swarm of hiccuping flying babies, some of whom have bows and arrows? The wards of our lunatic asylums are crammed with poor souls who made the mistake of trying to flee from putti in the open air. The other mistake people sometimes make is to think they can turn the tables on the armed putti by shooting arrows at them so they drop, fatally wounded, from the sky. This doesn't work. You cannot kill a putto. Unlike Ploppo the Clown, they are immortal. Thankfully, since Renaissance times, we have seen rather less of the putti than we used to. Scientists are not sure what has caused the drop in numbers. It could be something to do with smog. But they are still out there, cherubic and terrifying and swooping through the air--flying babies!--and you would do well to be on your guard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-2830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-21Thu, 21 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 24 Hours 01:59 Gluck, Glinka, And Buxtehude 07:26 Annals Of Nautical Heroism 13:18 Gloveboxes Of The Rich And Famous 17:06 Boxing Gloves Of The Indigent And Wretched 20:21 Rescue Squad 20:42 Foghorn 27:08 Love Triangle 24 HOURS Exciting news from ResonanceFM,,,, Bank Holiday Monday, 27 August : 12:00am--11:59pm. Twenty four hours in the company of Frank Key, writer in residence and creator of Resonance's longest running programme, Hooting Yard on the Air. Comprising a selection of programmes from the very first in April 2004 to the present day. It has been an eerily quiet summer here at Hooting Yard, what with one ting and an udder (as my mother used to say). I hope to return to the land of the living soon. GLUCK, GLINKA, AND BUXTEHUDE Between the years 1787 and 1804, in the ethereal realms, the dead Gluck and the unborn Glinka became friends and allies. They were drawn together by mutual puzzlement at the absence, from those very realms, of Buxtehude, who had been dead since 1707 and ought, therefore, to have put in an appearance in the mystic aether. Gluck and Glinka, or their spirit-essences, set out to track down Buxtehude, or his immortal soul, a quest which only came to an end when Glinka was transformed into a material mewling infant in 1804. Gluck had to drum his heels and await Glinka's return to the ethereal realms in 1857. By this time, of course, Buxtehude's immortal soul had been missing for a full one hundred and fifty years, which is as close as dammit to a cut-off point in the world of spirits. This is the conceit of an unfinished novel by Algernon Spooky, the so-called "psychic windowcleaner" who has a walk-on part in virtually every single biography and memoir of the first half of the twentieth century. Spooky seems to have known everybody, and frequently got into fist-fights with them. He was a commanding figure, described by Pipton as resembling a cross between a Roman emperor and a harrier hawk, with a bit of the temple of Angkor Wat thrown in. Unfortunately for the fate of his novel, Algernon Spooky had a tin ear and knew nothing of music, so his attempts to bring the souls of Gluck and Glinka and Buxtehude to fictional life are, in the words of Pipton again, "like watching an idiot child drool into a tin cup". After scribbling thousands and thousands of words, Spooky realised he was making a fool of himself--not for the first time--and tried to rework the material into a detective thriller. Here, Gluck, Glinka, and Buxtehude became a trio of malefactors plotting dark and dismal deeds. They hid in plain sight, operating from a high-street shoe shop clearly modelled on Freeman, Hardy and Willis. Only when Freeman, or Hardy, or Willis, or Freeman and Hardy, or Hardy and Willis, or Freeman and Willis, or for Christ's sake let us have done with it, all three of them, got wind of Spooky's tale and threatened him with a libel suit did that manuscript, too, end up in the dustbin. But being Algernon Spooky, it was no ordinary dustbin. He styled it his Magical Ancient Egyptian Dustbin From The Realm Of Thoth, and scratched various arcane symbols upon it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 24 Hours 01:59 Gluck, Glinka, And Buxtehude 07:26 Annals Of Nautical Heroism 13:18 Gloveboxes Of The Rich And Famous 17:06 Boxing Gloves Of The Indigent And Wretched 20:21 Rescue Squad 20:42 Foghorn 27:08 Love Triangle 24 HOURS Exciting news from ResonanceFM,,,, Bank Holiday Monday, 27 August : 12:00am--11:59pm. Twenty four hours in the company of Frank Key, writer in residence and creator of Resonance's longest running programme, Hooting Yard on the Air. Comprising a selection of programmes from the very first in April 2004 to the present day. It has been an eerily quiet summer here at Hooting Yard, what with one ting and an udder (as my mother used to say). I hope to return to the land of the living soon. GLUCK, GLINKA, AND BUXTEHUDE Between the years 1787 and 1804, in the ethereal realms, the dead Gluck and the unborn Glinka became friends and allies. They were drawn together by mutual puzzlement at the absence, from those very realms, of Buxtehude, who had been dead since 1707 and ought, therefore, to have put in an appearance in the mystic aether. Gluck and Glinka, or their spirit-essences, set out to track down Buxtehude, or his immortal soul, a quest which only came to an end when Glinka was transformed into a material mewling infant in 1804. Gluck had to drum his heels and await Glinka's return to the ethereal realms in 1857. By this time, of course, Buxtehude's immortal soul had been missing for a full one hundred and fifty years, which is as close as dammit to a cut-off point in the world of spirits. This is the conceit of an unfinished novel by Algernon Spooky, the so-called "psychic windowcleaner" who has a walk-on part in virtually every single biography and memoir of the first half of the twentieth century. Spooky seems to have known everybody, and frequently got into fist-fights with them. He was a commanding figure, described by Pipton as resembling a cross between a Roman emperor and a harrier hawk, with a bit of the temple of Angkor Wat thrown in. Unfortunately for the fate of his novel, Algernon Spooky had a tin ear and knew nothing of music, so his attempts to bring the souls of Gluck and Glinka and Buxtehude to fictional life are, in the words of Pipton again, "like watching an idiot child drool into a tin cup". After scribbling thousands and thousands of words, Spooky realised he was making a fool of himself--not for the first time--and tried to rework the material into a detective thriller. Here, Gluck, Glinka, and Buxtehude became a trio of malefactors plotting dark and dismal deeds. They hid in plain sight, operating from a high-street shoe shop clearly modelled on Freeman, Hardy and Willis. Only when Freeman, or Hardy, or Willis, or Freeman and Hardy, or Hardy and Willis, or Freeman and Willis, or for Christ's sake let us have done with it, all three of them, got wind of Spooky's tale and threatened him with a libel suit did that manuscript, too, end up in the dustbin. But being Algernon Spooky, it was no ordinary dustbin. He styled it his Magical Ancient Egyptian Dustbin From The Realm Of Thoth, and scratched various arcane symbols upon it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-2129:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-14Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Leper Messiah 06:25 Madge Strudwick 09:57 The Rubbish Dump 13:48 The Parish Wolf 19:19 Maison Crimplene 23:39 Swiss Puppetry LEPER MESSIAH There is a fictional character named, somewhat foolishly, "Ziggy Stardust", the creation of a one-time student of mime named David Bowie. Among the attributes of Mr Stardust, we are told that he is "like a leper messiah". I wondered if there was a real, non-fictional leper messiah Mr Bowie had in mind, or, given that he uses the indefinite rather than the definite article, whether there might actually be several such messiahs, languishing in leper colonies across the globe. One way to find out would be to make a tour of leper colonies, where they still exist, in countries including India, China, Romania, Egypt, Nepal, Somalia, Liberia, Vietnam, and Japan. Before planning such an arduous itinerary, I did some background reading on Mr Bowie, and I discovered that he had often expressed an interest in the last-named of those nations, Japan. Somewhere he spoke of being "under Japanese influence" and elsewhere of "pictures of Jap girls in synthesis". I also learned that he had once been buried up to his neck when pretending to be an inmate of a Second World War Japanese prisoner of war camp. These clues were enough for me to dismiss any thought of travelling to India, China, Romania, Egypt, Nepal, Somalia, Liberia, or Vietnam, and to focus all my attention on the land of the rising sun. It seemed fairly clear that, if there were indeed one or more leper messiahs, they were almost certainly to be found in a Japanese leper colony. Impatient to proceed with my quest, I jumped into a Japanese car and told the driver to take me to the airport. Instead, he drove me to a forest in the Japanese car, and left a hole in the back of my head, hiding in the foliage and peat. It was wet and I was losing my body heat. Mr Bowie spoke of his honour being at stake when he was under Japanese influence, but for me it was more a case of injured pride, or nearly. And to make matters worse, I was nowhere near Japan, nowhere near even the airport. What price now my important research into Japanese leper messiahs? Anyway, stumbling through the foliage, I came upon some picnickers. Along with their hamper and rug and folding chairs and cans of wasp repellant, they had a cassette deck. It was playing poptones. I cocked an ear and listened carefully, hoping it might be one of Mr Bowie's songs about Mr Stardust, but alas it was not. "Good afternoon," I said to the picnickers, or rather shouted, to make myself heard above the din of poptones, "This is something of a long shot, but I don't suppose you all hail from a nearby leper colony?" "Actually, we do," said one, munching on a sausage. I was both pleased and surprised to note that he was of decidedly oriental appearance. Indeed, in spite of the rain, he was wearing a kimono. "May I join your picnic?" I asked, "I am famished." "Wait a moment," he said, "We shall have to ask permission." "From whom?" I asked. He pointed towards a tent which had been erected some yards away to the east. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Leper Messiah 06:25 Madge Strudwick 09:57 The Rubbish Dump 13:48 The Parish Wolf 19:19 Maison Crimplene 23:39 Swiss Puppetry LEPER MESSIAH There is a fictional character named, somewhat foolishly, "Ziggy Stardust", the creation of a one-time student of mime named David Bowie. Among the attributes of Mr Stardust, we are told that he is "like a leper messiah". I wondered if there was a real, non-fictional leper messiah Mr Bowie had in mind, or, given that he uses the indefinite rather than the definite article, whether there might actually be several such messiahs, languishing in leper colonies across the globe. One way to find out would be to make a tour of leper colonies, where they still exist, in countries including India, China, Romania, Egypt, Nepal, Somalia, Liberia, Vietnam, and Japan. Before planning such an arduous itinerary, I did some background reading on Mr Bowie, and I discovered that he had often expressed an interest in the last-named of those nations, Japan. Somewhere he spoke of being "under Japanese influence" and elsewhere of "pictures of Jap girls in synthesis". I also learned that he had once been buried up to his neck when pretending to be an inmate of a Second World War Japanese prisoner of war camp. These clues were enough for me to dismiss any thought of travelling to India, China, Romania, Egypt, Nepal, Somalia, Liberia, or Vietnam, and to focus all my attention on the land of the rising sun. It seemed fairly clear that, if there were indeed one or more leper messiahs, they were almost certainly to be found in a Japanese leper colony. Impatient to proceed with my quest, I jumped into a Japanese car and told the driver to take me to the airport. Instead, he drove me to a forest in the Japanese car, and left a hole in the back of my head, hiding in the foliage and peat. It was wet and I was losing my body heat. Mr Bowie spoke of his honour being at stake when he was under Japanese influence, but for me it was more a case of injured pride, or nearly. And to make matters worse, I was nowhere near Japan, nowhere near even the airport. What price now my important research into Japanese leper messiahs? Anyway, stumbling through the foliage, I came upon some picnickers. Along with their hamper and rug and folding chairs and cans of wasp repellant, they had a cassette deck. It was playing poptones. I cocked an ear and listened carefully, hoping it might be one of Mr Bowie's songs about Mr Stardust, but alas it was not. "Good afternoon," I said to the picnickers, or rather shouted, to make myself heard above the din of poptones, "This is something of a long shot, but I don't suppose you all hail from a nearby leper colony?" "Actually, we do," said one, munching on a sausage. I was both pleased and surprised to note that he was of decidedly oriental appearance. Indeed, in spite of the rain, he was wearing a kimono. "May I join your picnic?" I asked, "I am famished." "Wait a moment," he said, "We shall have to ask permission." "From whom?" I asked. He pointed towards a tent which had been erected some yards away to the east. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-1429:37fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-07Thu, 07 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Bewlay The Landgrave 07:14 Swan Guru 12:23 Spigot Boy 17:33 Light Shining In Buckinghamshire 25:03 Darkness Enshrouding Buckinghamshire BEWLAY THE LANDGRAVE Forty years ago, David Bowie demanded "Lay me place and bake me pie!", not unreasonably in the circumstances, as he added, "I'm starving for me gravy!" We have all, I think, been there, as they say nowadays. I have certainly had gravy hankerings of my own, most recently this very morning. Oddly enough, the first stirrings of a gravy craving stole upon me shortly after I had finished my breakfast of eggy cornflakes and smokers' poptarts. I left the house to take a turn around the duckpond over by the viaduct, and there came a constriction in my throat, a throbbing in the head, and a pang in the belly. Gravy, I thought, I'm starving for me gravy. I was unlikely to find any by the duckpond, so I wheeled about and set off in the opposite direction, towards the parade of shops. Past the hatter's and the haberdasher's and the ironmonger's there is a pie shop. To my dismay, I saw that its shutters were down, and there was no aroma of baking. I hammered my fists upon the shutters and screeched the words of David Bowie quoted above. Clearly gravy starvation was playing havoc with my common sense, for as I well knew, the pie shop did not have an in-store dining facility, so even had it been open I could not sensibly have demanded that my place be laid. I made such a din that the ironmonger came out of his shop, next door, to see what was afoot. He was armed with a sample of his ironmongery, a wrench or a crowbar, and who can blame him? I was hardly the picture of an upstanding citizen, in my gravy-famished hysteria. He dealt me a hefty thump on my cranium and used harsh words. Sprawled on the paving slabs, I gasped an apology for causing such a racket. I was about to explain that I was starving for me gravy when the ironmonger recognised me. "Good grief, Stipendiary Landgrave Pursuivant to the County Infanta, it is you!" he cried, and immediately proceeded to mumble his own, fawning, apology, helping me to my feet and dusting me down as he did so. "Unhand me, tradesperson!" I barked, "Just tell me why the pie shop is shut when I am in need of me gravy!" By such direct questioning did I learn that the pie shop proprietor had taken leave of absence to attend an important festival in a neighbouring land. He had left at dawn, apparently, in a cabriolet, both his face and that of his horse daubed with cosmetics in the guise of Aladdin Sane. I had forgotten all about the Bowiethon. With well-practised aristocratic disdain, I tossed a coin to the ironmonger and told him to return to his shop. Then I continued along the parade towards Old Mrs Sniggleby's Dickensian Dining Parlour, a place of grease and spoons, only to discover that she too had left town, and for the same reason, though the urchin begging outside her door told me she was an aficionado of the Berlin trilogy, and had gone to the festival under Japanese influence, in a kimono, clutching her set of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards. I needed an oblique strategy of my own if I was going to get me gravy! I decided to pop along to the palace, to call on the County Infanta. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Bewlay The Landgrave 07:14 Swan Guru 12:23 Spigot Boy 17:33 Light Shining In Buckinghamshire 25:03 Darkness Enshrouding Buckinghamshire BEWLAY THE LANDGRAVE Forty years ago, David Bowie demanded "Lay me place and bake me pie!", not unreasonably in the circumstances, as he added, "I'm starving for me gravy!" We have all, I think, been there, as they say nowadays. I have certainly had gravy hankerings of my own, most recently this very morning. Oddly enough, the first stirrings of a gravy craving stole upon me shortly after I had finished my breakfast of eggy cornflakes and smokers' poptarts. I left the house to take a turn around the duckpond over by the viaduct, and there came a constriction in my throat, a throbbing in the head, and a pang in the belly. Gravy, I thought, I'm starving for me gravy. I was unlikely to find any by the duckpond, so I wheeled about and set off in the opposite direction, towards the parade of shops. Past the hatter's and the haberdasher's and the ironmonger's there is a pie shop. To my dismay, I saw that its shutters were down, and there was no aroma of baking. I hammered my fists upon the shutters and screeched the words of David Bowie quoted above. Clearly gravy starvation was playing havoc with my common sense, for as I well knew, the pie shop did not have an in-store dining facility, so even had it been open I could not sensibly have demanded that my place be laid. I made such a din that the ironmonger came out of his shop, next door, to see what was afoot. He was armed with a sample of his ironmongery, a wrench or a crowbar, and who can blame him? I was hardly the picture of an upstanding citizen, in my gravy-famished hysteria. He dealt me a hefty thump on my cranium and used harsh words. Sprawled on the paving slabs, I gasped an apology for causing such a racket. I was about to explain that I was starving for me gravy when the ironmonger recognised me. "Good grief, Stipendiary Landgrave Pursuivant to the County Infanta, it is you!" he cried, and immediately proceeded to mumble his own, fawning, apology, helping me to my feet and dusting me down as he did so. "Unhand me, tradesperson!" I barked, "Just tell me why the pie shop is shut when I am in need of me gravy!" By such direct questioning did I learn that the pie shop proprietor had taken leave of absence to attend an important festival in a neighbouring land. He had left at dawn, apparently, in a cabriolet, both his face and that of his horse daubed with cosmetics in the guise of Aladdin Sane. I had forgotten all about the Bowiethon. With well-practised aristocratic disdain, I tossed a coin to the ironmonger and told him to return to his shop. Then I continued along the parade towards Old Mrs Sniggleby's Dickensian Dining Parlour, a place of grease and spoons, only to discover that she too had left town, and for the same reason, though the urchin begging outside her door told me she was an aficionado of the Berlin trilogy, and had gone to the festival under Japanese influence, in a kimono, clutching her set of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards. I needed an oblique strategy of my own if I was going to get me gravy! I decided to pop along to the palace, to call on the County Infanta. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2016-01-0730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-12-17Thu, 17 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 A Horse With No Name 05:51 The Offing Of Nitty 10:53 Along The Banks Of The Smem 22:17 The Laughing Cow 27:43 The Book A HORSE WITH NO NAME I was riding through the desert on a horse with no name. This was asking for trouble, and sure enough, after passing plants and birds and rocks and things and sand and hills and rings we arrived at a Horse Registration Station. A cowpoke in a poncho bid us to stop, so I pulled on the reins and patted my horse on its horsey head. "Before you go any further I must register your horse," said the cowpoke. "Register away!" I said, blithely I hoped. I had practised blitheness of speech at drama school, but only now did I understand the yawning gulf between strutting upon the stage and negotiating the real world of deserts and Horse Registration Stations manned by enponchoed cowpokes. "First I will need the name of your horse," he said. "And what will you need second?" I asked, playing for time. "Second I will need any aliases or pseudonyms by which your horse is known." I wondered what would happen if I cried "Yippee-ky-oh-ky-ay!" and dug my spurs into the horse's horsey flanks and galloped away, leaving the cowpoke in a trail of dust. "Don't get any funny ideas about galloping off on an unregistered horse," said the cowpoke, adding "You won't get far" with an air of menace. I am unusually alert to threats of menace, by dint of hard experience, and I do not mean merely stage menace as met with in certain plays by certain dramatists. No. I mean real menace in the real world of plants and birds and rocks and things and sand and hills and rings. For one wild moment I considered lying, plucking a name for my nameless horse from within the dark ignorant recesses of my cranial integuments. But the cowpoke again forestalled me. Was he a clairvoyant cowpoke? "And don't just make up a name," he warned, "I will know if you are lying, and by the martyred sinews of Saint Blodwyst, you will not want to suffer the consequences of trying to pull the wool over my eyes." I did not doubt him. He spoke with the kind of effortless authority of a character I had once played, to no little acclaim, in a stage production of something or other by one of the Norwegian playwrights. I had little option but to blurt out the truth. "My horse has no name," I blurted. The cowpoke did not react immediately. Then he fixed me with a gaze that would have chilled the blood were we not broiling in the heat of the desert. He looked at me, and then he looked at the horse. He rummaged in his poncho. He hummed a snatch of light opera, Il Ingrazziatiniatoni-apoppiapippi, I think. Then he took from within his poncho a pebble, and with sudden and devastating accuracy threw it up into the sky and clonked a bird, which plummeted to earth stone dead at his feet. "Each time a nameless horse tries to pass this Station," he said, "A bird must die. So it is written. Learn that lesson well, stranger. Now turn around and do not return." "Where is it written?" I asked. But the cowpoke had taken from within his poncho a shovel, and was busy burying the bird in the desert sand. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-12-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 A Horse With No Name 05:51 The Offing Of Nitty 10:53 Along The Banks Of The Smem 22:17 The Laughing Cow 27:43 The Book A HORSE WITH NO NAME I was riding through the desert on a horse with no name. This was asking for trouble, and sure enough, after passing plants and birds and rocks and things and sand and hills and rings we arrived at a Horse Registration Station. A cowpoke in a poncho bid us to stop, so I pulled on the reins and patted my horse on its horsey head. "Before you go any further I must register your horse," said the cowpoke. "Register away!" I said, blithely I hoped. I had practised blitheness of speech at drama school, but only now did I understand the yawning gulf between strutting upon the stage and negotiating the real world of deserts and Horse Registration Stations manned by enponchoed cowpokes. "First I will need the name of your horse," he said. "And what will you need second?" I asked, playing for time. "Second I will need any aliases or pseudonyms by which your horse is known." I wondered what would happen if I cried "Yippee-ky-oh-ky-ay!" and dug my spurs into the horse's horsey flanks and galloped away, leaving the cowpoke in a trail of dust. "Don't get any funny ideas about galloping off on an unregistered horse," said the cowpoke, adding "You won't get far" with an air of menace. I am unusually alert to threats of menace, by dint of hard experience, and I do not mean merely stage menace as met with in certain plays by certain dramatists. No. I mean real menace in the real world of plants and birds and rocks and things and sand and hills and rings. For one wild moment I considered lying, plucking a name for my nameless horse from within the dark ignorant recesses of my cranial integuments. But the cowpoke again forestalled me. Was he a clairvoyant cowpoke? "And don't just make up a name," he warned, "I will know if you are lying, and by the martyred sinews of Saint Blodwyst, you will not want to suffer the consequences of trying to pull the wool over my eyes." I did not doubt him. He spoke with the kind of effortless authority of a character I had once played, to no little acclaim, in a stage production of something or other by one of the Norwegian playwrights. I had little option but to blurt out the truth. "My horse has no name," I blurted. The cowpoke did not react immediately. Then he fixed me with a gaze that would have chilled the blood were we not broiling in the heat of the desert. He looked at me, and then he looked at the horse. He rummaged in his poncho. He hummed a snatch of light opera, Il Ingrazziatiniatoni-apoppiapippi, I think. Then he took from within his poncho a pebble, and with sudden and devastating accuracy threw it up into the sky and clonked a bird, which plummeted to earth stone dead at his feet. "Each time a nameless horse tries to pass this Station," he said, "A bird must die. So it is written. Learn that lesson well, stranger. Now turn around and do not return." "Where is it written?" I asked. But the cowpoke had taken from within his poncho a shovel, and was busy burying the bird in the desert sand. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-12-1730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-12-10Thu, 10 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 Conquistador 07:04 Laundry Bag Boy 26:57 Yvonne The Cow CONQUISTADOR This sprightly homage to Procol Harum first appeared in 2009. Conquistador, your stallion stands in need of company. For an adventurer and conqueror, especially one who led the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru in the 16th century, this is a lapse on your part. You should never leave your horse alone and abandoned, for it is likely to become fractious, and the last thing you want to have to deal with, either in the jungles or the mountains, is a fractious horse. You might argue that a native Peruvian firing poisonous darts at you through a blowpipe would cause you more concern than a horse in a bad mood, but there you would be wrong. Let's say that the native Peruvian's aim is impeccable, and his poisoned dart plunges into your neck. It is true that you would be surprised, and have only minutes to live as the toxins ravaged your innards, but it is a simple enough matter to pluck the dart out of your flesh and have one of your fellow conquistadors immediately suck on the puncture, drawing every last drop of poison into his mouth before spitting it out. Apply a medicinal poultice to the tiny hole in your neck and job done. You will be as right as rain and ready to carry on adventuring and conquering. By contrast, if, after abandoning your stallion while you clanked off on foot on an errand of death, you return to it to find it lonely, fractious and temperamental, you may have some difficulty getting back into your saddle. Your horse may rear up on its hind legs and make terrifying bellowing noises. If you are not careful you could end up being crushed under its mighty hooves. A fleck of horse-spittle might land in your eye, blurring your vision. The rest of your conquistador troop may have ridden on ahead, leaving you behind, without food or water, or a compass. You will know, from your training back in Toledo, that it can take hours to becalm a fractious horse, by which time your chances of catching up with your fellow adventuring conquerors before nightfall are remote. Unless the conquistador who sucked the poison out of your neck has stayed with you, you will now be all alone in a strange exotic landscape, famished. You do not know which fruits and berries are safe to eat, and in any case there will only be fruits and berries available to you if you are in the jungle. As I pointed out earlier, you might be up in the mountains, and there will be little to eat but impacted snow, which you will have to melt and soften before trying to shovel it down your throat. Bear in mind that the air is very thin up in the higher reaches of the Andes, and you will become exhausted quite rapidly, especially if you are expending energy hacking at a patch of snow to make it more easily meltable. Added to these imperilments, your horse will be hungry too, and its fractiousness may return, with a vengeance. You will have to find a way to placate it a second time, and by now it will be wise to your tricks, if it is a clever horse, which it probably is, having been chosen out of so many other horses to go on a conquistadorial campaign. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-12-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 Conquistador 07:04 Laundry Bag Boy 26:57 Yvonne The Cow CONQUISTADOR This sprightly homage to Procol Harum first appeared in 2009. Conquistador, your stallion stands in need of company. For an adventurer and conqueror, especially one who led the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru in the 16th century, this is a lapse on your part. You should never leave your horse alone and abandoned, for it is likely to become fractious, and the last thing you want to have to deal with, either in the jungles or the mountains, is a fractious horse. You might argue that a native Peruvian firing poisonous darts at you through a blowpipe would cause you more concern than a horse in a bad mood, but there you would be wrong. Let's say that the native Peruvian's aim is impeccable, and his poisoned dart plunges into your neck. It is true that you would be surprised, and have only minutes to live as the toxins ravaged your innards, but it is a simple enough matter to pluck the dart out of your flesh and have one of your fellow conquistadors immediately suck on the puncture, drawing every last drop of poison into his mouth before spitting it out. Apply a medicinal poultice to the tiny hole in your neck and job done. You will be as right as rain and ready to carry on adventuring and conquering. By contrast, if, after abandoning your stallion while you clanked off on foot on an errand of death, you return to it to find it lonely, fractious and temperamental, you may have some difficulty getting back into your saddle. Your horse may rear up on its hind legs and make terrifying bellowing noises. If you are not careful you could end up being crushed under its mighty hooves. A fleck of horse-spittle might land in your eye, blurring your vision. The rest of your conquistador troop may have ridden on ahead, leaving you behind, without food or water, or a compass. You will know, from your training back in Toledo, that it can take hours to becalm a fractious horse, by which time your chances of catching up with your fellow adventuring conquerors before nightfall are remote. Unless the conquistador who sucked the poison out of your neck has stayed with you, you will now be all alone in a strange exotic landscape, famished. You do not know which fruits and berries are safe to eat, and in any case there will only be fruits and berries available to you if you are in the jungle. As I pointed out earlier, you might be up in the mountains, and there will be little to eat but impacted snow, which you will have to melt and soften before trying to shovel it down your throat. Bear in mind that the air is very thin up in the higher reaches of the Andes, and you will become exhausted quite rapidly, especially if you are expending energy hacking at a patch of snow to make it more easily meltable. Added to these imperilments, your horse will be hungry too, and its fractiousness may return, with a vengeance. You will have to find a way to placate it a second time, and by now it will be wise to your tricks, if it is a clever horse, which it probably is, having been chosen out of so many other horses to go on a conquistadorial campaign. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-12-1029:47fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-12-03Thu, 03 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:09 The Blind Man As Poultry Inspector 15:19 A Magic Trick THE BLIND MAN AS POULTRY INSPECTOR Jorge Luis Borges' tenure as a blind inspector of poultry, while brief, was not without precedent. We recall the case of Pimty, two decades earlier and far, far from Buenos Aires. It may be an exaggeration to dub him, as did Pebblehead in the title of his bestselling paperback biography, The Illustrious Pimty, but that there was a lustre about him cannot be denied, unless you want to start a punch-up. Pimty's blindness was more Blunketty than Miltonic, he was the sort of man who enraged cows, when he trespassed in their fields, at weekends, carrying a picnic basket, under a thunderous sky, escaping the poultry market with its tin roofs and yelling merchants, his prison in the week, the inspector's hut, the braille calendar hanging tattered from a nail and the nail rusted, pricking him if he wasn't careful, blood on his fingers as his hands fumbled delving into a hen's croup, prodding, inspecting, as he was paid to do, oh and more than generously, he got a fair whack, and he spent it on booze and floozies, they haunted the poultry market, like figures from an early Kirchner, gaudy, angular, themselves sozzled on bathtub gin, sometimes they clucked just like the hens, particularly in the early afternoon, poor Pimty fuddled but up to his duty, tape measure round his neck like a tailor shifting schmutter, god knows why, it wasn't his job to measure the hens, nor their eggs, they joked he thought it was some kind of loose cravat, as if being blind he wouldn't know, they should have learned from their failed tricks, those mischievous poulterers, shoving a ball of dough stuck with feathers on the inspector's table, his rage was as terrible as the cows when he opened the gate of the field with one hand, holding tight to the picnic basket with the other, out in the mist, oblivious of it, but not of the cows that bore down on him, on Saturdays and Sundays when the poultry market was closed, shuttered, a deserted patch of concrete and cement, stray feathers scattered, neglected by the janitor's broom, the janitor Pimty's pal, some said his half-brother, deaf as a post where the inspector was blind, they made quite a pair even without the blood tie, always playing card games at lunchtime, rummy and spite and my lady's bonnet and Croesus, no money ever changing hands, the table rickety, sawdust everywhere, the stove in the corner, rain on the roof, birds pecking grain from the floor, shadow in the hut door of the inspector of inspectors looming, come for the rent and a check up, Pimty defiant, spitting out his words, hair standing on end as if he'd seen a ghost, half these hens are sick, man, what do you expect me to do, have a tot of gin while you tally my ledgers, I have to go and have a word with a man about a Buff Orpington and a Dutch Hookbill, and off Pimty goes, weaving across the familiar yard, sniffing the air, a storm brewing, better put on his sou'wester, yellow as a duck in a nursery book, shiny cardboard pages, stiff, buckled here and there, as you'd expect, he remembered gazing and gazing, rapt, when still so tiny with eyes that worked, before the operation, the surgeon cutting the useless withered nerves and then the blur black, the new life, […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-12-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:09 The Blind Man As Poultry Inspector 15:19 A Magic Trick THE BLIND MAN AS POULTRY INSPECTOR Jorge Luis Borges' tenure as a blind inspector of poultry, while brief, was not without precedent. We recall the case of Pimty, two decades earlier and far, far from Buenos Aires. It may be an exaggeration to dub him, as did Pebblehead in the title of his bestselling paperback biography, The Illustrious Pimty, but that there was a lustre about him cannot be denied, unless you want to start a punch-up. Pimty's blindness was more Blunketty than Miltonic, he was the sort of man who enraged cows, when he trespassed in their fields, at weekends, carrying a picnic basket, under a thunderous sky, escaping the poultry market with its tin roofs and yelling merchants, his prison in the week, the inspector's hut, the braille calendar hanging tattered from a nail and the nail rusted, pricking him if he wasn't careful, blood on his fingers as his hands fumbled delving into a hen's croup, prodding, inspecting, as he was paid to do, oh and more than generously, he got a fair whack, and he spent it on booze and floozies, they haunted the poultry market, like figures from an early Kirchner, gaudy, angular, themselves sozzled on bathtub gin, sometimes they clucked just like the hens, particularly in the early afternoon, poor Pimty fuddled but up to his duty, tape measure round his neck like a tailor shifting schmutter, god knows why, it wasn't his job to measure the hens, nor their eggs, they joked he thought it was some kind of loose cravat, as if being blind he wouldn't know, they should have learned from their failed tricks, those mischievous poulterers, shoving a ball of dough stuck with feathers on the inspector's table, his rage was as terrible as the cows when he opened the gate of the field with one hand, holding tight to the picnic basket with the other, out in the mist, oblivious of it, but not of the cows that bore down on him, on Saturdays and Sundays when the poultry market was closed, shuttered, a deserted patch of concrete and cement, stray feathers scattered, neglected by the janitor's broom, the janitor Pimty's pal, some said his half-brother, deaf as a post where the inspector was blind, they made quite a pair even without the blood tie, always playing card games at lunchtime, rummy and spite and my lady's bonnet and Croesus, no money ever changing hands, the table rickety, sawdust everywhere, the stove in the corner, rain on the roof, birds pecking grain from the floor, shadow in the hut door of the inspector of inspectors looming, come for the rent and a check up, Pimty defiant, spitting out his words, hair standing on end as if he'd seen a ghost, half these hens are sick, man, what do you expect me to do, have a tot of gin while you tally my ledgers, I have to go and have a word with a man about a Buff Orpington and a Dutch Hookbill, and off Pimty goes, weaving across the familiar yard, sniffing the air, a storm brewing, better put on his sou'wester, yellow as a duck in a nursery book, shiny cardboard pages, stiff, buckled here and there, as you'd expect, he remembered gazing and gazing, rapt, when still so tiny with eyes that worked, before the operation, the surgeon cutting the useless withered nerves and then the blur black, the new life, […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-12-0330:05fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-11-26Thu, 26 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Quayside Harpy 22:06 On Potatoes QUAYSIDE HARPY Ordinarily, when we think of harpies we think of Aello, Ocypete, and Celaeno, or as she is sometimes known, Podarge, the three sisters of Greek myth, bird-women who kept stealing, and befouling, food from Phineus and were generally vicious, violent and cruel. Tennyson called them "These prodigies of myriad nakednesses, / And twisted shapes of lust, unspeakable, / Abominable, strangers at my hearth / Not welcome, harpies miring every dish" but that may be more a reflection of the poet's fevered mental state than of the destructive wind-spirits themselves. It would certainly be a calumny upon the character of Beatrix Cambodge, the so-called Quayside Harpy who haunted the harbour of O'Houlihan's Wharf, that benighted, sludgesome seaside town a day's horse ride away from Haemoglobin Towers, if of course you point your horse due south, and if of course your horse is vimmy and fit, and not lame nor tubercular nor otherwise incapacitated. You might think it a simple matter to keep your horse healthy, but no! Our equine pals are subject to a host of terrible, terrible diseases! Lockjaw, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Equine Colic, Foal Pneumonia, Summer Seasonal Recurrent Dermatitis, and Equine Wobbler Syndrome are among the ones to look out for, next time you're hanging around at the stables, and there is a very helpful website with the admirably informative address www.horse-diseases.com to which you can refer. Don't forget to insert a hyphen between 'horse' and 'diseases', by the way, or you will go astray. As indeed, you will go astray if you point your healthy horse in any direction other than south when riding from Haemoglobin Towers to O'Houlihan's Wharf, in order to seek out Beatrix Cambodge, the Quayside Harpy, who of course I am meant to be talking about. Allow me just to prick the back of my hand with a long pin. That will help to concentrate my mind. I usually use a ladies' antique hatpin for what some think a melodramatic practice, but believe me, a tiny amount of bloodshed is well worth it to keep awake and alert when one might otherwise nod off into snoozeworld, particularly embarrassing when babbling into a microphone in the middle of a live radio show. There. I can read and dab at the puncture in my hand with a disinfected rag at the same time, so let us move on. Beatrix Cambodge wanted to be a harpy from girlhood, after she read about the mythical bird-women in a little book entitled Harpies, And Other Things That Fluttered At The Rim Of Cooking Vessels In Ancient Greece, by Dax Blib, the notorious children's writer and historian who wrote from his cell in a big forbidding prison perched on a promontory, where he was incarcerated for life after causing a series of railway disasters. The book spurred the tiny girl's imagination, but it was not as if hers was a humdrum childhood. Both of her parents were vampires, albeit of a fairly nondescript variety. Not for them remote castles and sweeping black capes and glistening crystal decanters from which to pour the blood they drank. Mr and Mrs Cambodge were lowly sorts, reduced on occasion to squeezing the last drop of gore from a fly or bluebottle thwacked with a rolled-up periodical. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-11-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Quayside Harpy 22:06 On Potatoes QUAYSIDE HARPY Ordinarily, when we think of harpies we think of Aello, Ocypete, and Celaeno, or as she is sometimes known, Podarge, the three sisters of Greek myth, bird-women who kept stealing, and befouling, food from Phineus and were generally vicious, violent and cruel. Tennyson called them "These prodigies of myriad nakednesses, / And twisted shapes of lust, unspeakable, / Abominable, strangers at my hearth / Not welcome, harpies miring every dish" but that may be more a reflection of the poet's fevered mental state than of the destructive wind-spirits themselves. It would certainly be a calumny upon the character of Beatrix Cambodge, the so-called Quayside Harpy who haunted the harbour of O'Houlihan's Wharf, that benighted, sludgesome seaside town a day's horse ride away from Haemoglobin Towers, if of course you point your horse due south, and if of course your horse is vimmy and fit, and not lame nor tubercular nor otherwise incapacitated. You might think it a simple matter to keep your horse healthy, but no! Our equine pals are subject to a host of terrible, terrible diseases! Lockjaw, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Equine Colic, Foal Pneumonia, Summer Seasonal Recurrent Dermatitis, and Equine Wobbler Syndrome are among the ones to look out for, next time you're hanging around at the stables, and there is a very helpful website with the admirably informative address www.horse-diseases.com to which you can refer. Don't forget to insert a hyphen between 'horse' and 'diseases', by the way, or you will go astray. As indeed, you will go astray if you point your healthy horse in any direction other than south when riding from Haemoglobin Towers to O'Houlihan's Wharf, in order to seek out Beatrix Cambodge, the Quayside Harpy, who of course I am meant to be talking about. Allow me just to prick the back of my hand with a long pin. That will help to concentrate my mind. I usually use a ladies' antique hatpin for what some think a melodramatic practice, but believe me, a tiny amount of bloodshed is well worth it to keep awake and alert when one might otherwise nod off into snoozeworld, particularly embarrassing when babbling into a microphone in the middle of a live radio show. There. I can read and dab at the puncture in my hand with a disinfected rag at the same time, so let us move on. Beatrix Cambodge wanted to be a harpy from girlhood, after she read about the mythical bird-women in a little book entitled Harpies, And Other Things That Fluttered At The Rim Of Cooking Vessels In Ancient Greece, by Dax Blib, the notorious children's writer and historian who wrote from his cell in a big forbidding prison perched on a promontory, where he was incarcerated for life after causing a series of railway disasters. The book spurred the tiny girl's imagination, but it was not as if hers was a humdrum childhood. Both of her parents were vampires, albeit of a fairly nondescript variety. Not for them remote castles and sweeping black capes and glistening crystal decanters from which to pour the blood they drank. Mr and Mrs Cambodge were lowly sorts, reduced on occasion to squeezing the last drop of gore from a fly or bluebottle thwacked with a rolled-up periodical. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-11-2630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-11-05Thu, 05 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:33 In Ponga 13:03 Lug That Pail 16:58 Dobson, Preoccupied 24:46 The Braying Of Donkeys IN PONGA In Ponga, you can recognise the satraps because they wear plumed hats. Or so I am told. In Gooma, by contrast, the hats of the satraps are unplumed, and look like any other hats sported by a million other Goomans. The satraps can be distinguished by their tattoos. Pongan satraps eschew tattooing, which is reserved for their shamen, but there are no shamen in Gooma. If one flies over the mountains into Gaar, one finds that the satraps wear plumed hats and sport tattoos, and that the chief method of adverting to their satrapdom is their habit of always carrying a bundle of tally sticks. The shamen of Gaar have both plumed hats and tattoos, but they do not carry tally sticks. They tie their hair in complex stylised knots. This much I have learned, and am grateful to have learned, from a fascinating periodical entitled Satraps And Shamen Of Ponga And Gooma And Gaar. It is published on the first Thursday of each month, and is packed with articles and photographs and quizzes and competitions. Since I picked up a copy at a newsagent's in an esplanade on a mezzanine level at an airport a short while ago it has become my absolute favourite periodical ever, even though I had no previous interest in either satraps or shamen, whether they were from Ponga or Gooma or Gaar or any other country you care to mention. I have been won over by the magazine's excellence in all particulars, but mostly by its vividness. It is the most vivid of periodicals, more vivid even than the Reader's Digest. In Ponga, the satraps hold councils at which are discussed important meteorological issues. The Pongan shamen consider the weather to fall within their purview, and this can lead to clashes between satraps and shamen. Such clashes are conducted at a strictly verbal level, and give rise to some fascinating linguistic quirks. Because there are no shamen in Gooma, the Gooman satraps have the weather all to themselves and face no clashes. In Gaar, the shamen tie their hair in complex stylised knots. I have said that Gaar is on the other side of the mountains from Ponga and Gooma, but I have yet to learn what these mountains are called, or indeed where they are. Vivid as the periodical is, I have to say that it is unforthcoming on matters geographical, and that is an understatement. I have been toying with the idea of writing a letter to the editor suggesting that a future issue might include some maps. When I was a little chap I had a passion for maps, just like the narrator of Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. I am no longer a little chap at all, but I would like to see maps, colourful ones, of Ponga and Gooma and Gaar. They would make the periodical even more vivid than it already is. In Ponga, the satraps have dominion over the birds of the air, or at least they act as if they do. They devise many laws to which the birds of the air are subject. Flightless birds fall within the remit of the shamen of Ponga. They do not create laws, but they consider flightless birds to be sacred, and count them, often. The satraps count the birds of the air also, with different purposes in mind. In Gooma, all known birds are poultry. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-11-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:33 In Ponga 13:03 Lug That Pail 16:58 Dobson, Preoccupied 24:46 The Braying Of Donkeys IN PONGA In Ponga, you can recognise the satraps because they wear plumed hats. Or so I am told. In Gooma, by contrast, the hats of the satraps are unplumed, and look like any other hats sported by a million other Goomans. The satraps can be distinguished by their tattoos. Pongan satraps eschew tattooing, which is reserved for their shamen, but there are no shamen in Gooma. If one flies over the mountains into Gaar, one finds that the satraps wear plumed hats and sport tattoos, and that the chief method of adverting to their satrapdom is their habit of always carrying a bundle of tally sticks. The shamen of Gaar have both plumed hats and tattoos, but they do not carry tally sticks. They tie their hair in complex stylised knots. This much I have learned, and am grateful to have learned, from a fascinating periodical entitled Satraps And Shamen Of Ponga And Gooma And Gaar. It is published on the first Thursday of each month, and is packed with articles and photographs and quizzes and competitions. Since I picked up a copy at a newsagent's in an esplanade on a mezzanine level at an airport a short while ago it has become my absolute favourite periodical ever, even though I had no previous interest in either satraps or shamen, whether they were from Ponga or Gooma or Gaar or any other country you care to mention. I have been won over by the magazine's excellence in all particulars, but mostly by its vividness. It is the most vivid of periodicals, more vivid even than the Reader's Digest. In Ponga, the satraps hold councils at which are discussed important meteorological issues. The Pongan shamen consider the weather to fall within their purview, and this can lead to clashes between satraps and shamen. Such clashes are conducted at a strictly verbal level, and give rise to some fascinating linguistic quirks. Because there are no shamen in Gooma, the Gooman satraps have the weather all to themselves and face no clashes. In Gaar, the shamen tie their hair in complex stylised knots. I have said that Gaar is on the other side of the mountains from Ponga and Gooma, but I have yet to learn what these mountains are called, or indeed where they are. Vivid as the periodical is, I have to say that it is unforthcoming on matters geographical, and that is an understatement. I have been toying with the idea of writing a letter to the editor suggesting that a future issue might include some maps. When I was a little chap I had a passion for maps, just like the narrator of Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. I am no longer a little chap at all, but I would like to see maps, colourful ones, of Ponga and Gooma and Gaar. They would make the periodical even more vivid than it already is. In Ponga, the satraps have dominion over the birds of the air, or at least they act as if they do. They devise many laws to which the birds of the air are subject. Flightless birds fall within the remit of the shamen of Ponga. They do not create laws, but they consider flightless birds to be sacred, and count them, often. The satraps count the birds of the air also, with different purposes in mind. In Gooma, all known birds are poultry. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-11-0530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-29Thu, 29 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:39 The Petula Clark Minefield 07:54 Dobson's Blotter 16:08 Adventures Of The Pointyhead Detectives THE PETULA CLARK MINEFIELD Just as Jason Bourne has an identity, a supremacy, and an ultimatum, so Petula Clark has files, a project--and a minefield. The Petula Clark minefield was the happy outcome of my determination, with the Petula Clark project, to put to good use the materials in the Petula Clark files, which I had collected in the 1960s and kept, for fifty years, in a remote secure storage facility guarded by wolves. The idea came to me when, one windswept morning, I was sashaying along a majestic and important boulevard in my bailiwick. All of a sudden, my boon companion Walter Mad, the animal behaviourist, amateur electrician, and van owner, drove up alongside me in his van, slowed to sashaying pace, wound down his window, and shouted at me. "I have inherited a field!" he cried. Later, over tea and toffee, I learned more. An elderly Mad uncle had died and left to his nephew, in his last will and testament, a field, somewhere out in the blasted and awful countryside. "If it were a magnetic field," moaned Walter Mad, "I might be interested. But it is nothing more than a flat expanse of mud and muck out beyond the Blister Lane Bypass, past the viaduct and the ha-ha and the decoy duckpond and the foopball pitch and the giant cement statue of Nobby Stiles and the weird cloud of ectoplasm and the bridge over the river Horrible and the vinegar works and Pang Hill Orphanage and the clown hospital and the blasted heath and the Bolshevik ballet school and the forest of gargoyles and the sump of slurry and the remote secure storage facility and the -" "Wait!" I cried, "This field of yours is near the storage facility?" "Had you allowed me to finish I would have listed several more significant landmarks on the way but, yes, it is fairly close by, as the crow flies." "I have an idea!" I cried, and I jumped into the van and told Walter Mad to drive like the clappers. My idea was the Petula Clark minefield. Through Walter Mad's inheritance, we had the field. The next step was to remove the Petula Clark files from the remote secure storage facility, and then to remove each of the six or seven press clippings from its buff cardboard folder. The folders we tossed, unsentimentally, on to a nearby bonfire. It was then a simple matter to have each of the six or seven press clippings laminated, to protect them against the many and various calamities of awful countryside weather. Once laminated, each press clipping was attached to one end of a pointy stick--that is, to the non-pointy end. At this stage I had not decided whether the Petula Clark minefield would accommodate one customer at a time, armed with all six or seven pointy sticks to which were attached the laminated Petula Clark press clippings, or six or seven customers simultaneously, each armed with a single pointy stick. Six or seven customers at a time was probably the better option, as it would allow us to advertise the Petula Clark minefield as a splendid opportunity for awayday team-building exercises for middle managers in small to medium size companies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:39 The Petula Clark Minefield 07:54 Dobson's Blotter 16:08 Adventures Of The Pointyhead Detectives THE PETULA CLARK MINEFIELD Just as Jason Bourne has an identity, a supremacy, and an ultimatum, so Petula Clark has files, a project--and a minefield. The Petula Clark minefield was the happy outcome of my determination, with the Petula Clark project, to put to good use the materials in the Petula Clark files, which I had collected in the 1960s and kept, for fifty years, in a remote secure storage facility guarded by wolves. The idea came to me when, one windswept morning, I was sashaying along a majestic and important boulevard in my bailiwick. All of a sudden, my boon companion Walter Mad, the animal behaviourist, amateur electrician, and van owner, drove up alongside me in his van, slowed to sashaying pace, wound down his window, and shouted at me. "I have inherited a field!" he cried. Later, over tea and toffee, I learned more. An elderly Mad uncle had died and left to his nephew, in his last will and testament, a field, somewhere out in the blasted and awful countryside. "If it were a magnetic field," moaned Walter Mad, "I might be interested. But it is nothing more than a flat expanse of mud and muck out beyond the Blister Lane Bypass, past the viaduct and the ha-ha and the decoy duckpond and the foopball pitch and the giant cement statue of Nobby Stiles and the weird cloud of ectoplasm and the bridge over the river Horrible and the vinegar works and Pang Hill Orphanage and the clown hospital and the blasted heath and the Bolshevik ballet school and the forest of gargoyles and the sump of slurry and the remote secure storage facility and the -" "Wait!" I cried, "This field of yours is near the storage facility?" "Had you allowed me to finish I would have listed several more significant landmarks on the way but, yes, it is fairly close by, as the crow flies." "I have an idea!" I cried, and I jumped into the van and told Walter Mad to drive like the clappers. My idea was the Petula Clark minefield. Through Walter Mad's inheritance, we had the field. The next step was to remove the Petula Clark files from the remote secure storage facility, and then to remove each of the six or seven press clippings from its buff cardboard folder. The folders we tossed, unsentimentally, on to a nearby bonfire. It was then a simple matter to have each of the six or seven press clippings laminated, to protect them against the many and various calamities of awful countryside weather. Once laminated, each press clipping was attached to one end of a pointy stick--that is, to the non-pointy end. At this stage I had not decided whether the Petula Clark minefield would accommodate one customer at a time, armed with all six or seven pointy sticks to which were attached the laminated Petula Clark press clippings, or six or seven customers simultaneously, each armed with a single pointy stick. Six or seven customers at a time was probably the better option, as it would allow us to advertise the Petula Clark minefield as a splendid opportunity for awayday team-building exercises for middle managers in small to medium size companies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-2930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-22Thu, 22 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:55 The Petula Clark Files 15:39 The Petula Clark Project 25:02 Swabian Hothead THE PETULA CLARK FILES I keep my Petula Clark files in a remote secure storage facility. The perimeter fence is electrified, and patrolled by wolves. The wolves are not electrified, but I am working on it, in partnership with the animal behaviourist and amateur electrician Walter Mad. The wolves have been trained to become docile at my approach, but to attack savagely anybody else, including Walter Mad. The combination of fence and wolves and some fairly stout padlocks ensures that my Petula Clark files remain safe and secure. It is fifty years since I began my collection. There was a brief report in the local newspaper of the seaside town in which I then lived, announcing a forthcoming concert by Petula Clark. I snipped it out of the paper with a pair of scissors and put it on my desk, under a seaside pebble. Over the following few months I snipped out of various papers several reports in which Petula Clark was mentioned. Some of these were illustrated with photographs of the chanteuse, though the photographs themselves were of low quality, as were most newspaper photographs in those days. By the time I had accumulated five or six such snippages I lost all interest in Petula Clark. Looking back, it is fair to say that I was never particularly interested in her in the first place. I spent far more of my time, for example, thinking about and studying and even attempting to imitate the behaviour of wolves. Eventually, one blazing summer morn, I looked at the seaside pebble on my desk, and the five or six press clippings related to Petula Clark underneath it, and I resolved--with a sort of manly Jack Hawkins stern-jawed resolve--to find a more efficient storage method for them. After all, it had occurred to me more than once that, were I to move the seaside pebble for any reason, and my window was open, and a gust of wind blew in, billowing the curtains, the cuttings, all five or six of them, could be scattered, untidily, and--perhaps, perhaps--be lost forever. Hence the files, by which I refer to buff cardboard folders. I bought a packet of these at a stationer's. I distinctly recall that on my walk to and from the shop, which took about fifteen minutes each way, I did not see a single wolf. This saddened me, but I was consoled, on the way back, that I had acquired a suitable means of storage for my collection of five or six Petula Clark press clippings. I was so eager to return home and set to work that I did not, as I usually did, stop off at the ice cream kiosk to buy a choc ice, which I would then eat while sitting on a seaside bench and staring out to sea. Walter Mad has hatched a scheme to use half-eaten choc ices as bait in the process of electrifying wolves. I must admit I did not quite follow his reasoning, but I feel sure it is sound. Once home, and having unwrapped from their cellophane the buff cardboard folders, I took five or six of them and placed a Petula Clark snippage into each one, having first, of course, moved the seaside pebble to one side on my desk. I considered marking the folders, for example by writing "Petula Clark Press Clipping No. 1" (and so on, up to No. 5 or No. 6) on the front of each one, but I decided against this. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:55 The Petula Clark Files 15:39 The Petula Clark Project 25:02 Swabian Hothead THE PETULA CLARK FILES I keep my Petula Clark files in a remote secure storage facility. The perimeter fence is electrified, and patrolled by wolves. The wolves are not electrified, but I am working on it, in partnership with the animal behaviourist and amateur electrician Walter Mad. The wolves have been trained to become docile at my approach, but to attack savagely anybody else, including Walter Mad. The combination of fence and wolves and some fairly stout padlocks ensures that my Petula Clark files remain safe and secure. It is fifty years since I began my collection. There was a brief report in the local newspaper of the seaside town in which I then lived, announcing a forthcoming concert by Petula Clark. I snipped it out of the paper with a pair of scissors and put it on my desk, under a seaside pebble. Over the following few months I snipped out of various papers several reports in which Petula Clark was mentioned. Some of these were illustrated with photographs of the chanteuse, though the photographs themselves were of low quality, as were most newspaper photographs in those days. By the time I had accumulated five or six such snippages I lost all interest in Petula Clark. Looking back, it is fair to say that I was never particularly interested in her in the first place. I spent far more of my time, for example, thinking about and studying and even attempting to imitate the behaviour of wolves. Eventually, one blazing summer morn, I looked at the seaside pebble on my desk, and the five or six press clippings related to Petula Clark underneath it, and I resolved--with a sort of manly Jack Hawkins stern-jawed resolve--to find a more efficient storage method for them. After all, it had occurred to me more than once that, were I to move the seaside pebble for any reason, and my window was open, and a gust of wind blew in, billowing the curtains, the cuttings, all five or six of them, could be scattered, untidily, and--perhaps, perhaps--be lost forever. Hence the files, by which I refer to buff cardboard folders. I bought a packet of these at a stationer's. I distinctly recall that on my walk to and from the shop, which took about fifteen minutes each way, I did not see a single wolf. This saddened me, but I was consoled, on the way back, that I had acquired a suitable means of storage for my collection of five or six Petula Clark press clippings. I was so eager to return home and set to work that I did not, as I usually did, stop off at the ice cream kiosk to buy a choc ice, which I would then eat while sitting on a seaside bench and staring out to sea. Walter Mad has hatched a scheme to use half-eaten choc ices as bait in the process of electrifying wolves. I must admit I did not quite follow his reasoning, but I feel sure it is sound. Once home, and having unwrapped from their cellophane the buff cardboard folders, I took five or six of them and placed a Petula Clark snippage into each one, having first, of course, moved the seaside pebble to one side on my desk. I considered marking the folders, for example by writing "Petula Clark Press Clipping No. 1" (and so on, up to No. 5 or No. 6) on the front of each one, but I decided against this. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-2230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-15Thu, 15 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On The Kitchen Devil 16:23 On The Inner Life 18:23 On The Report Of Dr Slop ON THE KITCHEN DEVIL Greetings. My name is Beelzebub, and I am the devil incarnate. You may have seen pictures of me, colour plates in books or crude engravings in religious tracts, where I am often depicted with a goaty appearance, with horns and cloven hooves and a tail. The accompanying texts attribute to me all sorts of dark powers, and give the impression that I am to be feared more than anything else in the world. All I can say is that such powers, such fear, if real, would come in extremely handy in my current predicament. For the past six months I have been held captive in the basement of a bungalow, by a neurasthenic Victorian lady named Maud and her slovenly yet devoted maidservant, Baines. The latter is my chief tormentor, for the length of chain which restrains me keeps me confined to the kitchen and the scullery and the pantry, where Baines rules the roost. When she is in particularly vindictive mood, Baines likes to poke me with burning hot toasting forks, cackling that she is giving me a taste of my own medicine. I have no idea what she is inferring, as I have never once in my life poked anybody with a burning hot toasting fork, oh, except for the occasional sinner, who richly deserved such hot poking on account of the crimes and naughtinesses and debaucheries and malfeasance they committed before they were delivered into my care. I, on the other hand, get poked with burning hot toasting forks purely for Baines' amusement, which seems to turn the moral order on its head. But what can I do? I am enchained, below stairs, forced to work as a skivvy. I suspect things would not be half so awful were this not a Victorian kitchen. The sheer amount of work involved in cooking and cleaning is exhausting even to think about. I have spent entire days scrubbing the grease from pots, using hard brown soap and soda and boiling water, and as soon as I am done Baines comes a-clattering with another load of caked and filthy kitchenware. Down here in the basement, there is no window to look out upon the world, and precious little ventilation, so the air is foul with fumes and smoke. Baines taunts me and says I must feel at home, but again, I have no idea what she is talking about. The infernal realm from which I hail is like a child's playpen in comparison. Things started out so well. On the way to my appointment with Maud, I stopped off in the little village of Porlock on the Somerset coast, where I poisoned a couple of wells, introduced an amusing new bacillus into the cows' milk, and blasted an orchard with firebolts. At the inn where I stayed, I joined the other guests in rustic sing-songs and games of shove-ha'penny before casting them into the pit. It has slipped my mind, but I might even have poked one or two of the more inebriated peasants with a burning hot toasting fork, as Baines suggests. When dawn broke on the fateful day, I was feeling chipper, and tucked into a breakfast of offal and hot coals. Transporting myself from the inn in Porlock to Maud's doorstep in a single bound, with a thousand times the leaping power of Spring-heeled Jack, I hammered my fist on her door. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On The Kitchen Devil 16:23 On The Inner Life 18:23 On The Report Of Dr Slop ON THE KITCHEN DEVIL Greetings. My name is Beelzebub, and I am the devil incarnate. You may have seen pictures of me, colour plates in books or crude engravings in religious tracts, where I am often depicted with a goaty appearance, with horns and cloven hooves and a tail. The accompanying texts attribute to me all sorts of dark powers, and give the impression that I am to be feared more than anything else in the world. All I can say is that such powers, such fear, if real, would come in extremely handy in my current predicament. For the past six months I have been held captive in the basement of a bungalow, by a neurasthenic Victorian lady named Maud and her slovenly yet devoted maidservant, Baines. The latter is my chief tormentor, for the length of chain which restrains me keeps me confined to the kitchen and the scullery and the pantry, where Baines rules the roost. When she is in particularly vindictive mood, Baines likes to poke me with burning hot toasting forks, cackling that she is giving me a taste of my own medicine. I have no idea what she is inferring, as I have never once in my life poked anybody with a burning hot toasting fork, oh, except for the occasional sinner, who richly deserved such hot poking on account of the crimes and naughtinesses and debaucheries and malfeasance they committed before they were delivered into my care. I, on the other hand, get poked with burning hot toasting forks purely for Baines' amusement, which seems to turn the moral order on its head. But what can I do? I am enchained, below stairs, forced to work as a skivvy. I suspect things would not be half so awful were this not a Victorian kitchen. The sheer amount of work involved in cooking and cleaning is exhausting even to think about. I have spent entire days scrubbing the grease from pots, using hard brown soap and soda and boiling water, and as soon as I am done Baines comes a-clattering with another load of caked and filthy kitchenware. Down here in the basement, there is no window to look out upon the world, and precious little ventilation, so the air is foul with fumes and smoke. Baines taunts me and says I must feel at home, but again, I have no idea what she is talking about. The infernal realm from which I hail is like a child's playpen in comparison. Things started out so well. On the way to my appointment with Maud, I stopped off in the little village of Porlock on the Somerset coast, where I poisoned a couple of wells, introduced an amusing new bacillus into the cows' milk, and blasted an orchard with firebolts. At the inn where I stayed, I joined the other guests in rustic sing-songs and games of shove-ha'penny before casting them into the pit. It has slipped my mind, but I might even have poked one or two of the more inebriated peasants with a burning hot toasting fork, as Baines suggests. When dawn broke on the fateful day, I was feeling chipper, and tucked into a breakfast of offal and hot coals. Transporting myself from the inn in Porlock to Maud's doorstep in a single bound, with a thousand times the leaping power of Spring-heeled Jack, I hammered my fist on her door. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-1530:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-08Thu, 08 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 On Failing To Persuade Maud To Come Into The Garden 09:29 On What Maud Did Next 17:44 On Maud, Again 25:25 Am I So Poised? ON FAILING TO PERSUADE MAUD TO COME INTO THE GARDEN "Come into the garden, Maud." "Not on your nelly. You know only too well that I am a neurasthenic recluse, and I prefer to remain in my bungalow with the windows shuttered, sitting at my escritoire penning tear-stained verses. When I have finished a particularly mawkish poem, I am given to flinging myself onto the floor and having a fit of the vapours, screaming and drumming my heels on the linoleum and beating my white fists upon the wainscot until they are bloody and bruised and require bandaging by Baines, my slovenly yet devoted maidservant. Why on earth should I risk my fragile mental equilibrium by coming into the garden?" "Oh, come on. The black bat, night, has flown." "I am reassured to learn that the garden is innocent of bats which do swoop and squeak, but there is much else out there guaranteed to send my weakling constitution into panic-stricken trembling. Those plants, for example. I grant you they are gorgeous, but their gorgeousness seems fierce, passionate, and even unnatural. There is hardly an individual shrub which a wanderer, straying by himself through a forest, would not be startled to find growing wild, as if an unearthly face had glared at him out of the thicket. Several, also, would shock a delicate instinct, such as mine, to pluck a delicate instinct at random, by an appearance of artificialness, indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were, adultery of various vegetable species, that the production was no longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty. They are probably the result of experiment, which, in one or two cases, has succeeded in mingling plants individually lovely into a compound possessing the questionable and ominous character that distinguishes the whole growth of the garden. It would not surprise me to learn that every single plant is a poisonous plant, as in the garden of Doctor Rappaccini in one of the mosses from an old manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne. And it is into the midst of this toxic organic miasma that you wish me to come skipping, without a care in the world? You must be insane!" "Maud, all I am saying is that the bat has flown away from the garden for the time being, and I want you to take advantage of its absence to come for a stroll. Come nightfall, it will be back." "You wish me to stroll with you in the garden, but you make no provision to protect me against being pricked by poisonous nettles or pointy thorns. It seems to me I would be far better off slumped on a chaise longue, my limbs hanging limp, keening with woe and summoning Baines to fetch me an invigorating tisane." "Well, I thought a stroll followed by a chaste yet tingling embrace in a verdant arbour might be a welcome diversion from your long silent empty days. I am here at the gate alone." "It has not escaped my notice that you neglect to address my point about protective clothing, a point I feel quite justified in making on account of those monstrous experimental plants with which the garden is rife. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 On Failing To Persuade Maud To Come Into The Garden 09:29 On What Maud Did Next 17:44 On Maud, Again 25:25 Am I So Poised? ON FAILING TO PERSUADE MAUD TO COME INTO THE GARDEN "Come into the garden, Maud." "Not on your nelly. You know only too well that I am a neurasthenic recluse, and I prefer to remain in my bungalow with the windows shuttered, sitting at my escritoire penning tear-stained verses. When I have finished a particularly mawkish poem, I am given to flinging myself onto the floor and having a fit of the vapours, screaming and drumming my heels on the linoleum and beating my white fists upon the wainscot until they are bloody and bruised and require bandaging by Baines, my slovenly yet devoted maidservant. Why on earth should I risk my fragile mental equilibrium by coming into the garden?" "Oh, come on. The black bat, night, has flown." "I am reassured to learn that the garden is innocent of bats which do swoop and squeak, but there is much else out there guaranteed to send my weakling constitution into panic-stricken trembling. Those plants, for example. I grant you they are gorgeous, but their gorgeousness seems fierce, passionate, and even unnatural. There is hardly an individual shrub which a wanderer, straying by himself through a forest, would not be startled to find growing wild, as if an unearthly face had glared at him out of the thicket. Several, also, would shock a delicate instinct, such as mine, to pluck a delicate instinct at random, by an appearance of artificialness, indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were, adultery of various vegetable species, that the production was no longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty. They are probably the result of experiment, which, in one or two cases, has succeeded in mingling plants individually lovely into a compound possessing the questionable and ominous character that distinguishes the whole growth of the garden. It would not surprise me to learn that every single plant is a poisonous plant, as in the garden of Doctor Rappaccini in one of the mosses from an old manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne. And it is into the midst of this toxic organic miasma that you wish me to come skipping, without a care in the world? You must be insane!" "Maud, all I am saying is that the bat has flown away from the garden for the time being, and I want you to take advantage of its absence to come for a stroll. Come nightfall, it will be back." "You wish me to stroll with you in the garden, but you make no provision to protect me against being pricked by poisonous nettles or pointy thorns. It seems to me I would be far better off slumped on a chaise longue, my limbs hanging limp, keening with woe and summoning Baines to fetch me an invigorating tisane." "Well, I thought a stroll followed by a chaste yet tingling embrace in a verdant arbour might be a welcome diversion from your long silent empty days. I am here at the gate alone." "It has not escaped my notice that you neglect to address my point about protective clothing, a point I feel quite justified in making on account of those monstrous experimental plants with which the garden is rife. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-0830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-01Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:42 Municipal Monkey Vampires 27:17 Buy The Record, Please 28:08 A Brief Note On Cats MUNICIPAL MONKEY VAMPIRES The other day I popped in to the Town Hall to find out a bit about bins, park benches, signage, flowerbeds and civic statuary. I think it is time to engage more fully with the maintenance of my bailiwick and the municipal doings therein. This impulse was prompted when, sitting on a park bench next to a civic statue of the much-missed Alderman Spandau, alongside which was a bin in which weeds hoed from a flowerbed had been chucked, I read a sign, placed there by the council, which implored me, and, I suppose, anybody else who read it, to refrain from smoking within the precincts of the park, to tidy up after my dog, though I did not have a dog as such, to ensure I paid my council tax promptly, and to place any litter I wished to discard in the bin provided. Each of these instructions, or pieces of advice, or commands, or whatever we might call them, was translated into several languages. It was a bloody big piece of signage. Incidentally, for those of you attuned to the resonances of the colour spectrum, the bench was brown, the statue was grey with patches of green, the bin was black, and the weeds were, weirdly, gash gold-vermilion. I wouldn't have put them in the bin, I'd have taken them home and arranged them in a vase and placed it on my mantelpiece, if I had a mantelpiece. The sign itself was beige, with the writing in red. If I had to be more precise, I would say it was blood red. I did not at the time understand why this might be significant. If I had either a dog or a mantelpiece, I might not have been so quick to visit the Town Hall. Both would have claims on my attention. I would have to take the dog for walkies, and shop for biscuits, and give it baths, and possibly take it to the vet for injections from time to time. As for a mantelpiece, that would need dusting, I suppose, and minor upkeep, such as the patching up of crumbly bits, if it was rotting, and also much time spent in judicious contemplation of items to display upon it, and the arrangement thereof. Those too would have to be dusted, in addition to the mantelpiece itself, if I were to avoid becoming engulfed by dust and thus have trouble with my breathing apparatus, one day. But unencumbered as I was by both dog and mantelpiece, when I hurled myself out of bed that morning, I was free to go along to the Town Hall without other duties to distract me. I know nothing of architecture, but by God I recognise municipal pride expressed in brick and concrete when I see it. I must have walked past the Town Hall numberless times without paying it any attention. Now, I stopped on the steps to take in its majestic frontage. Gosh. Feeling somewhat belittled, I entered through the grand doorway. I did not have an appointment with anybody, so when I presented myself at the reception desk I was treated with a certain disdain. Perhaps I was mistaken for a mendicant. I suppose I ought to have washed my hair and worn a less grubby cravat for what I considered a pretty momentous visit. I was pointed towards a row of plastic chairs and told to sit and wait. Before taking my seat, I browsed through a rack of leaflets affixed to the wall, and took a few of them to pass the time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:42 Municipal Monkey Vampires 27:17 Buy The Record, Please 28:08 A Brief Note On Cats MUNICIPAL MONKEY VAMPIRES The other day I popped in to the Town Hall to find out a bit about bins, park benches, signage, flowerbeds and civic statuary. I think it is time to engage more fully with the maintenance of my bailiwick and the municipal doings therein. This impulse was prompted when, sitting on a park bench next to a civic statue of the much-missed Alderman Spandau, alongside which was a bin in which weeds hoed from a flowerbed had been chucked, I read a sign, placed there by the council, which implored me, and, I suppose, anybody else who read it, to refrain from smoking within the precincts of the park, to tidy up after my dog, though I did not have a dog as such, to ensure I paid my council tax promptly, and to place any litter I wished to discard in the bin provided. Each of these instructions, or pieces of advice, or commands, or whatever we might call them, was translated into several languages. It was a bloody big piece of signage. Incidentally, for those of you attuned to the resonances of the colour spectrum, the bench was brown, the statue was grey with patches of green, the bin was black, and the weeds were, weirdly, gash gold-vermilion. I wouldn't have put them in the bin, I'd have taken them home and arranged them in a vase and placed it on my mantelpiece, if I had a mantelpiece. The sign itself was beige, with the writing in red. If I had to be more precise, I would say it was blood red. I did not at the time understand why this might be significant. If I had either a dog or a mantelpiece, I might not have been so quick to visit the Town Hall. Both would have claims on my attention. I would have to take the dog for walkies, and shop for biscuits, and give it baths, and possibly take it to the vet for injections from time to time. As for a mantelpiece, that would need dusting, I suppose, and minor upkeep, such as the patching up of crumbly bits, if it was rotting, and also much time spent in judicious contemplation of items to display upon it, and the arrangement thereof. Those too would have to be dusted, in addition to the mantelpiece itself, if I were to avoid becoming engulfed by dust and thus have trouble with my breathing apparatus, one day. But unencumbered as I was by both dog and mantelpiece, when I hurled myself out of bed that morning, I was free to go along to the Town Hall without other duties to distract me. I know nothing of architecture, but by God I recognise municipal pride expressed in brick and concrete when I see it. I must have walked past the Town Hall numberless times without paying it any attention. Now, I stopped on the steps to take in its majestic frontage. Gosh. Feeling somewhat belittled, I entered through the grand doorway. I did not have an appointment with anybody, so when I presented myself at the reception desk I was treated with a certain disdain. Perhaps I was mistaken for a mendicant. I suppose I ought to have washed my hair and worn a less grubby cravat for what I considered a pretty momentous visit. I was pointed towards a row of plastic chairs and told to sit and wait. Before taking my seat, I browsed through a rack of leaflets affixed to the wall, and took a few of them to pass the time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-10-0130:46fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-09-24Thu, 24 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 On Huz And Buz 09:37 British Psychology 14:15 Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes ON HUZ AND BUZ Let Huz bless with the Polypus--lively subtlety is acceptable to the Lord. Let Buz bless with the Jackall--but the Lord is the Lion's provider. - Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno, Fragment A. I wondered what ever became of Huz and Buz, the stout companions of my childhood. On the long summer afternoons we three played together in the shadow of the old viaduct out by Pang Hill. We played foopball and hockey and we polevaulted over ditches and we set fire to buttercups and we pretended to be Prussians or Russians or monsters from the far Carpathians. And always Huz had his polypus puppet of wool and wire, and Buz his cardboard jackal. And in the gloaming at the end of those endless days, Huz and Buz would trot back to Pang Hill Orphanage and sneak in through the hidden wicket, and I would trudge home, along the canal towpath rife with phlox and lupins, to the enormous mansion where Ma and Pa lay on separate ottomans in separate chambers in separate wings, both of them neurasthenic and medicated and moaning. I ate my dinner with Crouch, the impossibly tall and gangling servant, in the baronial hall, tenebrous and chill, where bats swooped in the rafters, and the rafters rotted, and sometimes shards of rafter dropped into my soup. And I thought of Huz and Buz, shivering in their attic room in the orphanage, going hungry to their iron cots. Sometimes, in the night, I would slip out of bed and pad along the corridor to Ma's wireless room to transmit coded messages, buzzes and clicks and bleeps, to my pals. Either Huz, or Buz, I forget which, had smuggled a portable metal tapping machine into the orphanage and kept it hidden under the sandbag that served as his pillow. It was a hazardous business, for there was always the risk he might be caught by the beadle. If that happened, Huz or Buz would be made to put a saucepan on his head and spend a week on the orphanage roof, among the crows and ravens, without shelter, slaking his thirst with rainwater from the gutters. It was hazardous for me too. The wireless room was thick with dust and cobwebs, spiders and beetles and gnats. Ma had abandoned it long ago, before I was born. Once it had been her sanctum, when she was young and lively and the recipient of mountaineering trophies. Crouch still polished the trophies, devotedly, day after day, with his special rags. The messages we exchanged in the night were couched in a private language Huz and Buz and I had devised. I still have some of the transcripts, musty and dog-eared, the ink fading, in a filing cabinet in what was once Pa's smoking room. I do not know why I keep them, for I long ago forgot the language, and can wring no sense from them. Perhaps it is that they are the sole remaining tangible reminders of my childhood friends. The orphanage, at the railings of which I often stood and wept, burned down last year. The beadle's grandson was arrested, but I do not know the outcome of the case. The local police officers do not speak to me any more. As a child, I was barely aware that the police existed. Certainly, on those long afternoons by the old viaduct, Huz and Buz and I never once saw a police officer. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-09-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 On Huz And Buz 09:37 British Psychology 14:15 Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes ON HUZ AND BUZ Let Huz bless with the Polypus--lively subtlety is acceptable to the Lord. Let Buz bless with the Jackall--but the Lord is the Lion's provider. - Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno, Fragment A. I wondered what ever became of Huz and Buz, the stout companions of my childhood. On the long summer afternoons we three played together in the shadow of the old viaduct out by Pang Hill. We played foopball and hockey and we polevaulted over ditches and we set fire to buttercups and we pretended to be Prussians or Russians or monsters from the far Carpathians. And always Huz had his polypus puppet of wool and wire, and Buz his cardboard jackal. And in the gloaming at the end of those endless days, Huz and Buz would trot back to Pang Hill Orphanage and sneak in through the hidden wicket, and I would trudge home, along the canal towpath rife with phlox and lupins, to the enormous mansion where Ma and Pa lay on separate ottomans in separate chambers in separate wings, both of them neurasthenic and medicated and moaning. I ate my dinner with Crouch, the impossibly tall and gangling servant, in the baronial hall, tenebrous and chill, where bats swooped in the rafters, and the rafters rotted, and sometimes shards of rafter dropped into my soup. And I thought of Huz and Buz, shivering in their attic room in the orphanage, going hungry to their iron cots. Sometimes, in the night, I would slip out of bed and pad along the corridor to Ma's wireless room to transmit coded messages, buzzes and clicks and bleeps, to my pals. Either Huz, or Buz, I forget which, had smuggled a portable metal tapping machine into the orphanage and kept it hidden under the sandbag that served as his pillow. It was a hazardous business, for there was always the risk he might be caught by the beadle. If that happened, Huz or Buz would be made to put a saucepan on his head and spend a week on the orphanage roof, among the crows and ravens, without shelter, slaking his thirst with rainwater from the gutters. It was hazardous for me too. The wireless room was thick with dust and cobwebs, spiders and beetles and gnats. Ma had abandoned it long ago, before I was born. Once it had been her sanctum, when she was young and lively and the recipient of mountaineering trophies. Crouch still polished the trophies, devotedly, day after day, with his special rags. The messages we exchanged in the night were couched in a private language Huz and Buz and I had devised. I still have some of the transcripts, musty and dog-eared, the ink fading, in a filing cabinet in what was once Pa's smoking room. I do not know why I keep them, for I long ago forgot the language, and can wring no sense from them. Perhaps it is that they are the sole remaining tangible reminders of my childhood friends. The orphanage, at the railings of which I often stood and wept, burned down last year. The beadle's grandson was arrested, but I do not know the outcome of the case. The local police officers do not speak to me any more. As a child, I was barely aware that the police existed. Certainly, on those long afternoons by the old viaduct, Huz and Buz and I never once saw a police officer. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-09-2430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-09-17Thu, 17 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:51 Impugned By A Peasant 11:30 Chucking-Out Time At The Cow & Pins 28:34 Yon Little Mound Of Heaped Up Earth IMPUGNED BY A PEASANT I was impugned by a peasant. It was a Thursday afternoon and I was walking along a lane, between aspens and larches. I saw the peasant up ahead. He was leaning against a stile and as I got closer I saw he was idly swinging a flail to no great purpose. As I passed him, he impugned me, in some sort of rustic invective I barely understood. I would have dashed him to the ground with a single blow, but alas!, I am a milksop and a weakling and I merely passed on by along the lane, blushing and furious. Later, as I sat in a countryside canteen drinking a tumbler of Squelcho!, I reflected upon this peasant and his impugning. What was he doing, leaning against that stile? Why was he swinging a flail? In what brutish argot did he speak? Much to my disgust, I realised I was obsessed by him, as, in Death In Venice, Gustav von Aschenbach is obsessed by Tadzio, or in Love And Death On Long Island, Giles De'Ath is obsessed by Ronnie Bostock. But Tadzio and Ronnie are young and beautiful, whereas my peasant--my peasant!--was old and snaggle-toothed and filthy and wretched. My hands were shaking, and I slopped some of my Squelcho! on the canteen table, drowning a fly. As I returned along the lane, I adjusted the cravat around my neck, to give it a more rakish look, and I primped my bouffant, and I turned my trudge to a sort of flouncing prance. As I neared the bend in the lane beyond which the stile would come into view, my heart began to thump violently and my mouth became so dry I gasped. Would my peasant still be there? Would he impugn me again? I wanted to run back to the safety of the canteen, but at the same time I was desperate to see him once more, so filthy, so rustic, so ancient, so vile! How can I express the sickening sensation I felt as I rounded the bend and saw that my peasant was gone? It was as if a knot of vipers writhed within my guts. Sunlight dappled through the aspens and the larches, a breeze refreshed the air, and there was the stile... but leaning on it now were two impossibly attractive youngsters, playing conkers. Closing in on them, panting like a monster of depravity, I saw they wore name-badges. One was Tadzio, the other Ronnie. I was barely coherent as I babbled at them, asking if they had seen a peasant, an old filthy snaggle-toothed peasant with a flail, had they seen in which direction he had gone, and when, and was he going fast or slow, with purpose or without, and did the sunlight glisten on his greasy matted hair? First Tadzio, then Ronnie, impugned me. In particular, they impugned my cravat and my bouffant and my flouncing. I crumpled to the ground, weeping and neursathenic. I would have welcomed death, there and then. But of course, I did not die. An hour or two later, I got to my feet and dusted the muck of the lane from my Italianate suit. The sun was sinking in the west, and Tadzio and Ronnie were long gone. I picked up a pebble and chucked it inexpertly at a linnet perched in an aspen. I missed the bird, of course, and I pranced away from the stile and made my way home. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-09-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:51 Impugned By A Peasant 11:30 Chucking-Out Time At The Cow & Pins 28:34 Yon Little Mound Of Heaped Up Earth IMPUGNED BY A PEASANT I was impugned by a peasant. It was a Thursday afternoon and I was walking along a lane, between aspens and larches. I saw the peasant up ahead. He was leaning against a stile and as I got closer I saw he was idly swinging a flail to no great purpose. As I passed him, he impugned me, in some sort of rustic invective I barely understood. I would have dashed him to the ground with a single blow, but alas!, I am a milksop and a weakling and I merely passed on by along the lane, blushing and furious. Later, as I sat in a countryside canteen drinking a tumbler of Squelcho!, I reflected upon this peasant and his impugning. What was he doing, leaning against that stile? Why was he swinging a flail? In what brutish argot did he speak? Much to my disgust, I realised I was obsessed by him, as, in Death In Venice, Gustav von Aschenbach is obsessed by Tadzio, or in Love And Death On Long Island, Giles De'Ath is obsessed by Ronnie Bostock. But Tadzio and Ronnie are young and beautiful, whereas my peasant--my peasant!--was old and snaggle-toothed and filthy and wretched. My hands were shaking, and I slopped some of my Squelcho! on the canteen table, drowning a fly. As I returned along the lane, I adjusted the cravat around my neck, to give it a more rakish look, and I primped my bouffant, and I turned my trudge to a sort of flouncing prance. As I neared the bend in the lane beyond which the stile would come into view, my heart began to thump violently and my mouth became so dry I gasped. Would my peasant still be there? Would he impugn me again? I wanted to run back to the safety of the canteen, but at the same time I was desperate to see him once more, so filthy, so rustic, so ancient, so vile! How can I express the sickening sensation I felt as I rounded the bend and saw that my peasant was gone? It was as if a knot of vipers writhed within my guts. Sunlight dappled through the aspens and the larches, a breeze refreshed the air, and there was the stile... but leaning on it now were two impossibly attractive youngsters, playing conkers. Closing in on them, panting like a monster of depravity, I saw they wore name-badges. One was Tadzio, the other Ronnie. I was barely coherent as I babbled at them, asking if they had seen a peasant, an old filthy snaggle-toothed peasant with a flail, had they seen in which direction he had gone, and when, and was he going fast or slow, with purpose or without, and did the sunlight glisten on his greasy matted hair? First Tadzio, then Ronnie, impugned me. In particular, they impugned my cravat and my bouffant and my flouncing. I crumpled to the ground, weeping and neursathenic. I would have welcomed death, there and then. But of course, I did not die. An hour or two later, I got to my feet and dusted the muck of the lane from my Italianate suit. The sun was sinking in the west, and Tadzio and Ronnie were long gone. I picked up a pebble and chucked it inexpertly at a linnet perched in an aspen. I missed the bird, of course, and I pranced away from the stile and made my way home. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-09-1730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-09-10Thu, 10 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:57 Pontiff Mnemonic 07:22 Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich & Wynken, Blynken & Nod 14:49 Have You Seen This Man? 20:09 Jeanette Winterson Please Note 30:03 On Bohemia PONTIFF MNEMONIC How vexing it is to be accosted by somebody who yells, "You there! Name all the Popes in order of their reign, beginning with the first and ending with the current incumbent!" As part of our tireless campaign to inform, elucidate, entertain, and generally make life less baffling, Hooting Yard is pleased to provide a handy mnemonic.Next time you're asked for a list of Pontiffs, you won't be stuck for an answer. First then, those Popes: Peter (32-67), Linus (67-76), Anacletus (76-88), Clement I (88-97), Evaristus (97-105), Alexander I (105-115), Sixtus I (115-125), Telesphorus (125-136), Hyginus (136-140), Pius I (140-155), Anicetus (155-166), Soter (166-175), Eleutherius (175-189), Victor I (189-199), Zephyrinus (199-217), Callistus I (217-22), Urban I (222-30), Pontain (230-35), Anterus (235-36), Fabian (236-50), Cornelius (251-53), Lucius I (253-54), Stephen I (254-257), Sixtus II (257-258), Dionysius (260-268), Felix I (269-274), Eutychian (275-283), Caius (283-296), Marcellinus (296-304), Marcellus I (308-309), Eusebius (309 or 310), Miltiades (311-14), Sylvester I (314-35), Marcus (336), Julius I (337-52), Liberius (352-66), Damasus I (366-83), Siricius (384-99), Anastasius I (399-401), Innocent I (401-17), Zosimus (417-18), Boniface I (418-22), Celestine I (422-32), Sixtus III (432-40), Leo I (the Great) (440-61), Hilarius (461-68), Simplicius (468-83), Felix III (II) (483-92), Gelasius I (492-96), Anastasius II (496-98), Symmachus (498-514), Hormisdas (514-23), John I (523-26), Felix IV (III) (526-30), Boniface II (530-32), John II (533-35), Agapetus I (535-36), Silverius (536-37), Vigilius (537-55), Pelagius I (556-61), John III (561-74), Benedict I (575-79), Pelagius II (579-90), Gregory I (the Great) (590-604), Sabinian (604-606), Boniface III (607), Boniface IV (608-15), Deusdedit (Adeodatus I) (615-18), Boniface V (619-25), Honorius I (625-38), Severinus (640), John IV (640-42), Theodore I (642-49), Martin I (649-55), Eugene I (655-57), Vitalian (657-72), Adeodatus (II) (672-76), Donus (676-78), Agatho (678-81), Leo II (682-83), Benedict II (684-85), John V (685-86), Conon (686-87), Sergius I (687-701), John VI (701-05), John VII (705-07), Sisinnius (708), Constantine (708-15), Gregory II (715-31), Gregory III (731-41), Zachary (741-52), Stephen II (752), Stephen III (752-57), Paul I (757-67), Stephen IV (767-72), Adrian I (772-95), Leo III (795-816), Stephen V (816-17), Paschal I (817-24), Eugene II (824-27), Valentine (827), Gregory IV (827-44), Sergius II (844-47), Leo IV (847-55), Benedict III (855-58), Nicholas I (the Great) (858-67), Adrian II (867-72), John VIII (872-82), Marinus I (882-84), Adrian III (884-85), Stephen VI (885-91), Formosus (891-96), Boniface VI (896), Stephen VII (896-97), Romanus (897), Theodore II (897), John IX (898-900), Benedict IV (900-03), Leo V (903), Sergius III (904-11), Anastasius III (911-13), Lando (913-14), John X (914-28), Leo VI (928), Stephen VIII (929-31), John XI (931-35), Leo VII (936-39), Stephen IX (939-42), Marinus II (942-46), Agapetus II (946-55), John XII (955-63), Leo VIII (963-64), Benedict […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-09-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:57 Pontiff Mnemonic 07:22 Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich & Wynken, Blynken & Nod 14:49 Have You Seen This Man? 20:09 Jeanette Winterson Please Note 30:03 On Bohemia PONTIFF MNEMONIC How vexing it is to be accosted by somebody who yells, "You there! Name all the Popes in order of their reign, beginning with the first and ending with the current incumbent!" As part of our tireless campaign to inform, elucidate, entertain, and generally make life less baffling, Hooting Yard is pleased to provide a handy mnemonic.Next time you're asked for a list of Pontiffs, you won't be stuck for an answer. First then, those Popes: Peter (32-67), Linus (67-76), Anacletus (76-88), Clement I (88-97), Evaristus (97-105), Alexander I (105-115), Sixtus I (115-125), Telesphorus (125-136), Hyginus (136-140), Pius I (140-155), Anicetus (155-166), Soter (166-175), Eleutherius (175-189), Victor I (189-199), Zephyrinus (199-217), Callistus I (217-22), Urban I (222-30), Pontain (230-35), Anterus (235-36), Fabian (236-50), Cornelius (251-53), Lucius I (253-54), Stephen I (254-257), Sixtus II (257-258), Dionysius (260-268), Felix I (269-274), Eutychian (275-283), Caius (283-296), Marcellinus (296-304), Marcellus I (308-309), Eusebius (309 or 310), Miltiades (311-14), Sylvester I (314-35), Marcus (336), Julius I (337-52), Liberius (352-66), Damasus I (366-83), Siricius (384-99), Anastasius I (399-401), Innocent I (401-17), Zosimus (417-18), Boniface I (418-22), Celestine I (422-32), Sixtus III (432-40), Leo I (the Great) (440-61), Hilarius (461-68), Simplicius (468-83), Felix III (II) (483-92), Gelasius I (492-96), Anastasius II (496-98), Symmachus (498-514), Hormisdas (514-23), John I (523-26), Felix IV (III) (526-30), Boniface II (530-32), John II (533-35), Agapetus I (535-36), Silverius (536-37), Vigilius (537-55), Pelagius I (556-61), John III (561-74), Benedict I (575-79), Pelagius II (579-90), Gregory I (the Great) (590-604), Sabinian (604-606), Boniface III (607), Boniface IV (608-15), Deusdedit (Adeodatus I) (615-18), Boniface V (619-25), Honorius I (625-38), Severinus (640), John IV (640-42), Theodore I (642-49), Martin I (649-55), Eugene I (655-57), Vitalian (657-72), Adeodatus (II) (672-76), Donus (676-78), Agatho (678-81), Leo II (682-83), Benedict II (684-85), John V (685-86), Conon (686-87), Sergius I (687-701), John VI (701-05), John VII (705-07), Sisinnius (708), Constantine (708-15), Gregory II (715-31), Gregory III (731-41), Zachary (741-52), Stephen II (752), Stephen III (752-57), Paul I (757-67), Stephen IV (767-72), Adrian I (772-95), Leo III (795-816), Stephen V (816-17), Paschal I (817-24), Eugene II (824-27), Valentine (827), Gregory IV (827-44), Sergius II (844-47), Leo IV (847-55), Benedict III (855-58), Nicholas I (the Great) (858-67), Adrian II (867-72), John VIII (872-82), Marinus I (882-84), Adrian III (884-85), Stephen VI (885-91), Formosus (891-96), Boniface VI (896), Stephen VII (896-97), Romanus (897), Theodore II (897), John IX (898-900), Benedict IV (900-03), Leo V (903), Sergius III (904-11), Anastasius III (911-13), Lando (913-14), John X (914-28), Leo VI (928), Stephen VIII (929-31), John XI (931-35), Leo VII (936-39), Stephen IX (939-42), Marinus II (942-46), Agapetus II (946-55), John XII (955-63), Leo VIII (963-64), Benedict […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-09-1030:18fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-30Thu, 30 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:41 On Babinsky's Idiot Half-Brother 11:11 Advice Regarding Vinegar 18:17 Spillage On Cambric ON BABINSKY'S IDIOT HALF-BROTHER Did you know that Babinsky, the infamous walrus-moustached serial killer, had an idiot half-brother? This chap--who for the sake of convenience we shall call Babinsky 2--was officially classified as a "type four cretin" under the official idiot classification system obtaining at that time, in that land, under that regime. I am afraid I don't know how many numbered types of cretin there were, nor of the nature and number of other idiot types, and I have only been able to ascertain Babinsky 2's official classification after years and years of fossicking about in mouldy archives, at grave peril to my physical and mental health. That is why I walk with a stick and hold what I delude myself are coherent conversations with birds including linnets and partridges. As a type four cretin, Babinsky 2 was considered to be a peculiarly high-functioning idiot, deemed suitable for such tasks as using a pointy stick to gather litter from verdant parkland, mopping up filth in long corridors, sitting in a tent outside a cathedral, and writing opinion pieces for The Guardian. Unfortunately, due to fuddled bureaucracy, several doctors had instead recommended that the most effective treatment for him, at that time, in that land, under that regime, was to be chained up in a cellar and fed, very occasionally, on slops, or, if that option was not available, to be chained up in an attic and fed, very occasionally, on pap. Such, then, was his plight in the dying days of the corrupt and despicable reign of the double kings Umberto and Ignatz. Babinsky himself, walrus-moustached and lumbering and psychotic, knew nothing of his idiot half-brother's fate. They had been parted since they were tiny, if one can for a moment imagine a tiny Babinsky. Yet like us all, the blood-drenched nutcase was once an innocent babe-in-arms, rocked in a cradle and sung to by his mama, though perhaps we ought not examine too closely the words of the songs that good woman sang to him, nor indeed their tunes, if tunes they can be called, for it is probable that it was those very songs, or hideous caterwauls, that laid the eggs of crime within his brain. She did not sing to Babinsky 2. Their parting happened, unexpectedly, during a family picnic, at a site of bucolic glory, when Babinsky was three and Babinsky 2 was two. There was a sudden thunderstorm. Mama was struck by lightning. A wolf carried Babinsky off into the woods. His idiot half-brother was left behind, drooling on the picnic blanket, deafened by jet fighters swooping low overhead, and by thunder, until he was gathered up and swaddled in the picnic blanket and borne away by a passing widow-woman. Old Mother Sebag-Montefiore had been reduced to penury since the death of her husband in one of King Umberto's insane wars, or possibly in one of King Ignatz's sane ones, and she conceived the idea of selling the child. At that time, in that land, under that regime, they had a primitive version of eBay, so she took a snapshot of the idiot tot and posted it and waited for bids to come in. All we know now is that at least one bid must have been made, for Babinsky 2 was indeed sold. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:41 On Babinsky's Idiot Half-Brother 11:11 Advice Regarding Vinegar 18:17 Spillage On Cambric ON BABINSKY'S IDIOT HALF-BROTHER Did you know that Babinsky, the infamous walrus-moustached serial killer, had an idiot half-brother? This chap--who for the sake of convenience we shall call Babinsky 2--was officially classified as a "type four cretin" under the official idiot classification system obtaining at that time, in that land, under that regime. I am afraid I don't know how many numbered types of cretin there were, nor of the nature and number of other idiot types, and I have only been able to ascertain Babinsky 2's official classification after years and years of fossicking about in mouldy archives, at grave peril to my physical and mental health. That is why I walk with a stick and hold what I delude myself are coherent conversations with birds including linnets and partridges. As a type four cretin, Babinsky 2 was considered to be a peculiarly high-functioning idiot, deemed suitable for such tasks as using a pointy stick to gather litter from verdant parkland, mopping up filth in long corridors, sitting in a tent outside a cathedral, and writing opinion pieces for The Guardian. Unfortunately, due to fuddled bureaucracy, several doctors had instead recommended that the most effective treatment for him, at that time, in that land, under that regime, was to be chained up in a cellar and fed, very occasionally, on slops, or, if that option was not available, to be chained up in an attic and fed, very occasionally, on pap. Such, then, was his plight in the dying days of the corrupt and despicable reign of the double kings Umberto and Ignatz. Babinsky himself, walrus-moustached and lumbering and psychotic, knew nothing of his idiot half-brother's fate. They had been parted since they were tiny, if one can for a moment imagine a tiny Babinsky. Yet like us all, the blood-drenched nutcase was once an innocent babe-in-arms, rocked in a cradle and sung to by his mama, though perhaps we ought not examine too closely the words of the songs that good woman sang to him, nor indeed their tunes, if tunes they can be called, for it is probable that it was those very songs, or hideous caterwauls, that laid the eggs of crime within his brain. She did not sing to Babinsky 2. Their parting happened, unexpectedly, during a family picnic, at a site of bucolic glory, when Babinsky was three and Babinsky 2 was two. There was a sudden thunderstorm. Mama was struck by lightning. A wolf carried Babinsky off into the woods. His idiot half-brother was left behind, drooling on the picnic blanket, deafened by jet fighters swooping low overhead, and by thunder, until he was gathered up and swaddled in the picnic blanket and borne away by a passing widow-woman. Old Mother Sebag-Montefiore had been reduced to penury since the death of her husband in one of King Umberto's insane wars, or possibly in one of King Ignatz's sane ones, and she conceived the idea of selling the child. At that time, in that land, under that regime, they had a primitive version of eBay, so she took a snapshot of the idiot tot and posted it and waited for bids to come in. All we know now is that at least one bid must have been made, for Babinsky 2 was indeed sold. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-3030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-23Thu, 23 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Birdsong 04:24 Overcast, With Drizzle 08:12 Derailed By Bees 15:43 The King And Nitty 20:39 On Silent Monkey BIRDSONG I have decided to devote my life to birdsong. No, not that kind of birdsong, all those trills and squawks and cooing noises that birds make. I mean songs about birds. I have not quite worked everything out in my head, but the general idea is to take familiar songs, not originally about birds, and to amend the lyrics to make them more bird-focussed. I feel this would provide an invaluable musical service for both humans and birds. As an example, here is the first fruit of my project, a rewrite of David Bowie's 1979 hit Boys Keep Swinging. I hope you will agree that this revised version is superior in every way, particularly from an ornithological point of view. Heaven loves ya The clouds part for ya Nothing stands in your way When you're a grebe Plumage regales ya Life is a pop of the cherry When you're a grebe When you're a grebe You can soar through the air When you're a grebe Other grebes check you out You get a fish These are your favourite things When you're a grebe Grebes Grebes Grebes keep swinging Grebes always work it out Uncage the colours Unfurl the flag Luck just kissed you hello When you're a grebe They'll never clone ya You're always first on the line When you're a grebe When you're a grebe You can dabble about on a pond When you're a grebe Learn to dive and everything You'll get your share When you're a grebe Grebes Grebes Grebes keep swinging Grebes always work it out OVERCAST, WITH DRIZZLE It was a gorgeous day of overcast skies and drizzle and a keen wind, and I set out early, in stout boots, with a pippy bag over my shoulder, whistling a tune remembered from childhood, such as it was, learned, I think, from the orphanage's brutish overseer, who liked to sing the song as he made us dip into puddles and fossick for squelchy writhing horrors, vile water-worms and other beings which we collected in our pails for him, and the orphan with the highest tally was rewarded with an extra helping of gruel. Oh happy days! We never found out what the brute did with all those aquatic creepy-crawlies, but, at night, as we tossed and turned in our iron cots in the attic, we whispered stories to each other, making up tales about the brute and his pails full of the worms we caught for him. It was only later, when I was grown and had long left the orphanage, that I learned he sold them to a scientist at the sinister secret laboratory along the lane on the other side of the viaduct, as he sold an orphan or two from time to time, when funds were low or he lost his temper. It was on that gorgeous day that I retraced my steps, past the shuttered and abandoned orphanage and along the lane and through the wicket gate we had been forbidden to cross in the old days, and I carried on under the viaduct and past the shuttered and abandoned laboratory, past the ice cream kiosk and the duckpond, on past the gasworks and the aerodrome and the cement statue of Condoleezza Rice With A Thousand Nightingales, until at last, the sky more overcast, the drizzle heavier, the wind keener, I came to the big stone gates of the Mercy Home. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Birdsong 04:24 Overcast, With Drizzle 08:12 Derailed By Bees 15:43 The King And Nitty 20:39 On Silent Monkey BIRDSONG I have decided to devote my life to birdsong. No, not that kind of birdsong, all those trills and squawks and cooing noises that birds make. I mean songs about birds. I have not quite worked everything out in my head, but the general idea is to take familiar songs, not originally about birds, and to amend the lyrics to make them more bird-focussed. I feel this would provide an invaluable musical service for both humans and birds. As an example, here is the first fruit of my project, a rewrite of David Bowie's 1979 hit Boys Keep Swinging. I hope you will agree that this revised version is superior in every way, particularly from an ornithological point of view. Heaven loves ya The clouds part for ya Nothing stands in your way When you're a grebe Plumage regales ya Life is a pop of the cherry When you're a grebe When you're a grebe You can soar through the air When you're a grebe Other grebes check you out You get a fish These are your favourite things When you're a grebe Grebes Grebes Grebes keep swinging Grebes always work it out Uncage the colours Unfurl the flag Luck just kissed you hello When you're a grebe They'll never clone ya You're always first on the line When you're a grebe When you're a grebe You can dabble about on a pond When you're a grebe Learn to dive and everything You'll get your share When you're a grebe Grebes Grebes Grebes keep swinging Grebes always work it out OVERCAST, WITH DRIZZLE It was a gorgeous day of overcast skies and drizzle and a keen wind, and I set out early, in stout boots, with a pippy bag over my shoulder, whistling a tune remembered from childhood, such as it was, learned, I think, from the orphanage's brutish overseer, who liked to sing the song as he made us dip into puddles and fossick for squelchy writhing horrors, vile water-worms and other beings which we collected in our pails for him, and the orphan with the highest tally was rewarded with an extra helping of gruel. Oh happy days! We never found out what the brute did with all those aquatic creepy-crawlies, but, at night, as we tossed and turned in our iron cots in the attic, we whispered stories to each other, making up tales about the brute and his pails full of the worms we caught for him. It was only later, when I was grown and had long left the orphanage, that I learned he sold them to a scientist at the sinister secret laboratory along the lane on the other side of the viaduct, as he sold an orphan or two from time to time, when funds were low or he lost his temper. It was on that gorgeous day that I retraced my steps, past the shuttered and abandoned orphanage and along the lane and through the wicket gate we had been forbidden to cross in the old days, and I carried on under the viaduct and past the shuttered and abandoned laboratory, past the ice cream kiosk and the duckpond, on past the gasworks and the aerodrome and the cement statue of Condoleezza Rice With A Thousand Nightingales, until at last, the sky more overcast, the drizzle heavier, the wind keener, I came to the big stone gates of the Mercy Home. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-2329:49fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-09Thu, 09 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:49 The Abominable Example Of Little Beggar Boys 02:41 A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song 11:49 Chunk Theory 18:25 Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet THE ABOMINABLE EXAMPLE OF LITTLE BEGGAR BOYS 1. A very poor child, of the parish of Newington-Butts... was a very monster of wickedness, and a thousand times more miserable and vile by his sin than by his poverty. He was running to hell as fast as he could go, and was old in vice when he was but young in years: we scarcely hear of one so like the devil in his infancy as was this poor child. What sin was there that his age was capable of, which he did not commit? What by the corruption of his nature, and the abominable example of little beggar boys, he was indeed arrived at a great pitch of impiety. He would call names, take God's name in vain, curse, swear, and do all kinds of mischief; and as to any thing of God, he was worse than a heathen... 6. He was in grievous agonies of spirit; his former sins stared him in the face, and made him tremble. The poison of God's arrows did even drink up his spirits; the sense of sin and of wrath were so great that he knew not what to do. The weight of God's displeasure, and the thought of lying under it to all eternity, broke him even to pieces, and he bitterly cried out, "What shall I do! I am a miserable sinner, and I fear that I shall go to hell." His sins had been so great and so many, that there was no hope for him... 14. The Wednesday before he died, he lay in a trance for about half an hour, in which time he thought he saw a vision of angels... 16 ...he gave a kind of leap in his bed, and snapped his finger and thumb together with abundance of joy. And from that time forward, in full joy and assurance of God's love, he continued earnestly praising God, desiring to die, and to be with Christ. John Wesley, Stories Of Boys And Girls Who Loved The Saviour (date uncertain) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:49 The Abominable Example Of Little Beggar Boys 02:41 A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song 11:49 Chunk Theory 18:25 Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet THE ABOMINABLE EXAMPLE OF LITTLE BEGGAR BOYS 1. A very poor child, of the parish of Newington-Butts... was a very monster of wickedness, and a thousand times more miserable and vile by his sin than by his poverty. He was running to hell as fast as he could go, and was old in vice when he was but young in years: we scarcely hear of one so like the devil in his infancy as was this poor child. What sin was there that his age was capable of, which he did not commit? What by the corruption of his nature, and the abominable example of little beggar boys, he was indeed arrived at a great pitch of impiety. He would call names, take God's name in vain, curse, swear, and do all kinds of mischief; and as to any thing of God, he was worse than a heathen... 6. He was in grievous agonies of spirit; his former sins stared him in the face, and made him tremble. The poison of God's arrows did even drink up his spirits; the sense of sin and of wrath were so great that he knew not what to do. The weight of God's displeasure, and the thought of lying under it to all eternity, broke him even to pieces, and he bitterly cried out, "What shall I do! I am a miserable sinner, and I fear that I shall go to hell." His sins had been so great and so many, that there was no hope for him... 14. The Wednesday before he died, he lay in a trance for about half an hour, in which time he thought he saw a vision of angels... 16 ...he gave a kind of leap in his bed, and snapped his finger and thumb together with abundance of joy. And from that time forward, in full joy and assurance of God's love, he continued earnestly praising God, desiring to die, and to be with Christ. John Wesley, Stories Of Boys And Girls Who Loved The Saviour (date uncertain) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-0930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-02Thu, 02 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 The Bodger's Spinney Variety Theatre 09:24 A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song THE BODGER'S SPINNEY VARIETY THEATRE Walk with me down memory lane as we recall some of the enticing acts who appeared at the Bodger's Spinney Variety Theatre during its golden age: Nobby Puck : The Human Windsock.Bells clanged whenever Nobby Puck appeared on stage. For ten awful days in the summer of 1907 he was held incommunicado by a gang of Papist fanatics. He escaped by means of a clever poison-gas device which he kept tucked inside his vest, and made his way back to Hooting Yard just in time to do his windsock act at the annual jamboree. Minnie Crunlop And Her Trailing Bandage.Over the years, many scholars have attempted to estimate the true length of Minnie Crunlop's bandage. Brewgit, the infamous Prussian quack entomologist, devoted over forty scientific papers to the question, leading his arch rival Buttonglue to accuse him of trifling, simplemindedness, and trafficking in poltrooneries. Brewgit was livid, and challenged his tormentor to a duel. They met in a desolate spinney at dawn. For weapons, they had magnetic cast-iron bradawls, sharpened to the point of implausibility. Before their scrimscrum could begin, however, Brewgit tripped over an abandoned churn, while Buttonglue developed a nosebleed. The affaire was never satisfactorily resolved, more's the pity. Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet.Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet was the brainchild of one Horst Preen, a dishevelled tugboat captain from Tantarabim. On a birthday frolic in a disused bun factory, he quite by chance discovered a matchless talent for disguise and physical agility. Apart from the famous Magnet Boy! act, he thrilled two continents with his wonderful ability to curl himself up into a ball and bounce across wide canals. The Highly Infectious Renshaw Family.The highly infectious Renshaw family were fond of butter, crocuses and finch lures. Astonishingly hard-hearted, they enjoyed taunting the aged, infirm, sick, halt and lame. Mad Harry Gubbins And His Life-Size Cork Effigy.Interviewed by the police in connection with the Strange Case of the Dog-eared Postage stamp, Mad Harry Gubbins made the following statement: "I have always gone to and fro accompanied by my cork effigy. It was presented to me on my twenty sixth birthday by my uncle, Demented Wenceslas Gubbins, with the express injunction that, were I to abandon the effigy, for example by leaving it leaning against a lamp-post near the docks, he would pursue me to the end of my days and badger me to throw myself into a pond." Guesbaldo Fubby And His Amazing Tea Strainers.Not for nothing was Guesbaldo Fubby known as the Tycho Brahe of Hooting Yard. For one thing, he had a wooden nose, following a youthful polevaulting accident. He kept his nose carefully varnished and, at nightfall, he placed it in a little titanium jar at his bedside. "His tea strainers," wrote Erskine Childers, "drove me crackers". Ingmar And Hetty : The Burst Appendix Twins.Ingmar and Hetty--who were not actually twins, and whose real names were Ingmat [sic] Baskerville and Magnesia Flowerdewdrop--hailed from a small island in the North Sea, from which they were expelled for reasons unknown. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 The Bodger's Spinney Variety Theatre 09:24 A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song THE BODGER'S SPINNEY VARIETY THEATRE Walk with me down memory lane as we recall some of the enticing acts who appeared at the Bodger's Spinney Variety Theatre during its golden age: Nobby Puck : The Human Windsock.Bells clanged whenever Nobby Puck appeared on stage. For ten awful days in the summer of 1907 he was held incommunicado by a gang of Papist fanatics. He escaped by means of a clever poison-gas device which he kept tucked inside his vest, and made his way back to Hooting Yard just in time to do his windsock act at the annual jamboree. Minnie Crunlop And Her Trailing Bandage.Over the years, many scholars have attempted to estimate the true length of Minnie Crunlop's bandage. Brewgit, the infamous Prussian quack entomologist, devoted over forty scientific papers to the question, leading his arch rival Buttonglue to accuse him of trifling, simplemindedness, and trafficking in poltrooneries. Brewgit was livid, and challenged his tormentor to a duel. They met in a desolate spinney at dawn. For weapons, they had magnetic cast-iron bradawls, sharpened to the point of implausibility. Before their scrimscrum could begin, however, Brewgit tripped over an abandoned churn, while Buttonglue developed a nosebleed. The affaire was never satisfactorily resolved, more's the pity. Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet.Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet was the brainchild of one Horst Preen, a dishevelled tugboat captain from Tantarabim. On a birthday frolic in a disused bun factory, he quite by chance discovered a matchless talent for disguise and physical agility. Apart from the famous Magnet Boy! act, he thrilled two continents with his wonderful ability to curl himself up into a ball and bounce across wide canals. The Highly Infectious Renshaw Family.The highly infectious Renshaw family were fond of butter, crocuses and finch lures. Astonishingly hard-hearted, they enjoyed taunting the aged, infirm, sick, halt and lame. Mad Harry Gubbins And His Life-Size Cork Effigy.Interviewed by the police in connection with the Strange Case of the Dog-eared Postage stamp, Mad Harry Gubbins made the following statement: "I have always gone to and fro accompanied by my cork effigy. It was presented to me on my twenty sixth birthday by my uncle, Demented Wenceslas Gubbins, with the express injunction that, were I to abandon the effigy, for example by leaving it leaning against a lamp-post near the docks, he would pursue me to the end of my days and badger me to throw myself into a pond." Guesbaldo Fubby And His Amazing Tea Strainers.Not for nothing was Guesbaldo Fubby known as the Tycho Brahe of Hooting Yard. For one thing, he had a wooden nose, following a youthful polevaulting accident. He kept his nose carefully varnished and, at nightfall, he placed it in a little titanium jar at his bedside. "His tea strainers," wrote Erskine Childers, "drove me crackers". Ingmar And Hetty : The Burst Appendix Twins.Ingmar and Hetty--who were not actually twins, and whose real names were Ingmat [sic] Baskerville and Magnesia Flowerdewdrop--hailed from a small island in the North Sea, from which they were expelled for reasons unknown. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-07-0228:50fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-06-25Thu, 25 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 On Potatoes 07:00 Mantelpiece 24:14 Puddles ON POTATOES "And what should they know of potatoes, who only potatoes know?" asks Dobson, in the title of one of his pamphlets, which is sadly out of print. It is a dazzling tour de force, noted for containing an eerily accurate description of crinkle-cut oven chips, written before such things existed. It is worth noting that the dazzling nature of the pamphlet is less to do with the quality of Dobson's prose, which might better be described, in this instance, as hysterical and incoherent, and more to do with the then fashionable far out groovy psychedelic typeface employed by Marigold Chew when setting the text. Indeed, so dazzling is the appearance of the multicoloured swirly maelstrom of type that one is advised to wear sunglasses when reading it, or attempting to read it. Peter Hitchens has claimed, not without reason, that Marigold Chew was probably "high on pot" when producing the pamphlet, but she also may have thought that its far out groovy psychedelic look would increase sales in "head shops" and free festivals and other such excresences of the era. If so, she was horribly mistaken, for "That Potato Pamphlet", as it is commonly known, sold only half a dozen copies in toto, and three of those went to a wandering proto-crusty who pitched his tent in Dobson's back garden for the duration of the summer of love. The pamphleteer himself might also have been "high on pot" when he wrote the text, for as I said, his prose is hysterical and incoherent. A weedy wannabe Dobsonist would have tossed the pamphlet aside, or even set it on fire, but I am adamantine in my devotion to the great man, so I enrolled in a special study group. Each weekday evening for three whole years, we met in an abandoned pavilion to pore over the pamphlet, eight of us, trying as best we could to eke some sense from it. What follows, then, owes as much to the contributions of Messrs Clapper, Shrublack, Inspip, Squelch, Dalewinton, Boggis and Globb as to my own insights. Dobson seems to have conceived of the idea of the crinkle-cut oven chip as the ne plus ultra of space age food. This, he says, describing a then imaginary frozen sliver of reconstituted potato-based mush shaped with some sort of wiggly-shaped jig-slicer, will be the staple foodstuff of space travellers and cosmonauts as they venture through galaxies yet unknown. He asks if any alien beings they might meet would comprehend that the crinkle-cut oven chip and the ordinary potato, a tuberous vegetable buried in soil back on planet Earth, were in any way related to each other. And he answers "no" to that question. No matter, he asserts, how advanced and superintelligent the beings were, they would never be able to grasp the human ingenuity that turned the one into the other. Dobson then posits the idea that it is the potato that has evolved from the crinkle-cut oven chip, rather than vice versa, and in a prescient passage written some years before Stanley Kubrick's film 2001 : A Space Odyssey (1968), he invents a scene where a primitive ape picks up a crinkle-cut oven chip and tosses it into the air, where--pfft!--it is suddenly transformed into a potato. Annoyingly, Dobson does not specify the variety of potato. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-06-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 On Potatoes 07:00 Mantelpiece 24:14 Puddles ON POTATOES "And what should they know of potatoes, who only potatoes know?" asks Dobson, in the title of one of his pamphlets, which is sadly out of print. It is a dazzling tour de force, noted for containing an eerily accurate description of crinkle-cut oven chips, written before such things existed. It is worth noting that the dazzling nature of the pamphlet is less to do with the quality of Dobson's prose, which might better be described, in this instance, as hysterical and incoherent, and more to do with the then fashionable far out groovy psychedelic typeface employed by Marigold Chew when setting the text. Indeed, so dazzling is the appearance of the multicoloured swirly maelstrom of type that one is advised to wear sunglasses when reading it, or attempting to read it. Peter Hitchens has claimed, not without reason, that Marigold Chew was probably "high on pot" when producing the pamphlet, but she also may have thought that its far out groovy psychedelic look would increase sales in "head shops" and free festivals and other such excresences of the era. If so, she was horribly mistaken, for "That Potato Pamphlet", as it is commonly known, sold only half a dozen copies in toto, and three of those went to a wandering proto-crusty who pitched his tent in Dobson's back garden for the duration of the summer of love. The pamphleteer himself might also have been "high on pot" when he wrote the text, for as I said, his prose is hysterical and incoherent. A weedy wannabe Dobsonist would have tossed the pamphlet aside, or even set it on fire, but I am adamantine in my devotion to the great man, so I enrolled in a special study group. Each weekday evening for three whole years, we met in an abandoned pavilion to pore over the pamphlet, eight of us, trying as best we could to eke some sense from it. What follows, then, owes as much to the contributions of Messrs Clapper, Shrublack, Inspip, Squelch, Dalewinton, Boggis and Globb as to my own insights. Dobson seems to have conceived of the idea of the crinkle-cut oven chip as the ne plus ultra of space age food. This, he says, describing a then imaginary frozen sliver of reconstituted potato-based mush shaped with some sort of wiggly-shaped jig-slicer, will be the staple foodstuff of space travellers and cosmonauts as they venture through galaxies yet unknown. He asks if any alien beings they might meet would comprehend that the crinkle-cut oven chip and the ordinary potato, a tuberous vegetable buried in soil back on planet Earth, were in any way related to each other. And he answers "no" to that question. No matter, he asserts, how advanced and superintelligent the beings were, they would never be able to grasp the human ingenuity that turned the one into the other. Dobson then posits the idea that it is the potato that has evolved from the crinkle-cut oven chip, rather than vice versa, and in a prescient passage written some years before Stanley Kubrick's film 2001 : A Space Odyssey (1968), he invents a scene where a primitive ape picks up a crinkle-cut oven chip and tosses it into the air, where--pfft!--it is suddenly transformed into a potato. Annoyingly, Dobson does not specify the variety of potato. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-06-2530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-06-04Thu, 04 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Janitor 20:21 Borneo 25:18 Grabber JANITOR For a long time, I used to go to bed early. I was exhausted from long days working as a janitor in an evaporated milk factory. There are those who think that being a janitor is an easy life, little more than a matter of rattling a set of keys, sloshing a mop along a corridor floor, and glaring reproachfully at all who pass by. There may be janitors of that kidney, but I was not that kind of janitor, and never had been, neither in this nor in any of my earlier janitorships. It is a curious fact that the buildings in which I have been a janitor have all housed milk-related activities. Before being appointed to my post in the evaporated milk factory, I worked at a condensed milk canning plant, a milk of magnesia research laboratory, and a milk slops sloppage tank. When I was younger I lacked application and was frequently reprimanded, on a carpet, as is usually the case, by my superiors. The overseer of the sloppage tank was particularly rancorous, as I recall. But by the time I fetched up at the evaporated milk factory, I took my duties seriously, excessively so, and that was why I was exhausted at the end of the day. To be precise, I was exhausted before the end of the day, hence my going to bed early. There is a pamphlet by Dobson, entitled Tips For Janitors (out of print), which helped to mend my ways. One boiling hot summer Sunday, at a loose end, I went to visit a dying janitor in a Mercy Home. His brow was beetle and his jaw was lantern, and he was slowly perishing from a malady which had set in after an attack of the bindings and which he could not shake off due to his advanced age. It was not entirely clear just how old he was, for his birth certificate had been destroyed by worms. He certainly looked unbelievably ancient when I went to see him on that boiling day. Propped up in a sort of collapsible medical chair, surrounded by dripping foliage, like General Sternwood in The Big Sleep, he had made a vain attempt to mask his decrepitude by dyeing his hair black with boot polish and by sporting the type of tee shirt worn by young Japanese trendies. Neither ploy fooled me. I knew I was looking at a janitor who had begun his career in the age of gas mantles and steam. My visit was prompted by a plea from the Charitable Board For Janitors Close To Death, seeking volunteers to pay social calls on janitors close to death to brighten their last days. I thought myself too lugubrious to be suitable for such a good deed, but the Board's director, an ex-flapper by the name of Mimsy Henbane, said that this particular dying janitor rejoiced in the lugubrious and funereal and bleak and that my presence would lift his spirits. Like the Italian castrato opera singer Luigi Marchesi (1754-1829), who, irrespective of the part he was playing, insisted on making his stage entrances on horseback, wearing a helmet with white feathers several feet long, I liked to cut something of a dash when entering a Mercy Home. On this particular Sunday I was ensmothered in fine kingly raiment, complete with the pelt of a wolverine (Gulo gulo, the largest land-dwelling member of the weasel family), a burnished golden helmet Marchesi would have died for, and a bauble or two. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-06-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Janitor 20:21 Borneo 25:18 Grabber JANITOR For a long time, I used to go to bed early. I was exhausted from long days working as a janitor in an evaporated milk factory. There are those who think that being a janitor is an easy life, little more than a matter of rattling a set of keys, sloshing a mop along a corridor floor, and glaring reproachfully at all who pass by. There may be janitors of that kidney, but I was not that kind of janitor, and never had been, neither in this nor in any of my earlier janitorships. It is a curious fact that the buildings in which I have been a janitor have all housed milk-related activities. Before being appointed to my post in the evaporated milk factory, I worked at a condensed milk canning plant, a milk of magnesia research laboratory, and a milk slops sloppage tank. When I was younger I lacked application and was frequently reprimanded, on a carpet, as is usually the case, by my superiors. The overseer of the sloppage tank was particularly rancorous, as I recall. But by the time I fetched up at the evaporated milk factory, I took my duties seriously, excessively so, and that was why I was exhausted at the end of the day. To be precise, I was exhausted before the end of the day, hence my going to bed early. There is a pamphlet by Dobson, entitled Tips For Janitors (out of print), which helped to mend my ways. One boiling hot summer Sunday, at a loose end, I went to visit a dying janitor in a Mercy Home. His brow was beetle and his jaw was lantern, and he was slowly perishing from a malady which had set in after an attack of the bindings and which he could not shake off due to his advanced age. It was not entirely clear just how old he was, for his birth certificate had been destroyed by worms. He certainly looked unbelievably ancient when I went to see him on that boiling day. Propped up in a sort of collapsible medical chair, surrounded by dripping foliage, like General Sternwood in The Big Sleep, he had made a vain attempt to mask his decrepitude by dyeing his hair black with boot polish and by sporting the type of tee shirt worn by young Japanese trendies. Neither ploy fooled me. I knew I was looking at a janitor who had begun his career in the age of gas mantles and steam. My visit was prompted by a plea from the Charitable Board For Janitors Close To Death, seeking volunteers to pay social calls on janitors close to death to brighten their last days. I thought myself too lugubrious to be suitable for such a good deed, but the Board's director, an ex-flapper by the name of Mimsy Henbane, said that this particular dying janitor rejoiced in the lugubrious and funereal and bleak and that my presence would lift his spirits. Like the Italian castrato opera singer Luigi Marchesi (1754-1829), who, irrespective of the part he was playing, insisted on making his stage entrances on horseback, wearing a helmet with white feathers several feet long, I liked to cut something of a dash when entering a Mercy Home. On this particular Sunday I was ensmothered in fine kingly raiment, complete with the pelt of a wolverine (Gulo gulo, the largest land-dwelling member of the weasel family), a burnished golden helmet Marchesi would have died for, and a bauble or two. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-06-0430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-05-28Thu, 28 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Tiny, Lethal 17:54 A Man Of Parts 23:18 The Last Ditch TINY, LETHAL Reading an item in yesterday's Guardian about tiny lethal phantasmal poison frogs, I was reminded of Dobson's pamphlet My Terrifying Encounter With A Tiny Lethal Phantasmal Poison Frog (out of print). It is by any measure one of his most exciting works, guaranteed to have one panting for breath and to cause beads of sweat to break out upon the brow. This is due to the pamphleteer deploying, as he so rarely did, his remarkable ability for building suspense. Alerted by the title, we are in a state of heightened expectation for the appearance of the minuscule killer, so tiny yet so toxic. But Dobson is in no hurry to come face to face with the lethal frog. He begins by recounting, in exasperating detail, how, in preparing for a morning trudge along the towpath of the old canal, he discovered that the aglets on his Batavian Crimebusters' boots had become rusted and brittle, the bootlaces fraying as a result. Reluctant to don a different pair of boots--for reasons he enumerates over five pages--Dobson describes his search, in drawers and cupboards and hideyholes, for a replacement pair of bootlaces. Throughout this "desperate fossicking", as he calls it, Marigold Chew is staring out of the window at the incessant rainfall, picking out a tune on her celeste, composing in her head the words of the song that would later be known as The Ballad Of Incessant Rainfall. In his monograph on Dobson's various items of footwear, Aloysius Nestingbird asks why the pamphleteer did not simply remove the laces from one of his other pairs of boots and reuse them when it became obvious that he had no pristine bootlaces to hand. He answers his own question by delving into Dobson's infamous pamphlet Every Lace Has Its Own Boot (out of print), the work which plumbed in excruciating detail the unfathomable depth of the pamphleteer's neurosis in these matters. Those of us who have read our Nestingbird will have his commentary in the back of our minds as we follow Dobson crashing about the house on his futile search. Twenty pages in, we are no closer to our own encounter with the tiny lethal phantasmal poison frog, but the tension is becoming unbearable. At the point where Dobson describes tipping out onto the floor the contents of a battered cardboard box kept under the kitchen sink, we are ready to put the pamphlet aside and to put the kettle on for a calming cup of tea. Next, we take a nap, and when we return to the pamphlet we find that is what Dobson did too. Giving up hope of finding new bootlaces for his Batavian Crimebusters' boots, and leaving Marigold Chew plinking and musing and staring out of the window, the pamphleteer retires to his nap-hub. Now he cranks up the suspense by treating the reader to a detailed account of his period of unconsciousness, accompanied by masterly, if somewhat florid, descriptions of his pillows, his coverlet, and his mattress. Nestingbird has remarked that "no one has ever written about the nap as brilliantly as Dobson. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-05-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Tiny, Lethal 17:54 A Man Of Parts 23:18 The Last Ditch TINY, LETHAL Reading an item in yesterday's Guardian about tiny lethal phantasmal poison frogs, I was reminded of Dobson's pamphlet My Terrifying Encounter With A Tiny Lethal Phantasmal Poison Frog (out of print). It is by any measure one of his most exciting works, guaranteed to have one panting for breath and to cause beads of sweat to break out upon the brow. This is due to the pamphleteer deploying, as he so rarely did, his remarkable ability for building suspense. Alerted by the title, we are in a state of heightened expectation for the appearance of the minuscule killer, so tiny yet so toxic. But Dobson is in no hurry to come face to face with the lethal frog. He begins by recounting, in exasperating detail, how, in preparing for a morning trudge along the towpath of the old canal, he discovered that the aglets on his Batavian Crimebusters' boots had become rusted and brittle, the bootlaces fraying as a result. Reluctant to don a different pair of boots--for reasons he enumerates over five pages--Dobson describes his search, in drawers and cupboards and hideyholes, for a replacement pair of bootlaces. Throughout this "desperate fossicking", as he calls it, Marigold Chew is staring out of the window at the incessant rainfall, picking out a tune on her celeste, composing in her head the words of the song that would later be known as The Ballad Of Incessant Rainfall. In his monograph on Dobson's various items of footwear, Aloysius Nestingbird asks why the pamphleteer did not simply remove the laces from one of his other pairs of boots and reuse them when it became obvious that he had no pristine bootlaces to hand. He answers his own question by delving into Dobson's infamous pamphlet Every Lace Has Its Own Boot (out of print), the work which plumbed in excruciating detail the unfathomable depth of the pamphleteer's neurosis in these matters. Those of us who have read our Nestingbird will have his commentary in the back of our minds as we follow Dobson crashing about the house on his futile search. Twenty pages in, we are no closer to our own encounter with the tiny lethal phantasmal poison frog, but the tension is becoming unbearable. At the point where Dobson describes tipping out onto the floor the contents of a battered cardboard box kept under the kitchen sink, we are ready to put the pamphlet aside and to put the kettle on for a calming cup of tea. Next, we take a nap, and when we return to the pamphlet we find that is what Dobson did too. Giving up hope of finding new bootlaces for his Batavian Crimebusters' boots, and leaving Marigold Chew plinking and musing and staring out of the window, the pamphleteer retires to his nap-hub. Now he cranks up the suspense by treating the reader to a detailed account of his period of unconsciousness, accompanied by masterly, if somewhat florid, descriptions of his pillows, his coverlet, and his mattress. Nestingbird has remarked that "no one has ever written about the nap as brilliantly as Dobson. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-05-2830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-05-21Thu, 21 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 A Weekend With An Owl God 09:16 Binder : The Forty-Nine Symphonies 13:33 Little Dagobert 19:27 An Outing 23:38 Moptop Of Gath A WEEKEND WITH AN OWL GOD If you have ever spent a weekend with an owl god, you will know that it can be a character-building experience. I have vivid memories of the time Chalchiuhtecolotl, the night owl god of the Aztecs, made itself at home in my flat for three trying days. I live in a glitzy and gleaming block, of futuristic design, impossibly stark, with lots of exciting remote control hubs, but the fact is it is small, even pokey, and it doesn't help that I have crammed into it the contents of my ma's laboratory and my pa's garden shed, together with much of the furniture thrown out when the local vet refurbished his waiting room and a jumble of junk from a hellhole. That Friday evening I was crumpled on a settee, eating lemon meringue pie and reading Pebblehead's bestselling paperback Brute Beauty And Valour And Act, Oh, Air, Pride, Plume, Here Buckle! when the front door sensor vibrated, the hub hummed, and the plasma display flashed insistently. I had a visitor, though no one was expected. Thinking it might be a goon coming to serve me with an Asbo, I depressed the locking knob on the entry pod, put down my pie plate, and tiptoed my way through some of ma's alembics to the door. Peering through the tintin slat, I saw a hunched and somewhat shabby figure dressed like a bus conductor, if you can remember bus conductors. He--I thought it was a he--was not holding anything that might be an Asbo, so, being an affable sort, I opened the door. He--or rather, it--almost knocked me over as it somehow soared past me and came to rest next to the settee. Before either of us spoke, it plucked my plate off the floor and scoffed what was left of the lemon meringue pie. Then it said: "Good evening. I am an Aztec god. My name is Chalchiuhtecolotl and I am an owl god. Of the night." "You look like a bus conductor," I replied, "And a shabby one at that." Then it screeched at me. It was the loudest and longest screech I have ever had the misfortune to hear. My ears did not stop ringing until Sunday lunchtime, by which time the owl god had completely taken over my life. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-05-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 A Weekend With An Owl God 09:16 Binder : The Forty-Nine Symphonies 13:33 Little Dagobert 19:27 An Outing 23:38 Moptop Of Gath A WEEKEND WITH AN OWL GOD If you have ever spent a weekend with an owl god, you will know that it can be a character-building experience. I have vivid memories of the time Chalchiuhtecolotl, the night owl god of the Aztecs, made itself at home in my flat for three trying days. I live in a glitzy and gleaming block, of futuristic design, impossibly stark, with lots of exciting remote control hubs, but the fact is it is small, even pokey, and it doesn't help that I have crammed into it the contents of my ma's laboratory and my pa's garden shed, together with much of the furniture thrown out when the local vet refurbished his waiting room and a jumble of junk from a hellhole. That Friday evening I was crumpled on a settee, eating lemon meringue pie and reading Pebblehead's bestselling paperback Brute Beauty And Valour And Act, Oh, Air, Pride, Plume, Here Buckle! when the front door sensor vibrated, the hub hummed, and the plasma display flashed insistently. I had a visitor, though no one was expected. Thinking it might be a goon coming to serve me with an Asbo, I depressed the locking knob on the entry pod, put down my pie plate, and tiptoed my way through some of ma's alembics to the door. Peering through the tintin slat, I saw a hunched and somewhat shabby figure dressed like a bus conductor, if you can remember bus conductors. He--I thought it was a he--was not holding anything that might be an Asbo, so, being an affable sort, I opened the door. He--or rather, it--almost knocked me over as it somehow soared past me and came to rest next to the settee. Before either of us spoke, it plucked my plate off the floor and scoffed what was left of the lemon meringue pie. Then it said: "Good evening. I am an Aztec god. My name is Chalchiuhtecolotl and I am an owl god. Of the night." "You look like a bus conductor," I replied, "And a shabby one at that." Then it screeched at me. It was the loudest and longest screech I have ever had the misfortune to hear. My ears did not stop ringing until Sunday lunchtime, by which time the owl god had completely taken over my life. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-05-2130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-05-07Thu, 07 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 By Aerostat to Hooting Yard 15:43 Man At C&A BY AEROSTAT TO HOOTING YARD by Frank Key Oh, I so wanted this to be a seafaring yarn. I wanted to hear the wind in the rigging, smell the salt tang in the breeze, roll with the creak and lurch of old wooden boards on the deck. I wanted to write a maritime tale, of a fabric woven of ships' cables and hawsers, an arctic wind blowing through it and birds of prey hovering over it. I wanted to prattle on about smacks, bilgewater, fo'c'sles, and splicing the mainbrace, whatever that means. Pirates would appear, cutlasses gleaming. Perched in the crow's nest, I would yell "land ahoy!", then scurry down the rigging to help tamp down the binnacles. At first, things had looked hopeful. I had received my instructions from Dobson. As ever, he was precise: "Track down Burble. Beat him to death with a club. Wrap him in chains and throw him down a flooded mineshaft. I shall expect a full report upon your return. Dobson." As soon as I had read his memo, I doused it in highly inflammable chemicals and took it down to the boiler room of my building. There, in solitude and gloom, I placed it in the roaring furnace. The flames licked up towards my face, and I turned away. I knew the tears would not be long in coming. It had been two years since one of Dobson's communiques had uprooted me from my rut and catapulted me into frantic adventure; three years before that I had been sent on a mission, ranging over four continents; the year before that embroiled in a world-shattering plot; and there had been at least half a dozen earlier escapades. No doubt these Dobson-inspired excitements were meant to be wild and life-enhancing, yet I yearned for tedium and futility. Trudging out of the boiler room, I began to sob. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before I could once again wallow in monotony and ennui. Despite my misgivings, I am very particular about my work. Dobson has even accused me of being finicky. I began to pack at once, having dusted down the enormous haversack which I always carry on my assignments. Within an hour of receiving my instructions, the packing was done, and I was perched on a wooden stool in my kitchen, wolfing down a bowl of slops. I had no idea when next I would eat. Having twice been struck by lightning while doing Dobson's bidding, I had taken the precaution of sprinkling finely-ground purslane on to my slops, and stashing a small pouch of the stuff in my haversack. Another half hour and I was out of the door and on my way. The weather was incomprehensible: I shall not record it here. I checked my watch by the gasworks' clock and spat into a hedgerow. It was not for me to question why Dobson wanted Burble obliterated, yet I could not help feeling a small pang of surprise. I had always understood Burble to be a trusted agent, a man who could be relied upon. I knew for a fact that he had been invaluable when Perkins and Throwback contracted the dengue, and were ensnared by a band of repressed mahouts. I could only assume that he had lately committed some heinous offence for which Dobson could not forgive him. What on earth could he have done? But I could not allow myself to dwell on such matters. It would not get the dog bathed, the roof fed, or the baby mended, whatever that saying is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-05-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 By Aerostat to Hooting Yard 15:43 Man At C&A BY AEROSTAT TO HOOTING YARD by Frank Key Oh, I so wanted this to be a seafaring yarn. I wanted to hear the wind in the rigging, smell the salt tang in the breeze, roll with the creak and lurch of old wooden boards on the deck. I wanted to write a maritime tale, of a fabric woven of ships' cables and hawsers, an arctic wind blowing through it and birds of prey hovering over it. I wanted to prattle on about smacks, bilgewater, fo'c'sles, and splicing the mainbrace, whatever that means. Pirates would appear, cutlasses gleaming. Perched in the crow's nest, I would yell "land ahoy!", then scurry down the rigging to help tamp down the binnacles. At first, things had looked hopeful. I had received my instructions from Dobson. As ever, he was precise: "Track down Burble. Beat him to death with a club. Wrap him in chains and throw him down a flooded mineshaft. I shall expect a full report upon your return. Dobson." As soon as I had read his memo, I doused it in highly inflammable chemicals and took it down to the boiler room of my building. There, in solitude and gloom, I placed it in the roaring furnace. The flames licked up towards my face, and I turned away. I knew the tears would not be long in coming. It had been two years since one of Dobson's communiques had uprooted me from my rut and catapulted me into frantic adventure; three years before that I had been sent on a mission, ranging over four continents; the year before that embroiled in a world-shattering plot; and there had been at least half a dozen earlier escapades. No doubt these Dobson-inspired excitements were meant to be wild and life-enhancing, yet I yearned for tedium and futility. Trudging out of the boiler room, I began to sob. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before I could once again wallow in monotony and ennui. Despite my misgivings, I am very particular about my work. Dobson has even accused me of being finicky. I began to pack at once, having dusted down the enormous haversack which I always carry on my assignments. Within an hour of receiving my instructions, the packing was done, and I was perched on a wooden stool in my kitchen, wolfing down a bowl of slops. I had no idea when next I would eat. Having twice been struck by lightning while doing Dobson's bidding, I had taken the precaution of sprinkling finely-ground purslane on to my slops, and stashing a small pouch of the stuff in my haversack. Another half hour and I was out of the door and on my way. The weather was incomprehensible: I shall not record it here. I checked my watch by the gasworks' clock and spat into a hedgerow. It was not for me to question why Dobson wanted Burble obliterated, yet I could not help feeling a small pang of surprise. I had always understood Burble to be a trusted agent, a man who could be relied upon. I knew for a fact that he had been invaluable when Perkins and Throwback contracted the dengue, and were ensnared by a band of repressed mahouts. I could only assume that he had lately committed some heinous offence for which Dobson could not forgive him. What on earth could he have done? But I could not allow myself to dwell on such matters. It would not get the dog bathed, the roof fed, or the baby mended, whatever that saying is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-05-0727:33fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-30Thu, 30 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:08 The Man Who Ate His Own Head 10:17 In The Shoes Of The Fisherman 21:52 Fashion Sequence 23:15 The Fishmongers' Prayer THE MAN WHO ATE HIS OWN HEAD The other day I met a man who claimed he could eat his own head. I considered this preposterous, and said so. We were at a sophisticated cocktail party and he was leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece. "I can prove it to you," he said, "As a demonstration, I will eat your head, and that will show that I could eat my own." I thought about this for perhaps three seconds before responding. "Your so-called proof has several distinct flaws," I said, "First, that if you eat my head, I will be in no position to form a judgement on the success or otherwise of your antics, as I presume I will lose consciousness and die as you gnaw through my neck, thus severing those all-important nerves and arteries and whatnot that enable my brain to function. Second, your ability to eat my head has no bearing whatsoever on your claim to be able to eat your own head. It is an entirely different head." He took a sip of his cocktail before conceding. "Those are both valid points. But there were but two, and you said you had several." "Let those two suffice for the time being," I said. "Very well," he replied, "I can see that I am up against a sceptic of formidable mental acuity. You are not by any chance a Jesuit, are you?" I assured him I was not, despite it having been a childhood ambition to be ordained into the order. "I, too, once dreamed of becoming a Jesuit," he said, "But alas, I lost my faith. Still, that was a long time ago, since when I suppose I learned to replace it with the more fervent belief that I can eat my own head. You will not be satisfied until you actually witness me in the act of doing so, will you?" I nodded my agreement. He looked at me in silence, and after a pause, said "There". "There what?" I asked. "I just ate my own head and regurgitated it, as a bird does with food for its young." he said, "You must excuse my manners, for I am a terribly fast eater and tend to gobble my food. I can be quite a cause of social discomfiture in the better restaurants." "I witnessed neither eating nor regurgitation," I said, "You just stood there looking at me." He sighed with a measure of impatience. "I have just explained to you that I eat with regrettable speed," he said, "And this habit has a deleterious effect on my digestive system, one consequence of which is that I cannot tolerate certain foodstuffs, including human flesh and bone and brain matter, etcetera, so I spew them up immediately." "You are a very foolish man. Good evening to you, sir," I said, and I turned on my heel and wandered off across the room, away from the mantelpiece, in search of somebody else to talk to. Later that evening, passing near the mantelpiece again, I saw the man biting the head off another party guest, a person who, I reasoned, had not had the benefits of a Jesuitical education, and thus could not counter the arguments of this foolish but persuasive fellow. There was blood on the carpet, as there so often is, even at the most sophisticated cocktail parties. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:08 The Man Who Ate His Own Head 10:17 In The Shoes Of The Fisherman 21:52 Fashion Sequence 23:15 The Fishmongers' Prayer THE MAN WHO ATE HIS OWN HEAD The other day I met a man who claimed he could eat his own head. I considered this preposterous, and said so. We were at a sophisticated cocktail party and he was leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece. "I can prove it to you," he said, "As a demonstration, I will eat your head, and that will show that I could eat my own." I thought about this for perhaps three seconds before responding. "Your so-called proof has several distinct flaws," I said, "First, that if you eat my head, I will be in no position to form a judgement on the success or otherwise of your antics, as I presume I will lose consciousness and die as you gnaw through my neck, thus severing those all-important nerves and arteries and whatnot that enable my brain to function. Second, your ability to eat my head has no bearing whatsoever on your claim to be able to eat your own head. It is an entirely different head." He took a sip of his cocktail before conceding. "Those are both valid points. But there were but two, and you said you had several." "Let those two suffice for the time being," I said. "Very well," he replied, "I can see that I am up against a sceptic of formidable mental acuity. You are not by any chance a Jesuit, are you?" I assured him I was not, despite it having been a childhood ambition to be ordained into the order. "I, too, once dreamed of becoming a Jesuit," he said, "But alas, I lost my faith. Still, that was a long time ago, since when I suppose I learned to replace it with the more fervent belief that I can eat my own head. You will not be satisfied until you actually witness me in the act of doing so, will you?" I nodded my agreement. He looked at me in silence, and after a pause, said "There". "There what?" I asked. "I just ate my own head and regurgitated it, as a bird does with food for its young." he said, "You must excuse my manners, for I am a terribly fast eater and tend to gobble my food. I can be quite a cause of social discomfiture in the better restaurants." "I witnessed neither eating nor regurgitation," I said, "You just stood there looking at me." He sighed with a measure of impatience. "I have just explained to you that I eat with regrettable speed," he said, "And this habit has a deleterious effect on my digestive system, one consequence of which is that I cannot tolerate certain foodstuffs, including human flesh and bone and brain matter, etcetera, so I spew them up immediately." "You are a very foolish man. Good evening to you, sir," I said, and I turned on my heel and wandered off across the room, away from the mantelpiece, in search of somebody else to talk to. Later that evening, passing near the mantelpiece again, I saw the man biting the head off another party guest, a person who, I reasoned, had not had the benefits of a Jesuitical education, and thus could not counter the arguments of this foolish but persuasive fellow. There was blood on the carpet, as there so often is, even at the most sophisticated cocktail parties. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-3030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-23Thu, 23 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:11 Dobson's Abortive Pliny DOBSON'S ABORTIVE PLINY Here is the list of contents of the tenth book of Pliny The Elder's Natural History (c. 77-79 AD): "The nature of birds. (i-ii) The ostrich, the phoenix. (iii-vi) Eagles, their species; their nature; when adopted as regimental badges; self-immolation of eagle on maiden's funeral pyre. (vii) The vulture. (viii) Lammergeier, sea-eagle. (ix-xi) Hawks: the buzzard; use of hawks by fowlers where practised; the only bird that is killed by its own kind; what bird produces one egg at a time. (xii) Kites. (xiii) Classification of birds by species. (xiv-xvi) Birds of ill-omen; in what months crows are not a bad omen; ravens; the horned owl. (xvii) Extinct birds; birds no longer known. (xviii) Birds hatched tail first. (xix) Night-owls. (xx) Mars's woodpecker. (xxi) Birds with hooked talons. (xxii-v) Birds with toes: peacocks; who first killed the peacock for food; who invented fattening peacocks; poultry--mode of castrating; a talking cock. (xxvi-xxxii) The goose who first introduced goose-liver (foie gras); Commagene goose; fox-goose, love-goose, heath-cock, bustard; cranes; storks; rest of reflexed-claw genus; swans. (xxxiii-v) Foreign migrant birds: quails, tongue-birds, ortolan, horned owl; native migrant birds and their destinations--swallows, thrushes, blackbirds, starlings; birds that moult in retirement: turtle-dove, ring-dove. (xxxvi) Non-migrant birds: half-yearly and quarter-yearly visitors: witwalls, hoopoes. (xxxvii-xl) Mernnon's hens, Meleager's sisters (guinea-hens), Seleucid hens, ibis. (xli) Where particular species not known. (xlii-v) Species that change colour and voice: the divination-bird class; nightingale, black-cap, robin, red-start, chat, golden oriole. (xlvi) The breeding season. (xlvii) Kingfishers: sign of fine weather for sailing. (xlviii) Remainder of aquatic class. (xlix-li) Craftsmanship of birds in nest-making; remarkable structures of swallows; sand-martins; thistle-finch; bee-eater; partridges. (lii f.) Pigeons--remarkable structures of, and prices paid for; (liv f.) Varieties of birds' flight and walk; footless martins or swifts. (lvi) Food of birds. Goat-suckers, spoon-bill. (lvii) Intelligence of birds; gold-finch, bull-bittern, yellow wagtail. (lviii-lxl) Talking birds: parrots, acorn-pies; riot at Rome caused by talking crow. (lxi) Diomede's birds. (lxii) What animals learn nothing. (lxiii) Birds, mode of drinking; the sultana hen. (lxiv) The long-legs. (lxv f.) Food of birds. Pelicans. (lxvii f.) Foreign birds: coots, pheasants, Numidian fowl, flamingos, heath-cock, bald crow or cormorant, Ted-beaked or Alpine crow, bare-footed crow or ptarmigan. (lxix) New species: small cranes. (lxx) Fabulous birds. (lxxi) Who invented fattening of chickens, and which consuls first prohibited? who first invented aviaries? Aesop's stewpan. (lxxiii-lxxx) Reproduction of birds: oviparous creatures other than birds; kinds and properties of eggs; defective hatching and its cures; Augusta's augury from eggs; what sort of hens the best? their diseases and remedies; kinds of small heron; nature of puff-eggs, addled eggs, wind-eggs; best way of preserving eggs. (lxxxi f.) The only species of bird that is viviparous and suckles its young. Oviparous species of land animals. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:11 Dobson's Abortive Pliny DOBSON'S ABORTIVE PLINY Here is the list of contents of the tenth book of Pliny The Elder's Natural History (c. 77-79 AD): "The nature of birds. (i-ii) The ostrich, the phoenix. (iii-vi) Eagles, their species; their nature; when adopted as regimental badges; self-immolation of eagle on maiden's funeral pyre. (vii) The vulture. (viii) Lammergeier, sea-eagle. (ix-xi) Hawks: the buzzard; use of hawks by fowlers where practised; the only bird that is killed by its own kind; what bird produces one egg at a time. (xii) Kites. (xiii) Classification of birds by species. (xiv-xvi) Birds of ill-omen; in what months crows are not a bad omen; ravens; the horned owl. (xvii) Extinct birds; birds no longer known. (xviii) Birds hatched tail first. (xix) Night-owls. (xx) Mars's woodpecker. (xxi) Birds with hooked talons. (xxii-v) Birds with toes: peacocks; who first killed the peacock for food; who invented fattening peacocks; poultry--mode of castrating; a talking cock. (xxvi-xxxii) The goose who first introduced goose-liver (foie gras); Commagene goose; fox-goose, love-goose, heath-cock, bustard; cranes; storks; rest of reflexed-claw genus; swans. (xxxiii-v) Foreign migrant birds: quails, tongue-birds, ortolan, horned owl; native migrant birds and their destinations--swallows, thrushes, blackbirds, starlings; birds that moult in retirement: turtle-dove, ring-dove. (xxxvi) Non-migrant birds: half-yearly and quarter-yearly visitors: witwalls, hoopoes. (xxxvii-xl) Mernnon's hens, Meleager's sisters (guinea-hens), Seleucid hens, ibis. (xli) Where particular species not known. (xlii-v) Species that change colour and voice: the divination-bird class; nightingale, black-cap, robin, red-start, chat, golden oriole. (xlvi) The breeding season. (xlvii) Kingfishers: sign of fine weather for sailing. (xlviii) Remainder of aquatic class. (xlix-li) Craftsmanship of birds in nest-making; remarkable structures of swallows; sand-martins; thistle-finch; bee-eater; partridges. (lii f.) Pigeons--remarkable structures of, and prices paid for; (liv f.) Varieties of birds' flight and walk; footless martins or swifts. (lvi) Food of birds. Goat-suckers, spoon-bill. (lvii) Intelligence of birds; gold-finch, bull-bittern, yellow wagtail. (lviii-lxl) Talking birds: parrots, acorn-pies; riot at Rome caused by talking crow. (lxi) Diomede's birds. (lxii) What animals learn nothing. (lxiii) Birds, mode of drinking; the sultana hen. (lxiv) The long-legs. (lxv f.) Food of birds. Pelicans. (lxvii f.) Foreign birds: coots, pheasants, Numidian fowl, flamingos, heath-cock, bald crow or cormorant, Ted-beaked or Alpine crow, bare-footed crow or ptarmigan. (lxix) New species: small cranes. (lxx) Fabulous birds. (lxxi) Who invented fattening of chickens, and which consuls first prohibited? who first invented aviaries? Aesop's stewpan. (lxxiii-lxxx) Reproduction of birds: oviparous creatures other than birds; kinds and properties of eggs; defective hatching and its cures; Augusta's augury from eggs; what sort of hens the best? their diseases and remedies; kinds of small heron; nature of puff-eggs, addled eggs, wind-eggs; best way of preserving eggs. (lxxxi f.) The only species of bird that is viviparous and suckles its young. Oviparous species of land animals. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-2330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-16Thu, 16 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:22 Fashion Sequence 08:42 Dobson In Dreamland 19:23 The Soutane-Attired Nemesis Of Sea Monsters 26:09 Modern Snipe FASHION SEQUENCE Here is another magnificent extract from Further Science : Book 20 by Norman Davies. (See here.) FASHION SEQUENCE 1. That from 1272/1327, there was a simple monk style. 2. 1327/99--pointed shoes and sleeves. 3. 1399/1461--bull horn hats--hence narrow central next/theatrical. 4. 1461/85--Welsh witchy narrow central hats. 5. 1485/1509--square curtained bed fashion peak/tall thin people. 6. 1509/47--square wooden Henry 8th puff sleeves. 7. 1547/58--dark fan skirt--Spanish. 8. 1558/1603--Elizabethan/Drake bearded pirate/big tent waists and shoulders. 9. 1603/25--Odd--big waists and metal narrow thorax. 10. 1625/49--Van Dyke Cavalier/untrustworthy/lax floppy. 11. 1649/60--dark Welsh witchy. 12. 1660/89--dark brigand/Quaker hats. 13. 1689/1714--tall narrow heads reaction. 14. 1714/27--black Red Riding Hood. 15. 1727/60--big waists. 16. 1760/90--big heads. 17. 1790/1837--long and thick/squashed. 18. 1837/60--wooden thick. 19. 1860/80--overdone. 20. 1880/1900--odd. 21. 1901/18--contrived. 22. 1918/30s--flighty freaks. 23. 1940/5--War/frenzied mean to lower Middle class on. 24. 1946/8--peak fine simple bold quality Middle class fashion. 25. Peak fine fashions occurred in the 14th Century/semi late 15th century /late 15th century / 1515 / 1695 / 1896 / 1946/8. DOBSON IN DREAMLAND According to Hargrave Jennings, in Curious Things Of The Outside World : Last Fire (1861), "There are moments in the history of the busiest man when his life seems a masquerade. There are periods in the story of the most engrossed and most worldly-minded man, when this strong fear will come, like a cloud, over him; when this conviction will start, athwart his horizon, like a flash from out a cloud. He will look up to the sunshine, some day, and in the midst of the business-clatter by which he may be surrounded, a man will, in a moment's glance, seem to see the whole jostle of human interests and city bustle, or any stir, as so much empty show. Like the sick person, he will sometimes raise his head, and out of the midst of his distractions, and out of the grasp which that thing, 'business', always has of him, he will ask himself the question, What does all this mean? Is the whole world awake, and am I asleep and dreaming a dream? Or is it that the whole world is the dream, and that I, in this single moment, have alone awakened?" That great twentieth-century pamphleteer, Dobson, woke up in this state of mind every single morning of his adult life. And that was not the end of his confusion, for Dobson was a great one for naps, he took a nap daily, very often more than one, plural naps, as it were, and each time he woke from his naps he likewise asked himself the questions posed by Hargrave Jennings, as he had already done on the morning of the day, when first he awoke. "Do you have the slightest idea," asked Marigold Chew, one blustery blizzardy Monday in the late 1950s, "How tiresome it is to have you lumbering about the place like a dippy person, asking the kinds of questions most sensible people stop posing when they outgrow their years of teendom?" Dobson's reply to this perfectly reasonable query was most annoying. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:22 Fashion Sequence 08:42 Dobson In Dreamland 19:23 The Soutane-Attired Nemesis Of Sea Monsters 26:09 Modern Snipe FASHION SEQUENCE Here is another magnificent extract from Further Science : Book 20 by Norman Davies. (See here.) FASHION SEQUENCE 1. That from 1272/1327, there was a simple monk style. 2. 1327/99--pointed shoes and sleeves. 3. 1399/1461--bull horn hats--hence narrow central next/theatrical. 4. 1461/85--Welsh witchy narrow central hats. 5. 1485/1509--square curtained bed fashion peak/tall thin people. 6. 1509/47--square wooden Henry 8th puff sleeves. 7. 1547/58--dark fan skirt--Spanish. 8. 1558/1603--Elizabethan/Drake bearded pirate/big tent waists and shoulders. 9. 1603/25--Odd--big waists and metal narrow thorax. 10. 1625/49--Van Dyke Cavalier/untrustworthy/lax floppy. 11. 1649/60--dark Welsh witchy. 12. 1660/89--dark brigand/Quaker hats. 13. 1689/1714--tall narrow heads reaction. 14. 1714/27--black Red Riding Hood. 15. 1727/60--big waists. 16. 1760/90--big heads. 17. 1790/1837--long and thick/squashed. 18. 1837/60--wooden thick. 19. 1860/80--overdone. 20. 1880/1900--odd. 21. 1901/18--contrived. 22. 1918/30s--flighty freaks. 23. 1940/5--War/frenzied mean to lower Middle class on. 24. 1946/8--peak fine simple bold quality Middle class fashion. 25. Peak fine fashions occurred in the 14th Century/semi late 15th century /late 15th century / 1515 / 1695 / 1896 / 1946/8. DOBSON IN DREAMLAND According to Hargrave Jennings, in Curious Things Of The Outside World : Last Fire (1861), "There are moments in the history of the busiest man when his life seems a masquerade. There are periods in the story of the most engrossed and most worldly-minded man, when this strong fear will come, like a cloud, over him; when this conviction will start, athwart his horizon, like a flash from out a cloud. He will look up to the sunshine, some day, and in the midst of the business-clatter by which he may be surrounded, a man will, in a moment's glance, seem to see the whole jostle of human interests and city bustle, or any stir, as so much empty show. Like the sick person, he will sometimes raise his head, and out of the midst of his distractions, and out of the grasp which that thing, 'business', always has of him, he will ask himself the question, What does all this mean? Is the whole world awake, and am I asleep and dreaming a dream? Or is it that the whole world is the dream, and that I, in this single moment, have alone awakened?" That great twentieth-century pamphleteer, Dobson, woke up in this state of mind every single morning of his adult life. And that was not the end of his confusion, for Dobson was a great one for naps, he took a nap daily, very often more than one, plural naps, as it were, and each time he woke from his naps he likewise asked himself the questions posed by Hargrave Jennings, as he had already done on the morning of the day, when first he awoke. "Do you have the slightest idea," asked Marigold Chew, one blustery blizzardy Monday in the late 1950s, "How tiresome it is to have you lumbering about the place like a dippy person, asking the kinds of questions most sensible people stop posing when they outgrow their years of teendom?" Dobson's reply to this perfectly reasonable query was most annoying. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-1630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-09Thu, 09 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:11 Dobson's Abortive Pliny DOBSON'S ABORTIVE PLINY Here is the list of contents of the tenth book of Pliny The Elder's Natural History (c. 77-79 AD): "The nature of birds. (i-ii) The ostrich, the phoenix. (iii-vi) Eagles, their species; their nature; when adopted as regimental badges; self-immolation of eagle on maiden's funeral pyre. (vii) The vulture. (viii) Lammergeier, sea-eagle. (ix-xi) Hawks: the buzzard; use of hawks by fowlers where practised; the only bird that is killed by its own kind; what bird produces one egg at a time. (xii) Kites. (xiii) Classification of birds by species. (xiv-xvi) Birds of ill-omen; in what months crows are not a bad omen; ravens; the horned owl. (xvii) Extinct birds; birds no longer known. (xviii) Birds hatched tail first. (xix) Night-owls. (xx) Mars's woodpecker. (xxi) Birds with hooked talons. (xxii-v) Birds with toes: peacocks; who first killed the peacock for food; who invented fattening peacocks; poultry--mode of castrating; a talking cock. (xxvi-xxxii) The goose who first introduced goose-liver (foie gras); Commagene goose; fox-goose, love-goose, heath-cock, bustard; cranes; storks; rest of reflexed-claw genus; swans. (xxxiii-v) Foreign migrant birds: quails, tongue-birds, ortolan, horned owl; native migrant birds and their destinations--swallows, thrushes, blackbirds, starlings; birds that moult in retirement: turtle-dove, ring-dove. (xxxvi) Non-migrant birds: half-yearly and quarter-yearly visitors: witwalls, hoopoes. (xxxvii-xl) Mernnon's hens, Meleager's sisters (guinea-hens), Seleucid hens, ibis. (xli) Where particular species not known. (xlii-v) Species that change colour and voice: the divination-bird class; nightingale, black-cap, robin, red-start, chat, golden oriole. (xlvi) The breeding season. (xlvii) Kingfishers: sign of fine weather for sailing. (xlviii) Remainder of aquatic class. (xlix-li) Craftsmanship of birds in nest-making; remarkable structures of swallows; sand-martins; thistle-finch; bee-eater; partridges. (lii f.) Pigeons--remarkable structures of, and prices paid for; (liv f.) Varieties of birds' flight and walk; footless martins or swifts. (lvi) Food of birds. Goat-suckers, spoon-bill. (lvii) Intelligence of birds; gold-finch, bull-bittern, yellow wagtail. (lviii-lxl) Talking birds: parrots, acorn-pies; riot at Rome caused by talking crow. (lxi) Diomede's birds. (lxii) What animals learn nothing. (lxiii) Birds, mode of drinking; the sultana hen. (lxiv) The long-legs. (lxv f.) Food of birds. Pelicans. (lxvii f.) Foreign birds: coots, pheasants, Numidian fowl, flamingos, heath-cock, bald crow or cormorant, Ted-beaked or Alpine crow, bare-footed crow or ptarmigan. (lxix) New species: small cranes. (lxx) Fabulous birds. (lxxi) Who invented fattening of chickens, and which consuls first prohibited? who first invented aviaries? Aesop's stewpan. (lxxiii-lxxx) Reproduction of birds: oviparous creatures other than birds; kinds and properties of eggs; defective hatching and its cures; Augusta's augury from eggs; what sort of hens the best? their diseases and remedies; kinds of small heron; nature of puff-eggs, addled eggs, wind-eggs; best way of preserving eggs. (lxxxi f.) The only species of bird that is viviparous and suckles its young. Oviparous species of land animals. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:11 Dobson's Abortive Pliny DOBSON'S ABORTIVE PLINY Here is the list of contents of the tenth book of Pliny The Elder's Natural History (c. 77-79 AD): "The nature of birds. (i-ii) The ostrich, the phoenix. (iii-vi) Eagles, their species; their nature; when adopted as regimental badges; self-immolation of eagle on maiden's funeral pyre. (vii) The vulture. (viii) Lammergeier, sea-eagle. (ix-xi) Hawks: the buzzard; use of hawks by fowlers where practised; the only bird that is killed by its own kind; what bird produces one egg at a time. (xii) Kites. (xiii) Classification of birds by species. (xiv-xvi) Birds of ill-omen; in what months crows are not a bad omen; ravens; the horned owl. (xvii) Extinct birds; birds no longer known. (xviii) Birds hatched tail first. (xix) Night-owls. (xx) Mars's woodpecker. (xxi) Birds with hooked talons. (xxii-v) Birds with toes: peacocks; who first killed the peacock for food; who invented fattening peacocks; poultry--mode of castrating; a talking cock. (xxvi-xxxii) The goose who first introduced goose-liver (foie gras); Commagene goose; fox-goose, love-goose, heath-cock, bustard; cranes; storks; rest of reflexed-claw genus; swans. (xxxiii-v) Foreign migrant birds: quails, tongue-birds, ortolan, horned owl; native migrant birds and their destinations--swallows, thrushes, blackbirds, starlings; birds that moult in retirement: turtle-dove, ring-dove. (xxxvi) Non-migrant birds: half-yearly and quarter-yearly visitors: witwalls, hoopoes. (xxxvii-xl) Mernnon's hens, Meleager's sisters (guinea-hens), Seleucid hens, ibis. (xli) Where particular species not known. (xlii-v) Species that change colour and voice: the divination-bird class; nightingale, black-cap, robin, red-start, chat, golden oriole. (xlvi) The breeding season. (xlvii) Kingfishers: sign of fine weather for sailing. (xlviii) Remainder of aquatic class. (xlix-li) Craftsmanship of birds in nest-making; remarkable structures of swallows; sand-martins; thistle-finch; bee-eater; partridges. (lii f.) Pigeons--remarkable structures of, and prices paid for; (liv f.) Varieties of birds' flight and walk; footless martins or swifts. (lvi) Food of birds. Goat-suckers, spoon-bill. (lvii) Intelligence of birds; gold-finch, bull-bittern, yellow wagtail. (lviii-lxl) Talking birds: parrots, acorn-pies; riot at Rome caused by talking crow. (lxi) Diomede's birds. (lxii) What animals learn nothing. (lxiii) Birds, mode of drinking; the sultana hen. (lxiv) The long-legs. (lxv f.) Food of birds. Pelicans. (lxvii f.) Foreign birds: coots, pheasants, Numidian fowl, flamingos, heath-cock, bald crow or cormorant, Ted-beaked or Alpine crow, bare-footed crow or ptarmigan. (lxix) New species: small cranes. (lxx) Fabulous birds. (lxxi) Who invented fattening of chickens, and which consuls first prohibited? who first invented aviaries? Aesop's stewpan. (lxxiii-lxxx) Reproduction of birds: oviparous creatures other than birds; kinds and properties of eggs; defective hatching and its cures; Augusta's augury from eggs; what sort of hens the best? their diseases and remedies; kinds of small heron; nature of puff-eggs, addled eggs, wind-eggs; best way of preserving eggs. (lxxxi f.) The only species of bird that is viviparous and suckles its young. Oviparous species of land animals. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-0930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-02Thu, 02 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 When Push Comes To Shove 04:21 On Pugton Hill 06:53 On The Ice Age 14:14 On A Talisman 21:38 Pick A Barn WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE From the archives: When push comes to shove, I invariably topple over. If I am standing on a precipice, or at the edge of a gaping pit, this can be life-threatening. Thus, whenever my plans for the day include roaming in the vicinity of a yawning chasm, I take precautions by wearing a sort of winch-and-pulley affair, one end of which is wound around my torso, under my vest, and the other end of which I hammer into a patch of firm ground using a great big iron mallet. I am careful to ensure that this end of my winch-and-pulley is stuck fast in the earth, for if there is any chance of it working itself loose, the entire activity would be pointless, for if, heaven forbid, I were to topple when shoved, my efforts would have been in vain, for the crumbling or squelchy soil would yield up my winch-and-pulley and I would surely topple as if I had never been attached to anything in the first place. That is such a terrible prospect that I make efforts to map out in advance the terrain in which I plan to wander, perhaps a week or so ahead. Of course, fugitive weather conditions can alter the state of the ground as shown on my charts, but risk and chance play a role in all human affairs, and there is no reason why my roamings should be exempt. When setting out on my map-making expeditions, I usually attach one end of the winch-and-pulley to some stable object like a horse-trough or a concrete sundial. My benefactors have long sought to deter me from straying near pits, chasms and abandoned mineshafts, so I am afraid I have had to use subterfuge. As I wave to them from the garden gate, with the winch-and-pulley concealed behind a muffler, I say something like, "I am just going out to check the concrete sundial" or "My my, the day is so clement that I think I will stroll along a flat and featureless plain like the big field where Farmer Buzan used to grow his potatoes all those years ago". Sometimes such announcements will be met with questions, which I am usually able to anticipate by peering at the furrowedness of my benefactors' brows. At other times I may have to improvise a convincing response or deflect the queries by pointing at a starling, for example, or forcing a sudden spray of projectile vomiting. When push comes to shove, pointing at a starling is my preferred option. It is twenty years now since I bashed in Farmer Buzan's head with his own spade. I like to think that my benefactors trust me these days, but it seems not. Oh look, there's a starling in that sycamore tree! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 When Push Comes To Shove 04:21 On Pugton Hill 06:53 On The Ice Age 14:14 On A Talisman 21:38 Pick A Barn WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE From the archives: When push comes to shove, I invariably topple over. If I am standing on a precipice, or at the edge of a gaping pit, this can be life-threatening. Thus, whenever my plans for the day include roaming in the vicinity of a yawning chasm, I take precautions by wearing a sort of winch-and-pulley affair, one end of which is wound around my torso, under my vest, and the other end of which I hammer into a patch of firm ground using a great big iron mallet. I am careful to ensure that this end of my winch-and-pulley is stuck fast in the earth, for if there is any chance of it working itself loose, the entire activity would be pointless, for if, heaven forbid, I were to topple when shoved, my efforts would have been in vain, for the crumbling or squelchy soil would yield up my winch-and-pulley and I would surely topple as if I had never been attached to anything in the first place. That is such a terrible prospect that I make efforts to map out in advance the terrain in which I plan to wander, perhaps a week or so ahead. Of course, fugitive weather conditions can alter the state of the ground as shown on my charts, but risk and chance play a role in all human affairs, and there is no reason why my roamings should be exempt. When setting out on my map-making expeditions, I usually attach one end of the winch-and-pulley to some stable object like a horse-trough or a concrete sundial. My benefactors have long sought to deter me from straying near pits, chasms and abandoned mineshafts, so I am afraid I have had to use subterfuge. As I wave to them from the garden gate, with the winch-and-pulley concealed behind a muffler, I say something like, "I am just going out to check the concrete sundial" or "My my, the day is so clement that I think I will stroll along a flat and featureless plain like the big field where Farmer Buzan used to grow his potatoes all those years ago". Sometimes such announcements will be met with questions, which I am usually able to anticipate by peering at the furrowedness of my benefactors' brows. At other times I may have to improvise a convincing response or deflect the queries by pointing at a starling, for example, or forcing a sudden spray of projectile vomiting. When push comes to shove, pointing at a starling is my preferred option. It is twenty years now since I bashed in Farmer Buzan's head with his own spade. I like to think that my benefactors trust me these days, but it seems not. Oh look, there's a starling in that sycamore tree! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-04-0227:09fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-03-19Thu, 19 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:53 Hiking Pickle Revisited 11:02 Butter Before Guns 15:57 Bolsheviks & Lizard-People 18:13 The Plumless Land 23:05 A Flapper's Diary 30.1.22 25:25 William Tayler's Diary 29.1.37 27:52 Norwegian Traffic Alert HIKING PICKLE REVISITED A further nugget from the archives. One In A Series Of Hiking Pickles first appeared on this day eight years ago. Dobson lived in the era before mobile phones, of course, so when he found himself imperilled in an isolated spot he had to harness every last scrap of ingenuity to summon help. You or I would simply make a call on our mobile--well, you would, but I wouldn't, because I do not own a mobile phone and never shall, for they are an abomination unto me--but this was not an option for Dobson, so what did he do? Let us take a closer look at the circumstances. It was a Tuesday in February. Football fans were grieving the loss of the Busby Babes in the Munich Air Disaster, Pope Pius XII had declared that Saint Clare was to be the patron saint of television, and little blind David Blunkett was just eleven years old. Meanwhile, Dobson got lost on an ill-advised hiking expedition and found himself exhausted, in a spinney, menaced by feral goats. The out of print pamphleteer had also managed to get himself hopelessly entangled in a thicket of thorny brambly creeping greenery rife with puffy spiders and venomous beetles. That's the kind of spinney it was, at least twenty miles from the nearest village, and with no paths nor country lanes leading anywhere close to it. There was, it is true, a big pylon a couple of dozen yards away, but it was a lone pylon, unconnected to any kind of electrical grid or other wiring system, a pylon the purpose of which was unknown, and it was a pylon of rust, suggestive of abandonment and disuse. This was not the first time Dobson had been in a hiking pickle, and it would not be the last. Indeed, late in life he had enough material to furnish a pamphlet entitled An Anthology Of Disastrous Hiking Mishaps Cobbled Together From A Lifetime Of Ill-Starred Rustic Pursuits (out of print). What was significant about this particular pickle was the manner in which Dobson succeeded in extricating himself from it. This was the period during which he had joined an experimental knitting circle, and as luck would have it he had in his noddy bag that day his latest project. It was an interpretation, in wool, of The Wreck Of The Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Dobson realised that, when fully unravelled, the yarn would stretch for miles. He sat down in the brambles, lit his pipe, took the scrunched-up woollen masterpiece out of his noddy bag, and unravelled, unravelled, unravelled. Two hours later he was still unravelling. The sun was setting by the time he was done, but Dobson had no fear of the night, for he was sanguine. Frequently Asked Question : Why didn't the pamphleteer use his portable metal tapping machine to call for help? Answer : He was unable to use his portable metal tapping machine because there was no ground-level pneumatic hub within reach. The wool fully unravelled, Dobson tapped out his pipe on a stone and beckoned to one of the feral Toggenbergs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-03-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:53 Hiking Pickle Revisited 11:02 Butter Before Guns 15:57 Bolsheviks & Lizard-People 18:13 The Plumless Land 23:05 A Flapper's Diary 30.1.22 25:25 William Tayler's Diary 29.1.37 27:52 Norwegian Traffic Alert HIKING PICKLE REVISITED A further nugget from the archives. One In A Series Of Hiking Pickles first appeared on this day eight years ago. Dobson lived in the era before mobile phones, of course, so when he found himself imperilled in an isolated spot he had to harness every last scrap of ingenuity to summon help. You or I would simply make a call on our mobile--well, you would, but I wouldn't, because I do not own a mobile phone and never shall, for they are an abomination unto me--but this was not an option for Dobson, so what did he do? Let us take a closer look at the circumstances. It was a Tuesday in February. Football fans were grieving the loss of the Busby Babes in the Munich Air Disaster, Pope Pius XII had declared that Saint Clare was to be the patron saint of television, and little blind David Blunkett was just eleven years old. Meanwhile, Dobson got lost on an ill-advised hiking expedition and found himself exhausted, in a spinney, menaced by feral goats. The out of print pamphleteer had also managed to get himself hopelessly entangled in a thicket of thorny brambly creeping greenery rife with puffy spiders and venomous beetles. That's the kind of spinney it was, at least twenty miles from the nearest village, and with no paths nor country lanes leading anywhere close to it. There was, it is true, a big pylon a couple of dozen yards away, but it was a lone pylon, unconnected to any kind of electrical grid or other wiring system, a pylon the purpose of which was unknown, and it was a pylon of rust, suggestive of abandonment and disuse. This was not the first time Dobson had been in a hiking pickle, and it would not be the last. Indeed, late in life he had enough material to furnish a pamphlet entitled An Anthology Of Disastrous Hiking Mishaps Cobbled Together From A Lifetime Of Ill-Starred Rustic Pursuits (out of print). What was significant about this particular pickle was the manner in which Dobson succeeded in extricating himself from it. This was the period during which he had joined an experimental knitting circle, and as luck would have it he had in his noddy bag that day his latest project. It was an interpretation, in wool, of The Wreck Of The Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Dobson realised that, when fully unravelled, the yarn would stretch for miles. He sat down in the brambles, lit his pipe, took the scrunched-up woollen masterpiece out of his noddy bag, and unravelled, unravelled, unravelled. Two hours later he was still unravelling. The sun was setting by the time he was done, but Dobson had no fear of the night, for he was sanguine. Frequently Asked Question : Why didn't the pamphleteer use his portable metal tapping machine to call for help? Answer : He was unable to use his portable metal tapping machine because there was no ground-level pneumatic hub within reach. The wool fully unravelled, Dobson tapped out his pipe on a stone and beckoned to one of the feral Toggenbergs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-03-1930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-03-12Thu, 12 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:16 On Dickensian Characters 12:52 Tokenism 17:01 Poumfrex 22:32 Soup Anniversary ON DICKENSIAN CHARACTERS To create a composite Dickensian character, it is necessary to cobble together elements from Adams, the Aged Parent, Arabella and Benjamin Allen, the Artful Dodger, Mr Ayresleigh, the Avenger, the Bachelor, Bayham and Laura Badger, the One-Eyed Bagman, the Bagnet family, Major Joseph Bagstock, Jack Bamber, Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Barbara, Miss Barbary, Martha Bardell, Thomas Bardell, Barkis, Old Bill Barley and Clara Barley, the Barnacle family, John Barsad, Charles Bates, Bazzard, Belle, Benjamin, Betsy, Mr Bevan, Biddy, Bitzer, Stephen Blackpool, Cornelia Blimber, Noddy and Henrietta Boffin, Josiah Bounderby, Lawrence Boythorn, Sally Brass, Sampson Brass, Madeline Bray, Walter Bray, Jefferson Brick, John Browdie, Good Mrs Brown, Alice Brown, Mr Brownlow, Inspector Bucket, Rosa Bud, Bumble, Jack Bunsby, Serjeant Buzfuz, Harriet, James and John Carker, Richard Carstone, Sydney Carton, John Baptist Cavalletto, the Reverend Chadband, the Cheeryble brothers and Frank, Edward and John Chester, Louisa Chick, Anne Chickenstalker, Anthony, Jonas, Martin and Old Martin Chuzzlewit, Ada Clare, Noah Claypole, Colonel Chowser, Compeyson, David Copperfield, Clara Copperfield, Mrs Corney, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim Cratchit, Creakle, Sophy Crewler, David Crimple, Mr Cripples, Canon Crisparkle, Vincent and Mrs Crummles, Jerry and Mrs Cruncher, Alderman Cute, Captain Cuttle, Solomon Daisy, Charles Darnay, Rosa Dartle, Dick Datchery, Lady Honoria and Sir Leicester Dedlock and Volumnia Dedlock, Ernest and Madame Defarge, Ned Dennis, Mr Dick, Young Dick, Deputy Winks, Mrs Dilber, Colonel Diver, Dodson and Fogg, Mr Dolls, Fanny and Florence Dombey and Paul Dombey and Paul Dombey Junior, Amy, Edward, Fanny, Frederick and William Dorrit, Daniel Doyce, Edwin Drood, Bentley Drummle, Duff, Durdles, Emily, the Marquis St Evremonde, Fagin, Fan, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Mr Feeder, Mr Fezziwig, Flora Finching, Horatio Fizkin, Affery and Jeremiah Flintwinch, Miss Flite, Fred, Mrs Gamp, Joe Gargery, Abel Garland, Mr and Mrs Garland, Walter Gay, Mr George, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, Mr Giles, Thomas and Tom Gradgrind, Mary Graham, Grainger, Edith Granger, Mr and Mrs Grayper, Grewgious, Arthur Gride, Gridley, Mr Grimwig, John Grueby, Mr and Mrs Gulpidge, Mrs Gummidge, William Guppy, John Harmon, Mrs Harris, James Harthouse, Estella Havisham, Miss Havisham, Arthur Havisham, Captain James Hawdon, Sir Mulberry Hawk, Mrs Heep, Uriah Heep, Werner Herzog, Charlie, Gaffer, and Lizzie Hexam, Betty Higden, Mrs Hominy, Luke Honeythunder, Hortense, Mr and Mrs Hubbles, Hugh, Leo and Mrs Hunter, Jem Hutley, Jaggers, Janet, John Jarndyce, John Jasper, Dr Anthony Jeddler and Grace, Marion and Martha Jeddler, Mr and Mrs Jellyby and Caddy Jellyby, Jenny, Alfred Jingle, Jo, Mr Jorkins, Captain Kedgick, Kenge, Kenwigs, Mrs Kidgerbury, Krook, Miss La Creevy, Alfred and Sophronia Lammle, Helena and Neville Landless, Mr Langdale, Miss Larkins, Edward and Edwin Leeford, Thomas Lenville, Lewsome, Mortimer Lightwood, Lillian, Mr Lillyvick, Tim Linkinwater, Littimer, Edmund Longford, Jarvis Lorry, Dr Losberne, Lowten, Mrs Lupin, Abel Magwitch, Peter Magnus, Dr Alexandre and […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-03-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:16 On Dickensian Characters 12:52 Tokenism 17:01 Poumfrex 22:32 Soup Anniversary ON DICKENSIAN CHARACTERS To create a composite Dickensian character, it is necessary to cobble together elements from Adams, the Aged Parent, Arabella and Benjamin Allen, the Artful Dodger, Mr Ayresleigh, the Avenger, the Bachelor, Bayham and Laura Badger, the One-Eyed Bagman, the Bagnet family, Major Joseph Bagstock, Jack Bamber, Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Barbara, Miss Barbary, Martha Bardell, Thomas Bardell, Barkis, Old Bill Barley and Clara Barley, the Barnacle family, John Barsad, Charles Bates, Bazzard, Belle, Benjamin, Betsy, Mr Bevan, Biddy, Bitzer, Stephen Blackpool, Cornelia Blimber, Noddy and Henrietta Boffin, Josiah Bounderby, Lawrence Boythorn, Sally Brass, Sampson Brass, Madeline Bray, Walter Bray, Jefferson Brick, John Browdie, Good Mrs Brown, Alice Brown, Mr Brownlow, Inspector Bucket, Rosa Bud, Bumble, Jack Bunsby, Serjeant Buzfuz, Harriet, James and John Carker, Richard Carstone, Sydney Carton, John Baptist Cavalletto, the Reverend Chadband, the Cheeryble brothers and Frank, Edward and John Chester, Louisa Chick, Anne Chickenstalker, Anthony, Jonas, Martin and Old Martin Chuzzlewit, Ada Clare, Noah Claypole, Colonel Chowser, Compeyson, David Copperfield, Clara Copperfield, Mrs Corney, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim Cratchit, Creakle, Sophy Crewler, David Crimple, Mr Cripples, Canon Crisparkle, Vincent and Mrs Crummles, Jerry and Mrs Cruncher, Alderman Cute, Captain Cuttle, Solomon Daisy, Charles Darnay, Rosa Dartle, Dick Datchery, Lady Honoria and Sir Leicester Dedlock and Volumnia Dedlock, Ernest and Madame Defarge, Ned Dennis, Mr Dick, Young Dick, Deputy Winks, Mrs Dilber, Colonel Diver, Dodson and Fogg, Mr Dolls, Fanny and Florence Dombey and Paul Dombey and Paul Dombey Junior, Amy, Edward, Fanny, Frederick and William Dorrit, Daniel Doyce, Edwin Drood, Bentley Drummle, Duff, Durdles, Emily, the Marquis St Evremonde, Fagin, Fan, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Mr Feeder, Mr Fezziwig, Flora Finching, Horatio Fizkin, Affery and Jeremiah Flintwinch, Miss Flite, Fred, Mrs Gamp, Joe Gargery, Abel Garland, Mr and Mrs Garland, Walter Gay, Mr George, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, Mr Giles, Thomas and Tom Gradgrind, Mary Graham, Grainger, Edith Granger, Mr and Mrs Grayper, Grewgious, Arthur Gride, Gridley, Mr Grimwig, John Grueby, Mr and Mrs Gulpidge, Mrs Gummidge, William Guppy, John Harmon, Mrs Harris, James Harthouse, Estella Havisham, Miss Havisham, Arthur Havisham, Captain James Hawdon, Sir Mulberry Hawk, Mrs Heep, Uriah Heep, Werner Herzog, Charlie, Gaffer, and Lizzie Hexam, Betty Higden, Mrs Hominy, Luke Honeythunder, Hortense, Mr and Mrs Hubbles, Hugh, Leo and Mrs Hunter, Jem Hutley, Jaggers, Janet, John Jarndyce, John Jasper, Dr Anthony Jeddler and Grace, Marion and Martha Jeddler, Mr and Mrs Jellyby and Caddy Jellyby, Jenny, Alfred Jingle, Jo, Mr Jorkins, Captain Kedgick, Kenge, Kenwigs, Mrs Kidgerbury, Krook, Miss La Creevy, Alfred and Sophronia Lammle, Helena and Neville Landless, Mr Langdale, Miss Larkins, Edward and Edwin Leeford, Thomas Lenville, Lewsome, Mortimer Lightwood, Lillian, Mr Lillyvick, Tim Linkinwater, Littimer, Edmund Longford, Jarvis Lorry, Dr Losberne, Lowten, Mrs Lupin, Abel Magwitch, Peter Magnus, Dr Alexandre and […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-03-1230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-02-19Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 Eleven Years Ago 06:43 Minibus Pariah 08:35 Vestige Of Trouser 11:25 An Elocution Lesson 14:26 A Pair Of Crabs 17:30 Pseudonymous Inaccuracy 19:02 Buttercup ELEVEN YEARS AGO Precisely eleven years ago today, on 24 January 2004, the Daily Mail reported that the Queen was due to have a knee operation, and that David Blunkett was accused of encouraging young persons to take drugs. Meanwhile, here at Hooting Yard, I posted a tale entitled The Phial Of Broth, or: The End Of C. W. Spraingue: Few people alive today remember the highly entertaining music hall act Guesbaldo Sopwith & His Amazing Tea Strainers. Sopwith--real name Cedric William Spraingue--was born in the Damp Building at Hooting Yard in 18-, and though his parents dragged him off a-circusing before he could even walk, he always recalled his birthplace with affection. At the turn of the century, when his popularity was at its height, Sopwith returned to Hooting Yard for the first time since infancy, to put on a Christmas Show for the bewildered and the fraught. The show was of course a tremendous success, and so thrilled were the burlap-shanked mayoral officers of the town that they threw an impromptu banquet for Sopwith. A tent was erected over the ice-rink, the rink itself covered in tough cork matting, and trestle-tables were carried in piled high with such delicacies as were available in Hooting Yard at that time. Sopwith was ushered to a seat at the top table, and a hush descended on the tent as the first course was brought in by the Hooting Yard Duckpond-Cleaner, whose name was Cackbag. This geriatric half-wit carried a capacious tureen containing gallons upon gallons of an iridescent broth, flavoured with pap, rime and bonemeal, and reportedly thoroughly indigestible. Cackbag slopped a ladleful of the broth into Sopwith's rusty bowl, and the majestic entertainer was about to spoon some of the piping hot liquid into his mouth, when of a sudden the tent was filled with cataclasm and pandaemonium. "Cedric William Spraingue!" The words rang out, re-echoing round the canvas walls. "Tundists have come for you! We will take you now!" Poor Sopwith, ashen, trembling and incontinent, could do little else but to obey the bidding of the unseen Tundists. As bolts of purple light spurted around the tent, and mesmerising noises deafened the townsfolk, he crawled to the entrance flap, a piteous figure on his hands and knees. As soon as he was through the flap, the uproar ceased, the tent interior calmed, the air grew still. Clamour and rack were no more: but Cedric William Spraingue, alias Guesbaldo Sopwith, was gone. Like so many others, he had been taken by the Tundists.Who knows why, or to what end? Like all who fell foul of Tundism, he was ne'er seen on earth again. His tea strainers, amazing though they may have been, were disposed of through a public auction on the first anniversary of his vanishment. All his other personal effects were sold off, burned, cast into canals, or donated to educational institutions for tiny ones. All, that is, except for one item. The banquet was abandoned after the Tundists had fallen upon the tent. Small urchins were plucked from the gutters to clear everything away, and were given the uneaten food as a reward. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-02-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 Eleven Years Ago 06:43 Minibus Pariah 08:35 Vestige Of Trouser 11:25 An Elocution Lesson 14:26 A Pair Of Crabs 17:30 Pseudonymous Inaccuracy 19:02 Buttercup ELEVEN YEARS AGO Precisely eleven years ago today, on 24 January 2004, the Daily Mail reported that the Queen was due to have a knee operation, and that David Blunkett was accused of encouraging young persons to take drugs. Meanwhile, here at Hooting Yard, I posted a tale entitled The Phial Of Broth, or: The End Of C. W. Spraingue: Few people alive today remember the highly entertaining music hall act Guesbaldo Sopwith & His Amazing Tea Strainers. Sopwith--real name Cedric William Spraingue--was born in the Damp Building at Hooting Yard in 18-, and though his parents dragged him off a-circusing before he could even walk, he always recalled his birthplace with affection. At the turn of the century, when his popularity was at its height, Sopwith returned to Hooting Yard for the first time since infancy, to put on a Christmas Show for the bewildered and the fraught. The show was of course a tremendous success, and so thrilled were the burlap-shanked mayoral officers of the town that they threw an impromptu banquet for Sopwith. A tent was erected over the ice-rink, the rink itself covered in tough cork matting, and trestle-tables were carried in piled high with such delicacies as were available in Hooting Yard at that time. Sopwith was ushered to a seat at the top table, and a hush descended on the tent as the first course was brought in by the Hooting Yard Duckpond-Cleaner, whose name was Cackbag. This geriatric half-wit carried a capacious tureen containing gallons upon gallons of an iridescent broth, flavoured with pap, rime and bonemeal, and reportedly thoroughly indigestible. Cackbag slopped a ladleful of the broth into Sopwith's rusty bowl, and the majestic entertainer was about to spoon some of the piping hot liquid into his mouth, when of a sudden the tent was filled with cataclasm and pandaemonium. "Cedric William Spraingue!" The words rang out, re-echoing round the canvas walls. "Tundists have come for you! We will take you now!" Poor Sopwith, ashen, trembling and incontinent, could do little else but to obey the bidding of the unseen Tundists. As bolts of purple light spurted around the tent, and mesmerising noises deafened the townsfolk, he crawled to the entrance flap, a piteous figure on his hands and knees. As soon as he was through the flap, the uproar ceased, the tent interior calmed, the air grew still. Clamour and rack were no more: but Cedric William Spraingue, alias Guesbaldo Sopwith, was gone. Like so many others, he had been taken by the Tundists.Who knows why, or to what end? Like all who fell foul of Tundism, he was ne'er seen on earth again. His tea strainers, amazing though they may have been, were disposed of through a public auction on the first anniversary of his vanishment. All his other personal effects were sold off, burned, cast into canals, or donated to educational institutions for tiny ones. All, that is, except for one item. The banquet was abandoned after the Tundists had fallen upon the tent. Small urchins were plucked from the gutters to clear everything away, and were given the uneaten food as a reward. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-02-1930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-02-12Thu, 12 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:04 Hooting Yard Haiku 04:43 On Ice! 05:09 Pontiff Mnemonic 06:11 Foiled Heist! 06:19 "As if kindled into anger now by..." 08:53 Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From the Stars, Chapter Thirteen 16:44 Boosters 16:56 Father Hopkins, SJ 17:08 Cows On A Collective Farm 17:14 My Little Blind Dolly 17:44 Ogre 17:50 "There was an interesting communication at, of..." 19:43 Hengist Pod Asks a Question 21:39 Cost O' Cows & Horses 28:54 Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes HOOTING YARD HAIKU In my debilitated state, felled by germs and much given to whimpering, writing one thousandish words upon any subject at all is quite beyond me. On the other hand, if readers are to read then writers must write. It occurred to me that I might just manage to bash out a few haiku, distillations in a few words of what we could call the Hooting Yardanschauung. A bog Beyond the viaduct In the downpour Dobson At his escritoire Scribbling twaddle A hobgoblin On Sawdust Bridge Eating a sausage Tiny Enid Flooring a ne'er-do-well And kicking his head in There are four for you to pore over. There may be more to come. Now for the Lemsip! ON ICE! I learned today that the spooky Scandinavian vampire novel Let The Right One In, first adapted--very successfully--for the screen, has now been turned into a theatrical production. But not just any old production. No, this is Let The Right One In--On Ice! Perhaps it is just me whose brain turns to putty when I hear those dread words--On Ice!--appended to a title. I can think of few less edifying experiences than watching a drama--any drama--given the skating-rink treatment. But audiences do seem to lap them up, so it strikes me that it might be financially profitable to turn my hand to such an adaptation. What would be even more unlikely than a moody vampire yarn? My initial thoughts turn to The Anatomy Of Melancholy On Ice!, or The Strange Death Of Liberal England On Ice! But I am drawn irresistibly to the titanic challenge that would be Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno On Ice! First I must contact Andrew Lloyd Webber to do the music. If he insists on roller skates rather than ice skates, I might be open to persuasion. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-02-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:04 Hooting Yard Haiku 04:43 On Ice! 05:09 Pontiff Mnemonic 06:11 Foiled Heist! 06:19 "As if kindled into anger now by..." 08:53 Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From the Stars, Chapter Thirteen 16:44 Boosters 16:56 Father Hopkins, SJ 17:08 Cows On A Collective Farm 17:14 My Little Blind Dolly 17:44 Ogre 17:50 "There was an interesting communication at, of..." 19:43 Hengist Pod Asks a Question 21:39 Cost O' Cows & Horses 28:54 Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes HOOTING YARD HAIKU In my debilitated state, felled by germs and much given to whimpering, writing one thousandish words upon any subject at all is quite beyond me. On the other hand, if readers are to read then writers must write. It occurred to me that I might just manage to bash out a few haiku, distillations in a few words of what we could call the Hooting Yardanschauung. A bog Beyond the viaduct In the downpour Dobson At his escritoire Scribbling twaddle A hobgoblin On Sawdust Bridge Eating a sausage Tiny Enid Flooring a ne'er-do-well And kicking his head in There are four for you to pore over. There may be more to come. Now for the Lemsip! ON ICE! I learned today that the spooky Scandinavian vampire novel Let The Right One In, first adapted--very successfully--for the screen, has now been turned into a theatrical production. But not just any old production. No, this is Let The Right One In--On Ice! Perhaps it is just me whose brain turns to putty when I hear those dread words--On Ice!--appended to a title. I can think of few less edifying experiences than watching a drama--any drama--given the skating-rink treatment. But audiences do seem to lap them up, so it strikes me that it might be financially profitable to turn my hand to such an adaptation. What would be even more unlikely than a moody vampire yarn? My initial thoughts turn to The Anatomy Of Melancholy On Ice!, or The Strange Death Of Liberal England On Ice! But I am drawn irresistibly to the titanic challenge that would be Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno On Ice! First I must contact Andrew Lloyd Webber to do the music. If he insists on roller skates rather than ice skates, I might be open to persuasion. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-02-1230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-02-05Thu, 05 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Dobson's Invitation 07:33 The Appian Way 09:38 The Stealthy Chump 15:12 The Pips 20:15 How I Thumped Certain Of My Tubs 24:38 Bonkers Maisie DOBSON'S INVITATION In the autumn of his years, Dobson received a letter asking him to contribute to a symposium. Such invitations were rare for the out of print pamphleteer, and he became unreasonably overexcited. Unable to think clearly, he wolfed down his breakfast and went for a brisk walk along the towpath of the old canal, shouting and chucking pebbles at swans. When he arrived home, sopping wet from the torrential downpour, he reread the letter. Apparently, what the sender called his "unique insight" would be welcomed for a symposium on The Importance Of The Cummerbund As A New Romantic Signifier, With Particular Reference To Spandau Ballet. Dobson had questions, but unfortunately his inamorata Marigold Chew, who he felt sure would know about these things, was off on a week-long gallivant. The pamphleteer had a vague idea what a cummerbund was, but that was about all of the symposium title he understood. He knew a bit about the Romantics, but what was a "New Romantic"? What exactly was meant by a "signifier"? And, most befuddling of all, was there really a ballet troupe resident at Spandau prison in Berlin, and if not, what on earth did the two words, thus conjoined, refer to? These were his questions. As he pored over the invitation, Dobson felt his excitement bubbling up again. He could barely recall when last he had been invited to anything, let alone an important symposium. Leaving the unanswered questions to waft in the mists of fuddle, he dashed off a letter of acceptance, not forgetting to ask that his bus fare be paid and a cup of tea provided. Then he crashed back out into the rain to buy a stamp at the post office and to plop his reply into a letterbox. On his way home along one of the less salubrious boulevards of Pointy Town, it occurred to Dobson that the answers to his questions could conceivably be common knowledge among the riffraff. It would not be the first time he discovered that things of which he was wholly ignorant were known by the most wretched and unsightly specimens of the lower orders. A gruesome little twerp, for example, had once vouchsafed to the pamphleteer not only the names of the four Liverpudlian moptops, but also told him which one wore spectacles and was married to an avant-garde Japanese performance artist. This information had proved invaluable when Dobson came to write his pamphlet Several Anagrams Of OO NOOKY, Informed By My Unique Insight Into Popular Culture (out of print). So it was that the pamphleteer buttonholed a number of hoi polloi in the street, shouting at them about romanticism and signifiers and ballet in German prisons. But by now the torrential rain had grown rainier and more torrential, and all those whose help Dobson sought swept past him, pausing only to curse or spit or kick. When eventually he made it home he was none the wiser. Dobson sat at his escritoire for hours, pencil poised over a blank sheet of paper. He was at a loss. Then he had a brainwave. He would go to the symposium and extemporize! So long as he included the key words, repeatedly, in whatever he said, he felt sure he could carry it off. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-02-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Dobson's Invitation 07:33 The Appian Way 09:38 The Stealthy Chump 15:12 The Pips 20:15 How I Thumped Certain Of My Tubs 24:38 Bonkers Maisie DOBSON'S INVITATION In the autumn of his years, Dobson received a letter asking him to contribute to a symposium. Such invitations were rare for the out of print pamphleteer, and he became unreasonably overexcited. Unable to think clearly, he wolfed down his breakfast and went for a brisk walk along the towpath of the old canal, shouting and chucking pebbles at swans. When he arrived home, sopping wet from the torrential downpour, he reread the letter. Apparently, what the sender called his "unique insight" would be welcomed for a symposium on The Importance Of The Cummerbund As A New Romantic Signifier, With Particular Reference To Spandau Ballet. Dobson had questions, but unfortunately his inamorata Marigold Chew, who he felt sure would know about these things, was off on a week-long gallivant. The pamphleteer had a vague idea what a cummerbund was, but that was about all of the symposium title he understood. He knew a bit about the Romantics, but what was a "New Romantic"? What exactly was meant by a "signifier"? And, most befuddling of all, was there really a ballet troupe resident at Spandau prison in Berlin, and if not, what on earth did the two words, thus conjoined, refer to? These were his questions. As he pored over the invitation, Dobson felt his excitement bubbling up again. He could barely recall when last he had been invited to anything, let alone an important symposium. Leaving the unanswered questions to waft in the mists of fuddle, he dashed off a letter of acceptance, not forgetting to ask that his bus fare be paid and a cup of tea provided. Then he crashed back out into the rain to buy a stamp at the post office and to plop his reply into a letterbox. On his way home along one of the less salubrious boulevards of Pointy Town, it occurred to Dobson that the answers to his questions could conceivably be common knowledge among the riffraff. It would not be the first time he discovered that things of which he was wholly ignorant were known by the most wretched and unsightly specimens of the lower orders. A gruesome little twerp, for example, had once vouchsafed to the pamphleteer not only the names of the four Liverpudlian moptops, but also told him which one wore spectacles and was married to an avant-garde Japanese performance artist. This information had proved invaluable when Dobson came to write his pamphlet Several Anagrams Of OO NOOKY, Informed By My Unique Insight Into Popular Culture (out of print). So it was that the pamphleteer buttonholed a number of hoi polloi in the street, shouting at them about romanticism and signifiers and ballet in German prisons. But by now the torrential rain had grown rainier and more torrential, and all those whose help Dobson sought swept past him, pausing only to curse or spit or kick. When eventually he made it home he was none the wiser. Dobson sat at his escritoire for hours, pencil poised over a blank sheet of paper. He was at a loss. Then he had a brainwave. He would go to the symposium and extemporize! So long as he included the key words, repeatedly, in whatever he said, he felt sure he could carry it off. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-02-0528:47fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-01-29Thu, 29 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:59 Galahad 07:19 Chickens In Charge 12:25 All Hail Gervase Beerpint 12:57 Ten Years Ago 17:17 Flopsy, Mopsy, And Satan 22:53 The Psychopath-Poacher GALAHAD In the long ago, I was a quiet and well-behaved child, and I rarely got into trouble. There was one occasion, however, when I caused something of a hoo-hah at my primary school. I did not think then, nor do I think now, that I did anything wrong. But I was reprimanded, and my mother was called to take me home, and for the remainder of my time at the school I was considered a "bad egg". The burning sense of injustice I felt half a century ago has stayed with me, and it is fair to say it has cast a pall over my life. It so happened that one wet afternoon our teacher Mrs Screech--I think she was related to M. A. Screech, the editor of many Penguin Classics and author of Laughter At The Foot Of The Cross--asked the class to talk about our pets. One by one my little schoolmates stood up and said things like "I have a cat named Tiddles" or "I have a dog called Scamp. He is a collie". When it was my turn, I stood up, took a matchbox out of my pocket, and said, "I have brought my pet with me. He is a pismire and his name is Galahad," and I opened the matchbox and let Galahad skitter about on my desk. For this innocent act, I was reprimanded and taken home and ever after seen as a bad egg and a troublemaker and a wretched, wretched boy. I was told that the word "pismire" was unseemly and that I was frightening the other children by letting a creepy-crawly loose in the classroom. There were other offences, apparently, a long list of them, all bound up in that single incident. But Galahad was my pet, and he was a pismire. I cannot recall when I discovered that "pismire" was an archaic term for "ant", but as soon as I heard it I knew it was suitable for Galahad. He was fully deserving of two syllables. He was a valiant little ant, and a loyal one. Every night, before I went to bed, I would take him out of the matchbox and put him in the garden so he could run about with all the other ants, and when I went to collect him in the morning he was always there, with his teeming hundreds or even thousands of fellows, and I would pick him up and put him in his matchbox and plop it into my pocket. It may be that Galahad was not precisely the same ant every day, though it was hard to tell, and I tried not to bother my little head about it. If he was the same ant, as I like to think, then he is extraordinarily long-lived, for an ant, as I still have him in a matchbox in my pocket as I write these words, fifty years after the burning injustice which has cast a pall over my life. It is a pall only lifted by Galahad himself. During our long and intense conversations, conducted in the language of ants, punctuated by screeching, he offers me solace and consolation. He is my pismire pal. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-01-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:59 Galahad 07:19 Chickens In Charge 12:25 All Hail Gervase Beerpint 12:57 Ten Years Ago 17:17 Flopsy, Mopsy, And Satan 22:53 The Psychopath-Poacher GALAHAD In the long ago, I was a quiet and well-behaved child, and I rarely got into trouble. There was one occasion, however, when I caused something of a hoo-hah at my primary school. I did not think then, nor do I think now, that I did anything wrong. But I was reprimanded, and my mother was called to take me home, and for the remainder of my time at the school I was considered a "bad egg". The burning sense of injustice I felt half a century ago has stayed with me, and it is fair to say it has cast a pall over my life. It so happened that one wet afternoon our teacher Mrs Screech--I think she was related to M. A. Screech, the editor of many Penguin Classics and author of Laughter At The Foot Of The Cross--asked the class to talk about our pets. One by one my little schoolmates stood up and said things like "I have a cat named Tiddles" or "I have a dog called Scamp. He is a collie". When it was my turn, I stood up, took a matchbox out of my pocket, and said, "I have brought my pet with me. He is a pismire and his name is Galahad," and I opened the matchbox and let Galahad skitter about on my desk. For this innocent act, I was reprimanded and taken home and ever after seen as a bad egg and a troublemaker and a wretched, wretched boy. I was told that the word "pismire" was unseemly and that I was frightening the other children by letting a creepy-crawly loose in the classroom. There were other offences, apparently, a long list of them, all bound up in that single incident. But Galahad was my pet, and he was a pismire. I cannot recall when I discovered that "pismire" was an archaic term for "ant", but as soon as I heard it I knew it was suitable for Galahad. He was fully deserving of two syllables. He was a valiant little ant, and a loyal one. Every night, before I went to bed, I would take him out of the matchbox and put him in the garden so he could run about with all the other ants, and when I went to collect him in the morning he was always there, with his teeming hundreds or even thousands of fellows, and I would pick him up and put him in his matchbox and plop it into my pocket. It may be that Galahad was not precisely the same ant every day, though it was hard to tell, and I tried not to bother my little head about it. If he was the same ant, as I like to think, then he is extraordinarily long-lived, for an ant, as I still have him in a matchbox in my pocket as I write these words, fifty years after the burning injustice which has cast a pall over my life. It is a pall only lifted by Galahad himself. During our long and intense conversations, conducted in the language of ants, punctuated by screeching, he offers me solace and consolation. He is my pismire pal. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-01-2930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-01-22Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:39 Encyclopaedia 05:34 Crow Windows : An Addendum 10:26 Peewit Patrol 16:45 The Clappers 23:35 Duggleby, Duggleby ENCYCLOPAEDIA It seems to me that Hooting Yard ought to have an overarching theme for the new year, a programme or project to act as a spur to my puny and often idle brainpans. The 2012 perpilocution project worked very well, for example, though similar schemes, based on diaries in 2013 and birds in 2014 petered out fairly rapidly. What, then, for 2015? I have been wondering for quite some time whether I ought to cobble together an Encyclopaedia of Everything. Ambitious as this project is, it would certainly keep me occupied for a year. The challenge is to subdivide Everything into 365 discrete units, allowing me to pluck one from the midden each day and to dazzle you lot with a well-crafted splurge of prose. A moment's thought, gazing out of the window at crows in the wind, is enough to convince me of the foolhardiness of this idea. But if, instead of dealing with Everything, I limit myself to one particular topic--say, birds, or eggs, or foopball stars of the 1950s, or instances of shadow puppetry in the cinema--I run the risk of boring both you lot and myself. There must be a happy medium, somewhere between the general and the particular, not quite Everything, perhaps, but an Encyclopaedia of Much. I then have to decide how to construct it, what arrangement to follow. The temptation to stare out of the window again becomes overwhelming. I could begin, I suppose, by telling you that a window is made out of glass, but that the crow I can see, in the failing light, though the window, is not made of glass. It is entirely possible to make a toy or decorative or model crow out of glass, but it is difficult to imagine a window made out of crows. Let us nonetheless imagine such a thing. You would need to gather together a fair number of crows, and jam them into a frame such that they filled the space within the frame. To keep the crows in place it would be best to slaughter them and then stuff them using your taxidermy skills. You would then remove the glass window in its frame and replace it with the crow window which, I think you will rapidly notice, occludes most if not all of the light blazing in from the outside. Only, right now, the light is failing, not blazing, so the new crow-window makes little difference. Either way, you still need some interior artificial light, such as that emitted by candle-flames, unless you wish to sit slumped in the darkness imagining, out on the lawn, a crow made of glass. Consider, then, how everything relates to everything else, birds to windows, taxidermy to candlelight, darkness to darkness at the dawning of the year. Encyclopaedia Topics Addressed : candles, crows, glass, stuffing. If you have found this postage enlightening, please add your ha'ppenyworth to Mr Key's pot. You may wish to donate even if you remain unenlightened and quite frankly baffled by the sheer stupidity of the foregoing. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-01-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:39 Encyclopaedia 05:34 Crow Windows : An Addendum 10:26 Peewit Patrol 16:45 The Clappers 23:35 Duggleby, Duggleby ENCYCLOPAEDIA It seems to me that Hooting Yard ought to have an overarching theme for the new year, a programme or project to act as a spur to my puny and often idle brainpans. The 2012 perpilocution project worked very well, for example, though similar schemes, based on diaries in 2013 and birds in 2014 petered out fairly rapidly. What, then, for 2015? I have been wondering for quite some time whether I ought to cobble together an Encyclopaedia of Everything. Ambitious as this project is, it would certainly keep me occupied for a year. The challenge is to subdivide Everything into 365 discrete units, allowing me to pluck one from the midden each day and to dazzle you lot with a well-crafted splurge of prose. A moment's thought, gazing out of the window at crows in the wind, is enough to convince me of the foolhardiness of this idea. But if, instead of dealing with Everything, I limit myself to one particular topic--say, birds, or eggs, or foopball stars of the 1950s, or instances of shadow puppetry in the cinema--I run the risk of boring both you lot and myself. There must be a happy medium, somewhere between the general and the particular, not quite Everything, perhaps, but an Encyclopaedia of Much. I then have to decide how to construct it, what arrangement to follow. The temptation to stare out of the window again becomes overwhelming. I could begin, I suppose, by telling you that a window is made out of glass, but that the crow I can see, in the failing light, though the window, is not made of glass. It is entirely possible to make a toy or decorative or model crow out of glass, but it is difficult to imagine a window made out of crows. Let us nonetheless imagine such a thing. You would need to gather together a fair number of crows, and jam them into a frame such that they filled the space within the frame. To keep the crows in place it would be best to slaughter them and then stuff them using your taxidermy skills. You would then remove the glass window in its frame and replace it with the crow window which, I think you will rapidly notice, occludes most if not all of the light blazing in from the outside. Only, right now, the light is failing, not blazing, so the new crow-window makes little difference. Either way, you still need some interior artificial light, such as that emitted by candle-flames, unless you wish to sit slumped in the darkness imagining, out on the lawn, a crow made of glass. Consider, then, how everything relates to everything else, birds to windows, taxidermy to candlelight, darkness to darkness at the dawning of the year. Encyclopaedia Topics Addressed : candles, crows, glass, stuffing. If you have found this postage enlightening, please add your ha'ppenyworth to Mr Key's pot. You may wish to donate even if you remain unenlightened and quite frankly baffled by the sheer stupidity of the foregoing. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-01-2230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2015-01-08Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 A Map Of Pointy Town 07:49 The Cadet And The Angel 12:43 Whither Art? 18:34 A Memorable Cracker Year 21:04 The Falls 23:18 Ulu Venv A MAP OF POINTY TOWN Over the past few weeks I have been following an intriguing flurry of correspondence in the readers' letters section of Bestial Grunting magazine. It began back in October--the "yellow month"--with a query from a certain Mr. P. X. Pyx, who wrote "I have been trying to obtain a map of Pointy Town, without success. Can any of your readers point me in the right direction?" In the next issue there were several replies, but most of them were facetious. They suggested plenty of directions in which Mr. Pyx might point himself, but the respondents were just having a spot of fun. The only sensible letter came from someone who described themselves (in an unpublished addendum) as an Official Pointy Town Tour Guide. It is worth mentioning here that such a position does not exist, as the only known tour guides in Pointy Town are resolutely unofficial, and proud of being so. But let that pass. This (unnamed) correspondent made the not unreasonable point that Mr. Pyx needed to divulge his own location before anybody could hope to have a clue in which direction he should be pointed in order to face either Pointy Town itself or a kiosk where he might make purchase of a map thereof. The editrix of Bestial Grunting awarded this letter five stars, and rightly so. The following week, a letter appeared undersigned "Mrs. P. X. Pyx, grieving relict of Mr. P. X. Pyx". Alongside the printed, typeset version of the letter, a photograph of the original was reproduced, showing the smudges occasioned during its composition by Mrs. Pyx's fallen tears, the better for readers to appreciate her grief. The widow explained that her late husband had dutifully followed the sundry pieces of advice given by the facetious letter-writers in the previous issue, but that in pointing himself in dozens of different directions at great speed, he had become dizzy in the head, and toppled over, and fallen into a pit of vipers he happened to be standing next to at the time. Mrs. Pyx added the plea that she herself now sought advice on obtaining a map of Pointy Town, as it was her dearest wish that her husband be buried clutching said map in his cold dead white hands, as soon as the authorities had devised a method of safely extricating his corpse from the viper pit. She did not divulge her location. Her letter was not awarded any stars by the editrix. By the time the next issue of the magazine appeared, it was November, the "month of chrysanthemums". Much of the letters page was taken up with protests that Mrs. Pyx had not been given any stars. Several readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions unless this injustice was corrected. The editrix devoted a full page elsewhere in the issue to a carefully-argued piece explaining her decision. Stars, she wrote, were not awarded lightly, and she was damned if she was going to cave in to the demands of her more petulant readers who misunderstood the protocols. The article was accompanied by a photograph of the letters editor plucking a star from the night sky, preliminary to affixing it to the print-ready page. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-01-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 A Map Of Pointy Town 07:49 The Cadet And The Angel 12:43 Whither Art? 18:34 A Memorable Cracker Year 21:04 The Falls 23:18 Ulu Venv A MAP OF POINTY TOWN Over the past few weeks I have been following an intriguing flurry of correspondence in the readers' letters section of Bestial Grunting magazine. It began back in October--the "yellow month"--with a query from a certain Mr. P. X. Pyx, who wrote "I have been trying to obtain a map of Pointy Town, without success. Can any of your readers point me in the right direction?" In the next issue there were several replies, but most of them were facetious. They suggested plenty of directions in which Mr. Pyx might point himself, but the respondents were just having a spot of fun. The only sensible letter came from someone who described themselves (in an unpublished addendum) as an Official Pointy Town Tour Guide. It is worth mentioning here that such a position does not exist, as the only known tour guides in Pointy Town are resolutely unofficial, and proud of being so. But let that pass. This (unnamed) correspondent made the not unreasonable point that Mr. Pyx needed to divulge his own location before anybody could hope to have a clue in which direction he should be pointed in order to face either Pointy Town itself or a kiosk where he might make purchase of a map thereof. The editrix of Bestial Grunting awarded this letter five stars, and rightly so. The following week, a letter appeared undersigned "Mrs. P. X. Pyx, grieving relict of Mr. P. X. Pyx". Alongside the printed, typeset version of the letter, a photograph of the original was reproduced, showing the smudges occasioned during its composition by Mrs. Pyx's fallen tears, the better for readers to appreciate her grief. The widow explained that her late husband had dutifully followed the sundry pieces of advice given by the facetious letter-writers in the previous issue, but that in pointing himself in dozens of different directions at great speed, he had become dizzy in the head, and toppled over, and fallen into a pit of vipers he happened to be standing next to at the time. Mrs. Pyx added the plea that she herself now sought advice on obtaining a map of Pointy Town, as it was her dearest wish that her husband be buried clutching said map in his cold dead white hands, as soon as the authorities had devised a method of safely extricating his corpse from the viper pit. She did not divulge her location. Her letter was not awarded any stars by the editrix. By the time the next issue of the magazine appeared, it was November, the "month of chrysanthemums". Much of the letters page was taken up with protests that Mrs. Pyx had not been given any stars. Several readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions unless this injustice was corrected. The editrix devoted a full page elsewhere in the issue to a carefully-argued piece explaining her decision. Stars, she wrote, were not awarded lightly, and she was damned if she was going to cave in to the demands of her more petulant readers who misunderstood the protocols. The article was accompanied by a photograph of the letters editor plucking a star from the night sky, preliminary to affixing it to the print-ready page. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2015-01-0829:29fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-12-18Thu, 18 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On Tongs 07:45 Jam Today 12:55 Exhaustion & Ignorance 15:27 A Letter From New England 20:40 Shutters And Brilliantine 24:56 184 Today! ON TONGS See, see? Whether it be burning coals or sugar lumps, his manipulation of the tongs is peerless. He is a dab hand. The dab, too, a demersal fish, he has plucked from the tank with the tongs, with great care, to watch it wriggle, before allowing it to plop back in, where it sinks gratefully to the sandy bottom. Coal, sugar, dab: these are but three of his tong manipulations. He was born to it. His papa thrust the tongs into his tiny infant fist. Papa was the Shatteridge Tongsman, as his papa had been before him, and his before his, all those papas stretching back generations since first the tongs were forged on the first Shatteridge Tongsman's legendary anvil. The first words he could speak were the words of the Song of Tongs. At six he was sent out from Shatteridge across the desolate tarpoota, practice tongs in his satchel. He confronted bears and monkeys and wolves, and human wolves in the form of the roaming tarpoota banditti. He learned the manipulation of the tongs. Epp, dubbed Glabb, taught him further tricks. Sweeping movements, significant passes, sleight of hand, delicacy, deftness. The wonder was that Epp, Glabb, was blind. He prowled the castle ramparts with, it was whispered, long invisible tongs. Many a flunkey felt their pinch from an inconceivable distance. Even papa was in awe of Epp, or Glabb. It was important to watch the wrigglings of the dab with great reserves of concentration, to memorise them. They told the weather, the crop failures, the outcome of battles. Not so the manipulation of the tongs with burning coal and with sugar lumps. Those were mere humdrum manipulations, to avert blazes or to sweeten infusions. It happened that a piece of burning coal might pop from the hearth on to the carpet, if the fire had not been properly set. Far better to pluck the coal from the carpet with the tongs than to let it burn and have need of flunkies with pails and buckets to extinguish it. It happened that an infusion might be bitter or sour and barely potable without the addition of a sugar lump. Better that it be sweetened than poured unwanted down the drain. But the dab, the dab! Epp, dubbed Glabb, was the repository of the dab's wrigglings lore. Incapable of seeing the wrigglings, he had them reported to him. Not by the Shatteridge Tongsman, whose job was to concentrate on the manipulation of the tongs. To have to watch the dab with piercing acuity the meanwhile would be asking too much, far too much. Thus by his side was the Dabwriggleman. It was another hereditary post, passed from papa to son. As for the dab, there was a pool for them, in the castle grounds. They settled there on the sandy bottom, being dabby, until such time as the tank dab died and had to replaced. Then the Dabnetman came lumbering towards the pond with his net. He cast it about with great skill, to ensure just one dab was caught in its mesh. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-12-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On Tongs 07:45 Jam Today 12:55 Exhaustion & Ignorance 15:27 A Letter From New England 20:40 Shutters And Brilliantine 24:56 184 Today! ON TONGS See, see? Whether it be burning coals or sugar lumps, his manipulation of the tongs is peerless. He is a dab hand. The dab, too, a demersal fish, he has plucked from the tank with the tongs, with great care, to watch it wriggle, before allowing it to plop back in, where it sinks gratefully to the sandy bottom. Coal, sugar, dab: these are but three of his tong manipulations. He was born to it. His papa thrust the tongs into his tiny infant fist. Papa was the Shatteridge Tongsman, as his papa had been before him, and his before his, all those papas stretching back generations since first the tongs were forged on the first Shatteridge Tongsman's legendary anvil. The first words he could speak were the words of the Song of Tongs. At six he was sent out from Shatteridge across the desolate tarpoota, practice tongs in his satchel. He confronted bears and monkeys and wolves, and human wolves in the form of the roaming tarpoota banditti. He learned the manipulation of the tongs. Epp, dubbed Glabb, taught him further tricks. Sweeping movements, significant passes, sleight of hand, delicacy, deftness. The wonder was that Epp, Glabb, was blind. He prowled the castle ramparts with, it was whispered, long invisible tongs. Many a flunkey felt their pinch from an inconceivable distance. Even papa was in awe of Epp, or Glabb. It was important to watch the wrigglings of the dab with great reserves of concentration, to memorise them. They told the weather, the crop failures, the outcome of battles. Not so the manipulation of the tongs with burning coal and with sugar lumps. Those were mere humdrum manipulations, to avert blazes or to sweeten infusions. It happened that a piece of burning coal might pop from the hearth on to the carpet, if the fire had not been properly set. Far better to pluck the coal from the carpet with the tongs than to let it burn and have need of flunkies with pails and buckets to extinguish it. It happened that an infusion might be bitter or sour and barely potable without the addition of a sugar lump. Better that it be sweetened than poured unwanted down the drain. But the dab, the dab! Epp, dubbed Glabb, was the repository of the dab's wrigglings lore. Incapable of seeing the wrigglings, he had them reported to him. Not by the Shatteridge Tongsman, whose job was to concentrate on the manipulation of the tongs. To have to watch the dab with piercing acuity the meanwhile would be asking too much, far too much. Thus by his side was the Dabwriggleman. It was another hereditary post, passed from papa to son. As for the dab, there was a pool for them, in the castle grounds. They settled there on the sandy bottom, being dabby, until such time as the tank dab died and had to replaced. Then the Dabnetman came lumbering towards the pond with his net. He cast it about with great skill, to ensure just one dab was caught in its mesh. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-12-1827:52fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-12-11Thu, 11 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:03 Ten Tarleton Tales--I 10:24 On A Ha-Ha Brouhaha 19:20 On Fictional Ducks TEN TARLETON TALES--I Note : Tarleton plays only a bit part in this first of Ten Tarleton Tales. But what a bit! At an advanced stage, the gunk is scraped off with a tallow-knife, collected in a pot, reduced by steaming and fed to seahorses. After several days the seahorses begin to display intricate and abnormal behaviour patterns. These patterns can be traced on graph paper with propelling-pencils and a ruler. Comparison with earlier graphs, done under a double blind test, has proved immensely illuminating. So lustrous, indeed, that copied out onto onion-skin paper and crumpled up, they can be inserted into glass bulbs and light a long corridor in a large building for upwards of four days. By the fourth day, they are dimming, there is a dying of the light, and sensitive persons mourn, as mourn they might. Having disposed of the gunk as described, the main bulk is best fed through a sieve. The most effective sieve to use is one with so-called "Swedenborgian angel" holes. These are not generally available in the shops, but can be ordered direct by post from the manufacturers, thus keeping costs surprisingly low. You might want to purchase two or three at one time. The fragile nature of the sieve means that it will not, alas, survive much use. It is easily distressed, especially when you try to force stuff through the holes, as certain boisterous and reckless persons tend to do. If you have such a person on your team, it is a good idea to keep them away from the sieves by telling them to go and keep an eye on the seahorses. Other pesky or exasperating team members can be usefully employed--and kept out of your hair--by laying the plumb line. This should consist of tent-pegs and butcher's string and stretch as far as the eye can see. The line should ideally be at the height of an average hollyhock, the calculation being made by consulting the tables at the back of the Annual Hollyhock Height Register. A copy of this ought to be in your local reference library, but will usually not be available for borrowing, so a literate and numerate member of the team, with a valid library ticket, should be delegated to copy out the required details. They can use the back of the graph paper on which the behaviour patterns of the seahorses have earlier been inscribed in majestic sweeping lines and arcs of unsurpassed beauty. Meanwhile, having fed the main bulk through the sieve into a bucket, the bucket can now be ferried to the platform. This should stand on sturdy props, the sturdier the better. Do not on any account use balsa wood. You are probably familiar with the case of Tarleton, and what transpired with his balsa wood props. If necessary, test the sturdiness using the standard tests of sturdiness which appear as Appendix VII in your pamphlet. Otherwise, proceed directly to the siphon and funnel palaver. Siphon the stuff out of the bucket, working slowly and methodically and seamlessly. As it passes through the funnel, take snapshots at one-minute intervals from the designated angles. These need not be full colour snapshots, unless they have been explicitly specified in the contract. That is certainly an unusual clause nowadays, and if it does appear, it is worth checking. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-12-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:03 Ten Tarleton Tales--I 10:24 On A Ha-Ha Brouhaha 19:20 On Fictional Ducks TEN TARLETON TALES--I Note : Tarleton plays only a bit part in this first of Ten Tarleton Tales. But what a bit! At an advanced stage, the gunk is scraped off with a tallow-knife, collected in a pot, reduced by steaming and fed to seahorses. After several days the seahorses begin to display intricate and abnormal behaviour patterns. These patterns can be traced on graph paper with propelling-pencils and a ruler. Comparison with earlier graphs, done under a double blind test, has proved immensely illuminating. So lustrous, indeed, that copied out onto onion-skin paper and crumpled up, they can be inserted into glass bulbs and light a long corridor in a large building for upwards of four days. By the fourth day, they are dimming, there is a dying of the light, and sensitive persons mourn, as mourn they might. Having disposed of the gunk as described, the main bulk is best fed through a sieve. The most effective sieve to use is one with so-called "Swedenborgian angel" holes. These are not generally available in the shops, but can be ordered direct by post from the manufacturers, thus keeping costs surprisingly low. You might want to purchase two or three at one time. The fragile nature of the sieve means that it will not, alas, survive much use. It is easily distressed, especially when you try to force stuff through the holes, as certain boisterous and reckless persons tend to do. If you have such a person on your team, it is a good idea to keep them away from the sieves by telling them to go and keep an eye on the seahorses. Other pesky or exasperating team members can be usefully employed--and kept out of your hair--by laying the plumb line. This should consist of tent-pegs and butcher's string and stretch as far as the eye can see. The line should ideally be at the height of an average hollyhock, the calculation being made by consulting the tables at the back of the Annual Hollyhock Height Register. A copy of this ought to be in your local reference library, but will usually not be available for borrowing, so a literate and numerate member of the team, with a valid library ticket, should be delegated to copy out the required details. They can use the back of the graph paper on which the behaviour patterns of the seahorses have earlier been inscribed in majestic sweeping lines and arcs of unsurpassed beauty. Meanwhile, having fed the main bulk through the sieve into a bucket, the bucket can now be ferried to the platform. This should stand on sturdy props, the sturdier the better. Do not on any account use balsa wood. You are probably familiar with the case of Tarleton, and what transpired with his balsa wood props. If necessary, test the sturdiness using the standard tests of sturdiness which appear as Appendix VII in your pamphlet. Otherwise, proceed directly to the siphon and funnel palaver. Siphon the stuff out of the bucket, working slowly and methodically and seamlessly. As it passes through the funnel, take snapshots at one-minute intervals from the designated angles. These need not be full colour snapshots, unless they have been explicitly specified in the contract. That is certainly an unusual clause nowadays, and if it does appear, it is worth checking. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-12-1128:20fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-12-04Thu, 04 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Reprehensible Tot 06:49 Annals Of The Seaside 11:06 On The Spittle Of Donkeys 18:18 Mr Key's Epistle To The Ephesians 22:31 A Visit To The Tearmonger THE REPREHENSIBLE TOT One foul and thunderous day, Prince Fulgencio was much pained to learn that there was, running amok in his castle, a reprehensible tot. "Whence comes this reprehensible tot?" he asked the henchman who had brought him this news. Prince Fulgencio hated all tots, infants, and tinies, with a hatred that burned his black soul. The henchman was ignorant of the provenance of the tot, but he was rightly terrified of Prince Fulgencio's rages, so he made up a story about the tot having been delivered to the castle in the talons of a fierce and gigantic bird of prey. There were many holes in this tale, and it would not have stood up to the merest scrutiny, but in his petulance and rage the Prince did not listen to it carefully, and he accepted it without question. "Find the tot and throw it down the deepest well in my domain," roared the Prince, "And then find the bird of prey and trap it in a net!" The henchman wrote these commands down in his henchpad, so he would not forget them, then clanked away in his armour to one of the many pantries, where he joined other henchmen who were carousing and glugging great flagons of fermented goaty milk and henbane. Not long thereafter, all the henchmen were sprawled on the floor of the pantry in a stupor, away with the fairies. Meanwhile, up in his chamber, Prince Fulgencio's rage was unabated. So terrific was his temper that he began to see hallucinations, not the least of which was the reprehensible tot itself, grown to an enormous size, and banging a spoon against a bowl. "I am at the end of my tether!" shrieked the Prince, "I am become unhinged!" It was rare for Prince Fulgencio to demonstrate such a level of self-awareness, though had he but paused to consider the matter he would rapidly have apprehended that there were neither tethers nor hinges about his person. On the contrary, he was dressed in his finery, silks and satins and rich brocade, garish, bright as fire, brighter than the sun which had not shone on his castle for years uncountable. "I have no need of sunlight," the Prince had said, in his calmer moments, "For I pour forth my own princely effulgence, so dazzling it blinds all those who have the temerity look upon my countenance." This was of course a delusion, but there was nobody in the castle who dared to tell Prince Fulgencio what was what. Nobody, that is, save for the reprehensible tot, who now came scampering into the Prince's chamber. It was much, much smaller than the phantom version born of the Prince's visions, yet no less alarming. It was unkempt, and spotted with patches of milky sick, and emitted a deafening keening. "Why are you not at the bottom of a well?" cried Prince Fulgencio. But the reprehensible tot had not yet learned to form coherent words. Gazing directly into the Prince's face, it screamed and wailed, and then belched up another gobbet of sick. The Prince called for his henchmen, but they did not come, for they were still away with the fairies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-12-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Reprehensible Tot 06:49 Annals Of The Seaside 11:06 On The Spittle Of Donkeys 18:18 Mr Key's Epistle To The Ephesians 22:31 A Visit To The Tearmonger THE REPREHENSIBLE TOT One foul and thunderous day, Prince Fulgencio was much pained to learn that there was, running amok in his castle, a reprehensible tot. "Whence comes this reprehensible tot?" he asked the henchman who had brought him this news. Prince Fulgencio hated all tots, infants, and tinies, with a hatred that burned his black soul. The henchman was ignorant of the provenance of the tot, but he was rightly terrified of Prince Fulgencio's rages, so he made up a story about the tot having been delivered to the castle in the talons of a fierce and gigantic bird of prey. There were many holes in this tale, and it would not have stood up to the merest scrutiny, but in his petulance and rage the Prince did not listen to it carefully, and he accepted it without question. "Find the tot and throw it down the deepest well in my domain," roared the Prince, "And then find the bird of prey and trap it in a net!" The henchman wrote these commands down in his henchpad, so he would not forget them, then clanked away in his armour to one of the many pantries, where he joined other henchmen who were carousing and glugging great flagons of fermented goaty milk and henbane. Not long thereafter, all the henchmen were sprawled on the floor of the pantry in a stupor, away with the fairies. Meanwhile, up in his chamber, Prince Fulgencio's rage was unabated. So terrific was his temper that he began to see hallucinations, not the least of which was the reprehensible tot itself, grown to an enormous size, and banging a spoon against a bowl. "I am at the end of my tether!" shrieked the Prince, "I am become unhinged!" It was rare for Prince Fulgencio to demonstrate such a level of self-awareness, though had he but paused to consider the matter he would rapidly have apprehended that there were neither tethers nor hinges about his person. On the contrary, he was dressed in his finery, silks and satins and rich brocade, garish, bright as fire, brighter than the sun which had not shone on his castle for years uncountable. "I have no need of sunlight," the Prince had said, in his calmer moments, "For I pour forth my own princely effulgence, so dazzling it blinds all those who have the temerity look upon my countenance." This was of course a delusion, but there was nobody in the castle who dared to tell Prince Fulgencio what was what. Nobody, that is, save for the reprehensible tot, who now came scampering into the Prince's chamber. It was much, much smaller than the phantom version born of the Prince's visions, yet no less alarming. It was unkempt, and spotted with patches of milky sick, and emitted a deafening keening. "Why are you not at the bottom of a well?" cried Prince Fulgencio. But the reprehensible tot had not yet learned to form coherent words. Gazing directly into the Prince's face, it screamed and wailed, and then belched up another gobbet of sick. The Prince called for his henchmen, but they did not come, for they were still away with the fairies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-12-0428:57fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-11-20Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 The Janitor And His Mop 05:27 The Janitor And His Pail 08:54 The Janitor And His Spirit Guide 15:24 The Janitor And His Decoy Kitchen 21:35 The New China THE JANITOR AND HIS MOP Few relationships are as close, and as intense, as that between a janitor and his mop. He may sense an attachment to his bunch of keys and his pail and his dog, but he cherishes his mop more than anything. I have spent several years interviewing janitors, and invariably they volunteer the information that their mop is their most treasured possession. They will say this, loudly and with vehemence, even when their dog is sitting obediently at their feet, gazing up at them in adoration. I am sure there is a monograph to be written, one day, upon janitors and their dogs, but I shall leave that joy to another scribbler. It is not that I am averse to dogs, well, I am, but it is not my aversion that dissuades me from writing about them. Were a janitor to spout effusive folderol on the subject of his dog, during one of my interviews, I would note it down accordingly and include it in my finished piece. I do not provide verbatim transcripts, preferring instead to give the reader an impressionistic or expressionistic or borderline hysterical portrait of the janitor through gorgeous words. Not all of these words will have been spoken by the janitor, nor by me, but they seem to hover in the aether in the janitor's vicinity. That is what I try, as best I am able, to communicate. It remains a remarkable fact that the thousands of janitors I have interviewed over the years have expressed boundless love for their mops. Often they are moved to tears, or, contrarily, to gales of unbridled glee, or sometimes both, turn and turn about. It is an emotionally wrenching experience, for them to be interviewed, and also for me, as the interviewer, broaching the topic of the mop and not knowing whether I will need to provide a napkin for them to dab at their tear-stained cheeks, or a similar napkin for myself to wipe off the flecks of spittle sprayed over me by janitors in the extremes of happiness. It occasionally happens that the dog, if it is frisky, will try to catch the napkin, either of the napkins, in its jaws, and scamper away with it, as if it were a bone. They are mysterious creatures, dogs, and often quite stupid. The mop, being inanimate, is much more predictable, and much less bother. For reasons I have not yet been able to fathom, no publisher has expressed an interest in my book of janitorial interviews. It thus remains in manuscript, hand-written, with a butcher's pencil, in a series of exercise books, some lined, some unlined. For the past several months I have had these books stored in a cupboard on the ground floor of a large building in a central location, near a bank, into the vaults of which I wish to transfer them for greater security, when I can afford the fee to do so. In the meantime, the cupboard is kept locked and watched over by a janitor, one of the few I have not taken time to interview. He prowls the corridors, rattling his bunch of keys, deploying his beloved mop, and followed everywhere by his dog. Insert apt Latin phrase to conclude this piece with a freight of significance. Originally posted in 2014. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-11-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 The Janitor And His Mop 05:27 The Janitor And His Pail 08:54 The Janitor And His Spirit Guide 15:24 The Janitor And His Decoy Kitchen 21:35 The New China THE JANITOR AND HIS MOP Few relationships are as close, and as intense, as that between a janitor and his mop. He may sense an attachment to his bunch of keys and his pail and his dog, but he cherishes his mop more than anything. I have spent several years interviewing janitors, and invariably they volunteer the information that their mop is their most treasured possession. They will say this, loudly and with vehemence, even when their dog is sitting obediently at their feet, gazing up at them in adoration. I am sure there is a monograph to be written, one day, upon janitors and their dogs, but I shall leave that joy to another scribbler. It is not that I am averse to dogs, well, I am, but it is not my aversion that dissuades me from writing about them. Were a janitor to spout effusive folderol on the subject of his dog, during one of my interviews, I would note it down accordingly and include it in my finished piece. I do not provide verbatim transcripts, preferring instead to give the reader an impressionistic or expressionistic or borderline hysterical portrait of the janitor through gorgeous words. Not all of these words will have been spoken by the janitor, nor by me, but they seem to hover in the aether in the janitor's vicinity. That is what I try, as best I am able, to communicate. It remains a remarkable fact that the thousands of janitors I have interviewed over the years have expressed boundless love for their mops. Often they are moved to tears, or, contrarily, to gales of unbridled glee, or sometimes both, turn and turn about. It is an emotionally wrenching experience, for them to be interviewed, and also for me, as the interviewer, broaching the topic of the mop and not knowing whether I will need to provide a napkin for them to dab at their tear-stained cheeks, or a similar napkin for myself to wipe off the flecks of spittle sprayed over me by janitors in the extremes of happiness. It occasionally happens that the dog, if it is frisky, will try to catch the napkin, either of the napkins, in its jaws, and scamper away with it, as if it were a bone. They are mysterious creatures, dogs, and often quite stupid. The mop, being inanimate, is much more predictable, and much less bother. For reasons I have not yet been able to fathom, no publisher has expressed an interest in my book of janitorial interviews. It thus remains in manuscript, hand-written, with a butcher's pencil, in a series of exercise books, some lined, some unlined. For the past several months I have had these books stored in a cupboard on the ground floor of a large building in a central location, near a bank, into the vaults of which I wish to transfer them for greater security, when I can afford the fee to do so. In the meantime, the cupboard is kept locked and watched over by a janitor, one of the few I have not taken time to interview. He prowls the corridors, rattling his bunch of keys, deploying his beloved mop, and followed everywhere by his dog. Insert apt Latin phrase to conclude this piece with a freight of significance. Originally posted in 2014. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-11-2027:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-11-13Thu, 13 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 Carruthers To The Rescue! 04:00 1848 06:40 Schneebaumhooft 12:09 Madge Strudwick 15:47 Crevasse Poppet 20:38 Ten Tarleton Tales--IV CARRUTHERS TO THE RESCUE! After my debaucheries in the fleshpots of the east, I sought further debaucheries in the fleshpots of the west. I was sated for a time but then I grew restless, and discovered fresh debaucheries in the fleshpots of the south. Some time later I went north, but in the north I found no fleshpots, just ice and snow and bitter gales and storms so cold my eyelids were frozen shut and I could not see. I stumbled about, blind upon an ice floe, and heard the ominous grunting of bears. The wind was howling, and my brain was howling, but I made no sound, for my frozen lips were blue, and fused together. This was not the death I had foreseen. I had imagined myself a dissolute voluptuary, sprawled on a divan, my belly full of wine, keeling over suddenly and unknowingly. The only sign of my passing would be when the resident band brought some hot carnal jazz number to an end and began to play a funereal dirge. Instead I was alone and cold in a blizzard of whiteness, about to be mauled and eaten by bears I could not even see. Then oh joy! I heard the clatter of a helicopter above, and soon enough I was hauled aboard to safety. When my eyelids thawed enough to open, I saw that my saviour was Carruthers. Carruthers, my old mucker from long ago, before my debaucheries in the fleshpots of the east and west and south. Carruthers to whom I had confessed, back then, that the pounding of those infernal drums was driving me mad. Carruthers who comforted me when I went to pieces in the tropics. Now here he was again, at the controls of the helicopter. "You came much too far north," he said, briefly removing the pipe clamped between his manly jaws, "You must have overshot the fleshpots on your journey. There are indeed northern fleshpots. I shall take you straight to them so you can continue with your debaucheries." "No!", I cried, as soon as my lips had thawed sufficiently to allow me to open my mouth, "I have learned a valuable moral lesson in the inhospitable bleakness of the ice-girt north. From this day on I shall shun debaucheries of all kinds, and devote my life to proper manly pursuits. Just keep me away from those drums and their infernal pounding." Carruthers nodded. And with that, he changed course, and took me to some corner of the earth with overcast skies and light breezes, mild and with occasional drizzle, temperate, temperate, and free of all temptations. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-11-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 Carruthers To The Rescue! 04:00 1848 06:40 Schneebaumhooft 12:09 Madge Strudwick 15:47 Crevasse Poppet 20:38 Ten Tarleton Tales--IV CARRUTHERS TO THE RESCUE! After my debaucheries in the fleshpots of the east, I sought further debaucheries in the fleshpots of the west. I was sated for a time but then I grew restless, and discovered fresh debaucheries in the fleshpots of the south. Some time later I went north, but in the north I found no fleshpots, just ice and snow and bitter gales and storms so cold my eyelids were frozen shut and I could not see. I stumbled about, blind upon an ice floe, and heard the ominous grunting of bears. The wind was howling, and my brain was howling, but I made no sound, for my frozen lips were blue, and fused together. This was not the death I had foreseen. I had imagined myself a dissolute voluptuary, sprawled on a divan, my belly full of wine, keeling over suddenly and unknowingly. The only sign of my passing would be when the resident band brought some hot carnal jazz number to an end and began to play a funereal dirge. Instead I was alone and cold in a blizzard of whiteness, about to be mauled and eaten by bears I could not even see. Then oh joy! I heard the clatter of a helicopter above, and soon enough I was hauled aboard to safety. When my eyelids thawed enough to open, I saw that my saviour was Carruthers. Carruthers, my old mucker from long ago, before my debaucheries in the fleshpots of the east and west and south. Carruthers to whom I had confessed, back then, that the pounding of those infernal drums was driving me mad. Carruthers who comforted me when I went to pieces in the tropics. Now here he was again, at the controls of the helicopter. "You came much too far north," he said, briefly removing the pipe clamped between his manly jaws, "You must have overshot the fleshpots on your journey. There are indeed northern fleshpots. I shall take you straight to them so you can continue with your debaucheries." "No!", I cried, as soon as my lips had thawed sufficiently to allow me to open my mouth, "I have learned a valuable moral lesson in the inhospitable bleakness of the ice-girt north. From this day on I shall shun debaucheries of all kinds, and devote my life to proper manly pursuits. Just keep me away from those drums and their infernal pounding." Carruthers nodded. And with that, he changed course, and took me to some corner of the earth with overcast skies and light breezes, mild and with occasional drizzle, temperate, temperate, and free of all temptations. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-11-1329:41fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-11-06Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 If You Go Away 02:36 BamBam Goes Haywire 05:53 Arch Of Triumph 10:33 Invoking Sumai 15:16 Invoking Sumai (2) 17:40 Myers & Butler 21:24 Dripping Trellis 24:35 Lost In Translation IF YOU GO AWAY If you go away, like I know you will, I will take the vase from the windowsill, and I'll take the blooms that are shoved in it, and I'll throw them out, 'cause you're such a git, if you go away, if you go away, if you go away. But if you stay, I'll give you some hay, I'll give you some straw, I'll lean on the fence, like the peasant I am, on my filthy farm, where the pigs are all sick, and the horses all limp, through the mud and the muck, as the rain pours in sheets, relentless and wet, like rain usually is, when it falls from the clouds, like the clouds in my brain, inside my glum head, the colour of curd, under my woolly hat, that's soaking and drenched, like my waterlogged boots, tied with frayed lengths of string, which are spattered with blood, from the butcher's shop, where I stole them for you, to wrap up your gifts, the hay and the straw, but used instead, to tie up my boots, when you went away, when you went away, when you went away. BAMBAM GOES HAYWIRE On Thursday morning, BamBam went haywire. That is all I am prepared to say on the subject. You may have questions, such as who or what is BamBam?, what is the etymology of the word haywire?, and so on, but quite frankly it is not up to me to spoonfeed you. I fail to see why you should not do your own research into these matters, thus freeing me for more important tasks, such as taking a well-earned nap, smoking a gasper while gazing out of the window, or stuffing my gob with a pile of Smokers' Poptarts. Any of those choices would be a better use of my time than telling you about BamBam going haywire. Oh please please Mr Key!, I hear you wail, Do tell us more! To which I reply, certainly not. At most, I might give you some pointers to help you conduct your own research. For the etymology of the word haywire, I can think of no better reference source than the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, wait, I can think of a better source--Dobson's pamphlet Everything You Ought To Know About Hay, And Words Beginning With Hay- (out of print). In fact I am surprised not to have recommended this pamphlet to you before. It is the most haycentric of all Dobson's works, and its first edition, of ten Gestetnered copies, actually had a cover to which strands of real hay were affixed, with glue. This had the unfortunate effect of partly obscuring the title, with the result that the pamphlet sold even fewer copies than was usually the case. If you do your research thoroughly, you will probably be exhausted by the time you are fully conversant with the word haywire. Your head will be so crammed with new and exciting information that there will be no room left to add anything at all. That being so, it seems rather pointless for me to tell you where you could discover further information about BamBam. Nevertheless, there will always be two or three scallywags who don't know when to stop, who will plough on regardless. Such persons are very exasperating, like hyperactive tots, and should not be encouraged. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-11-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 If You Go Away 02:36 BamBam Goes Haywire 05:53 Arch Of Triumph 10:33 Invoking Sumai 15:16 Invoking Sumai (2) 17:40 Myers & Butler 21:24 Dripping Trellis 24:35 Lost In Translation IF YOU GO AWAY If you go away, like I know you will, I will take the vase from the windowsill, and I'll take the blooms that are shoved in it, and I'll throw them out, 'cause you're such a git, if you go away, if you go away, if you go away. But if you stay, I'll give you some hay, I'll give you some straw, I'll lean on the fence, like the peasant I am, on my filthy farm, where the pigs are all sick, and the horses all limp, through the mud and the muck, as the rain pours in sheets, relentless and wet, like rain usually is, when it falls from the clouds, like the clouds in my brain, inside my glum head, the colour of curd, under my woolly hat, that's soaking and drenched, like my waterlogged boots, tied with frayed lengths of string, which are spattered with blood, from the butcher's shop, where I stole them for you, to wrap up your gifts, the hay and the straw, but used instead, to tie up my boots, when you went away, when you went away, when you went away. BAMBAM GOES HAYWIRE On Thursday morning, BamBam went haywire. That is all I am prepared to say on the subject. You may have questions, such as who or what is BamBam?, what is the etymology of the word haywire?, and so on, but quite frankly it is not up to me to spoonfeed you. I fail to see why you should not do your own research into these matters, thus freeing me for more important tasks, such as taking a well-earned nap, smoking a gasper while gazing out of the window, or stuffing my gob with a pile of Smokers' Poptarts. Any of those choices would be a better use of my time than telling you about BamBam going haywire. Oh please please Mr Key!, I hear you wail, Do tell us more! To which I reply, certainly not. At most, I might give you some pointers to help you conduct your own research. For the etymology of the word haywire, I can think of no better reference source than the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, wait, I can think of a better source--Dobson's pamphlet Everything You Ought To Know About Hay, And Words Beginning With Hay- (out of print). In fact I am surprised not to have recommended this pamphlet to you before. It is the most haycentric of all Dobson's works, and its first edition, of ten Gestetnered copies, actually had a cover to which strands of real hay were affixed, with glue. This had the unfortunate effect of partly obscuring the title, with the result that the pamphlet sold even fewer copies than was usually the case. If you do your research thoroughly, you will probably be exhausted by the time you are fully conversant with the word haywire. Your head will be so crammed with new and exciting information that there will be no room left to add anything at all. That being so, it seems rather pointless for me to tell you where you could discover further information about BamBam. Nevertheless, there will always be two or three scallywags who don't know when to stop, who will plough on regardless. Such persons are very exasperating, like hyperactive tots, and should not be encouraged. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-11-0629:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-10-23Thu, 23 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 The Expurgated Lovecraft 03:17 Toots 07:29 The Farmer Rebukes His Spade 11:09 Higgledy-Piggledy 16:35 Ten Tarleton Tales--VIII 20:05 Savagery In Splat THE EXPURGATED LOVECRAFT The other day I met a man who has devoted the past several years to a singular literary project. His aim is to produce a bowdlerised version of the complete works of H. P. Lovecraft, in which all reference to the spine-tingling and the spooky, the eldritch and the uncanny, is expunged. I was able immediately to grasp the value of this scheme. Lovecraft is a fascinating writer, but there must be many potential readers who are deterred from his work because, quite frankly, they do not wish to get the collywobbles. Excise the spine-tingling and the spooky, the eldritch and the uncanny, and an entire new constituency of fans will be created. I asked my new friend how he went about the creation of an expurgated Lovecraft. He explained that he began by simply deleting all the terrifying adjectives, adverbs, verbs and nouns. This had the unintended consequence of rendering much of Lovecraft's prose "bitty and near-incomprehensible", as he put it. Whole passages were reduced to strings of prepositions. Though commendably brief, the resulting text lacked heft. So then, he said proudly, his real work began. He realised that he could reinstate a certain amount of readability, and up the word-count, by replacing, for example, Shoggoth with a pretty vase of flowers, or hideous tentacles with gambolling bunny rabbits. I pointed out to him that some people--not least myself--found rabbits utterly frightening, and he promised to look again at his revisions. Then he bid me farewell, and I sat alone at the cafe table, mercilessly correlating all the contents of my mind. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-10-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 The Expurgated Lovecraft 03:17 Toots 07:29 The Farmer Rebukes His Spade 11:09 Higgledy-Piggledy 16:35 Ten Tarleton Tales--VIII 20:05 Savagery In Splat THE EXPURGATED LOVECRAFT The other day I met a man who has devoted the past several years to a singular literary project. His aim is to produce a bowdlerised version of the complete works of H. P. Lovecraft, in which all reference to the spine-tingling and the spooky, the eldritch and the uncanny, is expunged. I was able immediately to grasp the value of this scheme. Lovecraft is a fascinating writer, but there must be many potential readers who are deterred from his work because, quite frankly, they do not wish to get the collywobbles. Excise the spine-tingling and the spooky, the eldritch and the uncanny, and an entire new constituency of fans will be created. I asked my new friend how he went about the creation of an expurgated Lovecraft. He explained that he began by simply deleting all the terrifying adjectives, adverbs, verbs and nouns. This had the unintended consequence of rendering much of Lovecraft's prose "bitty and near-incomprehensible", as he put it. Whole passages were reduced to strings of prepositions. Though commendably brief, the resulting text lacked heft. So then, he said proudly, his real work began. He realised that he could reinstate a certain amount of readability, and up the word-count, by replacing, for example, Shoggoth with a pretty vase of flowers, or hideous tentacles with gambolling bunny rabbits. I pointed out to him that some people--not least myself--found rabbits utterly frightening, and he promised to look again at his revisions. Then he bid me farewell, and I sat alone at the cafe table, mercilessly correlating all the contents of my mind. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-10-2326:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-10-16Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 Ou sont les neiges d'antan? 09:05 Dabbling In Etiquette 12:26 Monkey In Ice 21:02 Sci-Fi For Diabetics 24:20 BamBam Goes Haywire OU SONT LES NEIGES D'ANTAN? Where are the snows of yesteryear? They have been shovelled into a refrigerated container and ferried to a remote storage facility, also refrigerated, where they are kept in specially-designed "snow bins". How can I gain access to the storage facility? With difficulty. As stated, it is remote. Assuming for the moment that I have at my disposal a tremendous form of transport that could zoom me to the remotest parts of the earth in a matter of minutes, in which direction should I point it before depressing the big knob with "Go!" etched upon it? You do not actually have such a form of transport, do you? Well, no, but let's just say that I did. Your direction of travel would depend upon where you are starting from. I am in Pointy Town. There is plenty of snow in Pointy Town. Each winter it settles on the pointiest bits of town and remains there, cold and white and frozen, until the chirruping of little birdies in the springtime. Why in heaven's name would you need access to the snow bins in the remote storage facility? Whim. Whim? If whim is not a good enough reason, then let us say I have been appointed by the burghers of Pointy Town to compare our own snow with the snows of yesteryear, and to make my report accordingly. These burghers, are they in their right minds? That is a moot point. I know one of them suffered a bash on the bonce with a snow-shovel last winter and has not been quite the same since. He jabbers and drools and drools and jabbers, turn and turn about. And was it this particular burgher who commissioned you to examine the snows of yesteryear? Yes, it was. Did you not stop to consider that any comparison you made between the snow currently enveloping Pointy Town and the snows of yesteryear would be futile? They josh that my middle name is Futility. So you are the go-to guy for fool's errands? I live in a Paradise of Fools. I thought you said you lived in Pointy Town? Are you trying to pull the wool over my eye? Do you mean eyes? No, eye. I am Cyclopean. A Cyclopean janitor of snow bins? Yes. Ah, I read about you in The Cyclopean Janitor of Snow Bins, a bestselling blockbuster paperback by Pebblehead! In which, I have to say, I was wholly misrepresented, so much so that I have taken legal action with a view to having the entire run of several million copies pulped. If you succeed, what will you do with all that pulp? I will shovel it into an unrefrigerated container and ferry it to a remote storage facility, also unrefrigerated, and keep it in specially-designed "pulp bins". Would that be the same remote storage facility where you keep the snows of yesteryear? No, the one is refrigerated and the other not. So you would need to be in two places at once to perform your janitorial duties? No, I would employ a Cyclopean pulp bin janitor. If I pluck out one of mine eyes, could I have the job? There is a waiting list of applicants. How could I shove myself to the front of that list? With sharp elbows. Consider them sharpened! Welcome aboard. DABBLING IN ETIQUETTE […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-10-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 Ou sont les neiges d'antan? 09:05 Dabbling In Etiquette 12:26 Monkey In Ice 21:02 Sci-Fi For Diabetics 24:20 BamBam Goes Haywire OU SONT LES NEIGES D'ANTAN? Where are the snows of yesteryear? They have been shovelled into a refrigerated container and ferried to a remote storage facility, also refrigerated, where they are kept in specially-designed "snow bins". How can I gain access to the storage facility? With difficulty. As stated, it is remote. Assuming for the moment that I have at my disposal a tremendous form of transport that could zoom me to the remotest parts of the earth in a matter of minutes, in which direction should I point it before depressing the big knob with "Go!" etched upon it? You do not actually have such a form of transport, do you? Well, no, but let's just say that I did. Your direction of travel would depend upon where you are starting from. I am in Pointy Town. There is plenty of snow in Pointy Town. Each winter it settles on the pointiest bits of town and remains there, cold and white and frozen, until the chirruping of little birdies in the springtime. Why in heaven's name would you need access to the snow bins in the remote storage facility? Whim. Whim? If whim is not a good enough reason, then let us say I have been appointed by the burghers of Pointy Town to compare our own snow with the snows of yesteryear, and to make my report accordingly. These burghers, are they in their right minds? That is a moot point. I know one of them suffered a bash on the bonce with a snow-shovel last winter and has not been quite the same since. He jabbers and drools and drools and jabbers, turn and turn about. And was it this particular burgher who commissioned you to examine the snows of yesteryear? Yes, it was. Did you not stop to consider that any comparison you made between the snow currently enveloping Pointy Town and the snows of yesteryear would be futile? They josh that my middle name is Futility. So you are the go-to guy for fool's errands? I live in a Paradise of Fools. I thought you said you lived in Pointy Town? Are you trying to pull the wool over my eye? Do you mean eyes? No, eye. I am Cyclopean. A Cyclopean janitor of snow bins? Yes. Ah, I read about you in The Cyclopean Janitor of Snow Bins, a bestselling blockbuster paperback by Pebblehead! In which, I have to say, I was wholly misrepresented, so much so that I have taken legal action with a view to having the entire run of several million copies pulped. If you succeed, what will you do with all that pulp? I will shovel it into an unrefrigerated container and ferry it to a remote storage facility, also unrefrigerated, and keep it in specially-designed "pulp bins". Would that be the same remote storage facility where you keep the snows of yesteryear? No, the one is refrigerated and the other not. So you would need to be in two places at once to perform your janitorial duties? No, I would employ a Cyclopean pulp bin janitor. If I pluck out one of mine eyes, could I have the job? There is a waiting list of applicants. How could I shove myself to the front of that list? With sharp elbows. Consider them sharpened! Welcome aboard. DABBLING IN ETIQUETTE […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-10-1628:36fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-09-25Thu, 25 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Our Man In Ulm 05:09 Our Man In Ulm, Still 08:29 The Truncheon Brothers 12:27 I Am A Willow Warbler 15:38 The Family Pig 21:09 A Brisk Splosh OUR MAN IN ULM Our man in Ulm has sent this report from the Festival of Argumentative Music in Ulm: The annual Festival of Argumentative Music in Ulm has become a highlight on the calendar for lovers of grumpy German improv jazz, and this year they received a special treat with a performance by grumpy German improv jazz titan Horst Blot. With his usual septet augmented by glockenspiel, steam hammers, Japanese cardboard trombone, and an electronically-enhanced janitor's mop, Blot devoted his entire four-hour set to a startling reinvention of the old jazz standard Chutney On My Spats. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the concert. I had a very trying day. In the morning I had an ague and the quinsy, and then shortly after lunch I was stricken by jellybrain and cork-in-the-ears. In addition, I had to deal with a gas leak and a letter demanding the return of an overdue library book. The final straw was the discovery that my press pass had expired, meaning I would have to pay out of my own pocket for a ticket to the Festival. Horst Blot may well be a grumpy German improv jazz titan, but I am not going to open my wallet for him. Instead, I waited until the next day to read the review in Godawful Racket magazine. What a load of codswallop! It was written by Primrose Dent, who opined that the music was, among other things, searing, bippety-boppety, tough, chewy, Machiavellian, plinky-plonky, mordant, splenetic, sunlit, dappled, goosebumpy, tenebrous, and "a bit like a choc ice". In other words, she simply pulled a load of adjectives out of a bag and strung them together. Now I have done exactly the same thing, in some of my reports from Ulm, in the days when I used to have a valid press pass. I wrote out hundreds of adjectives on hundreds of scraps of paper, stuffed them into a pippy bag and then plucked out a few dozen each time I had to write an article on, say, the bus stops of Ulm, or the gazebos of beekeepers in Ulm, or indeed an earlier Horst Blot concert at the Festival of Argumentative Music in Ulm, where he played a shorter, three-and-a-half-hour version of Chutney On My Spats, without the glockenspiel, steam hammers, Japanese cardboard trombone, and electronically-enhanced janitor's mop, but with a steam glockenspiel, a Japanese cardboard mop, and a bowl of rice pudding. My articles may have been codswallop too, but they were emotionally-wrenching codswallop which elicited great heaving sobs from my readers. I know this because they used to write to me, although I was never able to read their letters, smudged as they were with salty tears. When I have recovered my wits I shall write a letter to Godawful Racket magazine pointing out that Primrose Dent has been deaf as a post since that episode in the wind tunnel at the aerodrome. She also puts her adjectives in the wrong sort of bag. Over and out, Your Man In Ulm. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-09-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Our Man In Ulm 05:09 Our Man In Ulm, Still 08:29 The Truncheon Brothers 12:27 I Am A Willow Warbler 15:38 The Family Pig 21:09 A Brisk Splosh OUR MAN IN ULM Our man in Ulm has sent this report from the Festival of Argumentative Music in Ulm: The annual Festival of Argumentative Music in Ulm has become a highlight on the calendar for lovers of grumpy German improv jazz, and this year they received a special treat with a performance by grumpy German improv jazz titan Horst Blot. With his usual septet augmented by glockenspiel, steam hammers, Japanese cardboard trombone, and an electronically-enhanced janitor's mop, Blot devoted his entire four-hour set to a startling reinvention of the old jazz standard Chutney On My Spats. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the concert. I had a very trying day. In the morning I had an ague and the quinsy, and then shortly after lunch I was stricken by jellybrain and cork-in-the-ears. In addition, I had to deal with a gas leak and a letter demanding the return of an overdue library book. The final straw was the discovery that my press pass had expired, meaning I would have to pay out of my own pocket for a ticket to the Festival. Horst Blot may well be a grumpy German improv jazz titan, but I am not going to open my wallet for him. Instead, I waited until the next day to read the review in Godawful Racket magazine. What a load of codswallop! It was written by Primrose Dent, who opined that the music was, among other things, searing, bippety-boppety, tough, chewy, Machiavellian, plinky-plonky, mordant, splenetic, sunlit, dappled, goosebumpy, tenebrous, and "a bit like a choc ice". In other words, she simply pulled a load of adjectives out of a bag and strung them together. Now I have done exactly the same thing, in some of my reports from Ulm, in the days when I used to have a valid press pass. I wrote out hundreds of adjectives on hundreds of scraps of paper, stuffed them into a pippy bag and then plucked out a few dozen each time I had to write an article on, say, the bus stops of Ulm, or the gazebos of beekeepers in Ulm, or indeed an earlier Horst Blot concert at the Festival of Argumentative Music in Ulm, where he played a shorter, three-and-a-half-hour version of Chutney On My Spats, without the glockenspiel, steam hammers, Japanese cardboard trombone, and electronically-enhanced janitor's mop, but with a steam glockenspiel, a Japanese cardboard mop, and a bowl of rice pudding. My articles may have been codswallop too, but they were emotionally-wrenching codswallop which elicited great heaving sobs from my readers. I know this because they used to write to me, although I was never able to read their letters, smudged as they were with salty tears. When I have recovered my wits I shall write a letter to Godawful Racket magazine pointing out that Primrose Dent has been deaf as a post since that episode in the wind tunnel at the aerodrome. She also puts her adjectives in the wrong sort of bag. Over and out, Your Man In Ulm. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-09-2529:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-09-18Thu, 18 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Captain Nitty's Lung Collapses 05:45 Captain Nitty's Attribute 09:32 Bracing Walks In Bleak Settings 13:05 Cat Versus Booby 17:32 Weird Oranges 21:28 Speckles And Splodges And Smudges CAPTAIN NITTY'S LUNG COLLAPSES One grim bright morning, Captain Nitty was walking along an imposing and expansive boulevard when one of his lungs collapsed. "Oof!" he gasped, before crumpling in an untidy angular heap upon the paving slabs. As he fell, his captainy cap fell off his head, and, landing on its brim, rolled into the gutter, where it was worried by a stray dog. The dog had strayed from its owner, who was known to Captain Nitty, though the dog was not. Captain Nitty had what is known as dog-blindness, in that he could never perceive any dog with any of his five senses. So, even had he had his wits about him, rather than being sprawled gasping on the pavement, he would not have been aware of the dog gnawing and pawing his cap. Later, in a bed on a ward in the clinic to where he had been ferried by a rickety and inefficient ambulance, Captain Nitty asked the clinic chaplain, who was sitting at his bedside telling the seven last words from the cross on his rosary beads, where his cap was. The chaplain replied in Latin, a language with which Captain Nitty was unfamiliar. What he said was, "Do not interrupt me with questions about your cap when I am praying for the salvation of your immortal soul through the words of Christ in his last extremity". Meanwhile, the dog had carried the cap, in its mouth, away from the boulevard to a patch of gorse and scrub over by the viaduct. Here, it lost interest in the cap and deposited it in a puddle. Then it scampered off to frighten some tiny tots gathered around a spooky fathomless inky-black pond. Captain Nitty made a miraculous recovery and that very same day, at around teatime, was back on his feet. He discharged himself from the clinic and went in search of his cap. Does it bring tears to your eyes, the thought of him, bare-headed and desperate, looking in all the wrong places, plagued by invisible dogs, day after grim bright day, fruitlessly, fruitlessly, fruitlessly? It should. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-09-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Captain Nitty's Lung Collapses 05:45 Captain Nitty's Attribute 09:32 Bracing Walks In Bleak Settings 13:05 Cat Versus Booby 17:32 Weird Oranges 21:28 Speckles And Splodges And Smudges CAPTAIN NITTY'S LUNG COLLAPSES One grim bright morning, Captain Nitty was walking along an imposing and expansive boulevard when one of his lungs collapsed. "Oof!" he gasped, before crumpling in an untidy angular heap upon the paving slabs. As he fell, his captainy cap fell off his head, and, landing on its brim, rolled into the gutter, where it was worried by a stray dog. The dog had strayed from its owner, who was known to Captain Nitty, though the dog was not. Captain Nitty had what is known as dog-blindness, in that he could never perceive any dog with any of his five senses. So, even had he had his wits about him, rather than being sprawled gasping on the pavement, he would not have been aware of the dog gnawing and pawing his cap. Later, in a bed on a ward in the clinic to where he had been ferried by a rickety and inefficient ambulance, Captain Nitty asked the clinic chaplain, who was sitting at his bedside telling the seven last words from the cross on his rosary beads, where his cap was. The chaplain replied in Latin, a language with which Captain Nitty was unfamiliar. What he said was, "Do not interrupt me with questions about your cap when I am praying for the salvation of your immortal soul through the words of Christ in his last extremity". Meanwhile, the dog had carried the cap, in its mouth, away from the boulevard to a patch of gorse and scrub over by the viaduct. Here, it lost interest in the cap and deposited it in a puddle. Then it scampered off to frighten some tiny tots gathered around a spooky fathomless inky-black pond. Captain Nitty made a miraculous recovery and that very same day, at around teatime, was back on his feet. He discharged himself from the clinic and went in search of his cap. Does it bring tears to your eyes, the thought of him, bare-headed and desperate, looking in all the wrong places, plagued by invisible dogs, day after grim bright day, fruitlessly, fruitlessly, fruitlessly? It should. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-09-1829:38fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-09-04Thu, 04 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 18:19 139 Pamphlets (Out Of Print) 20:19 168 Pamphlets (Out Of Print) 139 PAMPHLETS (OUT OF PRINT) It is traditional, at the turning of the year, for reader Mike Jennings to update his exhaustive bibliography of out of print pamphlets by Dobson. "It seems that 2011 has been a lean year indeed for Dobsonian scholarship," writes Mr Jennings from the pompous land of his banishment. Nevertheless, he has managed to track down eleven, or rather twelve, previously unidentified titles, and he is once again to be commended for his thoroughness, not least in assigning those pesky, but lovely, Blotzmann Numbers to the pamphlets he has unearthed. One day we might be able to work out their significance. There are earlier listings for pamphlets numbered 1 to 104, and pamphlets numbered 105 to 128. Please note that, unless stated otherwise, all titles are out of print. 129. The Dredging Of The Canal At Gaarg On The Eve Of The Batcake-Akido Conference. 130. Ducks And Criminals And Well-Maintained Reservoirs. 131. Eleven Essays On Reservoir Maintenance, By One Who Knows. 132. Things Beginning With B. 133. On The Inadvisability Of Taking Daytime Naps During The Unfolding Of Cataclysmic World Events. 134. How I Witnessed The Sight Of A Wild And Bearded Mobile Librarian In Hand To Hand Combat With A Snarling Gaggle Of Brain-Bejangled Peasants. 135. How Many Cormorants Are There In The Bible? 136. Omni-Encyclopaedia Dobsonia. 137. How To Fill Your Brain With Arcane Legal Precepts Through Simple Will-Power And Osmosis. 138. The Case Of Prince Fulgencio. 139, 139a. The Funnel, Volumes 1 and 2. 168 PAMPHLETS (OUT OF PRINT) For the past several years, reader Mike Jennings has spent his time very usefully compiling a reliable list of the works of Dobson. Once a year, at around this time, he updates the list to include those pamphlets to which reference has been made in these pages during the previous twelvemonth. And bang on time, here he is with an additional eight titles. Each has appended to it one of those damnably clever Blotzmann numbers. Please note that, unless otherwise stated, these titles are out of print. You can find links to earlier lists here. 161. Are There Any Moles In Outer Space? No, There Are Not! 162. On Not Toppling Into Any Of The Many Canals Of Amsterdam 163. How I Hid Under A Table During A Thunderstorm And Ruined My Trousers By Kneeling In A Puddle Of Unaerated Potato Juice, And What This Tells Us About The Human Spirit In Extremis 164. Several Observations On Kathy Kirby, Composed In A Cipher So Baffling That Centuries May Pass Before Anybody Will Be Able To Wring Any Sense From It 165. A Tally Of All The Breakfasts I Have Tucked Into Over The Past Sixteen Years 166. Stringing A Few Words Together To No Apparent Purpose 167. The Blue September Of Conference Pears 168. What I Have To Say, In Toto, About Sops And Fillips Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-09-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 18:19 139 Pamphlets (Out Of Print) 20:19 168 Pamphlets (Out Of Print) 139 PAMPHLETS (OUT OF PRINT) It is traditional, at the turning of the year, for reader Mike Jennings to update his exhaustive bibliography of out of print pamphlets by Dobson. "It seems that 2011 has been a lean year indeed for Dobsonian scholarship," writes Mr Jennings from the pompous land of his banishment. Nevertheless, he has managed to track down eleven, or rather twelve, previously unidentified titles, and he is once again to be commended for his thoroughness, not least in assigning those pesky, but lovely, Blotzmann Numbers to the pamphlets he has unearthed. One day we might be able to work out their significance. There are earlier listings for pamphlets numbered 1 to 104, and pamphlets numbered 105 to 128. Please note that, unless stated otherwise, all titles are out of print. 129. The Dredging Of The Canal At Gaarg On The Eve Of The Batcake-Akido Conference. 130. Ducks And Criminals And Well-Maintained Reservoirs. 131. Eleven Essays On Reservoir Maintenance, By One Who Knows. 132. Things Beginning With B. 133. On The Inadvisability Of Taking Daytime Naps During The Unfolding Of Cataclysmic World Events. 134. How I Witnessed The Sight Of A Wild And Bearded Mobile Librarian In Hand To Hand Combat With A Snarling Gaggle Of Brain-Bejangled Peasants. 135. How Many Cormorants Are There In The Bible? 136. Omni-Encyclopaedia Dobsonia. 137. How To Fill Your Brain With Arcane Legal Precepts Through Simple Will-Power And Osmosis. 138. The Case Of Prince Fulgencio. 139, 139a. The Funnel, Volumes 1 and 2. 168 PAMPHLETS (OUT OF PRINT) For the past several years, reader Mike Jennings has spent his time very usefully compiling a reliable list of the works of Dobson. Once a year, at around this time, he updates the list to include those pamphlets to which reference has been made in these pages during the previous twelvemonth. And bang on time, here he is with an additional eight titles. Each has appended to it one of those damnably clever Blotzmann numbers. Please note that, unless otherwise stated, these titles are out of print. You can find links to earlier lists here. 161. Are There Any Moles In Outer Space? No, There Are Not! 162. On Not Toppling Into Any Of The Many Canals Of Amsterdam 163. How I Hid Under A Table During A Thunderstorm And Ruined My Trousers By Kneeling In A Puddle Of Unaerated Potato Juice, And What This Tells Us About The Human Spirit In Extremis 164. Several Observations On Kathy Kirby, Composed In A Cipher So Baffling That Centuries May Pass Before Anybody Will Be Able To Wring Any Sense From It 165. A Tally Of All The Breakfasts I Have Tucked Into Over The Past Sixteen Years 166. Stringing A Few Words Together To No Apparent Purpose 167. The Blue September Of Conference Pears 168. What I Have To Say, In Toto, About Sops And Fillips Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-09-0429:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-07-31Thu, 31 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Wild Is The Wind 04:06 Word Of The Day : Boggle 07:38 Word Of The Day : Clunk 12:49 Word Of The Day : Glue 17:44 Word Of The Day : Mop 18:57 Word Of The Day : Pencil 23:56 Smokers' Poptarts 28:33 The Shoveller Of Widdecombe Ditch (Trad.) WILD IS THE WIND Like the leaf clings to the tree, oh! my darling cling to me, for we are like creatures of the wind, and wild is the wind! Wild is the wind! Wild it is! As wild as the wind in The Wind starring Lillian Gish. This wild wind howls across the desolate tarputa, so you must cling to me, my darling, and I must cling to these railings, and our clingings, yours to me and mine to the railings, will prevent us being blown away, like specks of dust in the wild wind. I cling to the railings surrounding the huge cement hollyhock that is the only landmark for miles and miles across the desolate tarputa. It is the work of the noted cement hollyhockist Sidney Hock, though the railings are municipal. When unveiled, so many moons ago, it was painted, all green and pink and crimson, with emulsion, but the relentless wild wind has stripped it of its paint and now it is a bare cement hollyhock towering on the tarputa, a handy landmark where such as we can arrange our assignations. For we are like creatures of the wind. Sidney Hock placed other cement hollyhocks in other locations, but this one is his masterpiece. That is why it is protected by railings. They are stout and strong, the railings, the better to withstand the wild wind. I cling to them now, as you cling to me, as the wind roars. We cannot hear each other speak, but what use is speech? The cement hollyhockist was himself a mute, by dint of some unfathomable hysteric blot upon his brain. From the age of ten, after a picnic, not a word was heard from his mouth. He had a great feeling for the tarputa, for its desolation, for the wild wind that roars across it, flattening everything except the enormous cement hollyhock which looms above us as we cling. Here we can conduct our assignations safe from the prim and priggish villagers in their broad-brimmed hats and black frock-coats. We shall not skulk in alleyways and shadow. Out here on the tarputa, in the howling wind, we cling, me to the railings and you to me, like the leaf clings to the tree. WORD OF THE DAY : BOGGLE Word of the day : Boggle. I am afraid that before we move on to boggle, we have unfinished business with yesterday's word of the day, parp. Reader Wlad Onanugu writes : Dear Wordmaestro, I am confused by your maunderings on the word parp. You say it is pretty much identical to toot, but then proceed, in your illustrative sentence, to refer to a hooter, rather than, as I might have expected, a tooter or parper. My mental chaos is compounded by the fact that you also make mention of tots, virtually the same word as toots, though entirely different in meaning. I looked forward to improving my word power with your new series. Instead I find myself quite dreadfully unhinged. Mr Onanugu will find it helpful to consult Dobson's pamphlet Parp. Toot, Hooter, Tooters, Parpers And Tots : A Complete Guide For The Bewildered (out of print). I have not read it myself, but am told it is almost, but not quite, "the greatest pamphlet ever written". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-07-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Wild Is The Wind 04:06 Word Of The Day : Boggle 07:38 Word Of The Day : Clunk 12:49 Word Of The Day : Glue 17:44 Word Of The Day : Mop 18:57 Word Of The Day : Pencil 23:56 Smokers' Poptarts 28:33 The Shoveller Of Widdecombe Ditch (Trad.) WILD IS THE WIND Like the leaf clings to the tree, oh! my darling cling to me, for we are like creatures of the wind, and wild is the wind! Wild is the wind! Wild it is! As wild as the wind in The Wind starring Lillian Gish. This wild wind howls across the desolate tarputa, so you must cling to me, my darling, and I must cling to these railings, and our clingings, yours to me and mine to the railings, will prevent us being blown away, like specks of dust in the wild wind. I cling to the railings surrounding the huge cement hollyhock that is the only landmark for miles and miles across the desolate tarputa. It is the work of the noted cement hollyhockist Sidney Hock, though the railings are municipal. When unveiled, so many moons ago, it was painted, all green and pink and crimson, with emulsion, but the relentless wild wind has stripped it of its paint and now it is a bare cement hollyhock towering on the tarputa, a handy landmark where such as we can arrange our assignations. For we are like creatures of the wind. Sidney Hock placed other cement hollyhocks in other locations, but this one is his masterpiece. That is why it is protected by railings. They are stout and strong, the railings, the better to withstand the wild wind. I cling to them now, as you cling to me, as the wind roars. We cannot hear each other speak, but what use is speech? The cement hollyhockist was himself a mute, by dint of some unfathomable hysteric blot upon his brain. From the age of ten, after a picnic, not a word was heard from his mouth. He had a great feeling for the tarputa, for its desolation, for the wild wind that roars across it, flattening everything except the enormous cement hollyhock which looms above us as we cling. Here we can conduct our assignations safe from the prim and priggish villagers in their broad-brimmed hats and black frock-coats. We shall not skulk in alleyways and shadow. Out here on the tarputa, in the howling wind, we cling, me to the railings and you to me, like the leaf clings to the tree. WORD OF THE DAY : BOGGLE Word of the day : Boggle. I am afraid that before we move on to boggle, we have unfinished business with yesterday's word of the day, parp. Reader Wlad Onanugu writes : Dear Wordmaestro, I am confused by your maunderings on the word parp. You say it is pretty much identical to toot, but then proceed, in your illustrative sentence, to refer to a hooter, rather than, as I might have expected, a tooter or parper. My mental chaos is compounded by the fact that you also make mention of tots, virtually the same word as toots, though entirely different in meaning. I looked forward to improving my word power with your new series. Instead I find myself quite dreadfully unhinged. Mr Onanugu will find it helpful to consult Dobson's pamphlet Parp. Toot, Hooter, Tooters, Parpers And Tots : A Complete Guide For The Bewildered (out of print). I have not read it myself, but am told it is almost, but not quite, "the greatest pamphlet ever written". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-07-3129:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-07-12Sat, 12 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 On Gods 15:32 What You Should Know About the Carpenters 20:36 Hoon Hing Boom Bang a Bang ON GODS Geb. Hapi. Anubis. Khnum. Ra. These are gods. They are not toys or trinkets, plastic figurines or dolls made out of scraps of wool or straw. They are gods. Maat. Aten. Sekhmet. Hathor. Horus. These too are gods. Mighty, imperious gods. Geb is the Great Cackler, Hapi the Father of the Gods, Anubis the Jackal, Khnum the Lord of the Cool Waters, Ra the Sun God, Maat the Goddess of Truth, Aten the Lord of All, Sekhmet the Mighty One, Hathor the Mistress of Heaven and Horus He Who Is Above. Bow down before them for they are powerful deities. While you cower in your ditch, grovelling, they bestride the heavens. Not toys, I say, but gods. Ammut. Isis. Bastet. Nut. Ptah. The devourer, the throne, the tearer, the sky, the opener. Above you the sky is black and fat with stars, for it is night, illimitable and desolate, and you are an uncomprehending mite alone on a burning planet, sprawling in your ditch. They are gods. Aker. Khepri. Sobek. Taurt. Seshat. Seth. Big, towering, potent gods and goddesses. Aker the Double Lion God. Khepri He who comes into existence. Sobek He who causes fertility. Taurt the Great Lady. Seshat, ah Seshat, the Lady of the Library, and Seth the Lord of Upper Egypt. These are the gods. You are not in Upper Egypt, nor in Lower Egypt. You are not in Egypt at all. But wherever your ditch is, in this night as hard as iron, you abase yourself before these gods, because you must. The time for toys and trinkets, for the bauble and the gewgaw, is long past, and you have left all fripperies behind you. Now there is simply you and your gods, locked together, in the face of the stark blank sky. Min. Mut. Osiris. Amun. Nephthys. Neith. The Chief of Heaven, the Lady of Heaven, the King of the Dead, the Hidden One, the Lady of the House and the Great Goddess. Bow down, bow down. You have a forelock. It is there to be tugged, so tug it. Tug it in obeisance to Thoth, the Great Measurer. And to Ra, to Ra, to Ra! Now plant your brow in the muck on the floor of the ditch and cast your mind back to that golden happy childhood when you plashed in the paddling pool on a sun-blazed summer's day. The water was cool and delightful, the water in your paddling pool. Did you rush home wrapped in your big yellow towel and worship Khnum? Did you thank Khnum for the coolness of the water? Dried and cooled, did you clutch your library ticket in your tiny hand and scamper excitedly to the public lending library to borrow a book of fairy stories? You would have looked for something with pictures of elves and wizards and peris and hobgoblins, and found a compendium, perhaps, carried it on tippytoe to the issuing desk bathed in the glorious sunshine streaming through those enormous library windows, had it stamped, and borne your borrowed book away, out onto the path in the bright afternoon. When you got home, safe in your bedroom strewn with pillows and cushions and patchwork quilts and throws, did you cry out in gratitude to Seshat? Mut. Nut. Horus. Seth. Anubis. These are gods. All-powerful and eternal. I can picture you, a few summers later, older but no wiser, traipsing around in the park at lunchtime. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-07-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 On Gods 15:32 What You Should Know About the Carpenters 20:36 Hoon Hing Boom Bang a Bang ON GODS Geb. Hapi. Anubis. Khnum. Ra. These are gods. They are not toys or trinkets, plastic figurines or dolls made out of scraps of wool or straw. They are gods. Maat. Aten. Sekhmet. Hathor. Horus. These too are gods. Mighty, imperious gods. Geb is the Great Cackler, Hapi the Father of the Gods, Anubis the Jackal, Khnum the Lord of the Cool Waters, Ra the Sun God, Maat the Goddess of Truth, Aten the Lord of All, Sekhmet the Mighty One, Hathor the Mistress of Heaven and Horus He Who Is Above. Bow down before them for they are powerful deities. While you cower in your ditch, grovelling, they bestride the heavens. Not toys, I say, but gods. Ammut. Isis. Bastet. Nut. Ptah. The devourer, the throne, the tearer, the sky, the opener. Above you the sky is black and fat with stars, for it is night, illimitable and desolate, and you are an uncomprehending mite alone on a burning planet, sprawling in your ditch. They are gods. Aker. Khepri. Sobek. Taurt. Seshat. Seth. Big, towering, potent gods and goddesses. Aker the Double Lion God. Khepri He who comes into existence. Sobek He who causes fertility. Taurt the Great Lady. Seshat, ah Seshat, the Lady of the Library, and Seth the Lord of Upper Egypt. These are the gods. You are not in Upper Egypt, nor in Lower Egypt. You are not in Egypt at all. But wherever your ditch is, in this night as hard as iron, you abase yourself before these gods, because you must. The time for toys and trinkets, for the bauble and the gewgaw, is long past, and you have left all fripperies behind you. Now there is simply you and your gods, locked together, in the face of the stark blank sky. Min. Mut. Osiris. Amun. Nephthys. Neith. The Chief of Heaven, the Lady of Heaven, the King of the Dead, the Hidden One, the Lady of the House and the Great Goddess. Bow down, bow down. You have a forelock. It is there to be tugged, so tug it. Tug it in obeisance to Thoth, the Great Measurer. And to Ra, to Ra, to Ra! Now plant your brow in the muck on the floor of the ditch and cast your mind back to that golden happy childhood when you plashed in the paddling pool on a sun-blazed summer's day. The water was cool and delightful, the water in your paddling pool. Did you rush home wrapped in your big yellow towel and worship Khnum? Did you thank Khnum for the coolness of the water? Dried and cooled, did you clutch your library ticket in your tiny hand and scamper excitedly to the public lending library to borrow a book of fairy stories? You would have looked for something with pictures of elves and wizards and peris and hobgoblins, and found a compendium, perhaps, carried it on tippytoe to the issuing desk bathed in the glorious sunshine streaming through those enormous library windows, had it stamped, and borne your borrowed book away, out onto the path in the bright afternoon. When you got home, safe in your bedroom strewn with pillows and cushions and patchwork quilts and throws, did you cry out in gratitude to Seshat? Mut. Nut. Horus. Seth. Anubis. These are gods. All-powerful and eternal. I can picture you, a few summers later, older but no wiser, traipsing around in the park at lunchtime. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-07-1229:18fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-06-26Thu, 26 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Tiny Enid Extinguishes a Volcano 07:48 The Taxonomy of Ducks, Swans and Geese Is in a State of Flux 19:27 Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind? 24:08 Barnyard Bulletin TINY ENID EXTINGUISHES A VOLCANO One windy September morning, Tiny Enid read in her daily newspaper that a big volcano might be about to erupt. Vulcanology was not her strong point, but some of the comments quoted in the story made her sit up with a start. A number of scientists from organisations with befuddling acronyms said things like: "It looks like it will erupt soon," and "We have recorded volcanic activity". Tiny Enid scoured the paper to see if there were any other signs or portents, such as unusual locust-swarm formations, but there were none. Yet. Her mind was made up. She packed a bag with pitons, hammers, extra socks, and a flask of her secret elixir. She left instructions for the milk delivery person and the topiarist, and called a taxi. The taxi took her from her house to the railway station, where she boarded a train to the port, from where a small boat rounded the coastline to that part of the land where there was an airfield. Tiny Enid had allowed her pilot's licence to expire, so she paid a man with a decisive moustache and a flying cap to take the controls of the little two-seater Pangloss diesel plane, and flew into the wild blue yonder with gritted teeth and blazing eyes. Tiny Enid never wore goggles when flying. She thought them a sign of moral dereliction. Thomas a Kempis Tiny Enid never let a day pass without reading a few pages of The Imitation Of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. Indeed, she kept a ragged copy of this devotional classic in her bag at all times. It is true that the Augustinian monk has nothing to say on the subject of flying goggles, given that he was writing in the 1420s, and it is hard for us to comprehend how Tiny Enid arrived at her interpretation. It is hard, and also unwise, for no less than a dozen harmless souls have gone crackers trying to correlate the contents of Tiny Enid's brain. They languish now in places of shuddery languishment, although it is to Tiny Enid's credit that she pays for their keep, including porridge for breakfast and a nurse who mops their brows. Thomas a Kempis suggests (Chapter 50) that "the desolate man should place himself in God's hands", and Tiny Enid agrees, but she has too a sense of her responsibility. Although these twelve men tried to make sense of her cerebral fumes and vapours uninvited, that does not stop her doing what she can for them. When the Pangloss landed at the foot of the volcano, Tiny Enid clambered out. She put on her extra socks and ascended the volcano using her pitons and hammers. When she reached the summit, she found a pair of perilous vents in which molten magma was bubbling and boiling, ready to erupt, just like the scientists had said. She also saw a great deal of tephra, in the form of rocks and cinders, ashes and dust, as if there had already been a mini-eruption. Pausing only to scan the sky for birds, Tiny Enid extinguished the volcano using a technique she had read about in the Reader's Digest. Then she started on the long journey home, whistling, and only a little muddy. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-06-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Tiny Enid Extinguishes a Volcano 07:48 The Taxonomy of Ducks, Swans and Geese Is in a State of Flux 19:27 Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind? 24:08 Barnyard Bulletin TINY ENID EXTINGUISHES A VOLCANO One windy September morning, Tiny Enid read in her daily newspaper that a big volcano might be about to erupt. Vulcanology was not her strong point, but some of the comments quoted in the story made her sit up with a start. A number of scientists from organisations with befuddling acronyms said things like: "It looks like it will erupt soon," and "We have recorded volcanic activity". Tiny Enid scoured the paper to see if there were any other signs or portents, such as unusual locust-swarm formations, but there were none. Yet. Her mind was made up. She packed a bag with pitons, hammers, extra socks, and a flask of her secret elixir. She left instructions for the milk delivery person and the topiarist, and called a taxi. The taxi took her from her house to the railway station, where she boarded a train to the port, from where a small boat rounded the coastline to that part of the land where there was an airfield. Tiny Enid had allowed her pilot's licence to expire, so she paid a man with a decisive moustache and a flying cap to take the controls of the little two-seater Pangloss diesel plane, and flew into the wild blue yonder with gritted teeth and blazing eyes. Tiny Enid never wore goggles when flying. She thought them a sign of moral dereliction. Thomas a Kempis Tiny Enid never let a day pass without reading a few pages of The Imitation Of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. Indeed, she kept a ragged copy of this devotional classic in her bag at all times. It is true that the Augustinian monk has nothing to say on the subject of flying goggles, given that he was writing in the 1420s, and it is hard for us to comprehend how Tiny Enid arrived at her interpretation. It is hard, and also unwise, for no less than a dozen harmless souls have gone crackers trying to correlate the contents of Tiny Enid's brain. They languish now in places of shuddery languishment, although it is to Tiny Enid's credit that she pays for their keep, including porridge for breakfast and a nurse who mops their brows. Thomas a Kempis suggests (Chapter 50) that "the desolate man should place himself in God's hands", and Tiny Enid agrees, but she has too a sense of her responsibility. Although these twelve men tried to make sense of her cerebral fumes and vapours uninvited, that does not stop her doing what she can for them. When the Pangloss landed at the foot of the volcano, Tiny Enid clambered out. She put on her extra socks and ascended the volcano using her pitons and hammers. When she reached the summit, she found a pair of perilous vents in which molten magma was bubbling and boiling, ready to erupt, just like the scientists had said. She also saw a great deal of tephra, in the form of rocks and cinders, ashes and dust, as if there had already been a mini-eruption. Pausing only to scan the sky for birds, Tiny Enid extinguished the volcano using a technique she had read about in the Reader's Digest. Then she started on the long journey home, whistling, and only a little muddy. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-06-2629:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-06-05Thu, 05 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Some Ponds, a Hotel, the Hollyhocks 08:42 Some Hotels, a Hollyhock, the Ponds 24:11 What to Do on a Winter's Day in Tantarabim SOME PONDS, A HOTEL, THE HOLLYHOCKS I--Some Ponds. There are seven ponds. Their names are Brink, Cramped, Dribble, Lamont, Presumption, Ravenous and Unholy. In a lead box at the bottom of one of the ponds an Icelandic fontoon lies sealed against the elements. But which pond? The fontoon is made of some nameless metallic alloy, and it has a long history. Countless learned tomes have been devoted to pondering its existence, location, significance, colour, smell, incontrovertibility and malevolence. Its value is incalculable. A facsimile made of petrified dough was sold by the Museum at Ack-on-the-Vug for an undisclosed sum. The identity of the buyer was also undisclosed, at the time. Now, this shadowy figure has the true fontoon almost in his clutches. He has booked in to a hotel just four hundred yards away from the ponds. II--A Hotel. The major domo at the hotel stared out of the dining-room window. The sky was overcast. Soon the drizzle would begin. It always did. He hooted, once and once only. He was afraid of sheep, baffled by corkage, continually muttering about the gasworks, defiant, elegantly ragged, flappable during snowstorms, grotesquely carnivorous, helpless with starch, ignoble, just dying to shake hands with a lion tamer, kept waiting for hours by guests late for breakfast, lascivious yet hard of hearing, mistakenly shot at by poachers, nerve-wracked, overcoated, pitiful, quite likely to hoot for a second time, risibly bemuffled, still awaiting a voyage around the world, tempestuous every Thursday, unbelievably festooned with old sacking and netting, vigilant, weak, xerophilous despite the rain, young at heart and zestful at the prospect of his daily milk supplement. He hooted for a second time, much louder. The hotel was fully occupied. Among the guests were anthropomorphic beings, bauxite miners, cartographers, dribbling thugs, elk fanciers, fontoon hunters, genuflecting dolts, heroic chefs, idiots savants, jugglers, kaolin quarry workers, lopsided people, marionettes, nautical curmudgeons, old besmirched gravediggers, pond draggers, quicklime spreaders, ruffians, sink bashers, taloned maniacs, untidy throwbacks, vinegar brewers, waxen image igniters, xylophone construction experts, yellow-bellied burblers and zinc inspectors. Watching them all gobbling down their breakfast porridge, the major domo tried to work out who was who. There appeared to be some trouble at one of the tables in the far corner. An aged couple, raddled and with frenzied gleams in their eyes, were raising their voices at a pallid and neurasthenic git still wearing his nightshirt. This man was Richard Widdmarke, implacable seeker of the Icelandic fontoon. His antagonists were a cartographer and a lopsided person. Their names were, respectively, Eileen and Wolfgang Hollyhock. III--The Hollyhocks. Widdmarke did not realise that for over forty years the Hollyhocks had also been searching desperately for the Icelandic fontoon. Their interest had been ignited by Eileen's discovery of a tiny zinc fontoon in the Serengeti. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-06-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Some Ponds, a Hotel, the Hollyhocks 08:42 Some Hotels, a Hollyhock, the Ponds 24:11 What to Do on a Winter's Day in Tantarabim SOME PONDS, A HOTEL, THE HOLLYHOCKS I--Some Ponds. There are seven ponds. Their names are Brink, Cramped, Dribble, Lamont, Presumption, Ravenous and Unholy. In a lead box at the bottom of one of the ponds an Icelandic fontoon lies sealed against the elements. But which pond? The fontoon is made of some nameless metallic alloy, and it has a long history. Countless learned tomes have been devoted to pondering its existence, location, significance, colour, smell, incontrovertibility and malevolence. Its value is incalculable. A facsimile made of petrified dough was sold by the Museum at Ack-on-the-Vug for an undisclosed sum. The identity of the buyer was also undisclosed, at the time. Now, this shadowy figure has the true fontoon almost in his clutches. He has booked in to a hotel just four hundred yards away from the ponds. II--A Hotel. The major domo at the hotel stared out of the dining-room window. The sky was overcast. Soon the drizzle would begin. It always did. He hooted, once and once only. He was afraid of sheep, baffled by corkage, continually muttering about the gasworks, defiant, elegantly ragged, flappable during snowstorms, grotesquely carnivorous, helpless with starch, ignoble, just dying to shake hands with a lion tamer, kept waiting for hours by guests late for breakfast, lascivious yet hard of hearing, mistakenly shot at by poachers, nerve-wracked, overcoated, pitiful, quite likely to hoot for a second time, risibly bemuffled, still awaiting a voyage around the world, tempestuous every Thursday, unbelievably festooned with old sacking and netting, vigilant, weak, xerophilous despite the rain, young at heart and zestful at the prospect of his daily milk supplement. He hooted for a second time, much louder. The hotel was fully occupied. Among the guests were anthropomorphic beings, bauxite miners, cartographers, dribbling thugs, elk fanciers, fontoon hunters, genuflecting dolts, heroic chefs, idiots savants, jugglers, kaolin quarry workers, lopsided people, marionettes, nautical curmudgeons, old besmirched gravediggers, pond draggers, quicklime spreaders, ruffians, sink bashers, taloned maniacs, untidy throwbacks, vinegar brewers, waxen image igniters, xylophone construction experts, yellow-bellied burblers and zinc inspectors. Watching them all gobbling down their breakfast porridge, the major domo tried to work out who was who. There appeared to be some trouble at one of the tables in the far corner. An aged couple, raddled and with frenzied gleams in their eyes, were raising their voices at a pallid and neurasthenic git still wearing his nightshirt. This man was Richard Widdmarke, implacable seeker of the Icelandic fontoon. His antagonists were a cartographer and a lopsided person. Their names were, respectively, Eileen and Wolfgang Hollyhock. III--The Hollyhocks. Widdmarke did not realise that for over forty years the Hollyhocks had also been searching desperately for the Icelandic fontoon. Their interest had been ignited by Eileen's discovery of a tiny zinc fontoon in the Serengeti. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-06-0530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-29Thu, 29 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:35 Life and Loves of the Immersion Man 23:38 Extract From a Pirate's Diary LIFE AND LOVES OF THE IMMERSION MAN The man with the hammers, the man with the flags. He has a second pair of shoes. He bought them in Blister Lane, he had them repaired. His head is the same size as two of anyone else's head, or a few pounds of oranges, plums, or other fruit. It will take years. Once he had decided to paint his ship with stolen paint, he could not look back. The ship, when painted, would be burnt sienna in colour, stains apart. What a long ship it was, and is, and will be. It had sailed from shore to shore. He held sway at the helm, and on deck. He spat plum stones into his flask. Much later, he knew, they would be crushed, liquefied, in his blender, in his kitchen, in his other hut, the hut he had built at the docks, for those mornings when he did not set sail on his ship to reach some other shore, where he had other huts. In weather so suitable for breakfast on a lawn, eighteen bowls of Special K and a jellied, jellied eel, he would ram the oars home, force them into the muck, so they were perpendicular, not far away from the tallest of the six trees, which were poplars, or larches, or even yews. Oars fixed in place, he will paint them, the oars, with the delicate bristles of his Coddington brush. Its wooden handle has seen better days, particularly the days in Jutland, Scheveningen, Reykjavik, other landmarks of or near Scandinavia. Those were the days before he was pulled towards the seas. Who pulled him to the seas? Who made his flag? Who made his shoes? Ah, that I cannot say, not yet. The kettle maps were stacked in a rough wooden crate. The crate had been painted. Butter had been kept in this crate, butter used in the sandwiches he had eaten at half-time in all those polevaulting or archery competitions he had entered. They had struck a medal for him, he was so keen. He had lost the medal. It was zinc. It had fallen out of his pocket in March. Deep snow lay on the ground. He remembered the day well, because he had to, it was Potato Day! The village wrestler, the one with the goitre, had a big iron pot of gruel and slops, as he always did. No one knew how old he was, but his birthday parties were marked by rectitude and spasms. He was extremely tall, he had to stoop to enter his own house. It was a squalid house. It stank of vinegar. This wrestler was wont to sing remarkable songs as he sat on the jetty, dangling his feet in the brackish water. For many years he had tended his broken nose, applying a new set of bandages every day. He used bright red bandages, having smeared them first with ink or ointment. The bottles were identical, and kept on the same shelf. The shelf was made of plastic, but it sloped towards the left. Nothing heavier than two small bottles or some corks could be kept on it. He brushed his hair. The lake was hidden by trees, a mile away from Haemoglobin Towers. For a thousand years, the lake looked blue. One day, when he was famished, he swam there, he wore water-wings, rubber ones, and yellow. He had to inflate them with his perfumed breath. It took all morning. By noon he was exhausted. Later, stealthily, he crept by torchlight to the moorings. They had been varnished, so thoroughly that he slipped and fell. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:35 Life and Loves of the Immersion Man 23:38 Extract From a Pirate's Diary LIFE AND LOVES OF THE IMMERSION MAN The man with the hammers, the man with the flags. He has a second pair of shoes. He bought them in Blister Lane, he had them repaired. His head is the same size as two of anyone else's head, or a few pounds of oranges, plums, or other fruit. It will take years. Once he had decided to paint his ship with stolen paint, he could not look back. The ship, when painted, would be burnt sienna in colour, stains apart. What a long ship it was, and is, and will be. It had sailed from shore to shore. He held sway at the helm, and on deck. He spat plum stones into his flask. Much later, he knew, they would be crushed, liquefied, in his blender, in his kitchen, in his other hut, the hut he had built at the docks, for those mornings when he did not set sail on his ship to reach some other shore, where he had other huts. In weather so suitable for breakfast on a lawn, eighteen bowls of Special K and a jellied, jellied eel, he would ram the oars home, force them into the muck, so they were perpendicular, not far away from the tallest of the six trees, which were poplars, or larches, or even yews. Oars fixed in place, he will paint them, the oars, with the delicate bristles of his Coddington brush. Its wooden handle has seen better days, particularly the days in Jutland, Scheveningen, Reykjavik, other landmarks of or near Scandinavia. Those were the days before he was pulled towards the seas. Who pulled him to the seas? Who made his flag? Who made his shoes? Ah, that I cannot say, not yet. The kettle maps were stacked in a rough wooden crate. The crate had been painted. Butter had been kept in this crate, butter used in the sandwiches he had eaten at half-time in all those polevaulting or archery competitions he had entered. They had struck a medal for him, he was so keen. He had lost the medal. It was zinc. It had fallen out of his pocket in March. Deep snow lay on the ground. He remembered the day well, because he had to, it was Potato Day! The village wrestler, the one with the goitre, had a big iron pot of gruel and slops, as he always did. No one knew how old he was, but his birthday parties were marked by rectitude and spasms. He was extremely tall, he had to stoop to enter his own house. It was a squalid house. It stank of vinegar. This wrestler was wont to sing remarkable songs as he sat on the jetty, dangling his feet in the brackish water. For many years he had tended his broken nose, applying a new set of bandages every day. He used bright red bandages, having smeared them first with ink or ointment. The bottles were identical, and kept on the same shelf. The shelf was made of plastic, but it sloped towards the left. Nothing heavier than two small bottles or some corks could be kept on it. He brushed his hair. The lake was hidden by trees, a mile away from Haemoglobin Towers. For a thousand years, the lake looked blue. One day, when he was famished, he swam there, he wore water-wings, rubber ones, and yellow. He had to inflate them with his perfumed breath. It took all morning. By noon he was exhausted. Later, stealthily, he crept by torchlight to the moorings. They had been varnished, so thoroughly that he slipped and fell. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-2929:23fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-22Thu, 22 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Buster And Radbod 11:57 Meetings With Remarkable Owls BUSTER AND RADBOD Here is another golden oldie, buried in the (temporarily hard-to-access) archives. It first appeared on the French-Canadian warbler Celine Dion's fortieth birthday. The same day, incidentally, was the forty-sixth birthday of MC Hammer, who is frightened of hammers. There are some questions we can answer without hesitation. Asked "what is your favourite website?", one hundred percent of sensible people immediately shout "Hooting Yard of course!" with unhinged and hysterical enthusiasm. Similarly, when asked in which schoolbook depository they would prefer to site a sniper's nest, an overwhelming number of would-be assassins reply "the Texas Schoolbook Depository at 411 Elm Street, Dallas, TX 75202-3317, without a doubt!" For my part, and in spite of the intervening decades, a question I can answer without even thinking is "what was your favourite weekly comic when you were tiny?" It was The Hammer Of Christ, and, within it, the strip I most adored was Buster And Radbod. Each week, I followed the adventures of the chirpy pair with my jaw dropped and drool flowing freely down my chin, my heart and pulse rates pounding desperately. It was through Buster and Radbod that I learned to read, and I am forever in their debt. They were, in many ways, an ill-matched fictional pair. Buster was squat, hissy, and preening, given to throwing fits and always attired in a bright yellow duffel coat and a little pointed wooden cap. He existed on a diet of chocolate swiss rolls, sprats, lettuce, and untreated milk straight from the goat. We were never given a glimpse of the goat, but it was understood that it lived in a field a short walk across the verdant hills from Buster's house and that its name was Buttercup. Buster had more than one iron pail in which he would collect the milk, one painted red and one unpainted, and a third, extra special pail that leaked and that he was always promising to mend, but never did. Buster had too many teeth crammed inside his mouth, certainly more than a non-fictional person would have, and some of them were sharpened into fangs. He liked to sit atop a rotating plinth and spin round and round until he was sick. I was always curious as to the engine which rotated the plinth. It bore a distinct resemblance to undersea drilling equipment I had seen, either in real life or in catalogues, although of course nearly all of Buster and Radbod's adventures took place on dry land, far from the sea. Buster was once or twice shown to be in possession of a pair of swimming trunks, they were visible in pictures of his open wardrobe, alongside a snorkel and an oxygen canister, but I cannot recall him ever wearing them. Buster had an owl as well as a goat. The owl was also called Buttercup, and Buster treated it cruelly, often pelting it with the shells of pistachio and Brazil nuts throughout the impossibly long afternoons of his idyllic fictional summertime. The owl took its revenge by regurgitating gobbets of semi-digested stoat or weasel on to Buster's pointed wooden cap, which he would then have to rinse clean under the village spigot. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Buster And Radbod 11:57 Meetings With Remarkable Owls BUSTER AND RADBOD Here is another golden oldie, buried in the (temporarily hard-to-access) archives. It first appeared on the French-Canadian warbler Celine Dion's fortieth birthday. The same day, incidentally, was the forty-sixth birthday of MC Hammer, who is frightened of hammers. There are some questions we can answer without hesitation. Asked "what is your favourite website?", one hundred percent of sensible people immediately shout "Hooting Yard of course!" with unhinged and hysterical enthusiasm. Similarly, when asked in which schoolbook depository they would prefer to site a sniper's nest, an overwhelming number of would-be assassins reply "the Texas Schoolbook Depository at 411 Elm Street, Dallas, TX 75202-3317, without a doubt!" For my part, and in spite of the intervening decades, a question I can answer without even thinking is "what was your favourite weekly comic when you were tiny?" It was The Hammer Of Christ, and, within it, the strip I most adored was Buster And Radbod. Each week, I followed the adventures of the chirpy pair with my jaw dropped and drool flowing freely down my chin, my heart and pulse rates pounding desperately. It was through Buster and Radbod that I learned to read, and I am forever in their debt. They were, in many ways, an ill-matched fictional pair. Buster was squat, hissy, and preening, given to throwing fits and always attired in a bright yellow duffel coat and a little pointed wooden cap. He existed on a diet of chocolate swiss rolls, sprats, lettuce, and untreated milk straight from the goat. We were never given a glimpse of the goat, but it was understood that it lived in a field a short walk across the verdant hills from Buster's house and that its name was Buttercup. Buster had more than one iron pail in which he would collect the milk, one painted red and one unpainted, and a third, extra special pail that leaked and that he was always promising to mend, but never did. Buster had too many teeth crammed inside his mouth, certainly more than a non-fictional person would have, and some of them were sharpened into fangs. He liked to sit atop a rotating plinth and spin round and round until he was sick. I was always curious as to the engine which rotated the plinth. It bore a distinct resemblance to undersea drilling equipment I had seen, either in real life or in catalogues, although of course nearly all of Buster and Radbod's adventures took place on dry land, far from the sea. Buster was once or twice shown to be in possession of a pair of swimming trunks, they were visible in pictures of his open wardrobe, alongside a snorkel and an oxygen canister, but I cannot recall him ever wearing them. Buster had an owl as well as a goat. The owl was also called Buttercup, and Buster treated it cruelly, often pelting it with the shells of pistachio and Brazil nuts throughout the impossibly long afternoons of his idyllic fictional summertime. The owl took its revenge by regurgitating gobbets of semi-digested stoat or weasel on to Buster's pointed wooden cap, which he would then have to rinse clean under the village spigot. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-2230:01fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-15Thu, 15 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:32 On A Fainting Goat 07:48 The Temple Of Hoon Fat Gaar 15:06 Norwegian Wood 20:03 Baines 25:50 Ten Years Ago ON A FAINTING GOAT Yesterday's edition of Hooting Yard On The Air on Resonance104.4FM, broadcast, as ever, live, had to be abandoned after ten minutes. I am sorry to say I felt queasy and dizzy and faint, and was unable to continue babbling into a microphone. I think I explained the situation before my dulcet tones were replaced by Erik Satie, but as the one piece I did manage to recite was On A Plague Of Boils it occurred to me that some listeners may have been given to understand that I had to truncate the show because I had broken out in a plague of suppurating boils. I am happy to reassure you that this is not the case. As it was, though I did not faint, I felt very close to doing so, and still today do not feel tiptop. I am bolting clementines as an aid to recovery. Meanwhile, rather than writing about Fainting Mr Key, here is a 2008 piece about a fainting goat. You would do well to remember, if ever you are out walking in the vicinity of the farmyard at Scroonhoonpooge, that you may come face to face with the fainting goat. If you encounter it on the lane leading out of the farmyard towards the orchard, and as soon as it sees you it topples over in a swoon, you must not be alarmed. You must certainly not think that the goat has fainted because you have caused it fright, by dint of something alarming in your appearance. Even if there is something terrifying about you, such as a twisted-up face or a too-brightly coloured clinker jacket or your being armed with a mail order Mannlicher-Carcano sniper's rifle, none of these things will be what causes the goat to faint. The goat will faint for the reason it is known as the fainting goat, which is that it is constantly fainting, dozens of times a day, even dozens of times an hour. This constant swooning is a mystery as far as the local vets are concerned. There are several vets with practices in walking or short bus journey distance of Scroonhoonpooge farmyard, and all of them at one time or another have been called to tend to the fainting goat. They have tried all sorts of treatments, from goat-friendly smelling salts to the deployment of Peruvian whistling vessels to simply shouting very loudly into the goat's ear, and though such techniques may revive the goat from its faint, none have served to stop it clattering over in a dead swoon again and again as the long countryside day draws on towards dusk and rainfall. When it is conscious, the goat seems hale and hearty, even frisky, and engages in all the normal activities one might expect of a farmyard goat. I would list these activities but I am sure you are thoroughly up to speed with the doings of goats, given the demographic of the Hooting Yard readership. There has been a certain amount of bickering among the local vets, as each of them grows frustrated at their inability to stop the continual fainting of the fainting goat. When they passed out of their veterinary colleges, they were all brimming with confidence, armed, as they thought, with the knowledge and expertise to handle all sorts of bestial maladies, from the workaday to the exotic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:32 On A Fainting Goat 07:48 The Temple Of Hoon Fat Gaar 15:06 Norwegian Wood 20:03 Baines 25:50 Ten Years Ago ON A FAINTING GOAT Yesterday's edition of Hooting Yard On The Air on Resonance104.4FM, broadcast, as ever, live, had to be abandoned after ten minutes. I am sorry to say I felt queasy and dizzy and faint, and was unable to continue babbling into a microphone. I think I explained the situation before my dulcet tones were replaced by Erik Satie, but as the one piece I did manage to recite was On A Plague Of Boils it occurred to me that some listeners may have been given to understand that I had to truncate the show because I had broken out in a plague of suppurating boils. I am happy to reassure you that this is not the case. As it was, though I did not faint, I felt very close to doing so, and still today do not feel tiptop. I am bolting clementines as an aid to recovery. Meanwhile, rather than writing about Fainting Mr Key, here is a 2008 piece about a fainting goat. You would do well to remember, if ever you are out walking in the vicinity of the farmyard at Scroonhoonpooge, that you may come face to face with the fainting goat. If you encounter it on the lane leading out of the farmyard towards the orchard, and as soon as it sees you it topples over in a swoon, you must not be alarmed. You must certainly not think that the goat has fainted because you have caused it fright, by dint of something alarming in your appearance. Even if there is something terrifying about you, such as a twisted-up face or a too-brightly coloured clinker jacket or your being armed with a mail order Mannlicher-Carcano sniper's rifle, none of these things will be what causes the goat to faint. The goat will faint for the reason it is known as the fainting goat, which is that it is constantly fainting, dozens of times a day, even dozens of times an hour. This constant swooning is a mystery as far as the local vets are concerned. There are several vets with practices in walking or short bus journey distance of Scroonhoonpooge farmyard, and all of them at one time or another have been called to tend to the fainting goat. They have tried all sorts of treatments, from goat-friendly smelling salts to the deployment of Peruvian whistling vessels to simply shouting very loudly into the goat's ear, and though such techniques may revive the goat from its faint, none have served to stop it clattering over in a dead swoon again and again as the long countryside day draws on towards dusk and rainfall. When it is conscious, the goat seems hale and hearty, even frisky, and engages in all the normal activities one might expect of a farmyard goat. I would list these activities but I am sure you are thoroughly up to speed with the doings of goats, given the demographic of the Hooting Yard readership. There has been a certain amount of bickering among the local vets, as each of them grows frustrated at their inability to stop the continual fainting of the fainting goat. When they passed out of their veterinary colleges, they were all brimming with confidence, armed, as they thought, with the knowledge and expertise to handle all sorts of bestial maladies, from the workaday to the exotic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-1529:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-01Thu, 01 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:18 Udo Luckner And The Magical Nucleus 08:11 The Cow 12:25 In Mufti On Houndsditch UDO LUCKNER AND THE MAGICAL NUCLEUS The British explorer Percy Fawcett vanished in the Amazon jungle, along with his son Jack and a friend of Jack's, in 1925. Fawcett was searching for the remains of an ancient mythical (and mystical) city he called Z. Over the following years, many attempts were made to find him... Many Brazilians told us that, over the past few decades, religious cults had spring up in the area that worshipped Fawcett as a kind of god. They believed that Fawcett had entered a network of underground tunnels and discovered that Z was, of all things, a portal to another reality. Even though Brian Fawcett had concealed his father's bizarre writings at the end of his life, these mystics had seized upon Fawcett's few cryptic references, in magazines such as the Occult Review, to his search for "the treasures of the invisible World". These writings, coupled with Fawcett's disappearance and the failure of anyone over the years to discover his remains, fuelled the notion that he had somehow defied the laws of physics. One sect, called the Magical Nucleus, was started, in 1968, by a man named Udo Luckner, who referred to himself as the High Priest of the Roncador and wore a long white gown and a cylindrical hat with a Star of David. In the 1970s, scores of Brazilians and Europeans, including Fawcett's great-nephew, flocked to join the Magical Nucleus, hoping to find this portal. Luckner built a religious compound by the Roncador Mountains, where families were forbidden to eat meat or wear jewelry. Luckner predicted that the world would end in 1982 and said that his people must prepare to descend into the hollow earth. But, when the planet remained in existence, the Magical Nucleus gradually disbanded. from The Lost City Of Z : A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest To Uncover The Secrets Of The Amazon by David Grann (2009) THE COW […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:18 Udo Luckner And The Magical Nucleus 08:11 The Cow 12:25 In Mufti On Houndsditch UDO LUCKNER AND THE MAGICAL NUCLEUS The British explorer Percy Fawcett vanished in the Amazon jungle, along with his son Jack and a friend of Jack's, in 1925. Fawcett was searching for the remains of an ancient mythical (and mystical) city he called Z. Over the following years, many attempts were made to find him... Many Brazilians told us that, over the past few decades, religious cults had spring up in the area that worshipped Fawcett as a kind of god. They believed that Fawcett had entered a network of underground tunnels and discovered that Z was, of all things, a portal to another reality. Even though Brian Fawcett had concealed his father's bizarre writings at the end of his life, these mystics had seized upon Fawcett's few cryptic references, in magazines such as the Occult Review, to his search for "the treasures of the invisible World". These writings, coupled with Fawcett's disappearance and the failure of anyone over the years to discover his remains, fuelled the notion that he had somehow defied the laws of physics. One sect, called the Magical Nucleus, was started, in 1968, by a man named Udo Luckner, who referred to himself as the High Priest of the Roncador and wore a long white gown and a cylindrical hat with a Star of David. In the 1970s, scores of Brazilians and Europeans, including Fawcett's great-nephew, flocked to join the Magical Nucleus, hoping to find this portal. Luckner built a religious compound by the Roncador Mountains, where families were forbidden to eat meat or wear jewelry. Luckner predicted that the world would end in 1982 and said that his people must prepare to descend into the hollow earth. But, when the planet remained in existence, the Magical Nucleus gradually disbanded. from The Lost City Of Z : A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest To Uncover The Secrets Of The Amazon by David Grann (2009) THE COW […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-05-0129:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-04-24Thu, 24 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Pratincole 05:07 Bird Nomenclature 06:08 The Roc 12:25 The Sweat Of The Peasant 22:12 Browne's Badger THE PRATINCOLE Chapter Five of Mr Key's Book Of Birds, a work in progress. The pratincole is a type of bird. Beak, feathers, power of flight etcetera etcetera. It is something of a neglected bird. In a poll, when asked to list, with a minimum of thought, the first five birds that came into their heads, nought percent of respondents named the pratincole. And there were a lot of respondents. A lot. It was one of the biggest polls ever conducted by the Pratincolophilia Society, and the results caused its members severe disappointment. Pratincolophilia is the technical term given to the psychological state of attraction to pratincoles. This can vary from a casual regard and appreciation of the bird, as when a person clomping about in the sort of environment where one might see a pratincole (meadows and marshes in southern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia) spots one and smiles and says, "Gosh! What a delightful little pratincole!", to full-blown crazed adoration of the bird. Pratincolophiles at the far end of the spectrum have been known to erect shrines and altars on which they place simulacra of the object of their obsession, made from plaster of Paris or plasticine or wax or marzipan. Occasionally they might obtain a stuffed pratincole from a friendly taxidermist. These people are doolally but harmless, and you might be acquainted with one for years without suspecting the nature of their inner mania, or even that they are maniacs at all. Commonly, the first hint you will be given is when the pratincolophile, speaking in a strangely heightened and excited tone of voice, invites you into the sanctum wherein stands the shrine or altar to their bird. In these circumstances, the best thing to do, having prostrated yourself upon the floor and jabbered a rum litany of nonsense, as bidden, is to pretend you have an urgent appointment, preferably on the other side of town, and to scarper without looking back. Next time you bump into your acquaintance, you would be advised to steer the conversation away from any bird-related topics whatsoever. It is a curious fact, however, that high spectrum pratincolophiles often display absolutely no interest in any other types of birds. If anything, they seem blitheringly ignorant about birds in general. Boffins have yet to identify the "danger points" which propel the casual or low spectrum pratincolophile, the one clomping about with a pair of binoculars and a healthy interest in other types of birds, to the bonkers level. It may have something to do with brain chemistry, or exposure to airborne toxins, or trauma, though it is difficult to imagine what possible trauma could be occasioned by a little pratincole. Still, the Lord moves in mysterious ways, as we know, and it would not be beyond His wit to think up some horror involving a maddened flock of pratincoles and visit it upon a poor benighted sod. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-04-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Pratincole 05:07 Bird Nomenclature 06:08 The Roc 12:25 The Sweat Of The Peasant 22:12 Browne's Badger THE PRATINCOLE Chapter Five of Mr Key's Book Of Birds, a work in progress. The pratincole is a type of bird. Beak, feathers, power of flight etcetera etcetera. It is something of a neglected bird. In a poll, when asked to list, with a minimum of thought, the first five birds that came into their heads, nought percent of respondents named the pratincole. And there were a lot of respondents. A lot. It was one of the biggest polls ever conducted by the Pratincolophilia Society, and the results caused its members severe disappointment. Pratincolophilia is the technical term given to the psychological state of attraction to pratincoles. This can vary from a casual regard and appreciation of the bird, as when a person clomping about in the sort of environment where one might see a pratincole (meadows and marshes in southern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia) spots one and smiles and says, "Gosh! What a delightful little pratincole!", to full-blown crazed adoration of the bird. Pratincolophiles at the far end of the spectrum have been known to erect shrines and altars on which they place simulacra of the object of their obsession, made from plaster of Paris or plasticine or wax or marzipan. Occasionally they might obtain a stuffed pratincole from a friendly taxidermist. These people are doolally but harmless, and you might be acquainted with one for years without suspecting the nature of their inner mania, or even that they are maniacs at all. Commonly, the first hint you will be given is when the pratincolophile, speaking in a strangely heightened and excited tone of voice, invites you into the sanctum wherein stands the shrine or altar to their bird. In these circumstances, the best thing to do, having prostrated yourself upon the floor and jabbered a rum litany of nonsense, as bidden, is to pretend you have an urgent appointment, preferably on the other side of town, and to scarper without looking back. Next time you bump into your acquaintance, you would be advised to steer the conversation away from any bird-related topics whatsoever. It is a curious fact, however, that high spectrum pratincolophiles often display absolutely no interest in any other types of birds. If anything, they seem blitheringly ignorant about birds in general. Boffins have yet to identify the "danger points" which propel the casual or low spectrum pratincolophile, the one clomping about with a pair of binoculars and a healthy interest in other types of birds, to the bonkers level. It may have something to do with brain chemistry, or exposure to airborne toxins, or trauma, though it is difficult to imagine what possible trauma could be occasioned by a little pratincole. Still, the Lord moves in mysterious ways, as we know, and it would not be beyond His wit to think up some horror involving a maddened flock of pratincoles and visit it upon a poor benighted sod. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-04-2429:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-04-10Thu, 10 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 The Robin 08:24 The Willow Warbler 13:03 The Corncrake 22:47 The Chiffchaff THE ROBIN The robin is a type of bird. It may be found, in near stasis, perched on a bough. Arrival upon and departure from the bough is accomplished by flight, flight achieved by deployment of the wings (a pair). Not all birds are capable of flight, but the robin is. During perchment, the robin may be captured by placing over it a net attached to one end of a stick. While it is thus prevented from flying away, one can insert a syringe through the net, and stun the robin with a sedative, rendering it unconscious. The net can then be lifted up, and the bird placed in the pocket. One should ensure that the bough from which the robin is abducted is within a short walking distance of the laboratory or other workspace. If the bird regains consciousness while in the pocket, it will panic, and flap about, and may well exercise its wings sufficiently to fly free, up and away into the boundless sky. Upon arrival at the lab, place the stunned bird on a work-surface and inject it with another dose of the serum, calibrated to keep it away with the fairies for a few hours. Various activities can now be carried out with the unconscious robin. These may be in the spirit of scientific enquiry, or just larking about. (Technically, the lark is a different type of bird and has nothing to do with larking about, at least not in the present context.) If one intends, shortly before the robin wakes up, its tiny brain woozy, to replace it on its bough, or on a different but nearby bough, it is important that no great harm should come to the bird as a result of the activities, whatever they might be. Small modifications to the unconscious robin are permissible, for example plucking out a handful of its feathers for later examination under a microscope at one's leisure, or painting it an entirely different colour with a non-toxic pigment. But on no account should one remove, say, its head, for in doing so one will kill the robin and it will not wake from its induced coma. If carrying out scientific experiments, it is well to bear in mind that the robin is but one type of bird, and one cannot extrapolate from the results of one's experiments deductions applicable to all types of birds, not even to all robins. It may not be a normal robin. If simply larking about, say by dipping the feet in a pool of ink and then printing a false bird-trail across the bedroom ceiling of a wife one is plotting to drive insane, as in the Patrick Hamilton play Gaslight, one need not bother whether the robin is normal or not. (The villainous husband in Gaslight did not print such a bird-trail, but it is the sort of tactic he might have used, had he had access to an unconscious robin.) When replacing the bird on its bough, it will need to be propped upright until it is fully awake, otherwise it will topple to the ground due to gravitational force. Use a small structure of interlaced twigs, or some such temporary bolster. Upon waking, the robin will probably bestir itself and use its wings to depart the bough, in flight, up into the sky, until it is quite out of sight, its destination unknown, even to the robin itself. This is an extract from Mr Key's Book Of Birds, a work in progress. THE WILLOW WARBLER […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-04-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 The Robin 08:24 The Willow Warbler 13:03 The Corncrake 22:47 The Chiffchaff THE ROBIN The robin is a type of bird. It may be found, in near stasis, perched on a bough. Arrival upon and departure from the bough is accomplished by flight, flight achieved by deployment of the wings (a pair). Not all birds are capable of flight, but the robin is. During perchment, the robin may be captured by placing over it a net attached to one end of a stick. While it is thus prevented from flying away, one can insert a syringe through the net, and stun the robin with a sedative, rendering it unconscious. The net can then be lifted up, and the bird placed in the pocket. One should ensure that the bough from which the robin is abducted is within a short walking distance of the laboratory or other workspace. If the bird regains consciousness while in the pocket, it will panic, and flap about, and may well exercise its wings sufficiently to fly free, up and away into the boundless sky. Upon arrival at the lab, place the stunned bird on a work-surface and inject it with another dose of the serum, calibrated to keep it away with the fairies for a few hours. Various activities can now be carried out with the unconscious robin. These may be in the spirit of scientific enquiry, or just larking about. (Technically, the lark is a different type of bird and has nothing to do with larking about, at least not in the present context.) If one intends, shortly before the robin wakes up, its tiny brain woozy, to replace it on its bough, or on a different but nearby bough, it is important that no great harm should come to the bird as a result of the activities, whatever they might be. Small modifications to the unconscious robin are permissible, for example plucking out a handful of its feathers for later examination under a microscope at one's leisure, or painting it an entirely different colour with a non-toxic pigment. But on no account should one remove, say, its head, for in doing so one will kill the robin and it will not wake from its induced coma. If carrying out scientific experiments, it is well to bear in mind that the robin is but one type of bird, and one cannot extrapolate from the results of one's experiments deductions applicable to all types of birds, not even to all robins. It may not be a normal robin. If simply larking about, say by dipping the feet in a pool of ink and then printing a false bird-trail across the bedroom ceiling of a wife one is plotting to drive insane, as in the Patrick Hamilton play Gaslight, one need not bother whether the robin is normal or not. (The villainous husband in Gaslight did not print such a bird-trail, but it is the sort of tactic he might have used, had he had access to an unconscious robin.) When replacing the bird on its bough, it will need to be propped upright until it is fully awake, otherwise it will topple to the ground due to gravitational force. Use a small structure of interlaced twigs, or some such temporary bolster. Upon waking, the robin will probably bestir itself and use its wings to depart the bough, in flight, up into the sky, until it is quite out of sight, its destination unknown, even to the robin itself. This is an extract from Mr Key's Book Of Birds, a work in progress. THE WILLOW WARBLER […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-04-1029:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-04-06Sun, 06 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The New World Order 07:19 Thatcher Bird Comparison Update 10:22 The Rubbish Dump 18:04 Crank's Bumf 22:00 The Demon Of The Air THE NEW WORLD ORDER The New World Order has come to pass. It has been decreed by the king that from this day forth, the order of "World" should not be w-o-r-l-d, as at present, but o-w-l-r-d. When a space is introduced between the l and the r, we get Owl Rd, where Rd is a common abbreviation for Road. Thus the New World Order is to be found along Owl Road, which is to be the new name for every single road, street, avenue, crescent, mews, lane, path, you get the idea, throughout the kingdom. The usual moaning minnies have raised objections, chiefly the posties and dustbin men and others whose duties require them to navigate the various roads and streets. They--or at least their representatives--say that with every road called Owl Road they will get lost, lost, hopelessly lost, and be unable to perform their functions with due efficiency. To which the king says: "Pah!" That is one of the great things about being the king. You can wave your begloved hand disdainfully and say "Pah!", and none dare challenge you. The posties' and dustbin men's representatives made a little fuss, it is true, but once the king had glared at them and spat his contempt, they knew better than to persist. They returned to their depots like whipped curs, and held meetings where they told the posties and the dustbin men to get to work, starting on Owl Road. "Don't worry your little proletarian heads about becoming hopelessly lost," they were told, "For how can you be lost when, wherever you are, you know you are on Owl Road?" You see how the king looks after his subjects? In the New World Order, everybody knows exactly where they are, at every hour of the day and the night. And that is a very fine state of affairs indeed. Written this day sitting on a municipal bench on Owl Road. THATCHER BIRD COMPARISON UPDATE When Margaret Thatcher died last year, I devoted one of my potsages [sic] for The Dabbler to the unresolved question of which bird she most closely resembled. I noted that Matthew Parris claimed "she walked like a partridge", while Jon Snow asserted "she scuttled about like a hen". Now things have become more complicated. Reading Dominic Sandbrook's Seasons In The Sun : The Battle For Britain 1974-1979, I learn that the Daily Express compared the then-future Prime Minister to "an angry woodpecker". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-04-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The New World Order 07:19 Thatcher Bird Comparison Update 10:22 The Rubbish Dump 18:04 Crank's Bumf 22:00 The Demon Of The Air THE NEW WORLD ORDER The New World Order has come to pass. It has been decreed by the king that from this day forth, the order of "World" should not be w-o-r-l-d, as at present, but o-w-l-r-d. When a space is introduced between the l and the r, we get Owl Rd, where Rd is a common abbreviation for Road. Thus the New World Order is to be found along Owl Road, which is to be the new name for every single road, street, avenue, crescent, mews, lane, path, you get the idea, throughout the kingdom. The usual moaning minnies have raised objections, chiefly the posties and dustbin men and others whose duties require them to navigate the various roads and streets. They--or at least their representatives--say that with every road called Owl Road they will get lost, lost, hopelessly lost, and be unable to perform their functions with due efficiency. To which the king says: "Pah!" That is one of the great things about being the king. You can wave your begloved hand disdainfully and say "Pah!", and none dare challenge you. The posties' and dustbin men's representatives made a little fuss, it is true, but once the king had glared at them and spat his contempt, they knew better than to persist. They returned to their depots like whipped curs, and held meetings where they told the posties and the dustbin men to get to work, starting on Owl Road. "Don't worry your little proletarian heads about becoming hopelessly lost," they were told, "For how can you be lost when, wherever you are, you know you are on Owl Road?" You see how the king looks after his subjects? In the New World Order, everybody knows exactly where they are, at every hour of the day and the night. And that is a very fine state of affairs indeed. Written this day sitting on a municipal bench on Owl Road. THATCHER BIRD COMPARISON UPDATE When Margaret Thatcher died last year, I devoted one of my potsages [sic] for The Dabbler to the unresolved question of which bird she most closely resembled. I noted that Matthew Parris claimed "she walked like a partridge", while Jon Snow asserted "she scuttled about like a hen". Now things have become more complicated. Reading Dominic Sandbrook's Seasons In The Sun : The Battle For Britain 1974-1979, I learn that the Daily Express compared the then-future Prime Minister to "an angry woodpecker". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-04-0629:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-03-27Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 Ten Tarleton Tales--III 05:20 The Rubbish Dump 15:26 Oh Prunella! 18:52 Grotto Cad 27:39 Thatcher Bird Comparison Update TEN TARLETON TALES--III I remember as if it were yesterday my very first encounter with Tarleton. He was propping up the bar in a beige and dismal drinking den, beetle-browed and lantern-jawed and babbling to no one in particular. I sat on a stool beside him, ordered a sprangeloenkenkischt, and listened to what he had to say. He was only recently back from a hush-hush mission in the East, and was worrying, like a dog with a sheep, at the impossibility of grasping the difference between the Near East, the Middle East, and the Far East. What seemed to bother him was that, whereas the location of the Middle East was as clear as dammit, between the Near and the Far, placing the Near and the Far was by no means as simple a matter. If you were slap bang in the middle of the Middle East, for example, the Near East and the Far East would be equidistant from where you stood, or sat, or lay sprawled in a hammock in the blistering noonday sun, going mad. When he briefly paused to glug his kolokkengehemmelbe, I asked him which East, Near or Middle or Far, he had been in, on his hush-hush mission. Swallowing the dregs of the fiery liqueur, he spluttered and told me the point of a hush-hush mission was that it was hush-hush. I could not disagree with that. I bought him another drink. His tongue did not need loosening, but I was at a loose end, and he seemed to be a man of parts, well worth listening to. I was wrong. For the next two hours, he gabbled on and on and on, without cease, trying but failing to settle the matter of the three Easts, Near and Middle and Far, now and then pulling from his pocket a crumpled map, hand-drawn with a leaky biro on a filthy napkin, on which he had tried, tried and failed, tried again and failed again, like the best or worst of Beckettians, to hammer home the geography of the East, to pin it down, definitively, so that he would no longer need to think about it. That, he said, in among his witterings, was what he could not stand--that no matter how hard he tried, the East would remain forever beyond his grasp. Eventually he staggered off to the lavatory to vomit. He had left the napkin map on the counter. Idly, I picked it up. I turned it this way and that, and then, feeling the breath of God on the back of my neck, I crumpled it up and uncrumpled it and turned it upside down and back to front. I laid it back on the counter and smoothed it out, downed the last of my goospelkschnittzern, wrapped my muffler tight about my neck, and tottered out into the icy blizzard. As I followed the tractor-tracks back towards my chalet, I heard from inside the bar a scream, at once hysterical and tragic and unhinged and ecstatic. I lit my pipe, as snowflakes fell. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-03-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 Ten Tarleton Tales--III 05:20 The Rubbish Dump 15:26 Oh Prunella! 18:52 Grotto Cad 27:39 Thatcher Bird Comparison Update TEN TARLETON TALES--III I remember as if it were yesterday my very first encounter with Tarleton. He was propping up the bar in a beige and dismal drinking den, beetle-browed and lantern-jawed and babbling to no one in particular. I sat on a stool beside him, ordered a sprangeloenkenkischt, and listened to what he had to say. He was only recently back from a hush-hush mission in the East, and was worrying, like a dog with a sheep, at the impossibility of grasping the difference between the Near East, the Middle East, and the Far East. What seemed to bother him was that, whereas the location of the Middle East was as clear as dammit, between the Near and the Far, placing the Near and the Far was by no means as simple a matter. If you were slap bang in the middle of the Middle East, for example, the Near East and the Far East would be equidistant from where you stood, or sat, or lay sprawled in a hammock in the blistering noonday sun, going mad. When he briefly paused to glug his kolokkengehemmelbe, I asked him which East, Near or Middle or Far, he had been in, on his hush-hush mission. Swallowing the dregs of the fiery liqueur, he spluttered and told me the point of a hush-hush mission was that it was hush-hush. I could not disagree with that. I bought him another drink. His tongue did not need loosening, but I was at a loose end, and he seemed to be a man of parts, well worth listening to. I was wrong. For the next two hours, he gabbled on and on and on, without cease, trying but failing to settle the matter of the three Easts, Near and Middle and Far, now and then pulling from his pocket a crumpled map, hand-drawn with a leaky biro on a filthy napkin, on which he had tried, tried and failed, tried again and failed again, like the best or worst of Beckettians, to hammer home the geography of the East, to pin it down, definitively, so that he would no longer need to think about it. That, he said, in among his witterings, was what he could not stand--that no matter how hard he tried, the East would remain forever beyond his grasp. Eventually he staggered off to the lavatory to vomit. He had left the napkin map on the counter. Idly, I picked it up. I turned it this way and that, and then, feeling the breath of God on the back of my neck, I crumpled it up and uncrumpled it and turned it upside down and back to front. I laid it back on the counter and smoothed it out, downed the last of my goospelkschnittzern, wrapped my muffler tight about my neck, and tottered out into the icy blizzard. As I followed the tractor-tracks back towards my chalet, I heard from inside the bar a scream, at once hysterical and tragic and unhinged and ecstatic. I lit my pipe, as snowflakes fell. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-03-2729:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-03-20Thu, 20 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:52 A Ghoul And His Monkey 07:40 Superstitions Concerning Birds A GHOUL AND HIS MONKEY Trudging through the countryside the other day, I saw ahead of me a couple of peasants, standing at the edge of a bog, deep in conversation. It is well-known that the talk of peasants consists almost exclusively of rustic lore and wisdom expressed in the form of age-old sayings and proverbs. Thus it was no surprise to me when the snatch of their talk I overheard as I passed them by was one such old saying. What was unexpected was that it was one I had never heard before. "A ghoul and his monkey are soon martyred," one peasant muttered, in the lugubrious tones of peasants the world over. His companion said something in reply, but the words were swept away on the wind, and I heard them not. I was trudging at a pretty fair crack, so I was almost immediately out of earshot. I considered, for a moment, turning about and interrogating the peasant regarding his utterance, but I quickly dismissed the thought. Trying to wring sense out of a peasant is almost always, as one might put it, a fool's errand. I was still thinking about what I had overheard when I arrived home. Usually, proverbs and sayings express a self-evident truth, what we might call common sense. A stitch in time saves nine and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush are examples of such folk wisdom, passed down through the generations. But--I wondered--is it equally true that a ghoul and his monkey are soon martyred? After making a cup of ersatz cocoa-style boiling beige water, I heaved down from the bookshelf the two fat volumes of the fourth edition of Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church (1583) by John Foxe, commonly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. This is my indispensable guide whenever I contemplate martyrdom. Admittedly, I do not do so very often, and I had to remove an encrustation of dust and grime from both volumes, using my trusty rag. That done, I felt confident that somewhere within the more than two thousand folio pages of Foxe's mighty work I would find confirmation of martyred ghouls and monkeys. Several hours later, my brow was furrowed, my eyes were bleary, and my once boiling beige cocoa-style water was stone cold. I slammed shut volume one of the Book of Martyrs having failed to discover a single reference to either a ghoul or a monkey. This was most disconcerting. Before pressing on with the second hefty volume, I tried to clear my head by practising Tranche Seven of Baxter's Head-Clearing Exercises. Tranches Two and Five are usually most efficacious, in my experience, but a quick rummage in the pantry revealed that I was fresh out of paper pastry cases. Also, I remembered that I had loaned my milk stamps to Bruno, so Tranche Seven it would have to be. Head semi-cleared, I reheated my drink over a gas-jet and slumped back in my armchair with Volume Two. Damn and blast John Foxe!, I shouted to the ceiling at dusk, as the shades of night gathered in the dimpled and disgusting sky, for I had fought my way through another thousand pages with neither hide nor hair of a ghoul or a monkey coming to light. It was at this point that I first began to doubt the veracity of that peasant I had overheard, so many hours ago. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-03-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:52 A Ghoul And His Monkey 07:40 Superstitions Concerning Birds A GHOUL AND HIS MONKEY Trudging through the countryside the other day, I saw ahead of me a couple of peasants, standing at the edge of a bog, deep in conversation. It is well-known that the talk of peasants consists almost exclusively of rustic lore and wisdom expressed in the form of age-old sayings and proverbs. Thus it was no surprise to me when the snatch of their talk I overheard as I passed them by was one such old saying. What was unexpected was that it was one I had never heard before. "A ghoul and his monkey are soon martyred," one peasant muttered, in the lugubrious tones of peasants the world over. His companion said something in reply, but the words were swept away on the wind, and I heard them not. I was trudging at a pretty fair crack, so I was almost immediately out of earshot. I considered, for a moment, turning about and interrogating the peasant regarding his utterance, but I quickly dismissed the thought. Trying to wring sense out of a peasant is almost always, as one might put it, a fool's errand. I was still thinking about what I had overheard when I arrived home. Usually, proverbs and sayings express a self-evident truth, what we might call common sense. A stitch in time saves nine and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush are examples of such folk wisdom, passed down through the generations. But--I wondered--is it equally true that a ghoul and his monkey are soon martyred? After making a cup of ersatz cocoa-style boiling beige water, I heaved down from the bookshelf the two fat volumes of the fourth edition of Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church (1583) by John Foxe, commonly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. This is my indispensable guide whenever I contemplate martyrdom. Admittedly, I do not do so very often, and I had to remove an encrustation of dust and grime from both volumes, using my trusty rag. That done, I felt confident that somewhere within the more than two thousand folio pages of Foxe's mighty work I would find confirmation of martyred ghouls and monkeys. Several hours later, my brow was furrowed, my eyes were bleary, and my once boiling beige cocoa-style water was stone cold. I slammed shut volume one of the Book of Martyrs having failed to discover a single reference to either a ghoul or a monkey. This was most disconcerting. Before pressing on with the second hefty volume, I tried to clear my head by practising Tranche Seven of Baxter's Head-Clearing Exercises. Tranches Two and Five are usually most efficacious, in my experience, but a quick rummage in the pantry revealed that I was fresh out of paper pastry cases. Also, I remembered that I had loaned my milk stamps to Bruno, so Tranche Seven it would have to be. Head semi-cleared, I reheated my drink over a gas-jet and slumped back in my armchair with Volume Two. Damn and blast John Foxe!, I shouted to the ceiling at dusk, as the shades of night gathered in the dimpled and disgusting sky, for I had fought my way through another thousand pages with neither hide nor hair of a ghoul or a monkey coming to light. It was at this point that I first began to doubt the veracity of that peasant I had overheard, so many hours ago. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-03-2030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-03-14Fri, 14 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 10:40 A Talk On Dobson A TALK ON DOBSON I have been speculating of late on how Dobson would have fared in the age of blogging. The common view is that the great pamphleteer would have flourished in this medium, but I wonder if that is true. He would not, of course, be "out of print" as is so regrettably the case, and I suppose most of us feel a pang when we imagine how tremendous it would be to log on to our computers to find fresh blog posts from so fecund a writer. And how piquant it would be to be able to add our own comments to whatever he had to say for himself on any particular day, rather than, as we must do, simply scribbling private marginalia in the few battered and dog-eared pamphlets we may have managed to scavenge from junk shops and rummage sales and community hub bazaars and compost heaps. Yet the more I think about it, the more I remain unconvinced that Dobson would have taken to blogging as effortlessly as a swan to a pond. The reasons for my hesitancy are threefold. As I am sure you are aware, dealing with three folds all in one go can cause nervous overexcitement and lead to the vapours and the jangles, so I am not going to talk about the first two folds. The third fold, however, is something I feel sufficiently robust to attend to this evening. As it happens, a few weeks ago I was asked to give a talk on Dobson to the inmates of a Crucifix School. It was an outdoor event, taking place in a field adjoining the main block, a building with a base and brickish skirt. Fortunately, the weather held, and we were not rained upon as I had feared might be the case earlier in the day, when I had become distracted and missed the prognostications of Mr Daniel Corbett, the eminent forecaster. Usually on these occasions I like to pick my own topic, whether it be Dobson and clunking noises, or Dobson's use of novelty pipe-cleaners, or the textual implications of Dobson's fear of squirrels. Sometimes I make my choice based on what I think will appeal to any given audience, sometimes I act on mere whim, and sometimes I just blather. But this time I had been asked to address the specific question "If Dobson Were Alive Today, Would He Be A Blogger Or Would He Continue To Churn Out Pamphlets?" It was a rather unwieldy title for a talk, but I accepted the invitation, not least because it came from an endearing flibbertigibbet. I speak of the Provostette of the Crucifix School, Maud Sprain, for whom in my youth I once carried a torch. Arriving at the field, having been debouched from a charabanc, I was somewhat upset to find that Maud was not there to welcome me. In fact, so shredded were my nerves that I let out a great cry of grief. I was hurried into a tent by some sort of aide de camp, who gave me a reviving brain tonic and explained that Maud had been called away to an important meeting. Apparently, there was a to-do about the Crucifix School's preferred biscuit supplier, with Huntley & Palmer's and Peek Frean's locked in unholy combat. Maud had gone to parley with representatives of the two titanic biscuit makers, although I have to say that from my memories of her I did not think it was a role to which she was suited. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-03-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 10:40 A Talk On Dobson A TALK ON DOBSON I have been speculating of late on how Dobson would have fared in the age of blogging. The common view is that the great pamphleteer would have flourished in this medium, but I wonder if that is true. He would not, of course, be "out of print" as is so regrettably the case, and I suppose most of us feel a pang when we imagine how tremendous it would be to log on to our computers to find fresh blog posts from so fecund a writer. And how piquant it would be to be able to add our own comments to whatever he had to say for himself on any particular day, rather than, as we must do, simply scribbling private marginalia in the few battered and dog-eared pamphlets we may have managed to scavenge from junk shops and rummage sales and community hub bazaars and compost heaps. Yet the more I think about it, the more I remain unconvinced that Dobson would have taken to blogging as effortlessly as a swan to a pond. The reasons for my hesitancy are threefold. As I am sure you are aware, dealing with three folds all in one go can cause nervous overexcitement and lead to the vapours and the jangles, so I am not going to talk about the first two folds. The third fold, however, is something I feel sufficiently robust to attend to this evening. As it happens, a few weeks ago I was asked to give a talk on Dobson to the inmates of a Crucifix School. It was an outdoor event, taking place in a field adjoining the main block, a building with a base and brickish skirt. Fortunately, the weather held, and we were not rained upon as I had feared might be the case earlier in the day, when I had become distracted and missed the prognostications of Mr Daniel Corbett, the eminent forecaster. Usually on these occasions I like to pick my own topic, whether it be Dobson and clunking noises, or Dobson's use of novelty pipe-cleaners, or the textual implications of Dobson's fear of squirrels. Sometimes I make my choice based on what I think will appeal to any given audience, sometimes I act on mere whim, and sometimes I just blather. But this time I had been asked to address the specific question "If Dobson Were Alive Today, Would He Be A Blogger Or Would He Continue To Churn Out Pamphlets?" It was a rather unwieldy title for a talk, but I accepted the invitation, not least because it came from an endearing flibbertigibbet. I speak of the Provostette of the Crucifix School, Maud Sprain, for whom in my youth I once carried a torch. Arriving at the field, having been debouched from a charabanc, I was somewhat upset to find that Maud was not there to welcome me. In fact, so shredded were my nerves that I let out a great cry of grief. I was hurried into a tent by some sort of aide de camp, who gave me a reviving brain tonic and explained that Maud had been called away to an important meeting. Apparently, there was a to-do about the Crucifix School's preferred biscuit supplier, with Huntley & Palmer's and Peek Frean's locked in unholy combat. Maud had gone to parley with representatives of the two titanic biscuit makers, although I have to say that from my memories of her I did not think it was a role to which she was suited. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-03-1429:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-02-27Thu, 27 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Whither Hardy And De Sorr? 04:11 On An Ascent By Hot Air Balloon 13:47 On Ford Madox 24:36 On This Day 27:53 Rustic Wisdom WHITHER HARDY AND DE SORR? Many thanks to Futility Closet for this clipping from The Times, 9 May 1854: An accident, the consequences of which are expected to be fatal, took place at Cannes on Sunday last. A M. Despleschin, of Nice, had announced his intention of making an ascent in a balloon, and two gentlemen, M. Hardy, of Cannes, and M.A. de Sorr, a literary man from Paris, had made arrangements to accompany him. These two gentlemen had taken their seats in the car, M. Despleschin not having yet entered it, when some person in the crowd, anxious to see the balloon start, cried out 'Let go.' The man who held the ropes, thinking that the order had come from the aeronaut, obeyed, and the balloon rose rapidly into the clouds, and disappeared. M. Hardy and M. de Sorr are both entirely ignorant of the management of a balloon, and it is feared that they have been carried out to sea. Up to the 2d. no intelligence had been received of them. ON AN ASCENT BY HOT AIR BALLOON Extracts from the journal of M. de Sorr, a literary man from Paris: 27 April 1854. Faffing about aimlessly, wondering how to celebrate tomorrow's feast day of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716). As luck would have it I bumped into a vague acquaintance, M. Hardy, who said he was making a balloon ascent tomorrow, and would I care to join him? I replied that I would very much like to do so. 28 April 1854. I met with M. Hardy as arranged, in a field on the outskirts of Cannes. Beyond some palings, les vaches were mooing. We ignored them and clambered into the basket, or "car" of the balloon. Shortly afterwards, responding to a call from someone in the crowd of spectators who had gathered, the chap holding the ropes let them go, and we began our ascent. I noted that Hardy looked somewhat disconcerted, and asked him why. "We have begun our ascent prematurely," he replied, "The aeronaut who was meant to be with us had not yet clambered aboard. I myself am entirely ignorant of the management of a balloon. What about you, is that something you know of?" "Not a sausage," I replied, as we rose through the clouds. Below, the earth disappeared from view. It seemed we were in a proper pickle. But an aeronautical pickle did not quite explain the expression on M. Hardy's countenance, where disconcertment had now been replaced by abject terror. Deploying the interrogation techniques I had learned as chef d'interrogateurs for the French postal service, I questioned him closely. Hardy turned out to be a Muggletonian, and as such, he believed that when we got six miles up we would crash into the sky. I shook him by the lapels and slapped him round the chops in an attempt to knock some sense into him. He curled up in a pitiable ball on the floor of the basket, weeping. Considering him a hopeless case, I busied myself by making an inventory of the basket. There was a hand-held rudder, a fan, a packet of biscuits, five bottles of champagne, a barometer, and an illustrated album of bird engravings. The air was growing thinner as we continued our ascent. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-02-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Whither Hardy And De Sorr? 04:11 On An Ascent By Hot Air Balloon 13:47 On Ford Madox 24:36 On This Day 27:53 Rustic Wisdom WHITHER HARDY AND DE SORR? Many thanks to Futility Closet for this clipping from The Times, 9 May 1854: An accident, the consequences of which are expected to be fatal, took place at Cannes on Sunday last. A M. Despleschin, of Nice, had announced his intention of making an ascent in a balloon, and two gentlemen, M. Hardy, of Cannes, and M.A. de Sorr, a literary man from Paris, had made arrangements to accompany him. These two gentlemen had taken their seats in the car, M. Despleschin not having yet entered it, when some person in the crowd, anxious to see the balloon start, cried out 'Let go.' The man who held the ropes, thinking that the order had come from the aeronaut, obeyed, and the balloon rose rapidly into the clouds, and disappeared. M. Hardy and M. de Sorr are both entirely ignorant of the management of a balloon, and it is feared that they have been carried out to sea. Up to the 2d. no intelligence had been received of them. ON AN ASCENT BY HOT AIR BALLOON Extracts from the journal of M. de Sorr, a literary man from Paris: 27 April 1854. Faffing about aimlessly, wondering how to celebrate tomorrow's feast day of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716). As luck would have it I bumped into a vague acquaintance, M. Hardy, who said he was making a balloon ascent tomorrow, and would I care to join him? I replied that I would very much like to do so. 28 April 1854. I met with M. Hardy as arranged, in a field on the outskirts of Cannes. Beyond some palings, les vaches were mooing. We ignored them and clambered into the basket, or "car" of the balloon. Shortly afterwards, responding to a call from someone in the crowd of spectators who had gathered, the chap holding the ropes let them go, and we began our ascent. I noted that Hardy looked somewhat disconcerted, and asked him why. "We have begun our ascent prematurely," he replied, "The aeronaut who was meant to be with us had not yet clambered aboard. I myself am entirely ignorant of the management of a balloon. What about you, is that something you know of?" "Not a sausage," I replied, as we rose through the clouds. Below, the earth disappeared from view. It seemed we were in a proper pickle. But an aeronautical pickle did not quite explain the expression on M. Hardy's countenance, where disconcertment had now been replaced by abject terror. Deploying the interrogation techniques I had learned as chef d'interrogateurs for the French postal service, I questioned him closely. Hardy turned out to be a Muggletonian, and as such, he believed that when we got six miles up we would crash into the sky. I shook him by the lapels and slapped him round the chops in an attempt to knock some sense into him. He curled up in a pitiable ball on the floor of the basket, weeping. Considering him a hopeless case, I busied myself by making an inventory of the basket. There was a hand-held rudder, a fan, a packet of biscuits, five bottles of champagne, a barometer, and an illustrated album of bird engravings. The air was growing thinner as we continued our ascent. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-02-2729:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-01-30Thu, 30 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Little Dagobert 05:36 The Eggs And Chickens Man 11:05 The Lollopers 16:34 The Brass-Necked Goose 23:04 In Memoriam Pete Seeger 27:20 Tiny Enid And The Gigantic Colourful Bewinged Flying Insect LITTLE DAGOBERT I banged my head on the baptismal font, but that was only the beginning of my troubles. The font was hewn from adamantine rock, and the water it contained, though of necessity holy water, was icy. When the priest slopped it on to my bashed head, I screamed at such a pitch that a stained glass window depicting the martyrdom of St Bibblybibdib (spikes, tongs, fire) was shattered. A falling shard sliced the priest's jugular, and he collapsed, but not before dropping me into the font. While I splashed about, bawling and freezing, minuscule organisms with which the water was riddled swam into my ears, and burrowed tiny tunnels into my brain, wherein they laid their eggs. If the organisms were minuscule, imagine how microscopically wee were their eggs! Before death claimed me, I was plucked from the font by the sexton, whose beard was so vast and hairy I was almost suffocated as he clutched me to him. Gurgling, I was passed to my mother, a woman of great dottiness who endangered my life many a time in the following months, usually by taking me to unsuitable picnics--unsuitable in that they took place in snowstorms or, during balmier weather, on steep hillsides down which I would roll, gathering pace as I approached, at the bottom, a railway line or major arterial thoroughfare along which huge container lorries thundered. Fortunately, though perplexingly, the sexton was always on hand to rescue me in the nick of time. Miraculously, I survived into toddlerhood. Around this time my mother began to encourage me to play on the roof of our hotel during electrical storms. I was grateful for the rubber bootees and lead-lined swaddling jacket the sexton gave me. More than once I toppled from the roof into the moat, and I soon learned to swim skilfully to dodge both the sharp-fanged scavenger fish and the unexploded mines therein. Regular swimming while wearing raiment of lead does wonders to build up one's muscular strength, and sure enough by my sixth birthday my mother was exhibiting me at circuses and freak shows. I was known as Little Dagobert, The Strongest Boy In The Universe. Sometimes I came close to being flattened by the steamrollers I pulled across lawns and village greens, until the sexton gave me a handy tip to avoid even the gentlest of downhill inclines. Being of an implausibly rare blood group, I had to be extra careful in the vicinity of sharp knives, axes, and slicers. My caution served me well when, on my tenth birthday, my mother had me apprenticed to a well-known butcher. He was a florid, chubby, deranged and blood-drenched man, who took both pride and pleasure in his inhumane slaughtering methods. I was inconsolable for days after he slew the sexton and chopped him to bits and made him into illegal pie-fillings. I resolved to run away to sea, though we lived far, far from any coast. One crisp autumn's dawn I gathered my few pitiable belongings and tied them in a bundle and tied the bundle to the end of a stick, and with the stick propped jauntily over my shoulder I set out to make my way in the world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-01-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Little Dagobert 05:36 The Eggs And Chickens Man 11:05 The Lollopers 16:34 The Brass-Necked Goose 23:04 In Memoriam Pete Seeger 27:20 Tiny Enid And The Gigantic Colourful Bewinged Flying Insect LITTLE DAGOBERT I banged my head on the baptismal font, but that was only the beginning of my troubles. The font was hewn from adamantine rock, and the water it contained, though of necessity holy water, was icy. When the priest slopped it on to my bashed head, I screamed at such a pitch that a stained glass window depicting the martyrdom of St Bibblybibdib (spikes, tongs, fire) was shattered. A falling shard sliced the priest's jugular, and he collapsed, but not before dropping me into the font. While I splashed about, bawling and freezing, minuscule organisms with which the water was riddled swam into my ears, and burrowed tiny tunnels into my brain, wherein they laid their eggs. If the organisms were minuscule, imagine how microscopically wee were their eggs! Before death claimed me, I was plucked from the font by the sexton, whose beard was so vast and hairy I was almost suffocated as he clutched me to him. Gurgling, I was passed to my mother, a woman of great dottiness who endangered my life many a time in the following months, usually by taking me to unsuitable picnics--unsuitable in that they took place in snowstorms or, during balmier weather, on steep hillsides down which I would roll, gathering pace as I approached, at the bottom, a railway line or major arterial thoroughfare along which huge container lorries thundered. Fortunately, though perplexingly, the sexton was always on hand to rescue me in the nick of time. Miraculously, I survived into toddlerhood. Around this time my mother began to encourage me to play on the roof of our hotel during electrical storms. I was grateful for the rubber bootees and lead-lined swaddling jacket the sexton gave me. More than once I toppled from the roof into the moat, and I soon learned to swim skilfully to dodge both the sharp-fanged scavenger fish and the unexploded mines therein. Regular swimming while wearing raiment of lead does wonders to build up one's muscular strength, and sure enough by my sixth birthday my mother was exhibiting me at circuses and freak shows. I was known as Little Dagobert, The Strongest Boy In The Universe. Sometimes I came close to being flattened by the steamrollers I pulled across lawns and village greens, until the sexton gave me a handy tip to avoid even the gentlest of downhill inclines. Being of an implausibly rare blood group, I had to be extra careful in the vicinity of sharp knives, axes, and slicers. My caution served me well when, on my tenth birthday, my mother had me apprenticed to a well-known butcher. He was a florid, chubby, deranged and blood-drenched man, who took both pride and pleasure in his inhumane slaughtering methods. I was inconsolable for days after he slew the sexton and chopped him to bits and made him into illegal pie-fillings. I resolved to run away to sea, though we lived far, far from any coast. One crisp autumn's dawn I gathered my few pitiable belongings and tied them in a bundle and tied the bundle to the end of a stick, and with the stick propped jauntily over my shoulder I set out to make my way in the world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-01-3029:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2014-01-16Thu, 16 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:36 Puny Vercingetorix 05:27 Fig And Soup And Mop And Git 09:32 Dobson's Abortive Bandicoot Pamphlet 18:35 In Dingly Dell PUNY VERCINGETORIX See Vercingetorix. Vercingetorix is puny. Hark! Hear Puny Vercingetorix clank. Wherefore does he clank? It is the clanking of his armour as he marches. Puny Vercingetorix is marching in his armour o'er the hills and far away. So puny is Puny Vercingetorix that he has fallen behind the other marchers. Yes, there are other marchers. He does not march alone. Puny Vercingetorix is merely one tiny puny cog in a martial host. It is an army, clanking o'er the hills and far away. Puny Vercingetorix is bringing up the rear, having fallen behind, so far behind that even if his vision were piercing he could barely see the host ahead. But he is short-sighted as well as puny. He is short-sighted and has no spectacles, for nobody in the army is allowed spectacles. It is like the court of King George III. What usually happens when a straggler falls far behind the marching host is that they are waylaid and carried off by marauding bears. There have been countless newspaper reports of such occurrences, most distressing, most distressing. But Puny Vercingetorix, though he is puny and myopic and neurasthenic and prone to terrible fits and something of a halfwit, is nevertheless possessed of a singular quality which, in his current circumstances, is as valuable as a chest crammed with precious stones. Puny Vercingetorix speaks the language of bears, at least the language of the bears that roam these hills far away. He was taught to speak with bears when tiny, attached to a travelling circus. Now, if as a straggling marcher cut off from the host he is waylaid by bears, Puny Vercingetorix will tilt his head to the appropriate angle, and raise one eyebrow, and make significant passing movements with his hands, and from his throat will erupt the most extraordinary noise. And the bears, rather than carrying him off to their lair, there to do him unimaginable harm, will each of them flop to the ground and flail about, beatific smiles on their faces. In the parlance of Doddy, he will have tickled their funny bones. Up ahead, the host is clashing with a rival host, an army terrible with banners. Puny Vercingetorix is well out of it. He sits on a clump, and takes from his pouch his curds and whey, and snacks upon them, waiting for bears. It is the first Thursday of the fifteenth century. And that piece first appeared in the first month of the Year of Our Lord two thousand and fourteen. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-01-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:36 Puny Vercingetorix 05:27 Fig And Soup And Mop And Git 09:32 Dobson's Abortive Bandicoot Pamphlet 18:35 In Dingly Dell PUNY VERCINGETORIX See Vercingetorix. Vercingetorix is puny. Hark! Hear Puny Vercingetorix clank. Wherefore does he clank? It is the clanking of his armour as he marches. Puny Vercingetorix is marching in his armour o'er the hills and far away. So puny is Puny Vercingetorix that he has fallen behind the other marchers. Yes, there are other marchers. He does not march alone. Puny Vercingetorix is merely one tiny puny cog in a martial host. It is an army, clanking o'er the hills and far away. Puny Vercingetorix is bringing up the rear, having fallen behind, so far behind that even if his vision were piercing he could barely see the host ahead. But he is short-sighted as well as puny. He is short-sighted and has no spectacles, for nobody in the army is allowed spectacles. It is like the court of King George III. What usually happens when a straggler falls far behind the marching host is that they are waylaid and carried off by marauding bears. There have been countless newspaper reports of such occurrences, most distressing, most distressing. But Puny Vercingetorix, though he is puny and myopic and neurasthenic and prone to terrible fits and something of a halfwit, is nevertheless possessed of a singular quality which, in his current circumstances, is as valuable as a chest crammed with precious stones. Puny Vercingetorix speaks the language of bears, at least the language of the bears that roam these hills far away. He was taught to speak with bears when tiny, attached to a travelling circus. Now, if as a straggling marcher cut off from the host he is waylaid by bears, Puny Vercingetorix will tilt his head to the appropriate angle, and raise one eyebrow, and make significant passing movements with his hands, and from his throat will erupt the most extraordinary noise. And the bears, rather than carrying him off to their lair, there to do him unimaginable harm, will each of them flop to the ground and flail about, beatific smiles on their faces. In the parlance of Doddy, he will have tickled their funny bones. Up ahead, the host is clashing with a rival host, an army terrible with banners. Puny Vercingetorix is well out of it. He sits on a clump, and takes from his pouch his curds and whey, and snacks upon them, waiting for bears. It is the first Thursday of the fifteenth century. And that piece first appeared in the first month of the Year of Our Lord two thousand and fourteen. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2014-01-1629:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-11-28Thu, 28 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Thoughts On Presenting Hooting Yard On The Air For Years & Years 02:48 Snigsby And The King 06:05 Holmes 24:12 In Gorse He Shook THOUGHTS ON PRESENTING HOOTING YARD ON THE AIR FOR YEARS & YEARS 'Twas brillig, and I babbled guff Until my listeners cried "Enough!" And stopped my gob with a plug of dough And then it was that I knew woe. A woe such as I'd never known Not e'en when I was skin and bone In starveling days of pimply youth Before I grew so fat forsooth. Fat and loud and babbling guff, All roister doister swagger and puff, Puffed up like one of those eerie toads That leap at you from beside the roads. Well, at least, they leap at moi. I wrote of them in my memoir, The text of which is what I brayed Hoping to make my listeners afraid. Instead they plugged my gob with dough And brought me down so very low That now my life is full of woe And it is time for me to go. Go where? To the seaside I suppose To my seaside chalet o' prose To thump my typewriter's leaden keys And write of hornets, wasps, and bees. SNIGSBY AND THE KING So fatuous, Snigsby, preening in his periwig and epaulettes. Fatuous, too, his fat friend the king, standing on the pier, beckoning gulls. His royal hand is raised, palm upwards, and on the palm a scattering of millet. When the gulls swoop, the fatuous fat king will chuckle and call to Snigsby to execute a hurried pencil sketch which can later be worked up into a huge oil painting for the king's gallery. But no gulls swoop, today, for it is one of those birdless days in the kingdom. The sky is empty of birds, as happens on the birdless days, which alas the king's prognosticators can never predict with any accuracy. Where the birds go, on these days, has not yet been ascertained, though several philosophers are hard at work in the king's tower trying to account for the circumstance. The philosophers' previous task was to explain the workings of railway timetables, a job they performed so well that the king presented every man jack of them with periwigs and epaulettes and special coins to keep in their pockets. They were toy coins, not legal tender, but they glistened brightly and pleased the philosophers, who were easily pleased by kingly gifts. Snigsby was too fatuous to be a philosopher or prognosticator and to be frank he was something of a butterfingers with his sketching pencil. But so fatuous was the fat king that he thought Snigsby's cack-handed scribbles were surpassing in loveliness. When the king called him, Snigsby scampered forwards along the pier, but he tripped and toppled and plunged into the sea. Mermaids snatched away his pencil and his sketchpad, his periwig and his epaulettes, and poor poor Snigsby, flailing in the water under a birdless sky, was dragged below the surface by the mermaids' pet scavenger fish. They fixed him with limpets to a seabed rock, there to perish. The king, who had not noticed Snigsby's fall, grew tired of calling, grew tired of holding out his upturned millet-scattered palm at the end of the pier on a birdless day. He tossed the millet into the sea and turned on his heel and minced back to the promenade where his horse waited with the immense patience of a horse. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-11-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Thoughts On Presenting Hooting Yard On The Air For Years & Years 02:48 Snigsby And The King 06:05 Holmes 24:12 In Gorse He Shook THOUGHTS ON PRESENTING HOOTING YARD ON THE AIR FOR YEARS & YEARS 'Twas brillig, and I babbled guff Until my listeners cried "Enough!" And stopped my gob with a plug of dough And then it was that I knew woe. A woe such as I'd never known Not e'en when I was skin and bone In starveling days of pimply youth Before I grew so fat forsooth. Fat and loud and babbling guff, All roister doister swagger and puff, Puffed up like one of those eerie toads That leap at you from beside the roads. Well, at least, they leap at moi. I wrote of them in my memoir, The text of which is what I brayed Hoping to make my listeners afraid. Instead they plugged my gob with dough And brought me down so very low That now my life is full of woe And it is time for me to go. Go where? To the seaside I suppose To my seaside chalet o' prose To thump my typewriter's leaden keys And write of hornets, wasps, and bees. SNIGSBY AND THE KING So fatuous, Snigsby, preening in his periwig and epaulettes. Fatuous, too, his fat friend the king, standing on the pier, beckoning gulls. His royal hand is raised, palm upwards, and on the palm a scattering of millet. When the gulls swoop, the fatuous fat king will chuckle and call to Snigsby to execute a hurried pencil sketch which can later be worked up into a huge oil painting for the king's gallery. But no gulls swoop, today, for it is one of those birdless days in the kingdom. The sky is empty of birds, as happens on the birdless days, which alas the king's prognosticators can never predict with any accuracy. Where the birds go, on these days, has not yet been ascertained, though several philosophers are hard at work in the king's tower trying to account for the circumstance. The philosophers' previous task was to explain the workings of railway timetables, a job they performed so well that the king presented every man jack of them with periwigs and epaulettes and special coins to keep in their pockets. They were toy coins, not legal tender, but they glistened brightly and pleased the philosophers, who were easily pleased by kingly gifts. Snigsby was too fatuous to be a philosopher or prognosticator and to be frank he was something of a butterfingers with his sketching pencil. But so fatuous was the fat king that he thought Snigsby's cack-handed scribbles were surpassing in loveliness. When the king called him, Snigsby scampered forwards along the pier, but he tripped and toppled and plunged into the sea. Mermaids snatched away his pencil and his sketchpad, his periwig and his epaulettes, and poor poor Snigsby, flailing in the water under a birdless sky, was dragged below the surface by the mermaids' pet scavenger fish. They fixed him with limpets to a seabed rock, there to perish. The king, who had not noticed Snigsby's fall, grew tired of calling, grew tired of holding out his upturned millet-scattered palm at the end of the pier on a birdless day. He tossed the millet into the sea and turned on his heel and minced back to the promenade where his horse waited with the immense patience of a horse. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-11-2829:17fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-11-21Thu, 21 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dealey Plaza Craft Project DEALEY PLAZA CRAFT PROJECT Fifty-four years ago, on this day, John F Kennedy was assassinated. Seven years ago, on this day, I marked the anniversary with a piece in The Dabbler ... Hello readers! I am going to show you how to make a lovely scale model of Dealey Plaza, the site in Dallas, Texas, of the Kennedy assassination on 22 November 1963. First, get some plasticine. Before removing the packaging, wash your hands thoroughly in warm water. If your hands are really grubby, for instance if you have been doing grubby things, use swarfega. I am making no moral judgement on your indulgence in grubby practices, merely noting that warm water by itself will not suffice to cleanse the pollution from your fleshly extremities. As for your immortal soul, far be it from me to pronounce upon the peril in which it is placed by your unconscionable grubbiness. After all, I am no saint. That being said, I abhor the kind of grubbiness to which you may have fallen prey, albeit I do not make it my business to go about declaring my own rectitude, for that would be to boast, and thus itself sinful. Once or twice, maybe, I have dipped my toe in the slimy puddle of moral turpitude, and that was quite enough for me. Now to the second stage of this exciting project. With your prayer book or catechism resting upon the work surface in easy reach, open the packet of plasticine. Intone three Hail Marys, break off some plasticine, and begin to mould it into the shape of the grassy knoll. It is advisable at this point to go and fetch your rosary beads. Before completing the grassy knoll part of the model, open up that tin of swarfega and clean your hands again. You can never be too careful. When you have made a passable model of the grassy knoll, take some matchsticks and press them into the plasticine to represent the white picket fence. Say a Novena. Now grab another chunk of plasticine and fashion a miniature version of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Remember to tweak a tiny tubular shape poking out of the sixth floor window to show assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's mail order Mannlicher- Carcano rifle with which he shot the President. Some people would insert the word "allegedly" into that sentence, but not me. I have read Case Closed by Gerald Posner so I know whereof I speak.. A pink blob of plasticine will do for Jackie Kennedy's pillbox hat. The underpass over the Stemmons Freeway is quite tricky to make out of plasticine, so you may wish to use a few bits of cardboard. Your local supermarket probably has packaging and boxes piled up somewhere for customers to take away. Go and get sufficient boxes to cut enough cardboard for the underpass, and while you are out and about, drop into your nearest Catholic church and make your confession to Father O'Flaherty. If your priest has a different name, don't worry. If you don't have a priest, do worry, for you will burn in hell, however skilfully you manage to complete your plasticine and cardboard model of Dealey Plaza. When you return home, your soul now washed clean of all disgusting filth, put the finishing touches to your model by curving a rectangle of plasticine into the shape of the pergola from where the Zapruder footage was shot. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-11-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dealey Plaza Craft Project DEALEY PLAZA CRAFT PROJECT Fifty-four years ago, on this day, John F Kennedy was assassinated. Seven years ago, on this day, I marked the anniversary with a piece in The Dabbler ... Hello readers! I am going to show you how to make a lovely scale model of Dealey Plaza, the site in Dallas, Texas, of the Kennedy assassination on 22 November 1963. First, get some plasticine. Before removing the packaging, wash your hands thoroughly in warm water. If your hands are really grubby, for instance if you have been doing grubby things, use swarfega. I am making no moral judgement on your indulgence in grubby practices, merely noting that warm water by itself will not suffice to cleanse the pollution from your fleshly extremities. As for your immortal soul, far be it from me to pronounce upon the peril in which it is placed by your unconscionable grubbiness. After all, I am no saint. That being said, I abhor the kind of grubbiness to which you may have fallen prey, albeit I do not make it my business to go about declaring my own rectitude, for that would be to boast, and thus itself sinful. Once or twice, maybe, I have dipped my toe in the slimy puddle of moral turpitude, and that was quite enough for me. Now to the second stage of this exciting project. With your prayer book or catechism resting upon the work surface in easy reach, open the packet of plasticine. Intone three Hail Marys, break off some plasticine, and begin to mould it into the shape of the grassy knoll. It is advisable at this point to go and fetch your rosary beads. Before completing the grassy knoll part of the model, open up that tin of swarfega and clean your hands again. You can never be too careful. When you have made a passable model of the grassy knoll, take some matchsticks and press them into the plasticine to represent the white picket fence. Say a Novena. Now grab another chunk of plasticine and fashion a miniature version of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Remember to tweak a tiny tubular shape poking out of the sixth floor window to show assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's mail order Mannlicher- Carcano rifle with which he shot the President. Some people would insert the word "allegedly" into that sentence, but not me. I have read Case Closed by Gerald Posner so I know whereof I speak.. A pink blob of plasticine will do for Jackie Kennedy's pillbox hat. The underpass over the Stemmons Freeway is quite tricky to make out of plasticine, so you may wish to use a few bits of cardboard. Your local supermarket probably has packaging and boxes piled up somewhere for customers to take away. Go and get sufficient boxes to cut enough cardboard for the underpass, and while you are out and about, drop into your nearest Catholic church and make your confession to Father O'Flaherty. If your priest has a different name, don't worry. If you don't have a priest, do worry, for you will burn in hell, however skilfully you manage to complete your plasticine and cardboard model of Dealey Plaza. When you return home, your soul now washed clean of all disgusting filth, put the finishing touches to your model by curving a rectangle of plasticine into the shape of the pergola from where the Zapruder footage was shot. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-11-2129:57fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-11-07Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:51 On Astrology 14:17 English Heads 26:36 Swoons, Shudders, Convulsions & Dread ON ASTROLOGY Eight years and one month ago, I posted the following horoscope here at Hooting Yard: Our horoscopes are based on the so-called Blodgett Astrological System of six, rather than twelve, signs. Over many years, forecasts made under this system have proved over eight hundred and forty-eight times more reliable than all that Pisces and Aquarius nonsense! You can work out which sign you are by referring to the absolutely splendid up to date online guide at www.blodgettglobaldomination.com/humanfate.html (site under construction). Fruitbat. Try to remember that you are lactose-intolerant. The hours before twilight will be significant for your pet stoat. Throw away that tub of swarfega. Mayonnaise. It is time to dig out your copy of Gordon "Sting" Sumner's profound I Hope The Russians Love Their Children Too and play it again after all these years. You may overhear the phrase "going postal" more than once this afternoon. Pay special attention to patches of bracken. Coathanger. Your recurrent nightmares about an albino hen will finally make sense. Don't go near any buildings, large or small. Slot. At last your destiny will begin to unfold, probably as you take a stroll along the towpath of the old canal. Vengeful thoughts will assail your brain, but you should ignore them, and devote your energies to making jam. A hollyhock may have special meaning for your kith and kin. Tarboosh. O what can ail thee, horoscope reader, alone and palely loitering? Make sure you treat yourself to an electric bath and a session in a sensory deprivation tank. The Bale of Gas in your House of Stupidity has incalculable effects. You will stand on the steps of the Insane Asylum, and hundreds of men and women will stand below you, with their upturned faces. Among them will be old men crushed by sorrow, and old men ruined by vice; aged women with faces that seemed to plead for pity, women that make you shrink from their unwomanly gaze; lion-like young men, made for heroes but caught in the devil's trap and changed into beasts; and boys whose looks show that sin has already stamped them with its foul insignia, and burned into their souls the shame which is to be one of the elements of its eternal punishment. A less impressible person than you would feel moved at the sight of that throng of bruised and broken creatures. A hymn will be read, and when the preachers strike up an old tune, voice after voice will join in the melody until it swells into a mighty volume of sacred song. You will notice that the faces of many are wet with tears, and there will be an indescribable pathos in their voices. The pitying God, amid the rapturous hallelujahs of the heavenly hosts, shall bend to listen to the music of these broken harps. Nixon. Vile dribbling goblins covered in boils will make life difficult today. Why am I returning to this old horoscope today?, you may ask. Well, for eight years I have been ignoring a cardboard box full of letters which I received in the days after this postage appeared. The box--or rather its contents--gnawed at my conscience. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. I have had a terrible time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-11-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:51 On Astrology 14:17 English Heads 26:36 Swoons, Shudders, Convulsions & Dread ON ASTROLOGY Eight years and one month ago, I posted the following horoscope here at Hooting Yard: Our horoscopes are based on the so-called Blodgett Astrological System of six, rather than twelve, signs. Over many years, forecasts made under this system have proved over eight hundred and forty-eight times more reliable than all that Pisces and Aquarius nonsense! You can work out which sign you are by referring to the absolutely splendid up to date online guide at www.blodgettglobaldomination.com/humanfate.html (site under construction). Fruitbat. Try to remember that you are lactose-intolerant. The hours before twilight will be significant for your pet stoat. Throw away that tub of swarfega. Mayonnaise. It is time to dig out your copy of Gordon "Sting" Sumner's profound I Hope The Russians Love Their Children Too and play it again after all these years. You may overhear the phrase "going postal" more than once this afternoon. Pay special attention to patches of bracken. Coathanger. Your recurrent nightmares about an albino hen will finally make sense. Don't go near any buildings, large or small. Slot. At last your destiny will begin to unfold, probably as you take a stroll along the towpath of the old canal. Vengeful thoughts will assail your brain, but you should ignore them, and devote your energies to making jam. A hollyhock may have special meaning for your kith and kin. Tarboosh. O what can ail thee, horoscope reader, alone and palely loitering? Make sure you treat yourself to an electric bath and a session in a sensory deprivation tank. The Bale of Gas in your House of Stupidity has incalculable effects. You will stand on the steps of the Insane Asylum, and hundreds of men and women will stand below you, with their upturned faces. Among them will be old men crushed by sorrow, and old men ruined by vice; aged women with faces that seemed to plead for pity, women that make you shrink from their unwomanly gaze; lion-like young men, made for heroes but caught in the devil's trap and changed into beasts; and boys whose looks show that sin has already stamped them with its foul insignia, and burned into their souls the shame which is to be one of the elements of its eternal punishment. A less impressible person than you would feel moved at the sight of that throng of bruised and broken creatures. A hymn will be read, and when the preachers strike up an old tune, voice after voice will join in the melody until it swells into a mighty volume of sacred song. You will notice that the faces of many are wet with tears, and there will be an indescribable pathos in their voices. The pitying God, amid the rapturous hallelujahs of the heavenly hosts, shall bend to listen to the music of these broken harps. Nixon. Vile dribbling goblins covered in boils will make life difficult today. Why am I returning to this old horoscope today?, you may ask. Well, for eight years I have been ignoring a cardboard box full of letters which I received in the days after this postage appeared. The box--or rather its contents--gnawed at my conscience. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. I have had a terrible time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-11-0729:40fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-31Thu, 31 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:42 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript 03:31 Moderne Travelogue Almananack 03:41 Shrivelled 19:28 Spooky Boswell Coincidence 20:04 Guy Maddin Film Intertitles Advent Calendar--I 23:31 An Appointment With Doctor Fang 27:18 Ugo's New Hooter 27:39 A Warning To Cartographers 28:00 Smokers' Poptarts! PEEP, BO : LECTURE TRANSCRIPT Good evening, and thank you for your warm welcome. Well, warm-ish. The clapping petered out rather quickly, and I must say that other audiences, in other auditoria, have shown a sight more enthusiasm. But there we go. I am not complaining. This lecturing lark is much preferable to being out and about in all weathers in the company of sheep, dim-witted and fearful beasts that they are. It is more lucrative too. But I should introduce myself. My name is Bo Peep. I am often known as "Little" Bo Peep by dint of my diminutive stature. I don't mind being called "Little". It has an affectionate ring. But I do object when some newspapers compare me to a dwarf from a Wagner opera. Clearly, the organisers of tonight's event expected me to be smaller than I am. What a tiny lectern! The one thing most of you will know about me is that I lost my sheep. I do not deny it. Quite why it caused such a kerfuffle in the press is a mystery to me. I became the poster girl for neglectful and inept shepherdesses, and even now I can barely leave my cottage without some mucky little country urchin calling out to me to ask where my sheep are. It is a trying existence. Thus I welcome this opportunity to tell my side of the story. It all happened on one of those blustery misty wuthery weathery days, in some godawful rustic backwater. As usual, I was sitting in a field, supervising several sheep. My childhood ambition of intergalactic space travel, of boldly going where no Peep had gone before, seemed as far off as ever. Bored out of my considerably acute mind, I drifted into a doze. And as I dozed, I dreamed. I dreamt of the moon and a yew tree. The light was blue. Grasses prickled my ankles, and I simply could not see where to get to through the fumy, spiritous mists. The moon dragged the sea after it like a dark crime. Bells startled the sky, eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection bonged out their names. The yew tree pointed up. It had a Gothic shape. The moon was my mother. Her blue garments unloosed small bats and owls. She was bald and wild. The message of the yew tree was blackness, blackness and silence. I started awake, rubbed my eyes, and saw that the sheep I was meant to be shepherdessing were gone. My immediate hunch was that they had been abducted by a band of roaming Wagnerian dwarves. I had read of several such crimes in the Daily Nibelungenlied And Countryside Advertiser. So, with the gung ho approach for which we Peeps are universally admired, or if not universally then at least in and around Sibodnedabshire, I hoisted my crook and marched off to the newsagent's kiosk, under those pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing at Ketchworth. It was not the Advertiser I was looking for. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:42 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript 03:31 Moderne Travelogue Almananack 03:41 Shrivelled 19:28 Spooky Boswell Coincidence 20:04 Guy Maddin Film Intertitles Advent Calendar--I 23:31 An Appointment With Doctor Fang 27:18 Ugo's New Hooter 27:39 A Warning To Cartographers 28:00 Smokers' Poptarts! PEEP, BO : LECTURE TRANSCRIPT Good evening, and thank you for your warm welcome. Well, warm-ish. The clapping petered out rather quickly, and I must say that other audiences, in other auditoria, have shown a sight more enthusiasm. But there we go. I am not complaining. This lecturing lark is much preferable to being out and about in all weathers in the company of sheep, dim-witted and fearful beasts that they are. It is more lucrative too. But I should introduce myself. My name is Bo Peep. I am often known as "Little" Bo Peep by dint of my diminutive stature. I don't mind being called "Little". It has an affectionate ring. But I do object when some newspapers compare me to a dwarf from a Wagner opera. Clearly, the organisers of tonight's event expected me to be smaller than I am. What a tiny lectern! The one thing most of you will know about me is that I lost my sheep. I do not deny it. Quite why it caused such a kerfuffle in the press is a mystery to me. I became the poster girl for neglectful and inept shepherdesses, and even now I can barely leave my cottage without some mucky little country urchin calling out to me to ask where my sheep are. It is a trying existence. Thus I welcome this opportunity to tell my side of the story. It all happened on one of those blustery misty wuthery weathery days, in some godawful rustic backwater. As usual, I was sitting in a field, supervising several sheep. My childhood ambition of intergalactic space travel, of boldly going where no Peep had gone before, seemed as far off as ever. Bored out of my considerably acute mind, I drifted into a doze. And as I dozed, I dreamed. I dreamt of the moon and a yew tree. The light was blue. Grasses prickled my ankles, and I simply could not see where to get to through the fumy, spiritous mists. The moon dragged the sea after it like a dark crime. Bells startled the sky, eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection bonged out their names. The yew tree pointed up. It had a Gothic shape. The moon was my mother. Her blue garments unloosed small bats and owls. She was bald and wild. The message of the yew tree was blackness, blackness and silence. I started awake, rubbed my eyes, and saw that the sheep I was meant to be shepherdessing were gone. My immediate hunch was that they had been abducted by a band of roaming Wagnerian dwarves. I had read of several such crimes in the Daily Nibelungenlied And Countryside Advertiser. So, with the gung ho approach for which we Peeps are universally admired, or if not universally then at least in and around Sibodnedabshire, I hoisted my crook and marched off to the newsagent's kiosk, under those pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing at Ketchworth. It was not the Advertiser I was looking for. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-3128:54fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-24Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:15 A Clucking Thing 12:40 A Note on Pigs 14:01 The Song Of The Borts Of Pray 17:02 Paper Pianos, Blots, & Dead Physicians 17:53 "Coleridge was a marvellous talker ... Wordsworth..." 19:13 A Clanking Thing A CLUCKING THING Once upon a time there was a clucking thing. It was made of wire and wax and string and it made a clucking noise when you pressed a knob. The knob was located on what might have been its head. I say "might have been" because the thing didn't really have a head, not a proper head, like my head or your head. It was a sort of boxy shape, this thing. The knob was set over to one side on the very upper part of it, which tapered slightly. That is why I said "head", because the knob was on the upper part, to give you some idea. Were the knob set lower, as low as could be, I could have said it was located on the thing's foot, even though it did not have a foot, or feet, not as such. It was not a mobile thing. If you wanted to move it, you had to pick it up and put it where you wanted it to be and it would stay there until you picked it up again and moved it somewhere else. It did not make a clucking sound unless you pressed the knob. It was yellow. It was yellow except for the knob, which was red, or perhaps orange. Also, its underside was beige. But its underside was almost always resting on the floor, and so was not visible. If you picked it up and rested it on its side, or--in a moment of hysteria--upside down, it did not cluck when you pressed the knob, no matter how hard and insistently and repeatedly you pressed the knob. It had to be placed upright, with the beige part on the floor. It was roughly the same size as a big duck. If you placed a microphone next to it, to amplify the clucking sound when you pressed the knob, the proximity of the microphone created some sort of feedback. Then the thing howled, a terrifying ear-splitting howl, whether or not you were pressing the knob. It would continue howling until you moved the microphone somewhere else, further away, preferably into a different room, or even into a different building. After howling, the thing would take some time to settle itself before pressing its knob would make it cluck. Immediately after howling, when you pressed the knob the thing would wheeze. You would probably have to wait about five minutes before it would cluck again properly, The thing did not do anything else except cluck, howl, or wheeze. It fulfilled no higher purpose. Unless you were particularly fond of boxy yellow immobile things, it did not really prettify a room, like a vase of brilliant flowers, or a framed picture of a parson skating on a frozen pond. It was not the only thing of its kind in the world. At the last count there were something like twenty million of them. Most of them, the things that cluck when you press the knob, were buried in landfill sites. Human ingenuity can be immensely befuddling. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:15 A Clucking Thing 12:40 A Note on Pigs 14:01 The Song Of The Borts Of Pray 17:02 Paper Pianos, Blots, & Dead Physicians 17:53 "Coleridge was a marvellous talker ... Wordsworth..." 19:13 A Clanking Thing A CLUCKING THING Once upon a time there was a clucking thing. It was made of wire and wax and string and it made a clucking noise when you pressed a knob. The knob was located on what might have been its head. I say "might have been" because the thing didn't really have a head, not a proper head, like my head or your head. It was a sort of boxy shape, this thing. The knob was set over to one side on the very upper part of it, which tapered slightly. That is why I said "head", because the knob was on the upper part, to give you some idea. Were the knob set lower, as low as could be, I could have said it was located on the thing's foot, even though it did not have a foot, or feet, not as such. It was not a mobile thing. If you wanted to move it, you had to pick it up and put it where you wanted it to be and it would stay there until you picked it up again and moved it somewhere else. It did not make a clucking sound unless you pressed the knob. It was yellow. It was yellow except for the knob, which was red, or perhaps orange. Also, its underside was beige. But its underside was almost always resting on the floor, and so was not visible. If you picked it up and rested it on its side, or--in a moment of hysteria--upside down, it did not cluck when you pressed the knob, no matter how hard and insistently and repeatedly you pressed the knob. It had to be placed upright, with the beige part on the floor. It was roughly the same size as a big duck. If you placed a microphone next to it, to amplify the clucking sound when you pressed the knob, the proximity of the microphone created some sort of feedback. Then the thing howled, a terrifying ear-splitting howl, whether or not you were pressing the knob. It would continue howling until you moved the microphone somewhere else, further away, preferably into a different room, or even into a different building. After howling, the thing would take some time to settle itself before pressing its knob would make it cluck. Immediately after howling, when you pressed the knob the thing would wheeze. You would probably have to wait about five minutes before it would cluck again properly, The thing did not do anything else except cluck, howl, or wheeze. It fulfilled no higher purpose. Unless you were particularly fond of boxy yellow immobile things, it did not really prettify a room, like a vase of brilliant flowers, or a framed picture of a parson skating on a frozen pond. It was not the only thing of its kind in the world. At the last count there were something like twenty million of them. Most of them, the things that cluck when you press the knob, were buried in landfill sites. Human ingenuity can be immensely befuddling. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-2429:15fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-10Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:45 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript 03:34 Moderne Travelogue Almananack 03:43 Shrivelled 19:30 Spooky Boswell Coincidence 20:06 A Note On Gnomes 22:40 Fee Fi Fo Fum 23:32 An Appointment With Doctor Fang 27:11 Abominable, Sulphurous & Futile : A Footnote 27:20 Ugo's New Hooter 27:51 A Warning To Cartographers PEEP, BO : LECTURE TRANSCRIPT Good evening, and thank you for your warm welcome. Well, warm-ish. The clapping petered out rather quickly, and I must say that other audiences, in other auditoria, have shown a sight more enthusiasm. But there we go. I am not complaining. This lecturing lark is much preferable to being out and about in all weathers in the company of sheep, dim-witted and fearful beasts that they are. It is more lucrative too. But I should introduce myself. My name is Bo Peep. I am often known as "Little" Bo Peep by dint of my diminutive stature. I don't mind being called "Little". It has an affectionate ring. But I do object when some newspapers compare me to a dwarf from a Wagner opera. Clearly, the organisers of tonight's event expected me to be smaller than I am. What a tiny lectern! The one thing most of you will know about me is that I lost my sheep. I do not deny it. Quite why it caused such a kerfuffle in the press is a mystery to me. I became the poster girl for neglectful and inept shepherdesses, and even now I can barely leave my cottage without some mucky little country urchin calling out to me to ask where my sheep are. It is a trying existence. Thus I welcome this opportunity to tell my side of the story. It all happened on one of those blustery misty wuthery weathery days, in some godawful rustic backwater. As usual, I was sitting in a field, supervising several sheep. My childhood ambition of intergalactic space travel, of boldly going where no Peep had gone before, seemed as far off as ever. Bored out of my considerably acute mind, I drifted into a doze. And as I dozed, I dreamed. I dreamt of the moon and a yew tree. The light was blue. Grasses prickled my ankles, and I simply could not see where to get to through the fumy, spiritous mists. The moon dragged the sea after it like a dark crime. Bells startled the sky, eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection bonged out their names. The yew tree pointed up. It had a Gothic shape. The moon was my mother. Her blue garments unloosed small bats and owls. She was bald and wild. The message of the yew tree was blackness, blackness and silence. I started awake, rubbed my eyes, and saw that the sheep I was meant to be shepherdessing were gone. My immediate hunch was that they had been abducted by a band of roaming Wagnerian dwarves. I had read of several such crimes in the Daily Nibelungenlied And Countryside Advertiser. So, with the gung ho approach for which we Peeps are universally admired, or if not universally then at least in and around Sibodnedabshire, I hoisted my crook and marched off to the newsagent's kiosk, under those pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing at Ketchworth. It was not the Advertiser I was looking for. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:45 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript 03:34 Moderne Travelogue Almananack 03:43 Shrivelled 19:30 Spooky Boswell Coincidence 20:06 A Note On Gnomes 22:40 Fee Fi Fo Fum 23:32 An Appointment With Doctor Fang 27:11 Abominable, Sulphurous & Futile : A Footnote 27:20 Ugo's New Hooter 27:51 A Warning To Cartographers PEEP, BO : LECTURE TRANSCRIPT Good evening, and thank you for your warm welcome. Well, warm-ish. The clapping petered out rather quickly, and I must say that other audiences, in other auditoria, have shown a sight more enthusiasm. But there we go. I am not complaining. This lecturing lark is much preferable to being out and about in all weathers in the company of sheep, dim-witted and fearful beasts that they are. It is more lucrative too. But I should introduce myself. My name is Bo Peep. I am often known as "Little" Bo Peep by dint of my diminutive stature. I don't mind being called "Little". It has an affectionate ring. But I do object when some newspapers compare me to a dwarf from a Wagner opera. Clearly, the organisers of tonight's event expected me to be smaller than I am. What a tiny lectern! The one thing most of you will know about me is that I lost my sheep. I do not deny it. Quite why it caused such a kerfuffle in the press is a mystery to me. I became the poster girl for neglectful and inept shepherdesses, and even now I can barely leave my cottage without some mucky little country urchin calling out to me to ask where my sheep are. It is a trying existence. Thus I welcome this opportunity to tell my side of the story. It all happened on one of those blustery misty wuthery weathery days, in some godawful rustic backwater. As usual, I was sitting in a field, supervising several sheep. My childhood ambition of intergalactic space travel, of boldly going where no Peep had gone before, seemed as far off as ever. Bored out of my considerably acute mind, I drifted into a doze. And as I dozed, I dreamed. I dreamt of the moon and a yew tree. The light was blue. Grasses prickled my ankles, and I simply could not see where to get to through the fumy, spiritous mists. The moon dragged the sea after it like a dark crime. Bells startled the sky, eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection bonged out their names. The yew tree pointed up. It had a Gothic shape. The moon was my mother. Her blue garments unloosed small bats and owls. She was bald and wild. The message of the yew tree was blackness, blackness and silence. I started awake, rubbed my eyes, and saw that the sheep I was meant to be shepherdessing were gone. My immediate hunch was that they had been abducted by a band of roaming Wagnerian dwarves. I had read of several such crimes in the Daily Nibelungenlied And Countryside Advertiser. So, with the gung ho approach for which we Peeps are universally admired, or if not universally then at least in and around Sibodnedabshire, I hoisted my crook and marched off to the newsagent's kiosk, under those pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing at Ketchworth. It was not the Advertiser I was looking for. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-1029:36fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-03Thu, 03 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:43 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript 03:32 Moderne Travelogue Almananack 03:41 Shrivelled 19:27 Spooky Boswell Coincidence 20:03 A Note On Gnomes 22:38 Fee Fi Fo Fum 22:52 Pontiff Mnemonic 23:30 An Appointment With Doctor Fang 27:17 Ugo's New Hooter 27:38 A Warning To Cartographers PEEP, BO : LECTURE TRANSCRIPT Good evening, and thank you for your warm welcome. Well, warm-ish. The clapping petered out rather quickly, and I must say that other audiences, in other auditoria, have shown a sight more enthusiasm. But there we go. I am not complaining. This lecturing lark is much preferable to being out and about in all weathers in the company of sheep, dim-witted and fearful beasts that they are. It is more lucrative too. But I should introduce myself. My name is Bo Peep. I am often known as "Little" Bo Peep by dint of my diminutive stature. I don't mind being called "Little". It has an affectionate ring. But I do object when some newspapers compare me to a dwarf from a Wagner opera. Clearly, the organisers of tonight's event expected me to be smaller than I am. What a tiny lectern! The one thing most of you will know about me is that I lost my sheep. I do not deny it. Quite why it caused such a kerfuffle in the press is a mystery to me. I became the poster girl for neglectful and inept shepherdesses, and even now I can barely leave my cottage without some mucky little country urchin calling out to me to ask where my sheep are. It is a trying existence. Thus I welcome this opportunity to tell my side of the story. It all happened on one of those blustery misty wuthery weathery days, in some godawful rustic backwater. As usual, I was sitting in a field, supervising several sheep. My childhood ambition of intergalactic space travel, of boldly going where no Peep had gone before, seemed as far off as ever. Bored out of my considerably acute mind, I drifted into a doze. And as I dozed, I dreamed. I dreamt of the moon and a yew tree. The light was blue. Grasses prickled my ankles, and I simply could not see where to get to through the fumy, spiritous mists. The moon dragged the sea after it like a dark crime. Bells startled the sky, eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection bonged out their names. The yew tree pointed up. It had a Gothic shape. The moon was my mother. Her blue garments unloosed small bats and owls. She was bald and wild. The message of the yew tree was blackness, blackness and silence. I started awake, rubbed my eyes, and saw that the sheep I was meant to be shepherdessing were gone. My immediate hunch was that they had been abducted by a band of roaming Wagnerian dwarves. I had read of several such crimes in the Daily Nibelungenlied And Countryside Advertiser. So, with the gung ho approach for which we Peeps are universally admired, or if not universally then at least in and around Sibodnedabshire, I hoisted my crook and marched off to the newsagent's kiosk, under those pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing at Ketchworth. It was not the Advertiser I was looking for. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:43 Peep, Bo : Lecture Transcript 03:32 Moderne Travelogue Almananack 03:41 Shrivelled 19:27 Spooky Boswell Coincidence 20:03 A Note On Gnomes 22:38 Fee Fi Fo Fum 22:52 Pontiff Mnemonic 23:30 An Appointment With Doctor Fang 27:17 Ugo's New Hooter 27:38 A Warning To Cartographers PEEP, BO : LECTURE TRANSCRIPT Good evening, and thank you for your warm welcome. Well, warm-ish. The clapping petered out rather quickly, and I must say that other audiences, in other auditoria, have shown a sight more enthusiasm. But there we go. I am not complaining. This lecturing lark is much preferable to being out and about in all weathers in the company of sheep, dim-witted and fearful beasts that they are. It is more lucrative too. But I should introduce myself. My name is Bo Peep. I am often known as "Little" Bo Peep by dint of my diminutive stature. I don't mind being called "Little". It has an affectionate ring. But I do object when some newspapers compare me to a dwarf from a Wagner opera. Clearly, the organisers of tonight's event expected me to be smaller than I am. What a tiny lectern! The one thing most of you will know about me is that I lost my sheep. I do not deny it. Quite why it caused such a kerfuffle in the press is a mystery to me. I became the poster girl for neglectful and inept shepherdesses, and even now I can barely leave my cottage without some mucky little country urchin calling out to me to ask where my sheep are. It is a trying existence. Thus I welcome this opportunity to tell my side of the story. It all happened on one of those blustery misty wuthery weathery days, in some godawful rustic backwater. As usual, I was sitting in a field, supervising several sheep. My childhood ambition of intergalactic space travel, of boldly going where no Peep had gone before, seemed as far off as ever. Bored out of my considerably acute mind, I drifted into a doze. And as I dozed, I dreamed. I dreamt of the moon and a yew tree. The light was blue. Grasses prickled my ankles, and I simply could not see where to get to through the fumy, spiritous mists. The moon dragged the sea after it like a dark crime. Bells startled the sky, eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection bonged out their names. The yew tree pointed up. It had a Gothic shape. The moon was my mother. Her blue garments unloosed small bats and owls. She was bald and wild. The message of the yew tree was blackness, blackness and silence. I started awake, rubbed my eyes, and saw that the sheep I was meant to be shepherdessing were gone. My immediate hunch was that they had been abducted by a band of roaming Wagnerian dwarves. I had read of several such crimes in the Daily Nibelungenlied And Countryside Advertiser. So, with the gung ho approach for which we Peeps are universally admired, or if not universally then at least in and around Sibodnedabshire, I hoisted my crook and marched off to the newsagent's kiosk, under those pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing at Ketchworth. It was not the Advertiser I was looking for. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-10-0328:28fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-26Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:57 Gladstone's Proposal 07:43 A 14:17 Puffin And Potato And Pirate Post 27:24 A Toc H Dabble GLADSTONE'S PROPOSAL After four nervy months, [Gladstone] came close to proposing at the Coliseum on a moonlit January evening. A few days later he did it instead by letter. It was not a proposal to sweep a young girl off her feet. "I seek much in a wife in gifts better than those of our human pride, and am also sensible that she can find little in me," he wrote, in a single long-winded sentence, "sensible that, were you to treat this note as the offspring of utter presumption, I must not be surprised: sensible that the life I invite you to share, even if it be not attended, as I trust it is not, with peculiar disadvantages of an outward kind, is one, I do not say unequal to your deserts, for that were saying little, but liable at best to changes and perplexities and pains which, for myself, I contemplate without apprehension, but to which it is perhaps selfishness in the main, with the sense of inward dependence counteracting an opposite sense of my too real unworthiness, which would make me contribute to expose another--and that other!" On receiving the letter Catherine pleaded for time, no doubt hoping it would give her the opportunity to work out exactly what Gladstone meant.* *"He really was a frightful old prig," wrote Clement Attlee... on reading this letter in a biography of Gladstone, "Fancy writing a letter proposing marriage including a sentence of 140 words all about the Almighty. He was a dreadful person." from The Lion And The Unicorn : Gladstone vs Disraeli by Richard Aldous (2006) A Many moons ago, when the Hooting Yard website was but young--on the ninth of March 2004, to be precise--I noted the fact I had learned that Ambrose Bierce had twelve siblings, all of whose given names began, like his, with the letter A. In the brief postage where I mentioned this, I included a request for a knowledgeable reader to let me know what all those names were. Six and a half years have passed, and do you know, not a single one of you has bothered to respond. This is simply not good enough. I do not think it is too much to expect that my loyal and devoted readers should register such a request and beaver away, burning the candle at both ends, putting their own lives on hold if necessary, until they have discovered the information I am seeking. Wait a moment while I emit a sigh, an expressive sigh which somehow commingles saintly patience and inordinate mental suffering and fathomless disappointment. There. Now, because of the distinct want of diligent research on your part, I have had to find out the names of Ambrose Bierce's siblings all by myself. You see what trouble you have caused me? Anyway, let bygones be bygones. Let us move forward in a spirit of happy comity, striding purposefully towards the slightly overcast uplands, me a preening magnifico and you lot stricken by unassuageable pangs of guilt. Oh, and before I forget, here are those names, of the thirteen children of Marcus Aurelius Bierce and his wife Laura Sherwood Bierce, of Horse Cave Creek, Meigs County, Ohio. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:57 Gladstone's Proposal 07:43 A 14:17 Puffin And Potato And Pirate Post 27:24 A Toc H Dabble GLADSTONE'S PROPOSAL After four nervy months, [Gladstone] came close to proposing at the Coliseum on a moonlit January evening. A few days later he did it instead by letter. It was not a proposal to sweep a young girl off her feet. "I seek much in a wife in gifts better than those of our human pride, and am also sensible that she can find little in me," he wrote, in a single long-winded sentence, "sensible that, were you to treat this note as the offspring of utter presumption, I must not be surprised: sensible that the life I invite you to share, even if it be not attended, as I trust it is not, with peculiar disadvantages of an outward kind, is one, I do not say unequal to your deserts, for that were saying little, but liable at best to changes and perplexities and pains which, for myself, I contemplate without apprehension, but to which it is perhaps selfishness in the main, with the sense of inward dependence counteracting an opposite sense of my too real unworthiness, which would make me contribute to expose another--and that other!" On receiving the letter Catherine pleaded for time, no doubt hoping it would give her the opportunity to work out exactly what Gladstone meant.* *"He really was a frightful old prig," wrote Clement Attlee... on reading this letter in a biography of Gladstone, "Fancy writing a letter proposing marriage including a sentence of 140 words all about the Almighty. He was a dreadful person." from The Lion And The Unicorn : Gladstone vs Disraeli by Richard Aldous (2006) A Many moons ago, when the Hooting Yard website was but young--on the ninth of March 2004, to be precise--I noted the fact I had learned that Ambrose Bierce had twelve siblings, all of whose given names began, like his, with the letter A. In the brief postage where I mentioned this, I included a request for a knowledgeable reader to let me know what all those names were. Six and a half years have passed, and do you know, not a single one of you has bothered to respond. This is simply not good enough. I do not think it is too much to expect that my loyal and devoted readers should register such a request and beaver away, burning the candle at both ends, putting their own lives on hold if necessary, until they have discovered the information I am seeking. Wait a moment while I emit a sigh, an expressive sigh which somehow commingles saintly patience and inordinate mental suffering and fathomless disappointment. There. Now, because of the distinct want of diligent research on your part, I have had to find out the names of Ambrose Bierce's siblings all by myself. You see what trouble you have caused me? Anyway, let bygones be bygones. Let us move forward in a spirit of happy comity, striding purposefully towards the slightly overcast uplands, me a preening magnifico and you lot stricken by unassuageable pangs of guilt. Oh, and before I forget, here are those names, of the thirteen children of Marcus Aurelius Bierce and his wife Laura Sherwood Bierce, of Horse Cave Creek, Meigs County, Ohio. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-2628:27fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-19Thu, 19 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 12:51 Farmers' Knitwear 17:51 The Painter Of Painters 21:08 Poptarts Redux FARMERS' KNITWEAR Farmers' knitwear is a particularly important and engaging topic. I know this, because I spoke to a farmer about it. He was a big, florid fellow with a big, florid head, and he was leaning against a fence, waving a stick at some cows. I was lost in the countryside and when I saw him, from a distance, silhouetted against a breathtakingly gorgeous sunset, I decided to approach him at speed, before he vanished, so I could ask him where I was. Mere seconds later, because I can move jolly fast when I have to, I tipped my hat to him in greeting. He was not wearing a hat, which I thought unusual for a farmer, but what do I know of farmers? Not much, as it turned out. For example, not only did I think all farmers wore hats, all the time, but I had no idea they were so interested in knitwear, and in discussing it with complete strangers lost in the countryside. Before I had a chance to ask the farmer where I was, he started talking to me about his cardigan. It was, he explained, a farmers' cardigan, knitted from wool. See how the length of the sleeves matches the length of my arms, he said. See how the buttons are fastened in a straight vertical line down the middle of the cardigan front. When I am done with my cows for the evening, he said, perhaps you would like to come back with me to my farmhouse, where I can show you the niddy noddy on which the wool for this cardigan was wound from the bobbin into a skein. This was a lot for me to take in, and I am afraid my face must have betrayed a certain hesitancy. It's all the same to me, said the farmer. And he turned back to his cows and waved the stick at them again. I assured him I would be more than happy to repair to the farmhouse. Already the thought had sparked in my brain that I might stay there, eating his food and sleeping on his sofa, for weeks or months. Then I would not need to find out where I was. I would no longer be lost, for I would have a haven at his hearth. To expedite my plan, while we trudged across the fields towards the farmhouse, I expressed far more interest in his knitwear than I really felt. He told me about his swift as well as his niddy noddy. I thought he was suddenly talking about birds, but he corrected me after I mumbled something about linnets. At one point he hoicked up his trouser-cuffs and invited me to look at his socks. They were knit from the same batch of wool as the cardigan, When we got to the farmhouse I fell a little behind him as he approached the door. I saw a spade leaning against the wall, picked it up, and bashed his head in while he was still in the doorway. Stepping over him, I went into the farmhouse kitchen and put the kettle on for a nice reviving cuppa. There was a woolly hat hanging from a nail on the back of the door. I knew I couldn't be completely mistaken about farmers' hats. I took off my own hat and removed the farmer's woolly hat from the nail and put it on my head, a smaller and less florid head than the farmer's, adjusting it to a rakish angle. Knowing what I now knew about farmers' knitwear, I could tell it was knit from the same batch of wool as the cardigan and the socks. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 12:51 Farmers' Knitwear 17:51 The Painter Of Painters 21:08 Poptarts Redux FARMERS' KNITWEAR Farmers' knitwear is a particularly important and engaging topic. I know this, because I spoke to a farmer about it. He was a big, florid fellow with a big, florid head, and he was leaning against a fence, waving a stick at some cows. I was lost in the countryside and when I saw him, from a distance, silhouetted against a breathtakingly gorgeous sunset, I decided to approach him at speed, before he vanished, so I could ask him where I was. Mere seconds later, because I can move jolly fast when I have to, I tipped my hat to him in greeting. He was not wearing a hat, which I thought unusual for a farmer, but what do I know of farmers? Not much, as it turned out. For example, not only did I think all farmers wore hats, all the time, but I had no idea they were so interested in knitwear, and in discussing it with complete strangers lost in the countryside. Before I had a chance to ask the farmer where I was, he started talking to me about his cardigan. It was, he explained, a farmers' cardigan, knitted from wool. See how the length of the sleeves matches the length of my arms, he said. See how the buttons are fastened in a straight vertical line down the middle of the cardigan front. When I am done with my cows for the evening, he said, perhaps you would like to come back with me to my farmhouse, where I can show you the niddy noddy on which the wool for this cardigan was wound from the bobbin into a skein. This was a lot for me to take in, and I am afraid my face must have betrayed a certain hesitancy. It's all the same to me, said the farmer. And he turned back to his cows and waved the stick at them again. I assured him I would be more than happy to repair to the farmhouse. Already the thought had sparked in my brain that I might stay there, eating his food and sleeping on his sofa, for weeks or months. Then I would not need to find out where I was. I would no longer be lost, for I would have a haven at his hearth. To expedite my plan, while we trudged across the fields towards the farmhouse, I expressed far more interest in his knitwear than I really felt. He told me about his swift as well as his niddy noddy. I thought he was suddenly talking about birds, but he corrected me after I mumbled something about linnets. At one point he hoicked up his trouser-cuffs and invited me to look at his socks. They were knit from the same batch of wool as the cardigan, When we got to the farmhouse I fell a little behind him as he approached the door. I saw a spade leaning against the wall, picked it up, and bashed his head in while he was still in the doorway. Stepping over him, I went into the farmhouse kitchen and put the kettle on for a nice reviving cuppa. There was a woolly hat hanging from a nail on the back of the door. I knew I couldn't be completely mistaken about farmers' hats. I took off my own hat and removed the farmer's woolly hat from the nail and put it on my head, a smaller and less florid head than the farmer's, adjusting it to a rakish angle. Knowing what I now knew about farmers' knitwear, I could tell it was knit from the same batch of wool as the cardigan and the socks. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-1928:15fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-12Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 The Elephant In The Room 04:03 Bank Holiday Services At St Bibblybibdib's 06:40 Ash. Box. Elm. Yew. 13:12 Sops And Fillips 20:52 Upon A Hired Bed In Sidmouth 24:11 Hist! THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM There is an elephant in the room. It is pushing the envelope and thinking outside the box, and what it is thinking about is not rocket science. Elephants are among the more intelligent members of the animal kingdom, but their brains cannot cope with the complexities of rocket science. It is more likely that the elephant is thinking about food, and when next it might find some vitamin-rich leafage to munch. Not that it would have any concept of vitamins, any more than of rocket science. So, anyway, there is this elephant in the room, with an envelope and a box. It must be a reasonably big room, for an elephant to fit into it, and one, moreover, with a l'age d'or. Sorry, I mean a large door, sufficient in height and breadth to allow the passage through it of a great big galumphing elephant. The lobby of an important hotel fits the bill. Somebody has placed in the lobby an envelope and a box. They may have been put there before the arrival of the elephant, or after. It doesn't matter, for Christ's sake! With regard to the envelope, it is a pretty straightforward matter that the elephant has chosen to push it across the floor, by exercising its trunk. Whether or not the envelope is sealed or open, whether it is empty or contains some document--a legal writ, a love letter, a coupon snipped from a magazine--the elephant neither knows nor cares. We might surmise that it is pushing the envelope because that is something for it to do, to keep it occupied, or because the presence of the envelope on the floor of the lobby is an irritant, to the elephant, which would prefer an unsullied space in which to plod about. That the elephant is thinking outside the box is blindingly obvious. Unless it is an enormous box, the elephant is not going to fit inside it, is it? Even if the box is big enough to receive an elephant, it would have to be an elephant of rare daintiness to succeed in clambering into the box without crushing it in the process. It is, after all, a cardboard box. We can assume that, not only is the elephant thinking outside the box, it is ignoring it, at least for the time being, while it is busying itself pushing the envelope across the floor with its trunk and thinking about food. Everything might change, of course, when the elephant pushes the envelope as far as the wainscot and can push it no further. It is anybody's guess what will happen next. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 The Elephant In The Room 04:03 Bank Holiday Services At St Bibblybibdib's 06:40 Ash. Box. Elm. Yew. 13:12 Sops And Fillips 20:52 Upon A Hired Bed In Sidmouth 24:11 Hist! THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM There is an elephant in the room. It is pushing the envelope and thinking outside the box, and what it is thinking about is not rocket science. Elephants are among the more intelligent members of the animal kingdom, but their brains cannot cope with the complexities of rocket science. It is more likely that the elephant is thinking about food, and when next it might find some vitamin-rich leafage to munch. Not that it would have any concept of vitamins, any more than of rocket science. So, anyway, there is this elephant in the room, with an envelope and a box. It must be a reasonably big room, for an elephant to fit into it, and one, moreover, with a l'age d'or. Sorry, I mean a large door, sufficient in height and breadth to allow the passage through it of a great big galumphing elephant. The lobby of an important hotel fits the bill. Somebody has placed in the lobby an envelope and a box. They may have been put there before the arrival of the elephant, or after. It doesn't matter, for Christ's sake! With regard to the envelope, it is a pretty straightforward matter that the elephant has chosen to push it across the floor, by exercising its trunk. Whether or not the envelope is sealed or open, whether it is empty or contains some document--a legal writ, a love letter, a coupon snipped from a magazine--the elephant neither knows nor cares. We might surmise that it is pushing the envelope because that is something for it to do, to keep it occupied, or because the presence of the envelope on the floor of the lobby is an irritant, to the elephant, which would prefer an unsullied space in which to plod about. That the elephant is thinking outside the box is blindingly obvious. Unless it is an enormous box, the elephant is not going to fit inside it, is it? Even if the box is big enough to receive an elephant, it would have to be an elephant of rare daintiness to succeed in clambering into the box without crushing it in the process. It is, after all, a cardboard box. We can assume that, not only is the elephant thinking outside the box, it is ignoring it, at least for the time being, while it is busying itself pushing the envelope across the floor with its trunk and thinking about food. Everything might change, of course, when the elephant pushes the envelope as far as the wainscot and can push it no further. It is anybody's guess what will happen next. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-1228:23fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-05Thu, 05 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Mob 07:01 Dough 13:54 Bill Hatworn 16:37 Hatworn Letter No. 2 19:35 A Bag Full Of Goo MOB Few experiences in life are as rewarding as being part of a mob. And of all mobs, the baying mob is the best, particularly at nightfall, on the outskirts of the village, holding aloft flaming torches and pitchforks, surrounding the hovel of a witch or an oddball, forcing them to choose between fleeing or being burned. As a veteran of several such baying mobs, I find it exasperating that the witch or the oddball so often elicits sympathy. If one were to give credence to the witterings of the biens pensants, the do-gooders, and the chattering classes around their sophisticated dinner party tables, one might think that there is something wrong with brandishing a burning tarry torch and baying for the blood of a social misfit. What planet do these people live on? If you are going to be an oddball, a mild eccentric, or a witch, then you have to take the consequences. And the consequences, rightly in my view, are that me and many many like me, simple credulous peasants though we may be, inarticulate and ignorant, will gather in the village tavern and grab our pitchforks and torches and march, as dusk descends, towards your shabby insalubrious hovel, baying. You may then choose to stay put and burn, or make an attempt to flee, bearing in mind that you may not succeed, given that we will chase you and overpower you and tear you limb from limb and chuck what's left of you into a ditch with a stake driven through your heart. That is simply the way of the world or, in contemporary jargon, social cohesion. There is much talk of the so-called "madness of crowds" as if, in allying oneself with one's fellows in a baying mob, one somehow loses all reason. Let us not forget that it is the witch, or the oddball, who is the enemy of reason, sitting in their hovel with their toads and newts and books, plotting dark and devilish deeds. Give them free rein and who knows what foul world they would have us inhabit. Better by far that they be stricken with terror at the sight of our pitchforks and our flaming torches, at the sound of our blood-curdling baying. So come and join us. We meet in the village tavern. Bring your pitchfork and your torch. Be part of the mob. It's an experience you won't forget. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Mob 07:01 Dough 13:54 Bill Hatworn 16:37 Hatworn Letter No. 2 19:35 A Bag Full Of Goo MOB Few experiences in life are as rewarding as being part of a mob. And of all mobs, the baying mob is the best, particularly at nightfall, on the outskirts of the village, holding aloft flaming torches and pitchforks, surrounding the hovel of a witch or an oddball, forcing them to choose between fleeing or being burned. As a veteran of several such baying mobs, I find it exasperating that the witch or the oddball so often elicits sympathy. If one were to give credence to the witterings of the biens pensants, the do-gooders, and the chattering classes around their sophisticated dinner party tables, one might think that there is something wrong with brandishing a burning tarry torch and baying for the blood of a social misfit. What planet do these people live on? If you are going to be an oddball, a mild eccentric, or a witch, then you have to take the consequences. And the consequences, rightly in my view, are that me and many many like me, simple credulous peasants though we may be, inarticulate and ignorant, will gather in the village tavern and grab our pitchforks and torches and march, as dusk descends, towards your shabby insalubrious hovel, baying. You may then choose to stay put and burn, or make an attempt to flee, bearing in mind that you may not succeed, given that we will chase you and overpower you and tear you limb from limb and chuck what's left of you into a ditch with a stake driven through your heart. That is simply the way of the world or, in contemporary jargon, social cohesion. There is much talk of the so-called "madness of crowds" as if, in allying oneself with one's fellows in a baying mob, one somehow loses all reason. Let us not forget that it is the witch, or the oddball, who is the enemy of reason, sitting in their hovel with their toads and newts and books, plotting dark and devilish deeds. Give them free rein and who knows what foul world they would have us inhabit. Better by far that they be stricken with terror at the sight of our pitchforks and our flaming torches, at the sound of our blood-curdling baying. So come and join us. We meet in the village tavern. Bring your pitchfork and your torch. Be part of the mob. It's an experience you won't forget. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-09-0528:11fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-08-18Sun, 18 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:32 Amsterdam 12:58 The Wisdom Of Peasants 25:02 Tungsten Grebe AMSTERDAM In spending the weekend just gone in Amsterdam, I was of course following in the footsteps of the twentieth century's most illustrious out of print pamphleteer. But whereas I went to the Dutch capital in the cause of art, Dobson's visit was occasioned by a challenge. Let me tell you all about it. It so happened that one wet and windy morning in the 1950s the pamphleteer was on his usual trudge along the towpath of the old canal, when a man sprang out at him from behind a splurge of cuckoopint. The man was rotund and diminutive and dressed all in green, with a little green pointy hat. He looked like a figure from a fairy tale, and though his name was not Rumpelstiltskin, it was similar, with the same number of syllables but a slightly different combination of vowels and consonants. Such was the suddenness of the strange little man's springing that Dobson was disconcerted, and would have toppled over, sploshing into the canal, had he not had the presence of mind to deploy a Goon Fang technique he had recently mastered. In this exercise of the ancient mystic art, one is able to fix one's feet to the ground, as if magnetically, for just long enough to avoid topplement. Dobson swayed slightly. "Drat and heaven's hounds a-gubbins!" screeched the little fellow dressed in green, "You were meant to topple over into the canal with a splosh that would cause me much mirth!" "Then you are confounded!", shouted Dobson. "What I do," said the little man, "Is to present those who confound me with a challenge. I challenge you to go to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, a city with a magnificent network of seventeenth century canals, and I further challenge you to walk alongside each and every canal in Amsterdam, from end to end, on both banks, trudging along back and forth, and to complete the task without once toppling into one or other of the canals. Do you accept my challenge?" "I do," said Dobson immediately, without thinking. But he was not being unduly impetuous. He realised that a trip to Amsterdam could provide the opportunity for important research, "It so happens," he explained, "That I am currently at work on a pamphlet devoted to the study of mariners with an exclusively fish-based diet. I have heard that in the port of Amsterdam, where the sailors all meet, there's a sailor who eats only fish heads and tails, and he'll show you his teeth that have rotted too soon, that can haul up the sails, that can swallow the moon. And he yells to the cook, with his arms open wide 'Hey, bring me more fish, throw it down by my side' and he wants so to belch, but he's too full to try, so he stands up and laughs and he zips up his fly, in the port of Amsterdam, in the port of Amsterdam. I would like to meet that sailor, and interrogate him on his diet." "I have often wondered," said the little man dressed all in green, "If the port of Amsterdam is the port to which Emily Dickinson was referring in that magnificently sensual poem 'Wild Nights!', where she writes Futile--the winds--To a Heart in port--Done with the Compass--Done with the Chart!" "Perhaps that is something else I can research while I am there," said Dobson. The little man chuckled horribly. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-08-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:32 Amsterdam 12:58 The Wisdom Of Peasants 25:02 Tungsten Grebe AMSTERDAM In spending the weekend just gone in Amsterdam, I was of course following in the footsteps of the twentieth century's most illustrious out of print pamphleteer. But whereas I went to the Dutch capital in the cause of art, Dobson's visit was occasioned by a challenge. Let me tell you all about it. It so happened that one wet and windy morning in the 1950s the pamphleteer was on his usual trudge along the towpath of the old canal, when a man sprang out at him from behind a splurge of cuckoopint. The man was rotund and diminutive and dressed all in green, with a little green pointy hat. He looked like a figure from a fairy tale, and though his name was not Rumpelstiltskin, it was similar, with the same number of syllables but a slightly different combination of vowels and consonants. Such was the suddenness of the strange little man's springing that Dobson was disconcerted, and would have toppled over, sploshing into the canal, had he not had the presence of mind to deploy a Goon Fang technique he had recently mastered. In this exercise of the ancient mystic art, one is able to fix one's feet to the ground, as if magnetically, for just long enough to avoid topplement. Dobson swayed slightly. "Drat and heaven's hounds a-gubbins!" screeched the little fellow dressed in green, "You were meant to topple over into the canal with a splosh that would cause me much mirth!" "Then you are confounded!", shouted Dobson. "What I do," said the little man, "Is to present those who confound me with a challenge. I challenge you to go to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, a city with a magnificent network of seventeenth century canals, and I further challenge you to walk alongside each and every canal in Amsterdam, from end to end, on both banks, trudging along back and forth, and to complete the task without once toppling into one or other of the canals. Do you accept my challenge?" "I do," said Dobson immediately, without thinking. But he was not being unduly impetuous. He realised that a trip to Amsterdam could provide the opportunity for important research, "It so happens," he explained, "That I am currently at work on a pamphlet devoted to the study of mariners with an exclusively fish-based diet. I have heard that in the port of Amsterdam, where the sailors all meet, there's a sailor who eats only fish heads and tails, and he'll show you his teeth that have rotted too soon, that can haul up the sails, that can swallow the moon. And he yells to the cook, with his arms open wide 'Hey, bring me more fish, throw it down by my side' and he wants so to belch, but he's too full to try, so he stands up and laughs and he zips up his fly, in the port of Amsterdam, in the port of Amsterdam. I would like to meet that sailor, and interrogate him on his diet." "I have often wondered," said the little man dressed all in green, "If the port of Amsterdam is the port to which Emily Dickinson was referring in that magnificently sensual poem 'Wild Nights!', where she writes Futile--the winds--To a Heart in port--Done with the Compass--Done with the Chart!" "Perhaps that is something else I can research while I am there," said Dobson. The little man chuckled horribly. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-08-1830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-08-01Thu, 01 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-08-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-08-0130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-07-25Thu, 25 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 On The Nincompoops' Bazaar 10:20 The Man Who Stood Behind The Door And Said "Boo!" To T.S. Eliot 14:53 The Quintessence Of Scoutmasters 17:50 Swan ON THE NINCOMPOOPS' BAZAAR Summer is here, and with it comes the annual Pointy Town Nincompoops' Bazaar. This year, as ever, the Nincompoops' Bazaar will be held in a particularly pointy part of Pointy Town. Preparations are well in hand, and several nincompoops have already laid out their stalls. This year, among the bargains available to punters will be antimony, breadcrumbs, curd, digestive biscuits, egg tapestries, frozen milk, galoshes, hats, ink, joggers' funnels, kaolin, lemon meringue pie, mother's wreckage, narthex rubbings, obsidian cat helmets, preening equipment, quicklime, rusty pins, sausages, talc, urban pointy things, vulgar snoods, wax, xylophones, yeast bags, and zookeepers' cushions. In the Kathy Kirby Memorial Tent we are promised Quetzalcoatl puppets, wind chimes, earmuffs, ratcatchers' trousers, tin, yoghourt, uncooked pork, instant mashed potato, offal, portable anvils, anchors, sock hoists, damp cloth, fierce wild beasts, glue, hornets, jam, kevlar dog helmets, limestone, zookeepers' pin-cushions, x-rayed innards, custard, vinkensport scorecards, bait, noodles, and marzipan. There will be a flag atop the tent, and a Tannoy belting out nincompoopised versions of the instrumental bits from Kathy Kirby's chart-toppers, played on the glockenspiel. A map of the site should soon be available, done in crayon and pencil by orphans from Pang Hill Orphanage. The light is dim in the Orphanage cellar, and the orphans are somewhat cack-handed, so the map may not actually be very helpful. As an alternative, visitors can be guided around the bazaar by a goat on the end of a chain. There is only one goat, so expect lengthy queues. The goat is an authentic nincompoop's Toggenburg, with three natural legs and one made of wood. The wooden leg has been given a slap of bright yellow paint to aid visibility in the more tenebrous areas of this pointy part of Pointy Town, where the enormous pointy bits block out the sunlight with pointy black shadows. In the lee of these shadows are several specialist stalls offering mole nets, nasal sprays, blood oranges, vapour, Chumpot patent soap, xysters for bone-scraping, zookeepers' pin-cushion holders, lettuce, kedgeree, jumping fleas, helicopter pilots' insignia, grease, froth, desk tidies, string, asbestos, potato novelties, orpiment, isinglass, unhelpful maps, yachting caps, trick propelling pencils, rotogravures, embossed badger badges, will-o-the-wisps, and quince jelly. Following certain unspeakable tragedies that occurred at last year's Nincompoops' Bazaar, the organisers are at pains to point out that no nincompoops will be armed to the teeth this time around. Of course they should not have been allowed to bring all those pointy sticks and poison-tipped pointy lances and pointy swords. Signpost chaos meant they mistook the Nincompoops' Bazaar for the Nincompoops' Jamboree, which was unfortunately scheduled to take place at the same time, and not that far away, but in a marginally less pointy part of Pointy Town. That both the Bazaar and the Jamboree had a Kathy Kirby Memorial Tent only added to the confusion, and the bloodshed. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-07-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 On The Nincompoops' Bazaar 10:20 The Man Who Stood Behind The Door And Said "Boo!" To T.S. Eliot 14:53 The Quintessence Of Scoutmasters 17:50 Swan ON THE NINCOMPOOPS' BAZAAR Summer is here, and with it comes the annual Pointy Town Nincompoops' Bazaar. This year, as ever, the Nincompoops' Bazaar will be held in a particularly pointy part of Pointy Town. Preparations are well in hand, and several nincompoops have already laid out their stalls. This year, among the bargains available to punters will be antimony, breadcrumbs, curd, digestive biscuits, egg tapestries, frozen milk, galoshes, hats, ink, joggers' funnels, kaolin, lemon meringue pie, mother's wreckage, narthex rubbings, obsidian cat helmets, preening equipment, quicklime, rusty pins, sausages, talc, urban pointy things, vulgar snoods, wax, xylophones, yeast bags, and zookeepers' cushions. In the Kathy Kirby Memorial Tent we are promised Quetzalcoatl puppets, wind chimes, earmuffs, ratcatchers' trousers, tin, yoghourt, uncooked pork, instant mashed potato, offal, portable anvils, anchors, sock hoists, damp cloth, fierce wild beasts, glue, hornets, jam, kevlar dog helmets, limestone, zookeepers' pin-cushions, x-rayed innards, custard, vinkensport scorecards, bait, noodles, and marzipan. There will be a flag atop the tent, and a Tannoy belting out nincompoopised versions of the instrumental bits from Kathy Kirby's chart-toppers, played on the glockenspiel. A map of the site should soon be available, done in crayon and pencil by orphans from Pang Hill Orphanage. The light is dim in the Orphanage cellar, and the orphans are somewhat cack-handed, so the map may not actually be very helpful. As an alternative, visitors can be guided around the bazaar by a goat on the end of a chain. There is only one goat, so expect lengthy queues. The goat is an authentic nincompoop's Toggenburg, with three natural legs and one made of wood. The wooden leg has been given a slap of bright yellow paint to aid visibility in the more tenebrous areas of this pointy part of Pointy Town, where the enormous pointy bits block out the sunlight with pointy black shadows. In the lee of these shadows are several specialist stalls offering mole nets, nasal sprays, blood oranges, vapour, Chumpot patent soap, xysters for bone-scraping, zookeepers' pin-cushion holders, lettuce, kedgeree, jumping fleas, helicopter pilots' insignia, grease, froth, desk tidies, string, asbestos, potato novelties, orpiment, isinglass, unhelpful maps, yachting caps, trick propelling pencils, rotogravures, embossed badger badges, will-o-the-wisps, and quince jelly. Following certain unspeakable tragedies that occurred at last year's Nincompoops' Bazaar, the organisers are at pains to point out that no nincompoops will be armed to the teeth this time around. Of course they should not have been allowed to bring all those pointy sticks and poison-tipped pointy lances and pointy swords. Signpost chaos meant they mistook the Nincompoops' Bazaar for the Nincompoops' Jamboree, which was unfortunately scheduled to take place at the same time, and not that far away, but in a marginally less pointy part of Pointy Town. That both the Bazaar and the Jamboree had a Kathy Kirby Memorial Tent only added to the confusion, and the bloodshed. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-07-2530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-07-04Thu, 04 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 On Picnic Panic 09:15 On My Panic Button 16:59 At Dr Pindrop's 24:00 At Grimpen Mire ON PICNIC PANIC Psychiatrists, phrenologists, and other brain doctors have identified a common mind-malaise known as picnic panic. This distressing condition afflicts picnickers who fly into a panic when picnicking. It can be terribly, terribly debilitating, and ruins many an otherwise splendid bucolic picnicking idyll. Consider the following case study. Ned B_____, a hale and hearty moustachioed jolly type of fellow, fond of rowing boats and bird slaughter, was exactly the type of person you might find attending a picnic in the 1930s. And attend several picnics he did. At each one, however, he fell victim to picnic panic, the panic increasing in severity to the point where, at his final picnic, he ran screaming into a nearby forest and was found, weeks later, a gibbering maniac beyond all hope of redemption. He was confined to an Asylum for the Hopelessly Bewildered until 1963. Upon his release, Ned B_____ was found accommodation in a dilapidated seaside resort, far from the field where once he had picnicked. A carer was appointed, a retired aviatrix named Mavis Handbasin, a very sensible woman with impeccable references. Among other responsibilities, she was charged with ensuring that Ned B_____ never consumed a single crumb of food nor slurp of drink when out of doors. It was thought, with good reason, that if ever he did so traumatic memories of picnics past might well up in his brain, and lead to further calamity. For this reason, too, he was kept away from all kinds of rugs and blankets, even when indoors. For several years, all was well. Ned B______ passed his days happily enough, in standard dilapidated seaside resort fashion. He was even known to chuckle occasionally, at some amusement or other. He began a stamp collection, and adopted a pudding-basin hairstyle. He often dreamed of slaughtering seagulls, but they were only dreams. It was not thought advisable to allow him a firearm. In the summer of 1968, however, during the third phase of the Tet Offensive, disaster struck. That good woman Mavis Handbasin arrived one morning at Ned B______'s squalid seafront boarding house to find him gone. On the wall of his kitchenette, scrawled in bright red crayon the colour of blood, were the letters PICN, followed by a long mad vertical line trailing off, down towards the wainscot. It had almost certainly been intended as a second letter I. Mavis Handbasin intuited the ghost of a final letter C, and her head began to spin. Somehow, something had inserted the idea of picnics into Ned B______'s poor shattered brain. She must find him before he did himself a mischief, or caused mayhem and havoc. She found him soon enough. There he was, upon the pebbly beach, just yards from his door. He was sat upon a raincoat he had spread out upon the pebbles, in imitation of a picnic blanket in a field. He was eating a sausage. As she approached, Mavis Handbasin saw that his eyes were glazed and his countenance stuck in a rictus of terror. His pudding-basin haircut was in a state of the utmost dishevelment. His flesh was the colour of curd. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-07-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:24 On Picnic Panic 09:15 On My Panic Button 16:59 At Dr Pindrop's 24:00 At Grimpen Mire ON PICNIC PANIC Psychiatrists, phrenologists, and other brain doctors have identified a common mind-malaise known as picnic panic. This distressing condition afflicts picnickers who fly into a panic when picnicking. It can be terribly, terribly debilitating, and ruins many an otherwise splendid bucolic picnicking idyll. Consider the following case study. Ned B_____, a hale and hearty moustachioed jolly type of fellow, fond of rowing boats and bird slaughter, was exactly the type of person you might find attending a picnic in the 1930s. And attend several picnics he did. At each one, however, he fell victim to picnic panic, the panic increasing in severity to the point where, at his final picnic, he ran screaming into a nearby forest and was found, weeks later, a gibbering maniac beyond all hope of redemption. He was confined to an Asylum for the Hopelessly Bewildered until 1963. Upon his release, Ned B_____ was found accommodation in a dilapidated seaside resort, far from the field where once he had picnicked. A carer was appointed, a retired aviatrix named Mavis Handbasin, a very sensible woman with impeccable references. Among other responsibilities, she was charged with ensuring that Ned B_____ never consumed a single crumb of food nor slurp of drink when out of doors. It was thought, with good reason, that if ever he did so traumatic memories of picnics past might well up in his brain, and lead to further calamity. For this reason, too, he was kept away from all kinds of rugs and blankets, even when indoors. For several years, all was well. Ned B______ passed his days happily enough, in standard dilapidated seaside resort fashion. He was even known to chuckle occasionally, at some amusement or other. He began a stamp collection, and adopted a pudding-basin hairstyle. He often dreamed of slaughtering seagulls, but they were only dreams. It was not thought advisable to allow him a firearm. In the summer of 1968, however, during the third phase of the Tet Offensive, disaster struck. That good woman Mavis Handbasin arrived one morning at Ned B______'s squalid seafront boarding house to find him gone. On the wall of his kitchenette, scrawled in bright red crayon the colour of blood, were the letters PICN, followed by a long mad vertical line trailing off, down towards the wainscot. It had almost certainly been intended as a second letter I. Mavis Handbasin intuited the ghost of a final letter C, and her head began to spin. Somehow, something had inserted the idea of picnics into Ned B______'s poor shattered brain. She must find him before he did himself a mischief, or caused mayhem and havoc. She found him soon enough. There he was, upon the pebbly beach, just yards from his door. He was sat upon a raincoat he had spread out upon the pebbles, in imitation of a picnic blanket in a field. He was eating a sausage. As she approached, Mavis Handbasin saw that his eyes were glazed and his countenance stuck in a rictus of terror. His pudding-basin haircut was in a state of the utmost dishevelment. His flesh was the colour of curd. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-07-0430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-27Thu, 27 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 My Fulbourn Star 04:21 An Encounter With A Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist 08:05 Sitting Upon The Banister 12:18 Me And My Eggs 19:12 N. Y. C. Lovecraft 23:04 Dining Well On Moss And Eels 27:09 The Village Wrestler MY FULBOURN STAR "The patient was a respectable artisan of considerable intelligence, and was sent to the Cambridgeshire Asylum after being nearly three years in a melancholy mood. . . . He spent much of his time in writing--sometimes verses, at others long letters of the most rambling character, and in drawing extraordinary diagrams . . . After he left the Asylum he went to work at his trade . . . but some two or three years later he began to write very strangely again . . . "This is one of the letters he wrote at this time, after a visit from a medical man, who tried to dissuade him from writing in this way : - Dear Doctor, To write or not to write, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to follow the visit of the great 'Fulbourn' with 'chronic melancholy' expressions of regret (withheld when he was here) that, as the Fates would have it, we were so little prepared to receive him, and to evince my humble desire to do honour to his visit. My Fulbourn star, but an instant seen, like a meteor's flash, a blank when gone. The dust of ages covering my little sanctum parlour room, the available drapery to greet the Doctor, stowed away through the midst of the regenerating (water and scrubbing--cleanliness next to godliness, political and spiritual) cleansing of a little world. The Great Physician walked, bedimmed by the 'dark ages', the long passage of Western Enterprise, leading to the curvatures of rising Eastern morn. The rounded configuration of Lunar (tics) garden's lives an o'ershadowment on Britannia's vortex. "... In the course of another year he had some domestic troubles, which upset him a good deal, and he ended by drowning himself one day in a public spot. The peculiarity was, that he could work well, and not attract public attention, while he was in his leisure moments writing the most incoherent nonsense." from On The Writing Of The Insane by G. Mackenzie Bacon (1870). Available online at the Public Domain Review. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 My Fulbourn Star 04:21 An Encounter With A Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist 08:05 Sitting Upon The Banister 12:18 Me And My Eggs 19:12 N. Y. C. Lovecraft 23:04 Dining Well On Moss And Eels 27:09 The Village Wrestler MY FULBOURN STAR "The patient was a respectable artisan of considerable intelligence, and was sent to the Cambridgeshire Asylum after being nearly three years in a melancholy mood. . . . He spent much of his time in writing--sometimes verses, at others long letters of the most rambling character, and in drawing extraordinary diagrams . . . After he left the Asylum he went to work at his trade . . . but some two or three years later he began to write very strangely again . . . "This is one of the letters he wrote at this time, after a visit from a medical man, who tried to dissuade him from writing in this way : - Dear Doctor, To write or not to write, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to follow the visit of the great 'Fulbourn' with 'chronic melancholy' expressions of regret (withheld when he was here) that, as the Fates would have it, we were so little prepared to receive him, and to evince my humble desire to do honour to his visit. My Fulbourn star, but an instant seen, like a meteor's flash, a blank when gone. The dust of ages covering my little sanctum parlour room, the available drapery to greet the Doctor, stowed away through the midst of the regenerating (water and scrubbing--cleanliness next to godliness, political and spiritual) cleansing of a little world. The Great Physician walked, bedimmed by the 'dark ages', the long passage of Western Enterprise, leading to the curvatures of rising Eastern morn. The rounded configuration of Lunar (tics) garden's lives an o'ershadowment on Britannia's vortex. "... In the course of another year he had some domestic troubles, which upset him a good deal, and he ended by drowning himself one day in a public spot. The peculiarity was, that he could work well, and not attract public attention, while he was in his leisure moments writing the most incoherent nonsense." from On The Writing Of The Insane by G. Mackenzie Bacon (1870). Available online at the Public Domain Review. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-2730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-20Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:55 Dabbling With Oranges 03:28 Birds And Fish 11:50 In Vegetation And In Awe 17:53 Children Of "Brian" 20:53 Rotating Withers 26:52 Poor Or Mad? DABBLING WITH ORANGES Over at The Dabbler this week I round up some amusements of the learned, including Baruch Spinoza's pastime of setting spiders to fight each other and then laughing immoderately at the result. There is mention of James Boswell too, which inspired Jonathan Law in the comments to note this intriguing passage from The Life Of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791): It seems [Johnson] had been frequently observed at the Club to put into his pocket the Seville oranges, after he had squeezed the juice of them into the drink he made for himself. Beauclerk and Garrick talked of it to me, and seemed to think that he had a strange unwillingness to be discovered. We could not divine what he did with them; and this was the bold question to be put. I saw on his table the spoils of the preceding night, some fresh peels nicely scraped and cut into pieces. "O, Sir, (said I) I now partly see what you do with the squeezed oranges which you put into your pocket at the Club." JOHNSON: "I have a great love for them." BOSWELL: "And pray, Sir, what do you do with them? You scrape them, it seems, very neatly, and what next?" JOHNSON: "I let them dry, Sir." BOSWELL: "And what next?" JOHNSON: "Nay, Sir, you shall know their fate no further." BOSWELL: "Then the world must be left in the dark. It must be said (assuming a mock solemnity) he scraped them, and let them dry, but what he did with them next, he never could be prevailed upon to tell." JOHNSON: "Nay, Sir, you should say it more emphatically:--he could not be prevailed upon, even by his dearest friends, to tell." It seems to me that Sherlock Holmes, having cleared up that business about The Five Orange Pips, ought to have turned his attention to The Mysterious Case Of Dr Johnson And His Collection Of Orange Peel. Tag : Fruit in literature. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:55 Dabbling With Oranges 03:28 Birds And Fish 11:50 In Vegetation And In Awe 17:53 Children Of "Brian" 20:53 Rotating Withers 26:52 Poor Or Mad? DABBLING WITH ORANGES Over at The Dabbler this week I round up some amusements of the learned, including Baruch Spinoza's pastime of setting spiders to fight each other and then laughing immoderately at the result. There is mention of James Boswell too, which inspired Jonathan Law in the comments to note this intriguing passage from The Life Of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791): It seems [Johnson] had been frequently observed at the Club to put into his pocket the Seville oranges, after he had squeezed the juice of them into the drink he made for himself. Beauclerk and Garrick talked of it to me, and seemed to think that he had a strange unwillingness to be discovered. We could not divine what he did with them; and this was the bold question to be put. I saw on his table the spoils of the preceding night, some fresh peels nicely scraped and cut into pieces. "O, Sir, (said I) I now partly see what you do with the squeezed oranges which you put into your pocket at the Club." JOHNSON: "I have a great love for them." BOSWELL: "And pray, Sir, what do you do with them? You scrape them, it seems, very neatly, and what next?" JOHNSON: "I let them dry, Sir." BOSWELL: "And what next?" JOHNSON: "Nay, Sir, you shall know their fate no further." BOSWELL: "Then the world must be left in the dark. It must be said (assuming a mock solemnity) he scraped them, and let them dry, but what he did with them next, he never could be prevailed upon to tell." JOHNSON: "Nay, Sir, you should say it more emphatically:--he could not be prevailed upon, even by his dearest friends, to tell." It seems to me that Sherlock Holmes, having cleared up that business about The Five Orange Pips, ought to have turned his attention to The Mysterious Case Of Dr Johnson And His Collection Of Orange Peel. Tag : Fruit in literature. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-2030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-18Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 On Buttons Versus Toggles 10:41 Keith 16:40 The Daily Nashe 19:43 The King And Nitty 25:04 Nashe, And Gosse On Nashe 26:29 Jerusalem ON BUTTONS VERSUS TOGGLES Oh!, how the past shrivels and vanishes, so we can scarce believe it was ever quick and throbbing and so very alive. When we cast back but fifty years, how hard it is to understand the passions that impelled our so recent forebears. Who, now, would get in a tizz about an issue that divided the nation half a century ago? Yet at the time, kin were set against kin, men of the cloth fulminated from the pulpit, all was clash and strife. I speak of course of that great controversy, button versus toggle. We may respond, today, with wry chuckles. Few if any of us would now identify ourselves as, exclusively, buttoneers or togglists. But that is how it was, then, for a brief but seething period. The method you chose to fasten your coat took on fantastical importance. And you did wear a coat, at all times, in all weathers. It might have been a raincoat or a duffel coat, but you did not step outdoors unclad in it. Many wore their coats indoors too, the more fanatical, those who sought to proclaim their buttoneering or togglism the loudest. It is instructive, when we consider such historical flaps, to consult the photographic evidence, where that is possible. In this case we are fortunate to have at least one riveting snap which shows how one family was caught up in the madness. These are the four children of Mr and Mrs Turpitude of Shoeburyness. From left to right, they are Ulf, Ulg, Clothgard, and Urk. What is immediately apparent is that Ulg is a buttoneer and his brother Urk a togglist. Ulf and Clothgard are partly hidden behind their siblings, but nevertheless clearly visible are two buttons (Ulf) and one button (Clothgard). What we have, then, is the progeny of a single family riven by the great controversy of the day. Further study of the snap raises all sorts of questions. We note the eerie countenances of the four tinies, their blank yet somehow threatening gazes. If we were to put them in order of malevolence, from most malevolent to least, we might say Ulg then Urk then Clothgard then Ulf. Obviously there is room for manoeuvre and we may wish to swap them about. But what is plain is that each of their gazes is fixed upon the same target, out of shot, next to or just behind the shoulder of the snapper. This is contrary to what we would expect, which would be for Ulf and Ulg and Clothgard to be lined up in a terrible row of buttoneers against the lone togglist Urk. Internecine conflict was commonplace at the time, and it is surely odd to find the Turpitude tinies arrayed together, the three with buttons and the one with toggles, seemingly in unison. It is of course entirely plausible that within seconds of the snap being taken, Ulf and Ulg and Clothgard turned on Urk and beat him to death with a garden spade, then using the spade to dig a pit in which to bury his battered corpse. There is evidence that such an enormity took place among a group of siblings in a ness other than Shoeburyness, possibly Foulness or Dungeness, around this time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 On Buttons Versus Toggles 10:41 Keith 16:40 The Daily Nashe 19:43 The King And Nitty 25:04 Nashe, And Gosse On Nashe 26:29 Jerusalem ON BUTTONS VERSUS TOGGLES Oh!, how the past shrivels and vanishes, so we can scarce believe it was ever quick and throbbing and so very alive. When we cast back but fifty years, how hard it is to understand the passions that impelled our so recent forebears. Who, now, would get in a tizz about an issue that divided the nation half a century ago? Yet at the time, kin were set against kin, men of the cloth fulminated from the pulpit, all was clash and strife. I speak of course of that great controversy, button versus toggle. We may respond, today, with wry chuckles. Few if any of us would now identify ourselves as, exclusively, buttoneers or togglists. But that is how it was, then, for a brief but seething period. The method you chose to fasten your coat took on fantastical importance. And you did wear a coat, at all times, in all weathers. It might have been a raincoat or a duffel coat, but you did not step outdoors unclad in it. Many wore their coats indoors too, the more fanatical, those who sought to proclaim their buttoneering or togglism the loudest. It is instructive, when we consider such historical flaps, to consult the photographic evidence, where that is possible. In this case we are fortunate to have at least one riveting snap which shows how one family was caught up in the madness. These are the four children of Mr and Mrs Turpitude of Shoeburyness. From left to right, they are Ulf, Ulg, Clothgard, and Urk. What is immediately apparent is that Ulg is a buttoneer and his brother Urk a togglist. Ulf and Clothgard are partly hidden behind their siblings, but nevertheless clearly visible are two buttons (Ulf) and one button (Clothgard). What we have, then, is the progeny of a single family riven by the great controversy of the day. Further study of the snap raises all sorts of questions. We note the eerie countenances of the four tinies, their blank yet somehow threatening gazes. If we were to put them in order of malevolence, from most malevolent to least, we might say Ulg then Urk then Clothgard then Ulf. Obviously there is room for manoeuvre and we may wish to swap them about. But what is plain is that each of their gazes is fixed upon the same target, out of shot, next to or just behind the shoulder of the snapper. This is contrary to what we would expect, which would be for Ulf and Ulg and Clothgard to be lined up in a terrible row of buttoneers against the lone togglist Urk. Internecine conflict was commonplace at the time, and it is surely odd to find the Turpitude tinies arrayed together, the three with buttons and the one with toggles, seemingly in unison. It is of course entirely plausible that within seconds of the snap being taken, Ulf and Ulg and Clothgard turned on Urk and beat him to death with a garden spade, then using the spade to dig a pit in which to bury his battered corpse. There is evidence that such an enormity took place among a group of siblings in a ness other than Shoeburyness, possibly Foulness or Dungeness, around this time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-1830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-13Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:14 Fire-Priestess 07:52 A Glut Of Leeks 12:05 Norm 15:32 Juvenilia 18:46 Reflections On Poles And Holes And Moles 23:02 Cloak And Dagger FIRE-PRIESTESS "You must be that fire-priestess everyone is talking about." This is a line from Game Of Thrones that I have been hoping to use in everyday conversation. I could, of course, just say it next time I find myself leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece at a swish cocktail party, to any woman within earshot, but even I realise how foolish that would be. No, what I need to do is to find the right milieu, one where not only can I fall naturally into conversation with a fire-priestess, but one where she is a common subject of discussion among the bien pensants. That is very unlikely to happen in my bailiwick, where I do not think I have ever met a fire-priestess. Nor have I heard anybody talking about one, though to be fair most of the people who live around here speak in barbaric incoherent grunts, if they speak at all. Shortly after writing the above paragraph, I decided to immerse myself in some serious fire-priestess research. I took the phone off the hook, drew down the blinds, barricaded the door, and crouched in the middle of the living room in the stance Blotzmann calls "the alert chaffinch" (see the Third Notebook, Lilac Series). Concentrating hard for twenty seconds as recommended, I was then able to proceed. I put on my shoes and Tyrolean sports casual jacket, unbarricaded the door, and pranced off to the railway station, where I bought a ticket to Shoeburyness. Using the Blotzmann method, I had ascertained that the Essex coastal town was a likely milieu to find everyone babbling about a fire-priestess and, indeed, a fire-priestess herself. I would then be able to meet with her and deploy the line from Game Of Thrones. To do so had become my dearest wish, to the point, I suppose, of mania. Shoeburyness is notable for its proximity to the large Ministry of Defence facility at Pig's Bay and also for its bottomless viper pit, of which I have written previously. As I disembarked from my train, I was confident that my Blotzmann-inspired hunch was correct, and I immediately pranced into the railway station canteen to commune with Shoeburynessites who, I felt sure, would have no other topic on their lips than the presence in the town of a fire-priestess. I bought a cup of tea, a sausage snack, and a slice of fruitcake, and sat down at one of the tables, cocking my ears. To my bitter disappointment, in the time it took me to munch my sausage and fruitcake and to drain my teacup, I heard not a single mention of a fire-priestess. Ukip, badgers, foopball, Ruskin's Fors Clavigera, the weather--these seemed to be the hot topics in Shoeburyness that day. I crashed out of the door and went prancing through the streets, down to the beach. Nobody I passed had a word to say about a fire-priestess. I wondered if perhaps I might draw her to me by setting fire to a waste bin. I found one, overflowing with paper and cardboard and seaside detritus, and ignited it with my lighter. As I hoped, a woman came rushing towards me. She was dressed in the uniform of a Shoeburyness Seaside Community Support Patrol Officer, but I knew, deep down in my gut, that it was merely a disguise. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:14 Fire-Priestess 07:52 A Glut Of Leeks 12:05 Norm 15:32 Juvenilia 18:46 Reflections On Poles And Holes And Moles 23:02 Cloak And Dagger FIRE-PRIESTESS "You must be that fire-priestess everyone is talking about." This is a line from Game Of Thrones that I have been hoping to use in everyday conversation. I could, of course, just say it next time I find myself leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece at a swish cocktail party, to any woman within earshot, but even I realise how foolish that would be. No, what I need to do is to find the right milieu, one where not only can I fall naturally into conversation with a fire-priestess, but one where she is a common subject of discussion among the bien pensants. That is very unlikely to happen in my bailiwick, where I do not think I have ever met a fire-priestess. Nor have I heard anybody talking about one, though to be fair most of the people who live around here speak in barbaric incoherent grunts, if they speak at all. Shortly after writing the above paragraph, I decided to immerse myself in some serious fire-priestess research. I took the phone off the hook, drew down the blinds, barricaded the door, and crouched in the middle of the living room in the stance Blotzmann calls "the alert chaffinch" (see the Third Notebook, Lilac Series). Concentrating hard for twenty seconds as recommended, I was then able to proceed. I put on my shoes and Tyrolean sports casual jacket, unbarricaded the door, and pranced off to the railway station, where I bought a ticket to Shoeburyness. Using the Blotzmann method, I had ascertained that the Essex coastal town was a likely milieu to find everyone babbling about a fire-priestess and, indeed, a fire-priestess herself. I would then be able to meet with her and deploy the line from Game Of Thrones. To do so had become my dearest wish, to the point, I suppose, of mania. Shoeburyness is notable for its proximity to the large Ministry of Defence facility at Pig's Bay and also for its bottomless viper pit, of which I have written previously. As I disembarked from my train, I was confident that my Blotzmann-inspired hunch was correct, and I immediately pranced into the railway station canteen to commune with Shoeburynessites who, I felt sure, would have no other topic on their lips than the presence in the town of a fire-priestess. I bought a cup of tea, a sausage snack, and a slice of fruitcake, and sat down at one of the tables, cocking my ears. To my bitter disappointment, in the time it took me to munch my sausage and fruitcake and to drain my teacup, I heard not a single mention of a fire-priestess. Ukip, badgers, foopball, Ruskin's Fors Clavigera, the weather--these seemed to be the hot topics in Shoeburyness that day. I crashed out of the door and went prancing through the streets, down to the beach. Nobody I passed had a word to say about a fire-priestess. I wondered if perhaps I might draw her to me by setting fire to a waste bin. I found one, overflowing with paper and cardboard and seaside detritus, and ignited it with my lighter. As I hoped, a woman came rushing towards me. She was dressed in the uniform of a Shoeburyness Seaside Community Support Patrol Officer, but I knew, deep down in my gut, that it was merely a disguise. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-1330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-06Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:49 Uncle Tom's Cabernet Sauvignon 04:07 Pitt The Middling 07:07 Dimwit Under The Trellis 17:53 Plenipotentiary With Cornflakes Carton And Nightjar 22:45 To Blodly Go . . . 27:38 Bird Forecast UNCLE TOM'S CABERNET SAUVIGNON My Uncle Tom was a wine snob. He was also a swine nob, "nob" of course being shorthand for "noble". Uncle Tom's cabin, where he spent the summer months, as also those of autumn, winter, and spring, was next to a pig sty, and he was a sort of Lord of the Pigs, similar in some ways to the Lord of the Flies, but with pigs rather than flies. Which is not to say there were no flies in his realm, for god knows they were legion. But whereas the pigs were devoted to Uncle Tom, and considered him their Lord and Saviour, the flies showed no such obeisance. Why would they? Underneath Uncle Tom's cabin was his wine cellar, bottle after bottle after bottle after bottle after bottle in serried horizontal ranks on his subterranean shelving racks. He was particularly fond of cabernet sauvignon, which had a couple of shelves all to itself. None of the pigs ever got to go down the iron spiral staircase into the cellar. Uncle Tom did not want any of his bottles accidentally smashed by a clumsy lumbering and perhaps terrified pig. Uncle Tom was a great friend of the legendary Russian goalkeeper Lev Yashin. They had formed a close bond one day in the 1950s. My uncle never betrayed any of Lev's confidences, no matter how much I badgered him, and boy did I badger him! Whenever he felt my badgering became too much, he pushed me into the pig sty and locked the gate so I could not get out. You would think I would have learned my lesson, and ceased being such a pest about Lev Yashin, but that would be to impute a semblance of sense to me, as a child. But I had none, and there are those who say I still don't. PITT THE MIDDLING We know of Pitt the Elder and Pitt the Younger, but what of Pitt the Middling? History has neglected him, presumably because he did not exist. But what if he had? What then? We might write a thumping fat biography of the middling Pitt, middling in stature, middling in importance, fair to middling in his accomplishments. This biography we could make up from whole cloth or, if we preferred, we could cobble it together from snatches from the true biographies of the other Pitts, the Elder and the Younger, and, casting further afield, from the biographies of any number of not-Pitts, contemporaries, coevals, and peers. Judiciously constructed, such a book might tell us more, much more, about the world and the age of the Pitts than any existing biography of either one of them or of any of the many not-Pitts whose lives we would gut to tell of the Middling Pitt. Our Pitt would be a sort of invisible man, one whose presence, however vivid, is nowhere attested in the available historical record. An invisible man and also a Frankenstein's monster, into whom we breathe the spark of life. Vampire too, for never having really lived, he can never really die. He stalks the earth then, still, Pitt the Middling. If you glimpse his shadow, prancing down the street, tip your hat to him, toss him a coin. He deserves that much. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:49 Uncle Tom's Cabernet Sauvignon 04:07 Pitt The Middling 07:07 Dimwit Under The Trellis 17:53 Plenipotentiary With Cornflakes Carton And Nightjar 22:45 To Blodly Go . . . 27:38 Bird Forecast UNCLE TOM'S CABERNET SAUVIGNON My Uncle Tom was a wine snob. He was also a swine nob, "nob" of course being shorthand for "noble". Uncle Tom's cabin, where he spent the summer months, as also those of autumn, winter, and spring, was next to a pig sty, and he was a sort of Lord of the Pigs, similar in some ways to the Lord of the Flies, but with pigs rather than flies. Which is not to say there were no flies in his realm, for god knows they were legion. But whereas the pigs were devoted to Uncle Tom, and considered him their Lord and Saviour, the flies showed no such obeisance. Why would they? Underneath Uncle Tom's cabin was his wine cellar, bottle after bottle after bottle after bottle after bottle in serried horizontal ranks on his subterranean shelving racks. He was particularly fond of cabernet sauvignon, which had a couple of shelves all to itself. None of the pigs ever got to go down the iron spiral staircase into the cellar. Uncle Tom did not want any of his bottles accidentally smashed by a clumsy lumbering and perhaps terrified pig. Uncle Tom was a great friend of the legendary Russian goalkeeper Lev Yashin. They had formed a close bond one day in the 1950s. My uncle never betrayed any of Lev's confidences, no matter how much I badgered him, and boy did I badger him! Whenever he felt my badgering became too much, he pushed me into the pig sty and locked the gate so I could not get out. You would think I would have learned my lesson, and ceased being such a pest about Lev Yashin, but that would be to impute a semblance of sense to me, as a child. But I had none, and there are those who say I still don't. PITT THE MIDDLING We know of Pitt the Elder and Pitt the Younger, but what of Pitt the Middling? History has neglected him, presumably because he did not exist. But what if he had? What then? We might write a thumping fat biography of the middling Pitt, middling in stature, middling in importance, fair to middling in his accomplishments. This biography we could make up from whole cloth or, if we preferred, we could cobble it together from snatches from the true biographies of the other Pitts, the Elder and the Younger, and, casting further afield, from the biographies of any number of not-Pitts, contemporaries, coevals, and peers. Judiciously constructed, such a book might tell us more, much more, about the world and the age of the Pitts than any existing biography of either one of them or of any of the many not-Pitts whose lives we would gut to tell of the Middling Pitt. Our Pitt would be a sort of invisible man, one whose presence, however vivid, is nowhere attested in the available historical record. An invisible man and also a Frankenstein's monster, into whom we breathe the spark of life. Vampire too, for never having really lived, he can never really die. He stalks the earth then, still, Pitt the Middling. If you glimpse his shadow, prancing down the street, tip your hat to him, toss him a coin. He deserves that much. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-06-0630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-30Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:28 A New Musical 04:46 Hot Zinc 10:57 Slow Dog 14:03 Broadsword Calling Danny Boy 16:49 The Quick Brown Fox And The Lazy Dog 20:48 The Sick Fairy 24:17 The Language Of Fruit 25:41 Cat A NEW MUSICAL You can learn many things by watching the Eurovision Song Contest. I noted some of them the other day at The Dabbler, but here I wish to confess that it was only when watching Eurovision that I learned to pronounce Malmo correctly. I had always thought that the final o rhymed with dough. Now I know that it is more accurately a sort of er or uh sound. This new knowledge led me, by ways I will not bother to explain, to devise a plan for an exciting piece of musical theatre. Now, I have not studied the life and times of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi with any great diligence, nor indeed with any diligence at all. What I know of the late tyrant was picked up from news reports--print and broadcast--over the years. So I have no idea whether he ever paid a visit to Sweden. If he did not, it does not matter, for my musical can be wholly fictional. The basic premise of my all-singing all-dancing show is that Gaddafi, on a visit to Sweden's southern capital, is presented by the good burghers of Malmo with an offering of myrrh. I realise this has connotations of the baby Jesus being presented with myrrh--plus gold and frankincense--by the three Kings of Orion-Tar, and that as a result my show might be accused of blasphemy. Well, bring it on!, as they say. We are all aware that blasphemy is a splendid way to drum up publicity. And Christian blasphemy is nice and safe, and wins plaudits for being "edgy" from the Guardian, unlike blasphemy against Islam, which gets you blown up or beheaded and accused of being racist by the Guardian. The main--the only--reason I have devised this show, however, is as a pretext for the title Muammar's Malmo Myrrh. That has a pleasing ring, does it not? The great thing about it is that, however clearly and resoundingly you try to enunciate the words, you still sound like a toothless inarticulate wretch. HOT ZINC I used to know a man whose name, unusually, was Hot Zinc. His character was equally rum. He muttered much in Dutch, while twisting twigs into dollies. Angular and emaciated, they were frightening dollies, quite unsuitable for the tiny tots who form the standard dolly demographic. The airbag in his car was of a wholly new type. It was devised by his cousin. He had dozens of cousins, and the name of the airbag designer was Ulf Drib, which is an anagram of bird flu. Ulf was a fat fellow who looked as if several of his airbags had exploded within him. In May 1968 he threw a pebble at a policeman in Paris. Youthful folly! Now he was fat and comfortable and bourgeois and able to manipulate air in wondrous ways. It was good thing he did, for Hot Zinc was a terrible driver. He ploughed into a gaggle of swans beside a canal. The prototype new airbag saved his life. The swans', not. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:28 A New Musical 04:46 Hot Zinc 10:57 Slow Dog 14:03 Broadsword Calling Danny Boy 16:49 The Quick Brown Fox And The Lazy Dog 20:48 The Sick Fairy 24:17 The Language Of Fruit 25:41 Cat A NEW MUSICAL You can learn many things by watching the Eurovision Song Contest. I noted some of them the other day at The Dabbler, but here I wish to confess that it was only when watching Eurovision that I learned to pronounce Malmo correctly. I had always thought that the final o rhymed with dough. Now I know that it is more accurately a sort of er or uh sound. This new knowledge led me, by ways I will not bother to explain, to devise a plan for an exciting piece of musical theatre. Now, I have not studied the life and times of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi with any great diligence, nor indeed with any diligence at all. What I know of the late tyrant was picked up from news reports--print and broadcast--over the years. So I have no idea whether he ever paid a visit to Sweden. If he did not, it does not matter, for my musical can be wholly fictional. The basic premise of my all-singing all-dancing show is that Gaddafi, on a visit to Sweden's southern capital, is presented by the good burghers of Malmo with an offering of myrrh. I realise this has connotations of the baby Jesus being presented with myrrh--plus gold and frankincense--by the three Kings of Orion-Tar, and that as a result my show might be accused of blasphemy. Well, bring it on!, as they say. We are all aware that blasphemy is a splendid way to drum up publicity. And Christian blasphemy is nice and safe, and wins plaudits for being "edgy" from the Guardian, unlike blasphemy against Islam, which gets you blown up or beheaded and accused of being racist by the Guardian. The main--the only--reason I have devised this show, however, is as a pretext for the title Muammar's Malmo Myrrh. That has a pleasing ring, does it not? The great thing about it is that, however clearly and resoundingly you try to enunciate the words, you still sound like a toothless inarticulate wretch. HOT ZINC I used to know a man whose name, unusually, was Hot Zinc. His character was equally rum. He muttered much in Dutch, while twisting twigs into dollies. Angular and emaciated, they were frightening dollies, quite unsuitable for the tiny tots who form the standard dolly demographic. The airbag in his car was of a wholly new type. It was devised by his cousin. He had dozens of cousins, and the name of the airbag designer was Ulf Drib, which is an anagram of bird flu. Ulf was a fat fellow who looked as if several of his airbags had exploded within him. In May 1968 he threw a pebble at a policeman in Paris. Youthful folly! Now he was fat and comfortable and bourgeois and able to manipulate air in wondrous ways. It was good thing he did, for Hot Zinc was a terrible driver. He ploughed into a gaggle of swans beside a canal. The prototype new airbag saved his life. The swans', not. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-3030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-23Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On A Thing Of Beauty 08:46 Explosive Revelations Of Malfeasance, Perfidy, And Pelf 12:24 Sparky Plover 19:33 Hedger And Ditcher 24:35 Hedger And Ditcher Redux ON A THING OF BEAUTY First, to be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours clear and bright; but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) First, it was small. In fact it was tiny. And I made it seem even tinier than it actually was by placing it next to some pretty big things. If I had surrounded it with, say, lemons or pin-cushions, it would still have been tiny but it would hold its own, as it were, among such fruit 'n' cloth. So in order to emphasise, even to exaggerate, its tininess, I swept away all the scattered lemons and pin-cushions and in their place I put a couple of life-size papier mache models of cows and an industrial washing machine. I could of course have left the lemons and pin-cushions where they were, and simply removed the tiny thing and found a new home for it. That would have saved time. But I had time on my hands, since the fall of the regime. Also, I could now squeeze all the lemons and stick pins in all the pin-cushions, in other words, make use of them, instead of leaving them scattered about, pointlessly. Heaving the papier mache cows and the washing machine into place took the wind out of me, so I went to have a lie down. I turned the volume down on the radio, which was playing stirring and patriotic anthems, and I dozed. Secondly, it was smooth. It was not smooth to begin with, but when I woke from my nap I fetched some sandpaper from my sandpaper-crammed desk drawer and rubbed away at the thing, smoothing all the rough edges. Offhand, I cannot recall what grade of sandpaper I used, but I made a note of it at the time, in my jotter, with my propelling-pencil, in case it ever cropped up as a matter of concern during an interrogation. But it never did, and eventually I cast the jotter into a furnace. I suspect I shall regret having done so, one of these days, but not yet, not yet, fingers crossed. Thirdly, it had variety in the direction of the parts. Some parts of it pointed one way, some another, and some in still other directions. That makes it sound complicated, but it wasn't. And to say the parts "pointed" might suggest they were pointy parts, but they weren't, at least not after I had sanded them down with the grade [whatever] sandpaper. I say they "pointed" in a direction when I suppose what I ought more correctly say is that the different parts "faced" in different directions, or that, depending on where you were when you cast your eyes upon it, you would see different aspects of it. Much like any other solid object, really, in this solid world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On A Thing Of Beauty 08:46 Explosive Revelations Of Malfeasance, Perfidy, And Pelf 12:24 Sparky Plover 19:33 Hedger And Ditcher 24:35 Hedger And Ditcher Redux ON A THING OF BEAUTY First, to be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours clear and bright; but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) First, it was small. In fact it was tiny. And I made it seem even tinier than it actually was by placing it next to some pretty big things. If I had surrounded it with, say, lemons or pin-cushions, it would still have been tiny but it would hold its own, as it were, among such fruit 'n' cloth. So in order to emphasise, even to exaggerate, its tininess, I swept away all the scattered lemons and pin-cushions and in their place I put a couple of life-size papier mache models of cows and an industrial washing machine. I could of course have left the lemons and pin-cushions where they were, and simply removed the tiny thing and found a new home for it. That would have saved time. But I had time on my hands, since the fall of the regime. Also, I could now squeeze all the lemons and stick pins in all the pin-cushions, in other words, make use of them, instead of leaving them scattered about, pointlessly. Heaving the papier mache cows and the washing machine into place took the wind out of me, so I went to have a lie down. I turned the volume down on the radio, which was playing stirring and patriotic anthems, and I dozed. Secondly, it was smooth. It was not smooth to begin with, but when I woke from my nap I fetched some sandpaper from my sandpaper-crammed desk drawer and rubbed away at the thing, smoothing all the rough edges. Offhand, I cannot recall what grade of sandpaper I used, but I made a note of it at the time, in my jotter, with my propelling-pencil, in case it ever cropped up as a matter of concern during an interrogation. But it never did, and eventually I cast the jotter into a furnace. I suspect I shall regret having done so, one of these days, but not yet, not yet, fingers crossed. Thirdly, it had variety in the direction of the parts. Some parts of it pointed one way, some another, and some in still other directions. That makes it sound complicated, but it wasn't. And to say the parts "pointed" might suggest they were pointy parts, but they weren't, at least not after I had sanded them down with the grade [whatever] sandpaper. I say they "pointed" in a direction when I suppose what I ought more correctly say is that the different parts "faced" in different directions, or that, depending on where you were when you cast your eyes upon it, you would see different aspects of it. Much like any other solid object, really, in this solid world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-2329:27fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-16Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 To Cut A Long Story Short 05:26 The Tragedie Of King Alphonso 14:02 An Evening With Jean-Luc Git 19:31 Mud 24:28 The Drums, The Drums TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT Like Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet, I am beautiful and clean and so very very young. Well, that is not exactly the case. I am unprepossessing, faintly grubby, and middle-aged. But then, Tony Hadley is no spring chicken either, if not quite as old as me. But, all else being equal, and notwithstanding brute reality, and both having my cake and eating it, I think I can justly claim to have beauty and cleanliness and youth, in comparison with certain others. A one hundred year old toad, sitting in a bog, for example. Put me next to that toad--on a dais, so I remain unsullied by bog-filth--and I think you would have to agree that if one of us is beautiful and clean and so very very young, it is certainly not the centenarian toad. We will not invite Tony Hadley into the line-up. Toads do not feature largely in the Spandau Ballet story. Indeed, they do not feature at all. I have read the literature, all of it, repeatedly, far beyond what is reasonable, and I can tell you there is not a toad to be found anywhere, not in The Spands : Harbingers Of Pop, nor in Ooh Ooh Ooh, This Much Is True, nor in The Spandau Ballet Pop-Up Picture Book, nor in any of the other several dozen volumes under which my bookshelf creaks. This is, I think, a great pity. Much would be explained were we to learn that the Kemp brothers, or Tony Hadley himself, kept, as a child, a pet toad. (I know there were a couple of other Spands, but nobody remembers who they were, or cares, other than their immediate families.) Ask me to explain what, precisely, would be explained, and I will make a fastidious gesture with my hands, and snort, and arrange my features into a withering look--a look that withers. Did Googie Withers ever listen to, say, Chant No. 1? It is one of the greatest regrets of my life that I did not grab the opportunity to ask her this question before she died, a couple of years ago, at the age of ninety-four. Not that I had the opportunity. I never met her. But I could have ferreted about for an email address or contact details, and put my query. I feel sure Googie would have replied. Of course, I have other regrets, many, oh!, many. And in all honesty, it is probably not true to say that the Withers/Chant No. 1 regret is among the most heart-wrenching of them. Not really. When I said it was, I suppose I was just trying to lend myself airs. It's a common failing, but I shouldn't make excuses. I know that now. And I know it because I have spent untold hours listening, at top volume, to the point where the neighbours complained to the police, to the entire Spandau Ballet discography, including out-takes and demos, on a loop, while gazing at large high definition hyperrealist pictures of toads, with a magnifying glass. You should try it some time. If there is a better way of clearing one's head of cobwebs and faff, I don't know what it is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 To Cut A Long Story Short 05:26 The Tragedie Of King Alphonso 14:02 An Evening With Jean-Luc Git 19:31 Mud 24:28 The Drums, The Drums TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT Like Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet, I am beautiful and clean and so very very young. Well, that is not exactly the case. I am unprepossessing, faintly grubby, and middle-aged. But then, Tony Hadley is no spring chicken either, if not quite as old as me. But, all else being equal, and notwithstanding brute reality, and both having my cake and eating it, I think I can justly claim to have beauty and cleanliness and youth, in comparison with certain others. A one hundred year old toad, sitting in a bog, for example. Put me next to that toad--on a dais, so I remain unsullied by bog-filth--and I think you would have to agree that if one of us is beautiful and clean and so very very young, it is certainly not the centenarian toad. We will not invite Tony Hadley into the line-up. Toads do not feature largely in the Spandau Ballet story. Indeed, they do not feature at all. I have read the literature, all of it, repeatedly, far beyond what is reasonable, and I can tell you there is not a toad to be found anywhere, not in The Spands : Harbingers Of Pop, nor in Ooh Ooh Ooh, This Much Is True, nor in The Spandau Ballet Pop-Up Picture Book, nor in any of the other several dozen volumes under which my bookshelf creaks. This is, I think, a great pity. Much would be explained were we to learn that the Kemp brothers, or Tony Hadley himself, kept, as a child, a pet toad. (I know there were a couple of other Spands, but nobody remembers who they were, or cares, other than their immediate families.) Ask me to explain what, precisely, would be explained, and I will make a fastidious gesture with my hands, and snort, and arrange my features into a withering look--a look that withers. Did Googie Withers ever listen to, say, Chant No. 1? It is one of the greatest regrets of my life that I did not grab the opportunity to ask her this question before she died, a couple of years ago, at the age of ninety-four. Not that I had the opportunity. I never met her. But I could have ferreted about for an email address or contact details, and put my query. I feel sure Googie would have replied. Of course, I have other regrets, many, oh!, many. And in all honesty, it is probably not true to say that the Withers/Chant No. 1 regret is among the most heart-wrenching of them. Not really. When I said it was, I suppose I was just trying to lend myself airs. It's a common failing, but I shouldn't make excuses. I know that now. And I know it because I have spent untold hours listening, at top volume, to the point where the neighbours complained to the police, to the entire Spandau Ballet discography, including out-takes and demos, on a loop, while gazing at large high definition hyperrealist pictures of toads, with a magnifying glass. You should try it some time. If there is a better way of clearing one's head of cobwebs and faff, I don't know what it is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-1630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-09Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Away In A Manger 06:16 The Beak 11:31 The Truth About Banbury Cross 14:56 The Mysterious Hotel 20:45 Bent Cronje 27:24 Shoveller, Shoveller AWAY IN A MANGER Call me slow-witted, if you will, but it took me an extraordinary length of time to realise that the manger, away in which the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head, was in fact a barnyard animal feeding trough. Yes, yes, I know that the carol is quite explicit on this matter, pointing out that the holy infant had "no crib for his bed", but somehow in my mind I have always associated a manger with a newborn's sleep facility, rather than as what the OED calls "a long open box or trough in a stable, barn, etc., out of which horses and cattle can eat fodder". You see what I mean about being slow-witted? Anyway, what occurs to me are the immense repercussions had some roaming ravenous barnyard omnivore fallen upon the manger and, understandably assuming its contents to be dinner, gobbled up the little Lord Jesus. Two thousand and thirteen years of Christian civilization would have been as naught. Imagine that, if you can. Though we might further consider the possibility that the barnyard omnivore, having ingested the Messiah, could itself have become the focus of religious yearnings. Let us assume that Joseph and Mary, fine, responsible parents as they were, were distracted by the arrival of shepherds and wise men and kings, and took their eyes off their mewling infant just long enough for the ravenous beast to come clattering into the farmyard building and guzzle the baby down. Incidentally, just as I was confused about the precise nature of a manger, I was equally muddleheaded about the provenance of the kings. I thought they were "we three kings of Orion-Tar". I had no idea where Orion-Tar might be--though it sounded vaguely like a region of outer space--nor why it had three kings rather than, as is usual, just the one, unless one is in Westeros, which has several. But the kings of Westeros are continually at each other's throats, whereas the three kings of Orion-Tar seem like boon companions, travelling together across the desert (or possibly the Red Waste) following a star. Anyway, if we assume that Joseph and Mary and the shepherds and the Magi and the three kings of Orion-Tar suddenly hear a great gulping and belching sound from the ravenous omnivore, and turn to look, they might very well want to make sure that the beast does not go running off. It might be too late to save the little Lord Almighty, but the barnyard beast itself is now clearly sacred. It contains within it the light of heaven and the hope of all mankind. Goats are omnivorous, as far as I know, so let us say that it is a goat that has swallowed the baby Jesus. It seems likely that, over the succeeding two thousand and thirteen years, we would have devised a culture based upon a goat-god. How different would our history be? It might be interesting to run the permutations through a superdupercomputer, as long range weather forecasters and climate change persons do. Or, more cheaply, one could create a board game, to while away the starlit evenings, snuggled down in heaps of straw, in barnyards far away. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Away In A Manger 06:16 The Beak 11:31 The Truth About Banbury Cross 14:56 The Mysterious Hotel 20:45 Bent Cronje 27:24 Shoveller, Shoveller AWAY IN A MANGER Call me slow-witted, if you will, but it took me an extraordinary length of time to realise that the manger, away in which the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head, was in fact a barnyard animal feeding trough. Yes, yes, I know that the carol is quite explicit on this matter, pointing out that the holy infant had "no crib for his bed", but somehow in my mind I have always associated a manger with a newborn's sleep facility, rather than as what the OED calls "a long open box or trough in a stable, barn, etc., out of which horses and cattle can eat fodder". You see what I mean about being slow-witted? Anyway, what occurs to me are the immense repercussions had some roaming ravenous barnyard omnivore fallen upon the manger and, understandably assuming its contents to be dinner, gobbled up the little Lord Jesus. Two thousand and thirteen years of Christian civilization would have been as naught. Imagine that, if you can. Though we might further consider the possibility that the barnyard omnivore, having ingested the Messiah, could itself have become the focus of religious yearnings. Let us assume that Joseph and Mary, fine, responsible parents as they were, were distracted by the arrival of shepherds and wise men and kings, and took their eyes off their mewling infant just long enough for the ravenous beast to come clattering into the farmyard building and guzzle the baby down. Incidentally, just as I was confused about the precise nature of a manger, I was equally muddleheaded about the provenance of the kings. I thought they were "we three kings of Orion-Tar". I had no idea where Orion-Tar might be--though it sounded vaguely like a region of outer space--nor why it had three kings rather than, as is usual, just the one, unless one is in Westeros, which has several. But the kings of Westeros are continually at each other's throats, whereas the three kings of Orion-Tar seem like boon companions, travelling together across the desert (or possibly the Red Waste) following a star. Anyway, if we assume that Joseph and Mary and the shepherds and the Magi and the three kings of Orion-Tar suddenly hear a great gulping and belching sound from the ravenous omnivore, and turn to look, they might very well want to make sure that the beast does not go running off. It might be too late to save the little Lord Almighty, but the barnyard beast itself is now clearly sacred. It contains within it the light of heaven and the hope of all mankind. Goats are omnivorous, as far as I know, so let us say that it is a goat that has swallowed the baby Jesus. It seems likely that, over the succeeding two thousand and thirteen years, we would have devised a culture based upon a goat-god. How different would our history be? It might be interesting to run the permutations through a superdupercomputer, as long range weather forecasters and climate change persons do. Or, more cheaply, one could create a board game, to while away the starlit evenings, snuggled down in heaps of straw, in barnyards far away. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-0930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-02Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Kimika Ying Writes In 05:19 Me And My Bear 12:09 Yon Little Mound Of Heaped Up Earth 16:59 Tar 28:36 Two Dinners KIMIKA YING WRITES IN A letter arrives from Kimika Ying: Dear Mr. Key : I came across the following picture today which struck me as remarkably familiar, and words from one of your earlier writings came to mind: "Each Saturday morning, I don the diving helmet and cycle fourteen voots to a bucolic hamlet.." You may well have seen this photo before, but while it was on my mind I wanted to take a moment to thank you for making the world a more surreal place. Listening to Hooting Yard is always a pleasure. I had not seen the picture before, and nor did I recall the piece Ms Ying quoted--not surprisingly, as it is nine years old, appearing here in March 2004. Here are both the photograph (from this source) and my elderly tale, What's On In Mustard Parva. My diving helmet is made of gleaming brass. I polish it once a week, on Friday afternoons. Each Saturday morning, I don the diving helmet and cycle fourteen voots to a bucolic hamlet called Mustard Parva. (Curiously, there is no neighbouring village named Mustard Magna, although a rustic barnyard person I met while drinking a pot of gaar in the local gaar-pot drinking hut told me that there had once been such a place. In the year of his birth, this toothless derelict said, the sizeable cluster of wooden buildings known as Mustard Magna had been invaded by a sloth of bears, many hundreds of them, driven insane by ergot poisoning, each bear capable of destroying a humble peasant dwelling with a single thwack from its mighty paw. Two hours after the first bear lumbered across Sawdust Bridge, the village was completely obliterated. It is still shown on some maps.) Jamming my bicycle into a kiosk on Mustard Parva's Yoko Ono Boulevard, I join six or seven other diving helmet enthusiasts for our weekly meeting. Huddled together in the upstairs room of a building fast succumbing to dry rot, we discuss our diving helmets and take lamentably inaccurate minutes which are published regularly through the good offices of the Mustard Parva Thing, whose editor is none other than the blind cousin of Marigold Chew. Source : The Belle of Amherst & Other Essays Written During An Unprecedented Pea-souper by Dobson (limited edition of three copies, unsigned, bound in tat, and coated with a foul-smelling medicament concocted by Dr Fang) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Kimika Ying Writes In 05:19 Me And My Bear 12:09 Yon Little Mound Of Heaped Up Earth 16:59 Tar 28:36 Two Dinners KIMIKA YING WRITES IN A letter arrives from Kimika Ying: Dear Mr. Key : I came across the following picture today which struck me as remarkably familiar, and words from one of your earlier writings came to mind: "Each Saturday morning, I don the diving helmet and cycle fourteen voots to a bucolic hamlet.." You may well have seen this photo before, but while it was on my mind I wanted to take a moment to thank you for making the world a more surreal place. Listening to Hooting Yard is always a pleasure. I had not seen the picture before, and nor did I recall the piece Ms Ying quoted--not surprisingly, as it is nine years old, appearing here in March 2004. Here are both the photograph (from this source) and my elderly tale, What's On In Mustard Parva. My diving helmet is made of gleaming brass. I polish it once a week, on Friday afternoons. Each Saturday morning, I don the diving helmet and cycle fourteen voots to a bucolic hamlet called Mustard Parva. (Curiously, there is no neighbouring village named Mustard Magna, although a rustic barnyard person I met while drinking a pot of gaar in the local gaar-pot drinking hut told me that there had once been such a place. In the year of his birth, this toothless derelict said, the sizeable cluster of wooden buildings known as Mustard Magna had been invaded by a sloth of bears, many hundreds of them, driven insane by ergot poisoning, each bear capable of destroying a humble peasant dwelling with a single thwack from its mighty paw. Two hours after the first bear lumbered across Sawdust Bridge, the village was completely obliterated. It is still shown on some maps.) Jamming my bicycle into a kiosk on Mustard Parva's Yoko Ono Boulevard, I join six or seven other diving helmet enthusiasts for our weekly meeting. Huddled together in the upstairs room of a building fast succumbing to dry rot, we discuss our diving helmets and take lamentably inaccurate minutes which are published regularly through the good offices of the Mustard Parva Thing, whose editor is none other than the blind cousin of Marigold Chew. Source : The Belle of Amherst & Other Essays Written During An Unprecedented Pea-souper by Dobson (limited edition of three copies, unsigned, bound in tat, and coated with a foul-smelling medicament concocted by Dr Fang) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-05-0230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-04-25Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:44 The Maori Factotum 06:56 Zinc Egret 09:06 Leper Messiah 14:40 Pointy Town Egg Dream 19:37 An Appointment With Doctor Fang 24:43 Warlock On Yeats And Berlioz THE MAORI FACTOTUM Close to the ruins of Eynsford Castle, Philip [Heseltine / Peter Warlock] shared the small main-street cottage with his composer friend, E. J. Moeran, together with a collection of cats and a Maori housekeeper-cum-factotum, Hal Collins (Te Akau) (d. 1929). Collins had previously been a barman at a London drinking club. [Cecil] Gray gave this intriguing description of him: "In contra-distinction to this more or less floating population of cats and women, a permanent member of the establishment was a strange character called Hal Collins . . . whose Maori grandmother had been a cannibal and used, within his memory, to lament the passing of the good old days when she could feast upon her kind. Besides being a graphic artist of considerable talent, particularly in woodcut, he was one of those people who, without ever having learned a note of music or received a lesson in piano playing, have an inborn technical dexterity and a quite remarkable gift for improvisation. He used to compose systematically, also, but without being able to write it down; I remember him once playing to me a whole act of an opera he had conceived on the subject of Tristram Shandy . . . He subsisted chiefly on stout, of which he consumed gargantuan quantities, and when elated would perform Maori war dances with quite terrifying realism. On spirits, however, he would run completely amok, in true native fashion, and on one occasion almost succeeded in massacring the entire household." Another snippet from Peter Warlock : The Life Of Philip Heseltine by Barry Smith (1994) ZINC EGRET Yesterday's piece entitled Tungsten Grebe contained an unfortunate error which rendered it incomprehensible. As a consequence, the Hooting Yard Incoming Postage Logistics Silo was bombarded with untold thousands of letters from readers expressing bafflement, befuddlement, or, in some cases, utter indifference. I have now taken the opportunity to reread, rereread, and rerereread the text, scan it through a Blotzmannscope, subject it to the Pigwell-Faffington Test, and carry out several other procedures that you need not bother your ungainly little heads about. As a result of my labours, which I can assure you were Herculean, I am now able to announce that if you replace the words "tungsten grebe" with "zinc egret", all becomes clear. Well, if not exactly clear, then let us say less misty. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-04-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:44 The Maori Factotum 06:56 Zinc Egret 09:06 Leper Messiah 14:40 Pointy Town Egg Dream 19:37 An Appointment With Doctor Fang 24:43 Warlock On Yeats And Berlioz THE MAORI FACTOTUM Close to the ruins of Eynsford Castle, Philip [Heseltine / Peter Warlock] shared the small main-street cottage with his composer friend, E. J. Moeran, together with a collection of cats and a Maori housekeeper-cum-factotum, Hal Collins (Te Akau) (d. 1929). Collins had previously been a barman at a London drinking club. [Cecil] Gray gave this intriguing description of him: "In contra-distinction to this more or less floating population of cats and women, a permanent member of the establishment was a strange character called Hal Collins . . . whose Maori grandmother had been a cannibal and used, within his memory, to lament the passing of the good old days when she could feast upon her kind. Besides being a graphic artist of considerable talent, particularly in woodcut, he was one of those people who, without ever having learned a note of music or received a lesson in piano playing, have an inborn technical dexterity and a quite remarkable gift for improvisation. He used to compose systematically, also, but without being able to write it down; I remember him once playing to me a whole act of an opera he had conceived on the subject of Tristram Shandy . . . He subsisted chiefly on stout, of which he consumed gargantuan quantities, and when elated would perform Maori war dances with quite terrifying realism. On spirits, however, he would run completely amok, in true native fashion, and on one occasion almost succeeded in massacring the entire household." Another snippet from Peter Warlock : The Life Of Philip Heseltine by Barry Smith (1994) ZINC EGRET Yesterday's piece entitled Tungsten Grebe contained an unfortunate error which rendered it incomprehensible. As a consequence, the Hooting Yard Incoming Postage Logistics Silo was bombarded with untold thousands of letters from readers expressing bafflement, befuddlement, or, in some cases, utter indifference. I have now taken the opportunity to reread, rereread, and rerereread the text, scan it through a Blotzmannscope, subject it to the Pigwell-Faffington Test, and carry out several other procedures that you need not bother your ungainly little heads about. As a result of my labours, which I can assure you were Herculean, I am now able to announce that if you replace the words "tungsten grebe" with "zinc egret", all becomes clear. Well, if not exactly clear, then let us say less misty. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-04-2530:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-04-18Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Amsterdam 12:42 The Wisdom Of Peasants 24:46 Tungsten Grebe AMSTERDAM In spending the weekend just gone in Amsterdam, I was of course following in the footsteps of the twentieth century's most illustrious out of print pamphleteer. But whereas I went to the Dutch capital in the cause of art, Dobson's visit was occasioned by a challenge. Let me tell you all about it. It so happened that one wet and windy morning in the 1950s the pamphleteer was on his usual trudge along the towpath of the old canal, when a man sprang out at him from behind a splurge of cuckoopint. The man was rotund and diminutive and dressed all in green, with a little green pointy hat. He looked like a figure from a fairy tale, and though his name was not Rumpelstiltskin, it was similar, with the same number of syllables but a slightly different combination of vowels and consonants. Such was the suddenness of the strange little man's springing that Dobson was disconcerted, and would have toppled over, sploshing into the canal, had he not had the presence of mind to deploy a Goon Fang technique he had recently mastered. In this exercise of the ancient mystic art, one is able to fix one's feet to the ground, as if magnetically, for just long enough to avoid topplement. Dobson swayed slightly. "Drat and heaven's hounds a-gubbins!" screeched the little fellow dressed in green, "You were meant to topple over into the canal with a splosh that would cause me much mirth!" "Then you are confounded!", shouted Dobson. "What I do," said the little man, "Is to present those who confound me with a challenge. I challenge you to go to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, a city with a magnificent network of seventeenth century canals, and I further challenge you to walk alongside each and every canal in Amsterdam, from end to end, on both banks, trudging along back and forth, and to complete the task without once toppling into one or other of the canals. Do you accept my challenge?" "I do," said Dobson immediately, without thinking. But he was not being unduly impetuous. He realised that a trip to Amsterdam could provide the opportunity for important research, "It so happens," he explained, "That I am currently at work on a pamphlet devoted to the study of mariners with an exclusively fish-based diet. I have heard that in the port of Amsterdam, where the sailors all meet, there's a sailor who eats only fish heads and tails, and he'll show you his teeth that have rotted too soon, that can haul up the sails, that can swallow the moon. And he yells to the cook, with his arms open wide 'Hey, bring me more fish, throw it down by my side' and he wants so to belch, but he's too full to try, so he stands up and laughs and he zips up his fly, in the port of Amsterdam, in the port of Amsterdam. I would like to meet that sailor, and interrogate him on his diet." "I have often wondered," said the little man dressed all in green, "If the port of Amsterdam is the port to which Emily Dickinson was referring in that magnificently sensual poem 'Wild Nights!', where she writes Futile--the winds--To a Heart in port--Done with the Compass--Done with the Chart!" "Perhaps that is something else I can research while I am there," said Dobson. The little man chuckled horribly. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-04-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Amsterdam 12:42 The Wisdom Of Peasants 24:46 Tungsten Grebe AMSTERDAM In spending the weekend just gone in Amsterdam, I was of course following in the footsteps of the twentieth century's most illustrious out of print pamphleteer. But whereas I went to the Dutch capital in the cause of art, Dobson's visit was occasioned by a challenge. Let me tell you all about it. It so happened that one wet and windy morning in the 1950s the pamphleteer was on his usual trudge along the towpath of the old canal, when a man sprang out at him from behind a splurge of cuckoopint. The man was rotund and diminutive and dressed all in green, with a little green pointy hat. He looked like a figure from a fairy tale, and though his name was not Rumpelstiltskin, it was similar, with the same number of syllables but a slightly different combination of vowels and consonants. Such was the suddenness of the strange little man's springing that Dobson was disconcerted, and would have toppled over, sploshing into the canal, had he not had the presence of mind to deploy a Goon Fang technique he had recently mastered. In this exercise of the ancient mystic art, one is able to fix one's feet to the ground, as if magnetically, for just long enough to avoid topplement. Dobson swayed slightly. "Drat and heaven's hounds a-gubbins!" screeched the little fellow dressed in green, "You were meant to topple over into the canal with a splosh that would cause me much mirth!" "Then you are confounded!", shouted Dobson. "What I do," said the little man, "Is to present those who confound me with a challenge. I challenge you to go to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, a city with a magnificent network of seventeenth century canals, and I further challenge you to walk alongside each and every canal in Amsterdam, from end to end, on both banks, trudging along back and forth, and to complete the task without once toppling into one or other of the canals. Do you accept my challenge?" "I do," said Dobson immediately, without thinking. But he was not being unduly impetuous. He realised that a trip to Amsterdam could provide the opportunity for important research, "It so happens," he explained, "That I am currently at work on a pamphlet devoted to the study of mariners with an exclusively fish-based diet. I have heard that in the port of Amsterdam, where the sailors all meet, there's a sailor who eats only fish heads and tails, and he'll show you his teeth that have rotted too soon, that can haul up the sails, that can swallow the moon. And he yells to the cook, with his arms open wide 'Hey, bring me more fish, throw it down by my side' and he wants so to belch, but he's too full to try, so he stands up and laughs and he zips up his fly, in the port of Amsterdam, in the port of Amsterdam. I would like to meet that sailor, and interrogate him on his diet." "I have often wondered," said the little man dressed all in green, "If the port of Amsterdam is the port to which Emily Dickinson was referring in that magnificently sensual poem 'Wild Nights!', where she writes Futile--the winds--To a Heart in port--Done with the Compass--Done with the Chart!" "Perhaps that is something else I can research while I am there," said Dobson. The little man chuckled horribly. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-04-1828:08fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-04-11Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 The Statement Of William Tell 04:37 William Tell : Second Statement Of Particulars 10:35 William Tell : Third Statement Of Particulars 18:52 William Tell : Fourth Statement Of Particulars 22:16 Inside The Orgone Accumulator! THE STATEMENT OF WILLIAM TELL My name is William Tell, and I am an archer of repute. Like Caspar Badrutt, the hotelier who pioneered winter sports, I am a man of Switzerland, country of chocolate swiss roll and neutrality. My son Walter has a large head, and as he lolloped along the mountain paths, it tilted upon his neck and swung from side to side. He had become an object of ridicule among the goatherds. My wife, Coco, delved into ancient books to see if she could discover a spell to shrink Walter's head. I was fully supportive of this strategy, and entered many crossbow tournaments, the idea being to win prize monies so Coco could afford to buy more and more ancient books. Though I won contests in every canton of Switzerland, and even abroad, in Italy, where they called me Guglielmo, and our chalet was piled high with ancient books, Coco failed to discover an effective spell. Walter became low-spirited and unusually cantankerous. I feared for my coop of hens, towards which my son began to mutter animadversions. He was projecting his inner turmoil against harmless poultry, a psychological commonplace. Goatherds are larger, and violent when threatened. Desperate, I sought advice from the Swiss Institute Of Deportment. I was told that the muscles in Walter's neck could be strengthened rather than his head shrunk. The way to do this was to make him carry pieces of fruit balanced atop his crown. That goes some way to explaining why Walter had an apple on his head when Hermann Gessler, Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, came riding by on his horse. By every Alp in Switzerland, how I hated the Vogt! I shot the apple off Walter's head with my crossbow to show Gessler that I was not a man he should mess with. I had a pomegranate in my pocket, and was about to balance it on Gessler's head when I was apprehended by his henchmen. To his credit, my quick-thinking son unlatched the hens from the coop and set the fear of god into them. He pointed at the henchmen, and yelled "Kill!" They immediately unhanded me, and fled alongside their Vogt of Altdorf. Inside the chalet, Coco had brewed a potion from a recipe in one of the ancient books. Walter took a sip and spat it out, but I drank an entire gobletful. Shortly afterwards I lost touch with reality. My name is William Tell, and that is my statement. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, as the potion is still coursing through my veins. I must now go and tell everything I know about Switzerland to a man named Ruskin, who says he is writing a book about this fair country. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-04-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 The Statement Of William Tell 04:37 William Tell : Second Statement Of Particulars 10:35 William Tell : Third Statement Of Particulars 18:52 William Tell : Fourth Statement Of Particulars 22:16 Inside The Orgone Accumulator! THE STATEMENT OF WILLIAM TELL My name is William Tell, and I am an archer of repute. Like Caspar Badrutt, the hotelier who pioneered winter sports, I am a man of Switzerland, country of chocolate swiss roll and neutrality. My son Walter has a large head, and as he lolloped along the mountain paths, it tilted upon his neck and swung from side to side. He had become an object of ridicule among the goatherds. My wife, Coco, delved into ancient books to see if she could discover a spell to shrink Walter's head. I was fully supportive of this strategy, and entered many crossbow tournaments, the idea being to win prize monies so Coco could afford to buy more and more ancient books. Though I won contests in every canton of Switzerland, and even abroad, in Italy, where they called me Guglielmo, and our chalet was piled high with ancient books, Coco failed to discover an effective spell. Walter became low-spirited and unusually cantankerous. I feared for my coop of hens, towards which my son began to mutter animadversions. He was projecting his inner turmoil against harmless poultry, a psychological commonplace. Goatherds are larger, and violent when threatened. Desperate, I sought advice from the Swiss Institute Of Deportment. I was told that the muscles in Walter's neck could be strengthened rather than his head shrunk. The way to do this was to make him carry pieces of fruit balanced atop his crown. That goes some way to explaining why Walter had an apple on his head when Hermann Gessler, Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, came riding by on his horse. By every Alp in Switzerland, how I hated the Vogt! I shot the apple off Walter's head with my crossbow to show Gessler that I was not a man he should mess with. I had a pomegranate in my pocket, and was about to balance it on Gessler's head when I was apprehended by his henchmen. To his credit, my quick-thinking son unlatched the hens from the coop and set the fear of god into them. He pointed at the henchmen, and yelled "Kill!" They immediately unhanded me, and fled alongside their Vogt of Altdorf. Inside the chalet, Coco had brewed a potion from a recipe in one of the ancient books. Walter took a sip and spat it out, but I drank an entire gobletful. Shortly afterwards I lost touch with reality. My name is William Tell, and that is my statement. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, as the potion is still coursing through my veins. I must now go and tell everything I know about Switzerland to a man named Ruskin, who says he is writing a book about this fair country. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-04-1130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-28Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 A Meditation At Breakfast 03:19 In The Socks Of The Mighty 11:57 Knitting And Catastrophe 15:13 Travels In Arabia Deserta A MEDITATION AT BREAKFAST Man is never more spraingue than when he is toffee. Or, to put it another way, cheek by jowl, as it were, there is in man a faculty of rejubment best exercised in plectrum. It was out of some grosser tin that our forefathers beat their washbasins. When Pangbourne calls, so the trellis trembles, and it was ever thistle. These reflections were occasioned while boiling an egg, frying a rasher of bacon, and toasting a slice of bread. Aha!, you exclaim, he is fixing his breakfast! And you would be right, as right as rain. But is rain right? Pips are spat onto hissing coals when we consider such questions. The puddle of infirmity is plashed through on scorched plimsoll soles. The nougat is both pink and white. But yes, it was breakfast, the egg and the bacon and the toast. It always would be breakfast, in this dispensation. Who was it who wrote that the careworn man dips his tootsies in the duckpond only for his hair to stand on end when struck by lightning? Freedom, then, we can unhitch from the fork. What glue was, and what glues wert, that is a bird's pinion of a lack. The spark is crunched, the ear bought, and winter's booming ever splat. Breakfast! Digest it how we may, it was innocent of the sausage. And, aye, there is a lesson there, one wiped with a rag on a panel. Beat that panel as your forefathers beat their basins out of tin. It is a spraingue nougat we covet, nor toffee formidable. IN THE SOCKS OF THE MIGHTY "Behold the socks of the mighty!" These were the words I heard declaimed in my dreams, in the moment before waking on a windy winter's morn. It was later, as I was scoffing breakfast (eggs, plus a surfeit of lampreys), that I realised their significance. I slapped my forehead and went to retrieve, from the cupboard under the sink, my battered tin crown. The time had come to stake my claim to the Iron Throne. I would reign o'er the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros! First of all, of course, I would have to eliminate all the other pretenders to the Throne, of whom there were many. Oh!, many, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. But for all the corpses piled up along the pathway to the Throne, there yet remained innumerable claimants who were very much alive, alive and in brutish good health, and heavily armed, and of psychotic temperament. If I was going to take my rightful place sitting on that Throne, with my bauble and sceptre, I was going to have my work cut out. What I needed was a troop of minions. The presence of minions lends a kingly air even to the weediest of Throne-claimants. Straight after breakfast, then, I popped to the newsagent's to pick up the latest issue of the directory or register or whatever it is, that invaluable publication which lists, in alphabetical order, with contact details, and accompanied by skilful line-drawings with much cross-hatching done in a spidery pen, all minions currently available for hire. Sitting on a municipal park bench, buffeted by the wild winds, I leafed through the lists and plumped for the Minions Of The Pointy Sticks. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 A Meditation At Breakfast 03:19 In The Socks Of The Mighty 11:57 Knitting And Catastrophe 15:13 Travels In Arabia Deserta A MEDITATION AT BREAKFAST Man is never more spraingue than when he is toffee. Or, to put it another way, cheek by jowl, as it were, there is in man a faculty of rejubment best exercised in plectrum. It was out of some grosser tin that our forefathers beat their washbasins. When Pangbourne calls, so the trellis trembles, and it was ever thistle. These reflections were occasioned while boiling an egg, frying a rasher of bacon, and toasting a slice of bread. Aha!, you exclaim, he is fixing his breakfast! And you would be right, as right as rain. But is rain right? Pips are spat onto hissing coals when we consider such questions. The puddle of infirmity is plashed through on scorched plimsoll soles. The nougat is both pink and white. But yes, it was breakfast, the egg and the bacon and the toast. It always would be breakfast, in this dispensation. Who was it who wrote that the careworn man dips his tootsies in the duckpond only for his hair to stand on end when struck by lightning? Freedom, then, we can unhitch from the fork. What glue was, and what glues wert, that is a bird's pinion of a lack. The spark is crunched, the ear bought, and winter's booming ever splat. Breakfast! Digest it how we may, it was innocent of the sausage. And, aye, there is a lesson there, one wiped with a rag on a panel. Beat that panel as your forefathers beat their basins out of tin. It is a spraingue nougat we covet, nor toffee formidable. IN THE SOCKS OF THE MIGHTY "Behold the socks of the mighty!" These were the words I heard declaimed in my dreams, in the moment before waking on a windy winter's morn. It was later, as I was scoffing breakfast (eggs, plus a surfeit of lampreys), that I realised their significance. I slapped my forehead and went to retrieve, from the cupboard under the sink, my battered tin crown. The time had come to stake my claim to the Iron Throne. I would reign o'er the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros! First of all, of course, I would have to eliminate all the other pretenders to the Throne, of whom there were many. Oh!, many, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. But for all the corpses piled up along the pathway to the Throne, there yet remained innumerable claimants who were very much alive, alive and in brutish good health, and heavily armed, and of psychotic temperament. If I was going to take my rightful place sitting on that Throne, with my bauble and sceptre, I was going to have my work cut out. What I needed was a troop of minions. The presence of minions lends a kingly air even to the weediest of Throne-claimants. Straight after breakfast, then, I popped to the newsagent's to pick up the latest issue of the directory or register or whatever it is, that invaluable publication which lists, in alphabetical order, with contact details, and accompanied by skilful line-drawings with much cross-hatching done in a spidery pen, all minions currently available for hire. Sitting on a municipal park bench, buffeted by the wild winds, I leafed through the lists and plumped for the Minions Of The Pointy Sticks. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-2830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-21Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 On Mephitic Vapours 08:20 Eerie Mavis 12:29 On (Or Rather, Towards) The Planet Of The Crumpled Jesuits 21:38 The Stupid Milk ON MEPHITIC VAPOURS Dobson had this to say about mephitic vapours: I can date my fanatical interest in mephitic vapours quite precisely. There was an autumn during my childhood when my parents took to sending me, at the first hint of daylight, on a morning errand to fetch eggs from a distant farm. There had been a falling out with the nearby eggman, for reasons unclear to me. I was sent out of the room on the last occasion he called, and heard muffled, undecipherable shouting, some thumps, and the slamming of the door. The next day I was roused at dawn and told to put on my wellington boots and head off across the fields, following a hand-drawn map pressed into my hands by papa. The map showed our hovel and a dotted line, with compass points, a few notable features such as a badger sanctuary and a Blotzmann mast, and at the end of the dotted line an egg, representing the distant farm. I would have had to be a peculiarly dimwitted child not to be able to make my way there and back by mid-afternoon. But what papa omitted from the map, deliberately or otherwise, was Loathsome Marsh. This I had to splash through, in my wellingtons, twice a day until, months later, there was a rapprochement with the eggman. In spite of its loathsomeness, I grew to love Loathsome Marsh. I was particularly fond of the mephitic vapours which hung over it, morning and afternoon, a shroud of evil mist in which I fancied sprites and goblins cavorting and cutting capers. The noxious pong did not bother me, for I soon learned to plug my nostrils with cotton wool. Years later, I had the pleasure of meeting a mephitic vapour scientist who was making a special study of Loathsome Marsh. One day he took me back to his laboratory, where I spent a happy afternoon poring over his baffling array of instruments and equipment while he explained his project to me. He too, it seemed, was convinced that the mephitic vapours of Loathsome Marsh served to half-conceal various sprites and goblins. He was, he said, trying to "isolate" them. He would go down to the marsh at daybreak, as I had done all those years ago, and scan the mephitic vapours with a mephitic vapour scanner of his own design. He then captured a sample of the mephitic vapours in a glass holder, its vent plugged with a simple cork from a wine bottle, and brought it back to the laboratory for analysis. Thus far, he admitted, he had no conclusive results to report, but I could tell from the mad gleam in his eyes that the mephitic vapours of Loathsome Marsh had quite unhinged him, and that his life thereafter would be devoted to them. I have not been able to trace the out of print pamphlet from which this passage is taken. It appears in an anthology entitled The Bumper Book Of Mephitic Vapours For Boys And Girls, the editrix of which, one Prudence Foxglove, provides no sources for any of the four hundred and thirty-seven texts she cobbled together. There is a distinct possibility that she may have written the whole thing herself and attributed the separate pieces to writers both real and invented. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 On Mephitic Vapours 08:20 Eerie Mavis 12:29 On (Or Rather, Towards) The Planet Of The Crumpled Jesuits 21:38 The Stupid Milk ON MEPHITIC VAPOURS Dobson had this to say about mephitic vapours: I can date my fanatical interest in mephitic vapours quite precisely. There was an autumn during my childhood when my parents took to sending me, at the first hint of daylight, on a morning errand to fetch eggs from a distant farm. There had been a falling out with the nearby eggman, for reasons unclear to me. I was sent out of the room on the last occasion he called, and heard muffled, undecipherable shouting, some thumps, and the slamming of the door. The next day I was roused at dawn and told to put on my wellington boots and head off across the fields, following a hand-drawn map pressed into my hands by papa. The map showed our hovel and a dotted line, with compass points, a few notable features such as a badger sanctuary and a Blotzmann mast, and at the end of the dotted line an egg, representing the distant farm. I would have had to be a peculiarly dimwitted child not to be able to make my way there and back by mid-afternoon. But what papa omitted from the map, deliberately or otherwise, was Loathsome Marsh. This I had to splash through, in my wellingtons, twice a day until, months later, there was a rapprochement with the eggman. In spite of its loathsomeness, I grew to love Loathsome Marsh. I was particularly fond of the mephitic vapours which hung over it, morning and afternoon, a shroud of evil mist in which I fancied sprites and goblins cavorting and cutting capers. The noxious pong did not bother me, for I soon learned to plug my nostrils with cotton wool. Years later, I had the pleasure of meeting a mephitic vapour scientist who was making a special study of Loathsome Marsh. One day he took me back to his laboratory, where I spent a happy afternoon poring over his baffling array of instruments and equipment while he explained his project to me. He too, it seemed, was convinced that the mephitic vapours of Loathsome Marsh served to half-conceal various sprites and goblins. He was, he said, trying to "isolate" them. He would go down to the marsh at daybreak, as I had done all those years ago, and scan the mephitic vapours with a mephitic vapour scanner of his own design. He then captured a sample of the mephitic vapours in a glass holder, its vent plugged with a simple cork from a wine bottle, and brought it back to the laboratory for analysis. Thus far, he admitted, he had no conclusive results to report, but I could tell from the mad gleam in his eyes that the mephitic vapours of Loathsome Marsh had quite unhinged him, and that his life thereafter would be devoted to them. I have not been able to trace the out of print pamphlet from which this passage is taken. It appears in an anthology entitled The Bumper Book Of Mephitic Vapours For Boys And Girls, the editrix of which, one Prudence Foxglove, provides no sources for any of the four hundred and thirty-seven texts she cobbled together. There is a distinct possibility that she may have written the whole thing herself and attributed the separate pieces to writers both real and invented. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-2130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-14Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 A Recipe for Gruel 08:14 Pontiff Mnemonic 13:35 Incoherence 19:31 Pastry Idyll 22:53 On Bird Funerals A RECIPE FOR GRUEL You will need the following ingredients: oats; water. The following equipment is essential: a big pot; a big spoon; the Holy Bible. On a blustery winter's day, with a chill in the very marrow of your poor, poor bones, take the big pot & carry it, trudging through snow, to the rusty spigot on the other side of the village. Weeping, use what little strength you have to turn the spigot until a woeful driblet of brackish water appears. Make sure you place the big iron pot under the drip, so that water collects in it. With luck, & prayer, you should find that the pot is about three quarters full before twilight, when of course the village curfew comes into effect. The evil Grand Vizier proclaimed so in his ukase, to make sure that all pious people are behind their latched & bolted doors by nightfall. Place the big pot on your oven & set it on full. Remember that it can take electric cookers longer to heat up than gas ones, but do not despair. Once your oven's maximum heat is reached, the water will bubble away like nobody's business. To prevent steam escaping, it is a splendid idea to cover the pot. If, long ago, when you were feckless, you lost or mislaid the lid of your pot, or if indeed your pot never had a lid, for not all pots do, you can of course improvise a lid using all sorts of debris strewn higgledy-piggledy about your hovel. Just be sure you use flame-resistant debris, please. Now then, while you are waiting for the water to come to the boil, you can go & find the oats while I take a well-earned nap. Let's have a little musical interlude. .. I am now fully rested and in tiptop condition. Let us press on without further ado, for by now your pot of water should be boiling. Please pay attention, as the next step, if fumbled, will put paid to your dearest wish, which is to make a successful pot of gruel. With your right hand, scoop some oats from the pail. Grasp the lid of the pot, if there is one, in your left hand, & lift it free of the pot. Cast the handful of oats into the seething cauldron & replace the lid. You may repeat this step once or twice, but on no account overdo the oats, as this will spoil your gruel making it too thick, & as the only remedy for this would be to add more water, you would have to return to the spigot, breaking the village curfew, and so risk being clubbed within an inch of your life by merciless curfew-cadets, & your gruel, imperfect though it may be, would then go to waste. Sin upon sin. You are now free to allow the contents of the pot to boil merrily away, although of course from time to time you ought to brandish the big spoon in your fist & give the gruel-to-be a mighty stir. In the intervals between stirrings, you must on no account remain idle. This is the perfect time to read improving passages from the Bible. Indeed, why not throw open your door, stand upright & magnificent in your weed-choked yard, & declaim the scriptures in a booming voice for the benefit of whoe'er may be within earshot in the vast & pitiless night? Two little reminders, though. However resounding your declamation, do not allow into your tone even the most minuscule taint of vanity. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 A Recipe for Gruel 08:14 Pontiff Mnemonic 13:35 Incoherence 19:31 Pastry Idyll 22:53 On Bird Funerals A RECIPE FOR GRUEL You will need the following ingredients: oats; water. The following equipment is essential: a big pot; a big spoon; the Holy Bible. On a blustery winter's day, with a chill in the very marrow of your poor, poor bones, take the big pot & carry it, trudging through snow, to the rusty spigot on the other side of the village. Weeping, use what little strength you have to turn the spigot until a woeful driblet of brackish water appears. Make sure you place the big iron pot under the drip, so that water collects in it. With luck, & prayer, you should find that the pot is about three quarters full before twilight, when of course the village curfew comes into effect. The evil Grand Vizier proclaimed so in his ukase, to make sure that all pious people are behind their latched & bolted doors by nightfall. Place the big pot on your oven & set it on full. Remember that it can take electric cookers longer to heat up than gas ones, but do not despair. Once your oven's maximum heat is reached, the water will bubble away like nobody's business. To prevent steam escaping, it is a splendid idea to cover the pot. If, long ago, when you were feckless, you lost or mislaid the lid of your pot, or if indeed your pot never had a lid, for not all pots do, you can of course improvise a lid using all sorts of debris strewn higgledy-piggledy about your hovel. Just be sure you use flame-resistant debris, please. Now then, while you are waiting for the water to come to the boil, you can go & find the oats while I take a well-earned nap. Let's have a little musical interlude. .. I am now fully rested and in tiptop condition. Let us press on without further ado, for by now your pot of water should be boiling. Please pay attention, as the next step, if fumbled, will put paid to your dearest wish, which is to make a successful pot of gruel. With your right hand, scoop some oats from the pail. Grasp the lid of the pot, if there is one, in your left hand, & lift it free of the pot. Cast the handful of oats into the seething cauldron & replace the lid. You may repeat this step once or twice, but on no account overdo the oats, as this will spoil your gruel making it too thick, & as the only remedy for this would be to add more water, you would have to return to the spigot, breaking the village curfew, and so risk being clubbed within an inch of your life by merciless curfew-cadets, & your gruel, imperfect though it may be, would then go to waste. Sin upon sin. You are now free to allow the contents of the pot to boil merrily away, although of course from time to time you ought to brandish the big spoon in your fist & give the gruel-to-be a mighty stir. In the intervals between stirrings, you must on no account remain idle. This is the perfect time to read improving passages from the Bible. Indeed, why not throw open your door, stand upright & magnificent in your weed-choked yard, & declaim the scriptures in a booming voice for the benefit of whoe'er may be within earshot in the vast & pitiless night? Two little reminders, though. However resounding your declamation, do not allow into your tone even the most minuscule taint of vanity. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-1430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-07Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On A Thing Of Beauty 08:46 Explosive Revelations Of Malfeasance, Perfidy, And Pelf 12:24 Sparky Plover 19:33 Hedger And Ditcher 24:35 Hedger And Ditcher Redux ON A THING OF BEAUTY First, to be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours clear and bright; but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) First, it was small. In fact it was tiny. And I made it seem even tinier than it actually was by placing it next to some pretty big things. If I had surrounded it with, say, lemons or pin-cushions, it would still have been tiny but it would hold its own, as it were, among such fruit 'n' cloth. So in order to emphasise, even to exaggerate, its tininess, I swept away all the scattered lemons and pin-cushions and in their place I put a couple of life-size papier mache models of cows and an industrial washing machine. I could of course have left the lemons and pin-cushions where they were, and simply removed the tiny thing and found a new home for it. That would have saved time. But I had time on my hands, since the fall of the regime. Also, I could now squeeze all the lemons and stick pins in all the pin-cushions, in other words, make use of them, instead of leaving them scattered about, pointlessly. Heaving the papier mache cows and the washing machine into place took the wind out of me, so I went to have a lie down. I turned the volume down on the radio, which was playing stirring and patriotic anthems, and I dozed. Secondly, it was smooth. It was not smooth to begin with, but when I woke from my nap I fetched some sandpaper from my sandpaper-crammed desk drawer and rubbed away at the thing, smoothing all the rough edges. Offhand, I cannot recall what grade of sandpaper I used, but I made a note of it at the time, in my jotter, with my propelling-pencil, in case it ever cropped up as a matter of concern during an interrogation. But it never did, and eventually I cast the jotter into a furnace. I suspect I shall regret having done so, one of these days, but not yet, not yet, fingers crossed. Thirdly, it had variety in the direction of the parts. Some parts of it pointed one way, some another, and some in still other directions. That makes it sound complicated, but it wasn't. And to say the parts "pointed" might suggest they were pointy parts, but they weren't, at least not after I had sanded them down with the grade [whatever] sandpaper. I say they "pointed" in a direction when I suppose what I ought more correctly say is that the different parts "faced" in different directions, or that, depending on where you were when you cast your eyes upon it, you would see different aspects of it. Much like any other solid object, really, in this solid world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On A Thing Of Beauty 08:46 Explosive Revelations Of Malfeasance, Perfidy, And Pelf 12:24 Sparky Plover 19:33 Hedger And Ditcher 24:35 Hedger And Ditcher Redux ON A THING OF BEAUTY First, to be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours clear and bright; but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) First, it was small. In fact it was tiny. And I made it seem even tinier than it actually was by placing it next to some pretty big things. If I had surrounded it with, say, lemons or pin-cushions, it would still have been tiny but it would hold its own, as it were, among such fruit 'n' cloth. So in order to emphasise, even to exaggerate, its tininess, I swept away all the scattered lemons and pin-cushions and in their place I put a couple of life-size papier mache models of cows and an industrial washing machine. I could of course have left the lemons and pin-cushions where they were, and simply removed the tiny thing and found a new home for it. That would have saved time. But I had time on my hands, since the fall of the regime. Also, I could now squeeze all the lemons and stick pins in all the pin-cushions, in other words, make use of them, instead of leaving them scattered about, pointlessly. Heaving the papier mache cows and the washing machine into place took the wind out of me, so I went to have a lie down. I turned the volume down on the radio, which was playing stirring and patriotic anthems, and I dozed. Secondly, it was smooth. It was not smooth to begin with, but when I woke from my nap I fetched some sandpaper from my sandpaper-crammed desk drawer and rubbed away at the thing, smoothing all the rough edges. Offhand, I cannot recall what grade of sandpaper I used, but I made a note of it at the time, in my jotter, with my propelling-pencil, in case it ever cropped up as a matter of concern during an interrogation. But it never did, and eventually I cast the jotter into a furnace. I suspect I shall regret having done so, one of these days, but not yet, not yet, fingers crossed. Thirdly, it had variety in the direction of the parts. Some parts of it pointed one way, some another, and some in still other directions. That makes it sound complicated, but it wasn't. And to say the parts "pointed" might suggest they were pointy parts, but they weren't, at least not after I had sanded them down with the grade [whatever] sandpaper. I say they "pointed" in a direction when I suppose what I ought more correctly say is that the different parts "faced" in different directions, or that, depending on where you were when you cast your eyes upon it, you would see different aspects of it. Much like any other solid object, really, in this solid world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-03-0729:35fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-28Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 On A Thing Of Beauty 08:52 Explosive Revelations Of Malfeasance, Perfidy, And Pelf 12:30 Sparky Plover 19:39 Hedger And Ditcher 24:42 Hedger And Ditcher Redux ON A THING OF BEAUTY First, to be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours clear and bright; but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) First, it was small. In fact it was tiny. And I made it seem even tinier than it actually was by placing it next to some pretty big things. If I had surrounded it with, say, lemons or pin-cushions, it would still have been tiny but it would hold its own, as it were, among such fruit 'n' cloth. So in order to emphasise, even to exaggerate, its tininess, I swept away all the scattered lemons and pin-cushions and in their place I put a couple of life-size papier mache models of cows and an industrial washing machine. I could of course have left the lemons and pin-cushions where they were, and simply removed the tiny thing and found a new home for it. That would have saved time. But I had time on my hands, since the fall of the regime. Also, I could now squeeze all the lemons and stick pins in all the pin-cushions, in other words, make use of them, instead of leaving them scattered about, pointlessly. Heaving the papier mache cows and the washing machine into place took the wind out of me, so I went to have a lie down. I turned the volume down on the radio, which was playing stirring and patriotic anthems, and I dozed. Secondly, it was smooth. It was not smooth to begin with, but when I woke from my nap I fetched some sandpaper from my sandpaper-crammed desk drawer and rubbed away at the thing, smoothing all the rough edges. Offhand, I cannot recall what grade of sandpaper I used, but I made a note of it at the time, in my jotter, with my propelling-pencil, in case it ever cropped up as a matter of concern during an interrogation. But it never did, and eventually I cast the jotter into a furnace. I suspect I shall regret having done so, one of these days, but not yet, not yet, fingers crossed. Thirdly, it had variety in the direction of the parts. Some parts of it pointed one way, some another, and some in still other directions. That makes it sound complicated, but it wasn't. And to say the parts "pointed" might suggest they were pointy parts, but they weren't, at least not after I had sanded them down with the grade [whatever] sandpaper. I say they "pointed" in a direction when I suppose what I ought more correctly say is that the different parts "faced" in different directions, or that, depending on where you were when you cast your eyes upon it, you would see different aspects of it. Much like any other solid object, really, in this solid world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 On A Thing Of Beauty 08:52 Explosive Revelations Of Malfeasance, Perfidy, And Pelf 12:30 Sparky Plover 19:39 Hedger And Ditcher 24:42 Hedger And Ditcher Redux ON A THING OF BEAUTY First, to be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours clear and bright; but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) First, it was small. In fact it was tiny. And I made it seem even tinier than it actually was by placing it next to some pretty big things. If I had surrounded it with, say, lemons or pin-cushions, it would still have been tiny but it would hold its own, as it were, among such fruit 'n' cloth. So in order to emphasise, even to exaggerate, its tininess, I swept away all the scattered lemons and pin-cushions and in their place I put a couple of life-size papier mache models of cows and an industrial washing machine. I could of course have left the lemons and pin-cushions where they were, and simply removed the tiny thing and found a new home for it. That would have saved time. But I had time on my hands, since the fall of the regime. Also, I could now squeeze all the lemons and stick pins in all the pin-cushions, in other words, make use of them, instead of leaving them scattered about, pointlessly. Heaving the papier mache cows and the washing machine into place took the wind out of me, so I went to have a lie down. I turned the volume down on the radio, which was playing stirring and patriotic anthems, and I dozed. Secondly, it was smooth. It was not smooth to begin with, but when I woke from my nap I fetched some sandpaper from my sandpaper-crammed desk drawer and rubbed away at the thing, smoothing all the rough edges. Offhand, I cannot recall what grade of sandpaper I used, but I made a note of it at the time, in my jotter, with my propelling-pencil, in case it ever cropped up as a matter of concern during an interrogation. But it never did, and eventually I cast the jotter into a furnace. I suspect I shall regret having done so, one of these days, but not yet, not yet, fingers crossed. Thirdly, it had variety in the direction of the parts. Some parts of it pointed one way, some another, and some in still other directions. That makes it sound complicated, but it wasn't. And to say the parts "pointed" might suggest they were pointy parts, but they weren't, at least not after I had sanded them down with the grade [whatever] sandpaper. I say they "pointed" in a direction when I suppose what I ought more correctly say is that the different parts "faced" in different directions, or that, depending on where you were when you cast your eyes upon it, you would see different aspects of it. Much like any other solid object, really, in this solid world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-2830:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-21Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Ten Tarleton Tales--I 11:24 On Musca Domestica 18:02 Ten Tarleton Tales--X TEN TARLETON TALES--I Note : Tarleton plays only a bit part in this first of Ten Tarleton Tales. But what a bit! At an advanced stage, the gunk is scraped off with a tallow-knife, collected in a pot, reduced by steaming and fed to seahorses. After several days the seahorses begin to display intricate and abnormal behaviour patterns. These patterns can be traced on graph paper with propelling-pencils and a ruler. Comparison with earlier graphs, done under a double blind test, has proved immensely illuminating. So lustrous, indeed, that copied out onto onion-skin paper and crumpled up, they can be inserted into glass bulbs and light a long corridor in a large building for upwards of four days. By the fourth day, they are dimming, there is a dying of the light, and sensitive persons mourn, as mourn they might. Having disposed of the gunk as described, the main bulk is best fed through a sieve. The most effective sieve to use is one with so-called "Swedenborgian angel" holes. These are not generally available in the shops, but can be ordered direct by post from the manufacturers, thus keeping costs surprisingly low. You might want to purchase two or three at one time. The fragile nature of the sieve means that it will not, alas, survive much use. It is easily distressed, especially when you try to force stuff through the holes, as certain boisterous and reckless persons tend to do. If you have such a person on your team, it is a good idea to keep them away from the sieves by telling them to go and keep an eye on the seahorses. Other pesky or exasperating team members can be usefully employed--and kept out of your hair--by laying the plumb line. This should consist of tent-pegs and butcher's string and stretch as far as the eye can see. The line should ideally be at the height of an average hollyhock, the calculation being made by consulting the tables at the back of the Annual Hollyhock Height Register. A copy of this ought to be in your local reference library, but will usually not be available for borrowing, so a literate and numerate member of the team, with a valid library ticket, should be delegated to copy out the required details. They can use the back of the graph paper on which the behaviour patterns of the seahorses have earlier been inscribed in majestic sweeping lines and arcs of unsurpassed beauty. Meanwhile, having fed the main bulk through the sieve into a bucket, the bucket can now be ferried to the platform. This should stand on sturdy props, the sturdier the better. Do not on any account use balsa wood. You are probably familiar with the case of Tarleton, and what transpired with his balsa wood props. If necessary, test the sturdiness using the standard tests of sturdiness which appear as Appendix VII in your pamphlet. Otherwise, proceed directly to the siphon and funnel palaver. Siphon the stuff out of the bucket, working slowly and methodically and seamlessly. As it passes through the funnel, take snapshots at one-minute intervals from the designated angles. These need not be full colour snapshots, unless they have been explicitly specified in the contract. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Ten Tarleton Tales--I 11:24 On Musca Domestica 18:02 Ten Tarleton Tales--X TEN TARLETON TALES--I Note : Tarleton plays only a bit part in this first of Ten Tarleton Tales. But what a bit! At an advanced stage, the gunk is scraped off with a tallow-knife, collected in a pot, reduced by steaming and fed to seahorses. After several days the seahorses begin to display intricate and abnormal behaviour patterns. These patterns can be traced on graph paper with propelling-pencils and a ruler. Comparison with earlier graphs, done under a double blind test, has proved immensely illuminating. So lustrous, indeed, that copied out onto onion-skin paper and crumpled up, they can be inserted into glass bulbs and light a long corridor in a large building for upwards of four days. By the fourth day, they are dimming, there is a dying of the light, and sensitive persons mourn, as mourn they might. Having disposed of the gunk as described, the main bulk is best fed through a sieve. The most effective sieve to use is one with so-called "Swedenborgian angel" holes. These are not generally available in the shops, but can be ordered direct by post from the manufacturers, thus keeping costs surprisingly low. You might want to purchase two or three at one time. The fragile nature of the sieve means that it will not, alas, survive much use. It is easily distressed, especially when you try to force stuff through the holes, as certain boisterous and reckless persons tend to do. If you have such a person on your team, it is a good idea to keep them away from the sieves by telling them to go and keep an eye on the seahorses. Other pesky or exasperating team members can be usefully employed--and kept out of your hair--by laying the plumb line. This should consist of tent-pegs and butcher's string and stretch as far as the eye can see. The line should ideally be at the height of an average hollyhock, the calculation being made by consulting the tables at the back of the Annual Hollyhock Height Register. A copy of this ought to be in your local reference library, but will usually not be available for borrowing, so a literate and numerate member of the team, with a valid library ticket, should be delegated to copy out the required details. They can use the back of the graph paper on which the behaviour patterns of the seahorses have earlier been inscribed in majestic sweeping lines and arcs of unsurpassed beauty. Meanwhile, having fed the main bulk through the sieve into a bucket, the bucket can now be ferried to the platform. This should stand on sturdy props, the sturdier the better. Do not on any account use balsa wood. You are probably familiar with the case of Tarleton, and what transpired with his balsa wood props. If necessary, test the sturdiness using the standard tests of sturdiness which appear as Appendix VII in your pamphlet. Otherwise, proceed directly to the siphon and funnel palaver. Siphon the stuff out of the bucket, working slowly and methodically and seamlessly. As it passes through the funnel, take snapshots at one-minute intervals from the designated angles. These need not be full colour snapshots, unless they have been explicitly specified in the contract. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-2130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-14Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:02 Vile Mud And Weeds 07:32 A Picnic In Poxhaven 10:29 On Cav And Pag 18:16 Take Me Back To Old Plovdiv 22:46 Pontiff! 26:29 Hooting Yard Haiku VILE MUD AND WEEDS From the archives, this postage first appeared seven years ago today, on 13 February 2006: Almost exactly two years ago, on 13 March 2004 to be precise, our quote of the day was by William Hope Hodgson, from From The Tideless Sea. To jog your memories, he wrote I am writing this in the saloon of the sailing ship, Homebird, and writing with but little hope of human eye ever seeing that which I write; for we are in the heart of the dread Sargasso Sea--the Tideless Sea of the North Atlantic. From the stump of our mizzen mast, one may see, spread out to the far horizon, an interminable waste of weed--a treacherous, silent vastitude of slime and hideousness! When I chose the quotation I was unfamiliar with the work of Hodgson, a state of affairs which continued, shamefully, until just a few days ago. I am indebted to Tim Gadd for drawing my attention to this superb writer and encouraging me to immerse myself in the slimy, weed-choked pages of his books. William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was an author, photographer, sailor, and body-builder, who wrote four novels before concentrating on short fiction. He was killed in the First World War. H. P. Lovecraft was an admirer, praising his "serious treatment of unreality," and the critic Sam Gafford notes "his apparently inexplicable choice of writing styles" in an essay entitled Writing Backwards. Reading his first published novel, The Boats Of The 'Glen Carrig', I was struck by something else 'apparently inexplicable'. The story purports to be an account of [the boats'] Adventures in the Strange places of the Earth, after the foundering of the good ship 'Glen Carrig' through striking upon a hidden rock in the unknown seas to the Southward, As told by John Winterstraw, Gent., to his son James Winterstraw, in the year 1757, and by him committed very properly and legibly to manuscript so what we get is a thrilling yarn wherein the narrator recounts coming ashore in the Land of Lonesomeness. . . we found it to be of an abominable flatness, desolate beyond all that I could have imagined... in the end, we found... a slimy-banked creek... the banks being composed of a vile mud . . . before heading off to an island on a weed-choked sea where the bulk of the tale takes place. As in From The Tideless Sea, the setting is thus an interminable waste of weed--a treacherous, silent vastitude of slime and hideousness! Lurking in the weeds are various disgusting creatures which our heroes fight off and outwit, in between doing boat repairs. But is there any other writer who would take pains to mention every single occasion his characters break off for a meal? Until the end, where several weeks' action is summarised, the narrative takes us day by day, and Hodgson regularly reassures us that the castaways are getting proper meals. I did some basic word-count analysis on the novel, and Hodgson's focus of attention became clear. It is indeed a weed-choked book--weed, and enticing variants such as the weed-continent, appear 223 times (in a 60,000-word text). […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:02 Vile Mud And Weeds 07:32 A Picnic In Poxhaven 10:29 On Cav And Pag 18:16 Take Me Back To Old Plovdiv 22:46 Pontiff! 26:29 Hooting Yard Haiku VILE MUD AND WEEDS From the archives, this postage first appeared seven years ago today, on 13 February 2006: Almost exactly two years ago, on 13 March 2004 to be precise, our quote of the day was by William Hope Hodgson, from From The Tideless Sea. To jog your memories, he wrote I am writing this in the saloon of the sailing ship, Homebird, and writing with but little hope of human eye ever seeing that which I write; for we are in the heart of the dread Sargasso Sea--the Tideless Sea of the North Atlantic. From the stump of our mizzen mast, one may see, spread out to the far horizon, an interminable waste of weed--a treacherous, silent vastitude of slime and hideousness! When I chose the quotation I was unfamiliar with the work of Hodgson, a state of affairs which continued, shamefully, until just a few days ago. I am indebted to Tim Gadd for drawing my attention to this superb writer and encouraging me to immerse myself in the slimy, weed-choked pages of his books. William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was an author, photographer, sailor, and body-builder, who wrote four novels before concentrating on short fiction. He was killed in the First World War. H. P. Lovecraft was an admirer, praising his "serious treatment of unreality," and the critic Sam Gafford notes "his apparently inexplicable choice of writing styles" in an essay entitled Writing Backwards. Reading his first published novel, The Boats Of The 'Glen Carrig', I was struck by something else 'apparently inexplicable'. The story purports to be an account of [the boats'] Adventures in the Strange places of the Earth, after the foundering of the good ship 'Glen Carrig' through striking upon a hidden rock in the unknown seas to the Southward, As told by John Winterstraw, Gent., to his son James Winterstraw, in the year 1757, and by him committed very properly and legibly to manuscript so what we get is a thrilling yarn wherein the narrator recounts coming ashore in the Land of Lonesomeness. . . we found it to be of an abominable flatness, desolate beyond all that I could have imagined... in the end, we found... a slimy-banked creek... the banks being composed of a vile mud . . . before heading off to an island on a weed-choked sea where the bulk of the tale takes place. As in From The Tideless Sea, the setting is thus an interminable waste of weed--a treacherous, silent vastitude of slime and hideousness! Lurking in the weeds are various disgusting creatures which our heroes fight off and outwit, in between doing boat repairs. But is there any other writer who would take pains to mention every single occasion his characters break off for a meal? Until the end, where several weeks' action is summarised, the narrative takes us day by day, and Hodgson regularly reassures us that the castaways are getting proper meals. I did some basic word-count analysis on the novel, and Hodgson's focus of attention became clear. It is indeed a weed-choked book--weed, and enticing variants such as the weed-continent, appear 223 times (in a 60,000-word text). […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-1430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-07Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:58 Who Was Captain Nitty? 06:15 No More Soup, Ever 08:54 Monsters Of Duplicity 13:17 Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue's Diary 23.1.97 17:07 Blodgett's Diary 24.1.46 18:55 An Ignorant Ornithologist's Diary 25.1.46 22:22 Papa Kutschera's Diary 26.1.05 26:49 Hallucinating Hoon Hospital In-Patient's Diary 27.1.12 WHO WAS CAPTAIN NITTY? Who was Captain Nitty? Interestingly enough, it is a question that has never been asked before. In the long march of humankind, from primeval swamps to space age fabness, nobody has ever wanted to know who exactly this Captain Nitty person actually was. That should tell us something, but what? It might tell us that Captain Nitty was an almost staggeringly insignificant figure. It might tell us that he never actually existed and is mere figment. Note those figs. Fig-ure, and fig-ment. We are all familiar, I think, from our picture books, with "Fig. 1" or "Fig. A." Sometimes, depending on the nature of the book, a Fig. might be a Plate. How much easier it would be to answer our question if we had a Fig. or a Plate depicting Captain Nitty. If that were the case, we could simply point at the picture and say, "There! That is Captain Nitty," and all curiosity--if indeed there were any--would be satisfied, and we could go off and do something else, something perhaps of more import, such as circumnavigating a duckpond, or visiting an owl sanctuary. But, just as nobody has ever cared to ask who Captain Nitty was, nor has anybody ever bothered to depict him, whether in pen and ink or daubs of paint or by mechanical means such as a camera or Blotzmannscope. Even the noted mezzotintist Rex Tint never made a mezzotint of Captain Nitty, possibly because nobody was ever prepared to pay the fat fee demanded by Rex Tint for one of his mezzotints. In the absence of a Fig. or a Plate, then, how are we to go about answering the question? Is there a potted biography to which we might refer? "Potted", in this sense, does not mean literally that the biography is to be found planted in a pot, like, say, an aspidistra. We must not get in a muddle about all these figs and plates and pots. If we confuse them with actual figs, and actual plates, and actual pots, our brains are likely to overheat as we struggle to comprehend what we are talking about. If such overheating does occur--and there are times when it does, it does--then a circumnavigation of the duckpond, or a visit to an owl sanctuary, is a splendid coolant. Brain duly cooled, however, we are still at something of a loss regarding Captain Nitty, as we have discovered, to our horror--and that is not too strong a word--that no potted biography of him exists. We ought of course to realise this. For someone to have written a biography, potted or otherwise, they would first have had to ask the question "Who was Captain Nitty?", albeit silently, to themselves, and we already know that it is an unasked question. There are of course innumerable other questions which have never been asked, ever, by anybody. How do you boil an ostrich-head?, for example, or Were the tears of Saint Veronica used as a gum for postage stamps? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:58 Who Was Captain Nitty? 06:15 No More Soup, Ever 08:54 Monsters Of Duplicity 13:17 Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue's Diary 23.1.97 17:07 Blodgett's Diary 24.1.46 18:55 An Ignorant Ornithologist's Diary 25.1.46 22:22 Papa Kutschera's Diary 26.1.05 26:49 Hallucinating Hoon Hospital In-Patient's Diary 27.1.12 WHO WAS CAPTAIN NITTY? Who was Captain Nitty? Interestingly enough, it is a question that has never been asked before. In the long march of humankind, from primeval swamps to space age fabness, nobody has ever wanted to know who exactly this Captain Nitty person actually was. That should tell us something, but what? It might tell us that Captain Nitty was an almost staggeringly insignificant figure. It might tell us that he never actually existed and is mere figment. Note those figs. Fig-ure, and fig-ment. We are all familiar, I think, from our picture books, with "Fig. 1" or "Fig. A." Sometimes, depending on the nature of the book, a Fig. might be a Plate. How much easier it would be to answer our question if we had a Fig. or a Plate depicting Captain Nitty. If that were the case, we could simply point at the picture and say, "There! That is Captain Nitty," and all curiosity--if indeed there were any--would be satisfied, and we could go off and do something else, something perhaps of more import, such as circumnavigating a duckpond, or visiting an owl sanctuary. But, just as nobody has ever cared to ask who Captain Nitty was, nor has anybody ever bothered to depict him, whether in pen and ink or daubs of paint or by mechanical means such as a camera or Blotzmannscope. Even the noted mezzotintist Rex Tint never made a mezzotint of Captain Nitty, possibly because nobody was ever prepared to pay the fat fee demanded by Rex Tint for one of his mezzotints. In the absence of a Fig. or a Plate, then, how are we to go about answering the question? Is there a potted biography to which we might refer? "Potted", in this sense, does not mean literally that the biography is to be found planted in a pot, like, say, an aspidistra. We must not get in a muddle about all these figs and plates and pots. If we confuse them with actual figs, and actual plates, and actual pots, our brains are likely to overheat as we struggle to comprehend what we are talking about. If such overheating does occur--and there are times when it does, it does--then a circumnavigation of the duckpond, or a visit to an owl sanctuary, is a splendid coolant. Brain duly cooled, however, we are still at something of a loss regarding Captain Nitty, as we have discovered, to our horror--and that is not too strong a word--that no potted biography of him exists. We ought of course to realise this. For someone to have written a biography, potted or otherwise, they would first have had to ask the question "Who was Captain Nitty?", albeit silently, to themselves, and we already know that it is an unasked question. There are of course innumerable other questions which have never been asked, ever, by anybody. How do you boil an ostrich-head?, for example, or Were the tears of Saint Veronica used as a gum for postage stamps? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-02-0730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-31Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb's Diary 15.1.13 06:10 Dobson's Diary 17.1.61 10:55 Pebblehead's Diary 19.1.92 16:31 A Pimply Ragamuffin's Diary 20.1.00 20:53 Virginia Woolf's Diary 21.1.18 22:26 A Crow's Diary 22.1.70 24:59 Tenth Anniversary (XI) FORD MADOX UNSTREBNODTALB'S DIARY 15.1.13 The diary of Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb, on this day one hundred years ago: I gargled. You gargled. He, she, or it gargled. We gargled. You lot gargled. They gargled. That was the gargling done, and it remained only to regargle before getting down to the lesser business of the day, the gargling and regargling being, of course, the main business, on this day as on every day in the current dispensation. I know for a fact that some queer folk like to gargle with stuff that comes prepared in bottles available from the chemist's shop, such as Dr Baxter's "Zippy" Fragrant Spitting Fluid. I abhor those concoctions. I make my own, a mixture of ice cold water scooped from the duckpond, table salt, crushed violets, vinegar, and goaty milk. The precise quantities of each ingredient I measure out in my so-called "gargling jar", which in truth is just an ordinary jar with horizontal lines scratched on the side with the sharpened ends of a pair of sugar tongs. It has served me well these forty years, and will I hope continue to do so for as many more years as the Lord sees fit in His ineffable wisdom to grant me. Not that I am a religious man. Pious yes, religious no. If there is a Lord, then He is a phantom in my head, lodged somewhere between the brain and the skull, forever eluding the forceps of enquiry. I must admit that there are days when, having gargled and regargled, I find myself at something of a loose end. On occasion I throw caution to the winds and repair to the bathroom to gargle one more time. Spellbinding as this can be, I know it only staves off the inevitable, which is to buckle down to all those non-gargling activities with which I am afflicted. On any given day these might include: not gargling, taking a constitutional round and round the flowerbeds, scooping water from the duckpond, plucking then crushing violets, milking several goats, resisting the temptation to regargle, firing off a letter to the editor of the Gargling Gazette, shimmying up and down a rope ladder as part of military training for a war I am convinced will never come, dispensing alms to beggars and widows and orphans, communing with my spirit guide, hooplah!, polishing the gargling jar, and writing in a crabbed and barely legible hand in my diary. Today I did some of these things, not others, but with a heavy heart. I felt drawn, irresistibly, to the bathroom sink, to gargle again, though I knew it was madness. Dr Baxter himself, in spite of his "Zippy" potion, warns against the dangers of overgargling in a pamphlet distributed by an urchin in the village square. I do not think the urchin receives a farthing for his labours. Come rain or shine he stands there, weedy and disease-ridden, handing out pamphlets to passers-by. "Sickness Of The Brain Brought On By More Gargling Than Is Wise And Proper" are the words emblazoned on the cover, below which appears a mezzotint by the noted mezzotintist Rex Tint showing a horrifying brainsick mad person in the throes of unreason. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb's Diary 15.1.13 06:10 Dobson's Diary 17.1.61 10:55 Pebblehead's Diary 19.1.92 16:31 A Pimply Ragamuffin's Diary 20.1.00 20:53 Virginia Woolf's Diary 21.1.18 22:26 A Crow's Diary 22.1.70 24:59 Tenth Anniversary (XI) FORD MADOX UNSTREBNODTALB'S DIARY 15.1.13 The diary of Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb, on this day one hundred years ago: I gargled. You gargled. He, she, or it gargled. We gargled. You lot gargled. They gargled. That was the gargling done, and it remained only to regargle before getting down to the lesser business of the day, the gargling and regargling being, of course, the main business, on this day as on every day in the current dispensation. I know for a fact that some queer folk like to gargle with stuff that comes prepared in bottles available from the chemist's shop, such as Dr Baxter's "Zippy" Fragrant Spitting Fluid. I abhor those concoctions. I make my own, a mixture of ice cold water scooped from the duckpond, table salt, crushed violets, vinegar, and goaty milk. The precise quantities of each ingredient I measure out in my so-called "gargling jar", which in truth is just an ordinary jar with horizontal lines scratched on the side with the sharpened ends of a pair of sugar tongs. It has served me well these forty years, and will I hope continue to do so for as many more years as the Lord sees fit in His ineffable wisdom to grant me. Not that I am a religious man. Pious yes, religious no. If there is a Lord, then He is a phantom in my head, lodged somewhere between the brain and the skull, forever eluding the forceps of enquiry. I must admit that there are days when, having gargled and regargled, I find myself at something of a loose end. On occasion I throw caution to the winds and repair to the bathroom to gargle one more time. Spellbinding as this can be, I know it only staves off the inevitable, which is to buckle down to all those non-gargling activities with which I am afflicted. On any given day these might include: not gargling, taking a constitutional round and round the flowerbeds, scooping water from the duckpond, plucking then crushing violets, milking several goats, resisting the temptation to regargle, firing off a letter to the editor of the Gargling Gazette, shimmying up and down a rope ladder as part of military training for a war I am convinced will never come, dispensing alms to beggars and widows and orphans, communing with my spirit guide, hooplah!, polishing the gargling jar, and writing in a crabbed and barely legible hand in my diary. Today I did some of these things, not others, but with a heavy heart. I felt drawn, irresistibly, to the bathroom sink, to gargle again, though I knew it was madness. Dr Baxter himself, in spite of his "Zippy" potion, warns against the dangers of overgargling in a pamphlet distributed by an urchin in the village square. I do not think the urchin receives a farthing for his labours. Come rain or shine he stands there, weedy and disease-ridden, handing out pamphlets to passers-by. "Sickness Of The Brain Brought On By More Gargling Than Is Wise And Proper" are the words emblazoned on the cover, below which appears a mezzotint by the noted mezzotintist Rex Tint showing a horrifying brainsick mad person in the throes of unreason. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-3130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-17Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:04 Bobnit Tivol's Diary 9.1.26 07:43 A Peasant's Diary 10.1.49 BC 12:06 The Grunty Man's Diary 11.1.13 14:39 Dennis Beerpint's Diary 13.1.03 21:24 Saint Mungo's Diary 14.1.73 25:44 Captain Scott's Diary 16.1.12 BOBNIT TIVOL'S DIARY 9.1.26 Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol is one of very few fictional athletes to have kept an entirely nonfictional diary, though quite how it came to be written is anybody's guess. Here is what he got up to on this day in 1926: Bounded out of bed spry and sprightly and cut two or three brisk Boswellian capers around the room before plunging my head into a pail of ice cold water. Then I was out at the cinder track. Being fictional, I do not need to travel from A to B, I can simply be in one place and then a moment later in another place. Generally speaking, that other place is the cinder track, unless I am taking part in a competition, when I might materialise in a field or a stadium. Nor do I need to eat breakfast, or indeed any other meal, except for fictional purposes, for example if a sense of drama is wrung from me having stomach cramps from overeating seconds before an important qualifying heat in an important sprint championship. Today I was in training for just such a competition, the Pointy Town All-Comers High Speed Breathless Panting Round And Round A Cinder Track Trophy. Those who follow my fictional career know I placed in the top seventeen in this contest in 1922 and 1923 and 1924. Last year, of course, I was attacked by a swarm of hornets on the eve of the final and was unable to compete. My coach, the irascible chain-smoking Old Halob, who is as real as I am fictional, was nowhere to be seen on this fine cold January morning. I missed his reassuring presence, but did my practice sprint anyway. I ran round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round the cinder track at high speed, panting breathlessly, all day. This is where I have an advantage over nonfictional athletes, who would collapse in exhausted heaps after a few laps. Being insubstantial and, some have said, unkindly, one-dimensional, I only collapse if there is a sense of drama to be wrung from my doing so. This usually occurs in important races, such as the final of the Sawdust Bridge One Hundred Mile Flat-Out Sprinting Cup, and not when I am merely on a training run. I would have kept on running round and round the cinder track after the sun went down, but it was at that point, as night o'erspread the sky and all was plunged in darkness, that Old Halob appeared. If he was not real I might think he was a vampire. He looked at his stopwatch and blew his whistle and coughed up an unseemly amount of catarrh and led me away to a nocturnal pole-vaulting area. I had completely forgotten that I also had to get in shape for the Pointy Town Nocturnal Pole-Vaulting Challenge Ribbon! So all in all it was a pretty good day, and night, as my days and nights go. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:04 Bobnit Tivol's Diary 9.1.26 07:43 A Peasant's Diary 10.1.49 BC 12:06 The Grunty Man's Diary 11.1.13 14:39 Dennis Beerpint's Diary 13.1.03 21:24 Saint Mungo's Diary 14.1.73 25:44 Captain Scott's Diary 16.1.12 BOBNIT TIVOL'S DIARY 9.1.26 Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol is one of very few fictional athletes to have kept an entirely nonfictional diary, though quite how it came to be written is anybody's guess. Here is what he got up to on this day in 1926: Bounded out of bed spry and sprightly and cut two or three brisk Boswellian capers around the room before plunging my head into a pail of ice cold water. Then I was out at the cinder track. Being fictional, I do not need to travel from A to B, I can simply be in one place and then a moment later in another place. Generally speaking, that other place is the cinder track, unless I am taking part in a competition, when I might materialise in a field or a stadium. Nor do I need to eat breakfast, or indeed any other meal, except for fictional purposes, for example if a sense of drama is wrung from me having stomach cramps from overeating seconds before an important qualifying heat in an important sprint championship. Today I was in training for just such a competition, the Pointy Town All-Comers High Speed Breathless Panting Round And Round A Cinder Track Trophy. Those who follow my fictional career know I placed in the top seventeen in this contest in 1922 and 1923 and 1924. Last year, of course, I was attacked by a swarm of hornets on the eve of the final and was unable to compete. My coach, the irascible chain-smoking Old Halob, who is as real as I am fictional, was nowhere to be seen on this fine cold January morning. I missed his reassuring presence, but did my practice sprint anyway. I ran round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round the cinder track at high speed, panting breathlessly, all day. This is where I have an advantage over nonfictional athletes, who would collapse in exhausted heaps after a few laps. Being insubstantial and, some have said, unkindly, one-dimensional, I only collapse if there is a sense of drama to be wrung from my doing so. This usually occurs in important races, such as the final of the Sawdust Bridge One Hundred Mile Flat-Out Sprinting Cup, and not when I am merely on a training run. I would have kept on running round and round the cinder track after the sun went down, but it was at that point, as night o'erspread the sky and all was plunged in darkness, that Old Halob appeared. If he was not real I might think he was a vampire. He looked at his stopwatch and blew his whistle and coughed up an unseemly amount of catarrh and led me away to a nocturnal pole-vaulting area. I had completely forgotten that I also had to get in shape for the Pointy Town Nocturnal Pole-Vaulting Challenge Ribbon! So all in all it was a pretty good day, and night, as my days and nights go. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-1730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-10Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 Dobson's Diary 1.1.53 04:37 Dobson's Diary 2.1.53 10:43 Tiny Enid's Diary 4.1.34 13:45 Dobson's Diary 5.1.58 18:22 Babinsky's Diary 7.1.66 DOBSON'S DIARY 1.1.53 Dobson, the out of print pamphleteer, was an intermittent diarist. At certain periods in his life, he maintained a voluminous, almost demented daily journal. At other times he made only scattered and vestigial scribblings, and there are also whole stretches where he fell completely silent, at least as a diarist. Surprisingly, there has been as yet no attempt to marshal all the extant texts into a published edition. Here, however, is Dobson's diary entry written sixty years ago to the day, on the first of January 1953: Cabbage stalks in swans' blood for breakfast. Then I went for a trudge along the towpath of the filthy old canal. Stopped to gaze at cows--the cows gazed back. Spent untold hours slumped at my escritoire struggling with my pamphlet in progress, Farming With Gnomes. The problem is I know little about farming and even less about gnomes. Why, then, asked my inamorata Marigold Chew, did I choose the topic in the first place? She fails to grasp the intricate workings of what I have decided to dub "Dobson Praxis", a praxis that itself may be the subject of a future pamphlet. When the time came to sharpen my pencil I could not find the pencil sharpener, so instead I picked up this week's copy of The Listener and read a fascinating article about a buff-breasted sandpiper. From a careful reading--and rereading--I deduced that this is some sort of bird, though what it is doing hanging around at a sewage works is beyond me. If I had wings and the power of flight I am by no means certain that I would choose to wallow in sewage when I could take wing and fly to, oh I don't know, somewhere less noisome and noxious. Actually, I note that the writer calls it a sewage farm rather than a sewage works. Perhaps this is a suitable type of farm for gnomes. I shall have to embark upon further research. Pig innards and peas for supper. DOBSON'S DIARY 2.1.53 The out of print pamphleteer Dobson's diary, sixty years ago today: I embarked on my research into sewage farm gnomes by rereading, and rerereading, the article in The Listener about a buff-breasted sandpiper. It was a pity, I thought, that no illustration accompanied the piece. Elsewhere in the same issue, the editor found room for a picture of masks in an article about masks. This exasperated me so much that I threw my new pencil sharpener, bought this morning to replace the one mislaid yesterday, out of the window and into a puddle. Why on earth the window was wide open on a day as inclement as this is a surpassing mystery, or it would be had Marigold Chew not embraced some hare-brained fresh-air fad. I hope she soon diverts her attention to something less chilly and windswept. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:23 Dobson's Diary 1.1.53 04:37 Dobson's Diary 2.1.53 10:43 Tiny Enid's Diary 4.1.34 13:45 Dobson's Diary 5.1.58 18:22 Babinsky's Diary 7.1.66 DOBSON'S DIARY 1.1.53 Dobson, the out of print pamphleteer, was an intermittent diarist. At certain periods in his life, he maintained a voluminous, almost demented daily journal. At other times he made only scattered and vestigial scribblings, and there are also whole stretches where he fell completely silent, at least as a diarist. Surprisingly, there has been as yet no attempt to marshal all the extant texts into a published edition. Here, however, is Dobson's diary entry written sixty years ago to the day, on the first of January 1953: Cabbage stalks in swans' blood for breakfast. Then I went for a trudge along the towpath of the filthy old canal. Stopped to gaze at cows--the cows gazed back. Spent untold hours slumped at my escritoire struggling with my pamphlet in progress, Farming With Gnomes. The problem is I know little about farming and even less about gnomes. Why, then, asked my inamorata Marigold Chew, did I choose the topic in the first place? She fails to grasp the intricate workings of what I have decided to dub "Dobson Praxis", a praxis that itself may be the subject of a future pamphlet. When the time came to sharpen my pencil I could not find the pencil sharpener, so instead I picked up this week's copy of The Listener and read a fascinating article about a buff-breasted sandpiper. From a careful reading--and rereading--I deduced that this is some sort of bird, though what it is doing hanging around at a sewage works is beyond me. If I had wings and the power of flight I am by no means certain that I would choose to wallow in sewage when I could take wing and fly to, oh I don't know, somewhere less noisome and noxious. Actually, I note that the writer calls it a sewage farm rather than a sewage works. Perhaps this is a suitable type of farm for gnomes. I shall have to embark upon further research. Pig innards and peas for supper. DOBSON'S DIARY 2.1.53 The out of print pamphleteer Dobson's diary, sixty years ago today: I embarked on my research into sewage farm gnomes by rereading, and rerereading, the article in The Listener about a buff-breasted sandpiper. It was a pity, I thought, that no illustration accompanied the piece. Elsewhere in the same issue, the editor found room for a picture of masks in an article about masks. This exasperated me so much that I threw my new pencil sharpener, bought this morning to replace the one mislaid yesterday, out of the window and into a puddle. Why on earth the window was wide open on a day as inclement as this is a surpassing mystery, or it would be had Marigold Chew not embraced some hare-brained fresh-air fad. I hope she soon diverts her attention to something less chilly and windswept. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-1030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-01Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2013-01-0130:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-12-01Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Big Metal Fence 22:05 The Smelly Castle 23:55 In Another German Forest 26:05 Water-Parties THE BIG METAL FENCE Here is another much-requested piece. Although I have read it, more than once, on the radio, it has never appeared in written form anywhere. I was planning an anthology of stories in 1993, just before the Wilderness Years, of which this would have formed a part, but that book never did see the light of day. As with The Book Of Gnats, if I were writing the story today it would be different, here and there, but I have left it in its original state, more or less. Freakishly tall, draped in a soutane, my brain pounding, I found myself standing before a trench full of sludge. In each hand, I discovered I was holding a bucket of pungent goo. My feet were encased in sturdy plastic bootees and at least two pairs of socks. I squelched across the trench, each step expelling from the sludge noisome fumes that wafted in the air behind me, shimmering and stinking. After some minutes, I clambered on to the other side, and rested the buckets upon the ground. Sulphurous fires ablaze within my skull, I had made the crossing from LIFE into DEATH. Eternity was before me. That was six weeks ago, and I have now prepared this preliminary report of my impressions. I do not doubt that as further aeons pass, what follows may appear naive, churlish and inaccurate. I shall file a more detailed report in ten billion years or so, and it will be instructive for scholars to compare the two documents. I repeat: these are very much first impressions. In marshalling my material, I have plunged the majority of my notes into the Chute Of Rack And Ruin, which is on the mezzanine floor of the larger of the Two Damp Buildings. First, because to include everything would make this report too long and unwieldy. Second, because I have come to enjoy the whirring and clanking noises emitted by the Chute when it is put into operation. It is my fondest hope that, however limited and fragmentary the material, my readers will nonetheless gain a useful insight into what awaits them after death. So far I have discovered four pubs: The Butcher's Vest, The Consumptive Stalinist, The Tenth Chaffinch, and The Smouldering Maw. To get into the latter, you must be in possession of a special ticket issued by the River Police, whose headquarters is in a small hut at the bottom of a flight of stone steps a few hundred yards north of the Moribund Dam. To get into the hut, however, you need a licence from the Buffed-Up Shield Committee, which meets only once every four thousand years. It is typical of my luck that it met just two days before I arrived here. From what I have heard, The Smouldering Maw has the very best drinks in the afterlife, and what's more they are free. My friend Ringchock, who has been here for untold centuries, recommends a peculiar brew they serve called The Hoist. It is effervescent, curdled, of a startling lavender tinge, and after four pints you get to join Captain Snap's Committee, of which more later. I have been able to get in to the other three pubs mentioned, none of which has any restrictions on entry. The Butcher's Vest is the only one worthy of repeated visits. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-12-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Big Metal Fence 22:05 The Smelly Castle 23:55 In Another German Forest 26:05 Water-Parties THE BIG METAL FENCE Here is another much-requested piece. Although I have read it, more than once, on the radio, it has never appeared in written form anywhere. I was planning an anthology of stories in 1993, just before the Wilderness Years, of which this would have formed a part, but that book never did see the light of day. As with The Book Of Gnats, if I were writing the story today it would be different, here and there, but I have left it in its original state, more or less. Freakishly tall, draped in a soutane, my brain pounding, I found myself standing before a trench full of sludge. In each hand, I discovered I was holding a bucket of pungent goo. My feet were encased in sturdy plastic bootees and at least two pairs of socks. I squelched across the trench, each step expelling from the sludge noisome fumes that wafted in the air behind me, shimmering and stinking. After some minutes, I clambered on to the other side, and rested the buckets upon the ground. Sulphurous fires ablaze within my skull, I had made the crossing from LIFE into DEATH. Eternity was before me. That was six weeks ago, and I have now prepared this preliminary report of my impressions. I do not doubt that as further aeons pass, what follows may appear naive, churlish and inaccurate. I shall file a more detailed report in ten billion years or so, and it will be instructive for scholars to compare the two documents. I repeat: these are very much first impressions. In marshalling my material, I have plunged the majority of my notes into the Chute Of Rack And Ruin, which is on the mezzanine floor of the larger of the Two Damp Buildings. First, because to include everything would make this report too long and unwieldy. Second, because I have come to enjoy the whirring and clanking noises emitted by the Chute when it is put into operation. It is my fondest hope that, however limited and fragmentary the material, my readers will nonetheless gain a useful insight into what awaits them after death. So far I have discovered four pubs: The Butcher's Vest, The Consumptive Stalinist, The Tenth Chaffinch, and The Smouldering Maw. To get into the latter, you must be in possession of a special ticket issued by the River Police, whose headquarters is in a small hut at the bottom of a flight of stone steps a few hundred yards north of the Moribund Dam. To get into the hut, however, you need a licence from the Buffed-Up Shield Committee, which meets only once every four thousand years. It is typical of my luck that it met just two days before I arrived here. From what I have heard, The Smouldering Maw has the very best drinks in the afterlife, and what's more they are free. My friend Ringchock, who has been here for untold centuries, recommends a peculiar brew they serve called The Hoist. It is effervescent, curdled, of a startling lavender tinge, and after four pints you get to join Captain Snap's Committee, of which more later. I have been able to get in to the other three pubs mentioned, none of which has any restrictions on entry. The Butcher's Vest is the only one worthy of repeated visits. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-12-0129:17fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-10-04Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On The Vagabonds' Regatta 07:58 On Ping Pong, Imagined 16:22 Acknowledgements And Disclaimer 20:55 On Not Having A Dog In The Fight ON THE VAGABONDS' REGATTA So we have had to put up with Wimbledon and Euro 2012 and the Olympics and the Paralympics and the Ryder Cup and the Lord knows what other so called sporting events over the past few months, when all along there are those of us who have been waiting for the big one. I speak of course of the Vagabonds' Regatta. By tradition, this takes place annually at roughly the same time as the Picnic For Detectives. And it really is the most splendid of all vagabonds' regattas. It is not just me who says that. The late Eric Hobsbawm thought so too. In an interview some years ago, he is reported to have said: I think twenty million deaths, give or take the odd million, was a price worth paying to usher in the glorious utopia of Soviet communism. But I must dash now, because I have my complimentary Hampstead intellectual's ticket for the Vagabonds' Regatta, and I wouldn't miss it for the world! It really is the most splendid of all vagabonds' regattas! Of course, Hobsbawm was living in lala land when he claimed to be in possession of a complimentary Hampstead intellectual's ticket. The organisers of the Vagabonds' Regatta do not, and I repeat, do not hand out free tickets to elderly north London leftie academics living in book-lined houses who have never met an actual working class person in their lives. No, they have to get their tickets the way everybody else does, by scrabbling in a bran tub in an often violent free for all. Indeed, the acquisition of tickets can be every bit as exciting as the regatta itself. Up and down the land, farmers are paid to throw open their barns, outside which queues form at dawn. Inside each barn is a bran tub, filled with bran and straw and slurry and muck, and somewhere within the filth, one or two tickets for the Vagabonds' Regatta. Some people pay just to watch the unseemly scramble, the punchings and kickings and gougings and stabbings of the desperate aspirant spectators. I think I would have paid to see Eric Hobsbawm get a good kicking, had I known which barn to attend, though if he did have a ticket it would not surprise me to learn that he hired a proxy prole to enter the melee on his behalf. We know that was the ruse employed by that other elderly north London leftie academic living in a book-lined house who never met an actual working class person in his life, Ralph Miliband. Happily, he was barred from the Vagabonds' Regatta when the ticket his proxy obtained was found to be counterfeit. If you are lucky enough to get a non-counterfeit ticket and still be in possession of all your limbs, you are certainly in for a treat! Down to the riverside you go, past the field where the Picnic For Detectives is in full swing. The spectators' area on the riverbank is muddy and sloshy and the stink of unnameable effluence wafts through the foul air. There are the rowing boats! They are empty, of course, at this stage, just before dawn on the day of the regatta. You tuck in to your official regatta snack of compressed reconstituted meat 'n' gristle slices on a bed of contaminated lettuce leaves in a basket. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-10-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On The Vagabonds' Regatta 07:58 On Ping Pong, Imagined 16:22 Acknowledgements And Disclaimer 20:55 On Not Having A Dog In The Fight ON THE VAGABONDS' REGATTA So we have had to put up with Wimbledon and Euro 2012 and the Olympics and the Paralympics and the Ryder Cup and the Lord knows what other so called sporting events over the past few months, when all along there are those of us who have been waiting for the big one. I speak of course of the Vagabonds' Regatta. By tradition, this takes place annually at roughly the same time as the Picnic For Detectives. And it really is the most splendid of all vagabonds' regattas. It is not just me who says that. The late Eric Hobsbawm thought so too. In an interview some years ago, he is reported to have said: I think twenty million deaths, give or take the odd million, was a price worth paying to usher in the glorious utopia of Soviet communism. But I must dash now, because I have my complimentary Hampstead intellectual's ticket for the Vagabonds' Regatta, and I wouldn't miss it for the world! It really is the most splendid of all vagabonds' regattas! Of course, Hobsbawm was living in lala land when he claimed to be in possession of a complimentary Hampstead intellectual's ticket. The organisers of the Vagabonds' Regatta do not, and I repeat, do not hand out free tickets to elderly north London leftie academics living in book-lined houses who have never met an actual working class person in their lives. No, they have to get their tickets the way everybody else does, by scrabbling in a bran tub in an often violent free for all. Indeed, the acquisition of tickets can be every bit as exciting as the regatta itself. Up and down the land, farmers are paid to throw open their barns, outside which queues form at dawn. Inside each barn is a bran tub, filled with bran and straw and slurry and muck, and somewhere within the filth, one or two tickets for the Vagabonds' Regatta. Some people pay just to watch the unseemly scramble, the punchings and kickings and gougings and stabbings of the desperate aspirant spectators. I think I would have paid to see Eric Hobsbawm get a good kicking, had I known which barn to attend, though if he did have a ticket it would not surprise me to learn that he hired a proxy prole to enter the melee on his behalf. We know that was the ruse employed by that other elderly north London leftie academic living in a book-lined house who never met an actual working class person in his life, Ralph Miliband. Happily, he was barred from the Vagabonds' Regatta when the ticket his proxy obtained was found to be counterfeit. If you are lucky enough to get a non-counterfeit ticket and still be in possession of all your limbs, you are certainly in for a treat! Down to the riverside you go, past the field where the Picnic For Detectives is in full swing. The spectators' area on the riverbank is muddy and sloshy and the stink of unnameable effluence wafts through the foul air. There are the rowing boats! They are empty, of course, at this stage, just before dawn on the day of the regatta. You tuck in to your official regatta snack of compressed reconstituted meat 'n' gristle slices on a bed of contaminated lettuce leaves in a basket. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-10-0429:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-08-09Thu, 09 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On Gas Rig Monkeys 09:18 On Natty Dread 19:07 Black Is The Colour 25:32 The Spitting Mills ON GAS RIG MONKEYS There was a programme on the box last night called Gas Rig Strip-Down. According to the listings, "Tom Wrigglesworth and Rob Bell watch as a gas platform is pulled from the North Sea and taken to Newcastle to be disassembled". This sounded quite exciting, but I didn't watch it for two reasons. First, because from that description I feared that we would learn a lot about the, er, "personalities" of Messrs Wrigglesworth and Bell, at the expense of just watching a gas rig being dismantled. Second, because I would have preferred a programme in which, without the intercession of the presenters, we watch a gas platform being pulled from the North Sea and taken to Newcastle to be disassembled by monkeys. Actually, it would be even better if the gas rig was left where it was in the middle of the North Sea and monkeys 'coptered out to it, to dismantle it in situ. Alan Partridge was on to something with his idea for monkey tennis. Monkeys taking apart large pieces of infrastructure would make splendid television. I would place watching monkeys dismantling a gas rig pretty high on a list of things I'd like to see before I die, up there in the dismantling section with seeing a life dismantled of muffins. Generally speaking, I think any large-scale sea-based construction such as a gas rig or an oil rig or even a huge rusting container ship is best taken to bits by animals. This is not without precedent. Years ago, at a time when the Chitty And Fagg coach company was still plying the coast roads of Kent, from Dover to Margate, there was an occasion when hundreds, or possibly thousands, of warthogs were let loose on a dilapidated and decommissioned hospital ship. The din of grunting was incredible, and drowned out the sound of foghorns. But there wasn't much left of the ship by the time the hogs were ferried back to shore in a flotilla of motorboats. Wild animals will just get on with the job, in a frenzied manner. Insects, too, can be utilised for dismantling purposes. Ants and beetles and other tiny scurrying things can overrun the largest gas rig in a matter of minutes, and can destroy it with surprising speed. Monkey demolition was pioneered by Chitty And Fagg. When one of their charabancs or pantechnicons was ready for the scrap heap, they would drive it out to the seaside and park it by the shore, then go and collect some monkeys. They had one or two menagerists in their pockets. Left to their own devices, the monkeys made short work of the clapped-out coaches. A few elderly people in those parts can remember being taken down to the beach to watch monkeys dismantling charabancs, and will tell you all about it over a cup of cocoa, but their "carers" always think they are raving and delirious. Some of us know better. The beach-based dismantlings were Chitty's idea. Fagg, the visionary, wanted to have their redundant vehicles towed out to sea, and deposited on a specially-built platform, out of sight of land. Once in place, it was his intention to test out various beasts and birds and insects to see which would do the most efficient job. He had a curious mania about leafcutter ants, for example, and also otters. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-08-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On Gas Rig Monkeys 09:18 On Natty Dread 19:07 Black Is The Colour 25:32 The Spitting Mills ON GAS RIG MONKEYS There was a programme on the box last night called Gas Rig Strip-Down. According to the listings, "Tom Wrigglesworth and Rob Bell watch as a gas platform is pulled from the North Sea and taken to Newcastle to be disassembled". This sounded quite exciting, but I didn't watch it for two reasons. First, because from that description I feared that we would learn a lot about the, er, "personalities" of Messrs Wrigglesworth and Bell, at the expense of just watching a gas rig being dismantled. Second, because I would have preferred a programme in which, without the intercession of the presenters, we watch a gas platform being pulled from the North Sea and taken to Newcastle to be disassembled by monkeys. Actually, it would be even better if the gas rig was left where it was in the middle of the North Sea and monkeys 'coptered out to it, to dismantle it in situ. Alan Partridge was on to something with his idea for monkey tennis. Monkeys taking apart large pieces of infrastructure would make splendid television. I would place watching monkeys dismantling a gas rig pretty high on a list of things I'd like to see before I die, up there in the dismantling section with seeing a life dismantled of muffins. Generally speaking, I think any large-scale sea-based construction such as a gas rig or an oil rig or even a huge rusting container ship is best taken to bits by animals. This is not without precedent. Years ago, at a time when the Chitty And Fagg coach company was still plying the coast roads of Kent, from Dover to Margate, there was an occasion when hundreds, or possibly thousands, of warthogs were let loose on a dilapidated and decommissioned hospital ship. The din of grunting was incredible, and drowned out the sound of foghorns. But there wasn't much left of the ship by the time the hogs were ferried back to shore in a flotilla of motorboats. Wild animals will just get on with the job, in a frenzied manner. Insects, too, can be utilised for dismantling purposes. Ants and beetles and other tiny scurrying things can overrun the largest gas rig in a matter of minutes, and can destroy it with surprising speed. Monkey demolition was pioneered by Chitty And Fagg. When one of their charabancs or pantechnicons was ready for the scrap heap, they would drive it out to the seaside and park it by the shore, then go and collect some monkeys. They had one or two menagerists in their pockets. Left to their own devices, the monkeys made short work of the clapped-out coaches. A few elderly people in those parts can remember being taken down to the beach to watch monkeys dismantling charabancs, and will tell you all about it over a cup of cocoa, but their "carers" always think they are raving and delirious. Some of us know better. The beach-based dismantlings were Chitty's idea. Fagg, the visionary, wanted to have their redundant vehicles towed out to sea, and deposited on a specially-built platform, out of sight of land. Once in place, it was his intention to test out various beasts and birds and insects to see which would do the most efficient job. He had a curious mania about leafcutter ants, for example, and also otters. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-08-0928:25fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-08-02Thu, 02 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 Fire-Priestess 00:20 On The Ground 04:18 Father Hopkins, SJ 05:00 On The Ground 05:51 Temple Of The Spider God 06:09 On The Ground 06:53 On The Krummhorn Man 15:32 On Life Without Ducks 23:10 High Strikes FIRE-PRIESTESS "You must be that fire-priestess everyone is talking about." This is a line from Game Of Thrones that I have been hoping to use in everyday conversation. I could, of course, just say it next time I find myself leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece at a swish cocktail party, to any woman within earshot, but even I realise how foolish that would be. No, what I need to do is to find the right milieu, one where not only can I fall naturally into conversation with a fire-priestess, but one where she is a common subject of discussion among the bien pensants. That is very unlikely to happen in my bailiwick, where I do not think I have ever met a fire-priestess. Nor have I heard anybody talking about one, though to be fair most of the people who live around here speak in barbaric incoherent grunts, if they speak at all. Shortly after writing the above paragraph, I decided to immerse myself in some serious fire-priestess research. I took the phone off the hook, drew down the blinds, barricaded the door, and crouched in the middle of the living room in the stance Blotzmann calls "the alert chaffinch" (see the Third Notebook, Lilac Series). Concentrating hard for twenty seconds as recommended, I was then able to proceed. I put on my shoes and Tyrolean sports casual jacket, unbarricaded the door, and pranced off to the railway station, where I bought a ticket to Shoeburyness. Using the Blotzmann method, I had ascertained that the Essex coastal town was a likely milieu to find everyone babbling about a fire-priestess and, indeed, a fire-priestess herself. I would then be able to meet with her and deploy the line from Game Of Thrones. To do so had become my dearest wish, to the point, I suppose, of mania. Shoeburyness is notable for its proximity to the large Ministry of Defence facility at Pig's Bay and also for its bottomless viper pit, of which I have written previously. As I disembarked from my train, I was confident that my Blotzmann-inspired hunch was correct, and I immediately pranced into the railway station canteen to commune with Shoeburynessites who, I felt sure, would have no other topic on their lips than the presence in the town of a fire-priestess. I bought a cup of tea, a sausage snack, and a slice of fruitcake, and sat down at one of the tables, cocking my ears. To my bitter disappointment, in the time it took me to munch my sausage and fruitcake and to drain my teacup, I heard not a single mention of a fire-priestess. Ukip, badgers, foopball, Ruskin's Fors Clavigera, the weather--these seemed to be the hot topics in Shoeburyness that day. I crashed out of the door and went prancing through the streets, down to the beach. Nobody I passed had a word to say about a fire-priestess. I wondered if perhaps I might draw her to me by setting fire to a waste bin. I found one, overflowing with paper and cardboard and seaside detritus, and ignited it with my lighter. As I hoped, a woman came rushing towards me. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-08-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 Fire-Priestess 00:20 On The Ground 04:18 Father Hopkins, SJ 05:00 On The Ground 05:51 Temple Of The Spider God 06:09 On The Ground 06:53 On The Krummhorn Man 15:32 On Life Without Ducks 23:10 High Strikes FIRE-PRIESTESS "You must be that fire-priestess everyone is talking about." This is a line from Game Of Thrones that I have been hoping to use in everyday conversation. I could, of course, just say it next time I find myself leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece at a swish cocktail party, to any woman within earshot, but even I realise how foolish that would be. No, what I need to do is to find the right milieu, one where not only can I fall naturally into conversation with a fire-priestess, but one where she is a common subject of discussion among the bien pensants. That is very unlikely to happen in my bailiwick, where I do not think I have ever met a fire-priestess. Nor have I heard anybody talking about one, though to be fair most of the people who live around here speak in barbaric incoherent grunts, if they speak at all. Shortly after writing the above paragraph, I decided to immerse myself in some serious fire-priestess research. I took the phone off the hook, drew down the blinds, barricaded the door, and crouched in the middle of the living room in the stance Blotzmann calls "the alert chaffinch" (see the Third Notebook, Lilac Series). Concentrating hard for twenty seconds as recommended, I was then able to proceed. I put on my shoes and Tyrolean sports casual jacket, unbarricaded the door, and pranced off to the railway station, where I bought a ticket to Shoeburyness. Using the Blotzmann method, I had ascertained that the Essex coastal town was a likely milieu to find everyone babbling about a fire-priestess and, indeed, a fire-priestess herself. I would then be able to meet with her and deploy the line from Game Of Thrones. To do so had become my dearest wish, to the point, I suppose, of mania. Shoeburyness is notable for its proximity to the large Ministry of Defence facility at Pig's Bay and also for its bottomless viper pit, of which I have written previously. As I disembarked from my train, I was confident that my Blotzmann-inspired hunch was correct, and I immediately pranced into the railway station canteen to commune with Shoeburynessites who, I felt sure, would have no other topic on their lips than the presence in the town of a fire-priestess. I bought a cup of tea, a sausage snack, and a slice of fruitcake, and sat down at one of the tables, cocking my ears. To my bitter disappointment, in the time it took me to munch my sausage and fruitcake and to drain my teacup, I heard not a single mention of a fire-priestess. Ukip, badgers, foopball, Ruskin's Fors Clavigera, the weather--these seemed to be the hot topics in Shoeburyness that day. I crashed out of the door and went prancing through the streets, down to the beach. Nobody I passed had a word to say about a fire-priestess. I wondered if perhaps I might draw her to me by setting fire to a waste bin. I found one, overflowing with paper and cardboard and seaside detritus, and ignited it with my lighter. As I hoped, a woman came rushing towards me. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-08-0228:32fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-07-26Thu, 26 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 On Pointy Town 09:18 On Beggar's Farm 15:05 Foiled Heist! 15:17 On Beggar's Farm 17:48 On Light Pouring Out ON POINTY TOWN Yesterday I complained that London's new whopping great skyscraper, the Shard, is insufficiently pointy. I stand by those words. It is not as pointy as it ought to be, nor, I understand, as it was originally intended to be. I think it was meant to taper up to a single pointy tip. Instead, it fizzles out in a pair of premature pointy bits which, as Marina Organ noted in the Comments, look "like a slightly worn, frayed paintbrush that needs a lick". How pointy it could have been! The entire design cries out for it to continue up and up, way past that pair of disappointing tips, to a single pointy termination. So pointy indeed that its top ought to be invisible, like the pointy thing in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. It is many years since I read that magnificent novel, so I cannot recall the details, but I remember that there is a pointy thing so pointy that its actual tip is far, far beyond its visible tip, as seen by the unaided eye. The Shard should have been as pointy as that. I do not wish to harp on about this--well, I do, and I will--but the building could be a hell of a lot pointier than it has turned out. An opportunity was missed. To see properly pointy buildings, of course, one need go no further than Pointy Town. Now there is a place where the architects and builders do not fight shy of true pointiness. There is not an edifice in Pointy Town that is not pointy, certainly pointier than the Shard. Not just buildings, but statues, street appurtenances, people's hats, even the very landscape itself--all as pointy as can be. For those keen on pointiness, it is very heaven. I am not sure if Pevsner ever went to Pointy Town, but had he done so, he would have been in raptures at the sheer profusion of pointy bits, if, that is, he was pointy-minded, which I am equally unsure whether he was or not. Let us say merely that he damn well ought to have been. "Pevsner", after all, is a curiously pointy name, at least one suggestive of pointiness, in comparison to a name like, oh I don't know, Stalin, for example. In spite of its meaning of "steel" or "steely", which might evoke pointiness, "Stalin" has a softer, more rounded quality than "Pevsner", to my ear. And Stalin himself was of course pocky, of which more later. There are buildings in Pointy Town taller--and, needless to say, pointier--than the Shard, and this led to the good burghers of the town banning hot air balloons from floating through the blue, blue skies above. It was feared, not without good reason, that there was an unacceptable risk of a hot air balloon colliding with the exceedingly pointy tip of a Pointy Town building and suffering a puncture. Imagine the loss of life and the subsequent cries of distress from the hot air ballooning community! It hardly bears thinking about. It was much wiser of the burghers merely to outlaw the practice of hot air ballooning. In this they followed the Muggletonians, though for different reasons. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-07-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 On Pointy Town 09:18 On Beggar's Farm 15:05 Foiled Heist! 15:17 On Beggar's Farm 17:48 On Light Pouring Out ON POINTY TOWN Yesterday I complained that London's new whopping great skyscraper, the Shard, is insufficiently pointy. I stand by those words. It is not as pointy as it ought to be, nor, I understand, as it was originally intended to be. I think it was meant to taper up to a single pointy tip. Instead, it fizzles out in a pair of premature pointy bits which, as Marina Organ noted in the Comments, look "like a slightly worn, frayed paintbrush that needs a lick". How pointy it could have been! The entire design cries out for it to continue up and up, way past that pair of disappointing tips, to a single pointy termination. So pointy indeed that its top ought to be invisible, like the pointy thing in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. It is many years since I read that magnificent novel, so I cannot recall the details, but I remember that there is a pointy thing so pointy that its actual tip is far, far beyond its visible tip, as seen by the unaided eye. The Shard should have been as pointy as that. I do not wish to harp on about this--well, I do, and I will--but the building could be a hell of a lot pointier than it has turned out. An opportunity was missed. To see properly pointy buildings, of course, one need go no further than Pointy Town. Now there is a place where the architects and builders do not fight shy of true pointiness. There is not an edifice in Pointy Town that is not pointy, certainly pointier than the Shard. Not just buildings, but statues, street appurtenances, people's hats, even the very landscape itself--all as pointy as can be. For those keen on pointiness, it is very heaven. I am not sure if Pevsner ever went to Pointy Town, but had he done so, he would have been in raptures at the sheer profusion of pointy bits, if, that is, he was pointy-minded, which I am equally unsure whether he was or not. Let us say merely that he damn well ought to have been. "Pevsner", after all, is a curiously pointy name, at least one suggestive of pointiness, in comparison to a name like, oh I don't know, Stalin, for example. In spite of its meaning of "steel" or "steely", which might evoke pointiness, "Stalin" has a softer, more rounded quality than "Pevsner", to my ear. And Stalin himself was of course pocky, of which more later. There are buildings in Pointy Town taller--and, needless to say, pointier--than the Shard, and this led to the good burghers of the town banning hot air balloons from floating through the blue, blue skies above. It was feared, not without good reason, that there was an unacceptable risk of a hot air balloon colliding with the exceedingly pointy tip of a Pointy Town building and suffering a puncture. Imagine the loss of life and the subsequent cries of distress from the hot air ballooning community! It hardly bears thinking about. It was much wiser of the burghers merely to outlaw the practice of hot air ballooning. In this they followed the Muggletonians, though for different reasons. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-07-2628:16fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-07-19Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 07:57 On Weather Lore 15:50 On The Underpants Bomber, The U-Boat, And Ted And Sylvia ON WEATHER LORE There are circumstances in which you may find yourself standing in a field alongside a Scandinavian peasant, staring at the sky. The peasant may turn to you and say: Morgenrode gir dage blode, Kveldsrode gir dage sode. What is an appropriate response? You could, of course, remain silent, while moulding your countenance into an expression of sagacity. A slight furrowing of the brow, a pursing of the lips, an intense look in the eyes, perhaps an almost imperceptible nod of the head. You could even rub your chin thoughtfully, as Mr Carter does in the Jennings & Darbyshire books by Anthony Buckeridge. The Scandinavian peasant will almost certainly take this as due acknowledgement. This is the safest course of action if you have no idea what he is babbling on about. But it may be that you have a smattering of some Scandinavian languages, or are wearing a hidden earpiece which provides you with a simultaneous translation. Both are possibilities if you are, for example, a diplomat, or a special rapporteur of the United Nations. There may be other reasons why one or both is the case, such as family background or the habit of international jet-setting for either business or leisure purposes. Your knowledge, or earpiece, will thus apprise you of the meaning of the peasant's utterance, which can be given as: Morning red gives wet days, Evening red gives sweet days. Armed, then, with the knowledge that the peasant is spouting rustic wisdom, or weather lore, you may wish to consider a verbal response. You can still do the whole business with the brow and the lips and the eyes and the head and the chin, but this time as a preliminary gambit. Then you might counter with a countryside adage of your own, for example: Red sky at night, shepherd's delight, Red sky in morning, fisherman's warning. or, if the field in which you are standing alongside the Scandinavian peasant is within the vicinity of the sea, or of a fjord, you might say: Red sky at night, sailor's delight, Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. The problem with this approach is that the Scandinavian peasant may be prompted to bat back a further piece of his own rustic wisdom, to which you will feel compelled to supply a rejoinder. You will swiftly find yourself embroiled in an escalating exchange of countryside proverbs which you cannot win. He is a peasant, and you are not. He will always be able to top your saw with something more abstruse, born of generations of experience tilling the Scandinavian fields. You should therefore deploy a different tactic. Instead of following the brow and the lips and the eyes and the head and the chin business with a couplet of weather lore, you should allow a significant pause, and then say: And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? This is a Biblical quotation, from the Gospel of Matthew, 16:3. Assuming for one moment that the Scandinavian peasant does not take it personally, it is likely that he will be stunned into silence, like a dumb ox. You then have the advantage. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-07-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 07:57 On Weather Lore 15:50 On The Underpants Bomber, The U-Boat, And Ted And Sylvia ON WEATHER LORE There are circumstances in which you may find yourself standing in a field alongside a Scandinavian peasant, staring at the sky. The peasant may turn to you and say: Morgenrode gir dage blode, Kveldsrode gir dage sode. What is an appropriate response? You could, of course, remain silent, while moulding your countenance into an expression of sagacity. A slight furrowing of the brow, a pursing of the lips, an intense look in the eyes, perhaps an almost imperceptible nod of the head. You could even rub your chin thoughtfully, as Mr Carter does in the Jennings & Darbyshire books by Anthony Buckeridge. The Scandinavian peasant will almost certainly take this as due acknowledgement. This is the safest course of action if you have no idea what he is babbling on about. But it may be that you have a smattering of some Scandinavian languages, or are wearing a hidden earpiece which provides you with a simultaneous translation. Both are possibilities if you are, for example, a diplomat, or a special rapporteur of the United Nations. There may be other reasons why one or both is the case, such as family background or the habit of international jet-setting for either business or leisure purposes. Your knowledge, or earpiece, will thus apprise you of the meaning of the peasant's utterance, which can be given as: Morning red gives wet days, Evening red gives sweet days. Armed, then, with the knowledge that the peasant is spouting rustic wisdom, or weather lore, you may wish to consider a verbal response. You can still do the whole business with the brow and the lips and the eyes and the head and the chin, but this time as a preliminary gambit. Then you might counter with a countryside adage of your own, for example: Red sky at night, shepherd's delight, Red sky in morning, fisherman's warning. or, if the field in which you are standing alongside the Scandinavian peasant is within the vicinity of the sea, or of a fjord, you might say: Red sky at night, sailor's delight, Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. The problem with this approach is that the Scandinavian peasant may be prompted to bat back a further piece of his own rustic wisdom, to which you will feel compelled to supply a rejoinder. You will swiftly find yourself embroiled in an escalating exchange of countryside proverbs which you cannot win. He is a peasant, and you are not. He will always be able to top your saw with something more abstruse, born of generations of experience tilling the Scandinavian fields. You should therefore deploy a different tactic. Instead of following the brow and the lips and the eyes and the head and the chin business with a couplet of weather lore, you should allow a significant pause, and then say: And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? This is a Biblical quotation, from the Gospel of Matthew, 16:3. Assuming for one moment that the Scandinavian peasant does not take it personally, it is likely that he will be stunned into silence, like a dumb ox. You then have the advantage. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-07-1928:10fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-07-12Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On Dog Nomenclature 09:54 On Vultures 17:54 On The Bisky Bat ON DOG NOMENCLATURE I am grateful to Wonders And Marvels for drawing to my attention the important topic of the naming of dogs in Ancient Greece. This is a topic I have always taken very seriously, in spite of the fact that I have never owned a dog myself. Indeed, ever since the age of four, when I was struck dumb and immobile with terror by Mrs Flack's huge black spittle-flecked growling hound, I have been cautious around dogs. Mrs Flack was a friend of my mother's. It is indicative of changing customs, and of a lapse in formalities, that I have no idea of her first name. The friends of my parents were invariably known to me, and I was expected to address them, as Mr or Mrs. As with so much else from my childhood, it seems like a lost world. Much, too, is lost due to my pitiable memory. But I certainly remember Mrs Flack's dog. We had gone to visit this friend one day, before I was of school age, and while my mother and Mrs Flack chitchatted away in the kitchen, I was deposited in an armchair in the living room, perhaps with a glass of milk and a biscuit and a comic to pass the time. (Another hint of a lost past is that I was not deposited in front of a television set.) At some point, into the room padded a huge black spittle-flecked hound, which planted itself in front of me, growling, quite obviously preparing to pounce and sink its fangs into my little infant throat. I wanted to cry out for help, but was so frightened I could neither move nor make a sound. I was eventually rescued by Mrs Flack popping into the room, seeing my stricken state, and leading the ungodly beast--which had not, after all, attacked me--away, assuring me it was a loveable harmless pooch. In subsequent years I have noticed that dog owners always make such assurances, which I treat with deserved contempt. I remain convinced that the vast majority of dogs mean me harm, and would tear out my vitals given half a chance. Nevertheless, dog nomenclature has always been a subject of interest to me, as has the nomenclature of other domestic pets. I would not claim is it an intense interest, like, say, the Munich Air Disaster or the Kennedy assassination or the glory of bird life in all its avian forms, but it is something I find diverting. Understand, I don't spend all my time thinking up names for putative dogs I might own in some parallel universe where I am a keen, even avid, dog lover, and was never traumatised, in my infancy, by Mrs Flack's huge black spittle-flecked growling hound. To do so would be foolish. But still, every now and then I find myself considering the names of dogs, and so the title of the Wonders and Marvels postage was bound to attract my attention. Names Of Dogs In Ancient Greece, it announced, and I immediately stopped whatever else I was doing so I could bone up on the subject, one which, I admit, I had never given any thought to whatsoever. The Ancient Greece bit, that is. So what did I learn? Among other things, An ancient Greek vase painting of 560 BC shows Atalanta and other heroes and their hounds killing the great Calydonian Boar. Seven dogs' names are inscribed on the vase: . . . […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-07-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On Dog Nomenclature 09:54 On Vultures 17:54 On The Bisky Bat ON DOG NOMENCLATURE I am grateful to Wonders And Marvels for drawing to my attention the important topic of the naming of dogs in Ancient Greece. This is a topic I have always taken very seriously, in spite of the fact that I have never owned a dog myself. Indeed, ever since the age of four, when I was struck dumb and immobile with terror by Mrs Flack's huge black spittle-flecked growling hound, I have been cautious around dogs. Mrs Flack was a friend of my mother's. It is indicative of changing customs, and of a lapse in formalities, that I have no idea of her first name. The friends of my parents were invariably known to me, and I was expected to address them, as Mr or Mrs. As with so much else from my childhood, it seems like a lost world. Much, too, is lost due to my pitiable memory. But I certainly remember Mrs Flack's dog. We had gone to visit this friend one day, before I was of school age, and while my mother and Mrs Flack chitchatted away in the kitchen, I was deposited in an armchair in the living room, perhaps with a glass of milk and a biscuit and a comic to pass the time. (Another hint of a lost past is that I was not deposited in front of a television set.) At some point, into the room padded a huge black spittle-flecked hound, which planted itself in front of me, growling, quite obviously preparing to pounce and sink its fangs into my little infant throat. I wanted to cry out for help, but was so frightened I could neither move nor make a sound. I was eventually rescued by Mrs Flack popping into the room, seeing my stricken state, and leading the ungodly beast--which had not, after all, attacked me--away, assuring me it was a loveable harmless pooch. In subsequent years I have noticed that dog owners always make such assurances, which I treat with deserved contempt. I remain convinced that the vast majority of dogs mean me harm, and would tear out my vitals given half a chance. Nevertheless, dog nomenclature has always been a subject of interest to me, as has the nomenclature of other domestic pets. I would not claim is it an intense interest, like, say, the Munich Air Disaster or the Kennedy assassination or the glory of bird life in all its avian forms, but it is something I find diverting. Understand, I don't spend all my time thinking up names for putative dogs I might own in some parallel universe where I am a keen, even avid, dog lover, and was never traumatised, in my infancy, by Mrs Flack's huge black spittle-flecked growling hound. To do so would be foolish. But still, every now and then I find myself considering the names of dogs, and so the title of the Wonders and Marvels postage was bound to attract my attention. Names Of Dogs In Ancient Greece, it announced, and I immediately stopped whatever else I was doing so I could bone up on the subject, one which, I admit, I had never given any thought to whatsoever. The Ancient Greece bit, that is. So what did I learn? Among other things, An ancient Greek vase painting of 560 BC shows Atalanta and other heroes and their hounds killing the great Calydonian Boar. Seven dogs' names are inscribed on the vase: . . . […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-07-1229:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-06-28Thu, 28 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On A Prang 09:00 On Scroonhoonpooge Marshes 22:20 On The Raking Of Gravel ON A PRANG The ventriloquist Claud Plon was out for a spin in his jalopy when he had a prang. He hit a lamppost, the collision with which rent and twisted the bonnet of the jalopy, exposing part of the engine, which belched forth jets of steam. "Oops!" said his dummy, a puppet called Bonko. Bonko was a sock stuffed with kapok who had a couple of glass beads sewn on to serve as eyes. "Sorry about that, Bonko, I wasn't looking where I was going," said the ventriloquist, "Are you all right?" "I think I have suffered a whiplash injury," replied Bonko, who may have been lying, as to the untrained eye he looked perfectly okay. "Goodness gracious!" said Claud Plon, "We shall have to get you to the doll hospital." "Why on earth would we go to a doll hospital?" asked Bonko, "I am not a doll. I am a sock stuffed with kapok with a couple of glass beads sewn on to serve as eyes." "Yes, I see your point," said Plon, "Then what about a puppet clinic?" "Is there such a place as a puppet clinic?" asked Bonko. "I have heard tell there is one in Pointy Town," said the ventriloquist. "But we are miles and miles away," said Bonko, "And I fear my whiplash may be fatal, for I can already feel myself succumbing to faintness and a lack of oxygen to the brain, pins and needles, darting pains behind my glass beads, and the gradual oozing of the very life out of me." This time Bonko was definitely lying, or at least embroidering the truth. But Claud Plon was both devoted and gullible. It would never occur to him that Bonko might be trying to pull the wool over his eyes, which in the ventriloquist's case were real, working eyes, not mere sewn-on glass beads. There had been occasions in the past when people suggested that Bonko might be a mendacious fantasist, and Plon had been so inflamed with outrage that he had beaten the accusers about the head with a shovel. Bonko egged him on, urging him to bash and bash and bash until the bashee was dead. Plon was now in something of a panic. Bonko, who was a fine judge of distance, was absolutely correct that they were very far away from Pointy Town and its puppet clinic. Also, the prang had been severe enough to render the jalopy motionless. Crank it as frantically as he could, it was not going anywhere. Steam continued to hiss from the bonnet. "What are we going to do?" wailed Plon. "You had better think of something quickly, because I am fading fast," said Bonko, "It is as if I am in a long, dark tunnel, and there is an unearthly light towards which I feel impelled to go." "Don't go into the light!" screamed Plon, remembering certain supernatural thriller films he had seen. "But it is such an attractive light," said Bonko, "I feel drawn to it." Claud Plon could think of nothing but to repeat his shrieked words. At which point the jalopy burst into flames. The ventriloquist and his dummy would surely have been engulfed and burned to a crisp had not a big red fire engine screeched to a halt beside them, bells clanging, and the fire been doused by untold gallons of water spurting from a hose trained upon the jalopy by three heroic firemen. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-06-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On A Prang 09:00 On Scroonhoonpooge Marshes 22:20 On The Raking Of Gravel ON A PRANG The ventriloquist Claud Plon was out for a spin in his jalopy when he had a prang. He hit a lamppost, the collision with which rent and twisted the bonnet of the jalopy, exposing part of the engine, which belched forth jets of steam. "Oops!" said his dummy, a puppet called Bonko. Bonko was a sock stuffed with kapok who had a couple of glass beads sewn on to serve as eyes. "Sorry about that, Bonko, I wasn't looking where I was going," said the ventriloquist, "Are you all right?" "I think I have suffered a whiplash injury," replied Bonko, who may have been lying, as to the untrained eye he looked perfectly okay. "Goodness gracious!" said Claud Plon, "We shall have to get you to the doll hospital." "Why on earth would we go to a doll hospital?" asked Bonko, "I am not a doll. I am a sock stuffed with kapok with a couple of glass beads sewn on to serve as eyes." "Yes, I see your point," said Plon, "Then what about a puppet clinic?" "Is there such a place as a puppet clinic?" asked Bonko. "I have heard tell there is one in Pointy Town," said the ventriloquist. "But we are miles and miles away," said Bonko, "And I fear my whiplash may be fatal, for I can already feel myself succumbing to faintness and a lack of oxygen to the brain, pins and needles, darting pains behind my glass beads, and the gradual oozing of the very life out of me." This time Bonko was definitely lying, or at least embroidering the truth. But Claud Plon was both devoted and gullible. It would never occur to him that Bonko might be trying to pull the wool over his eyes, which in the ventriloquist's case were real, working eyes, not mere sewn-on glass beads. There had been occasions in the past when people suggested that Bonko might be a mendacious fantasist, and Plon had been so inflamed with outrage that he had beaten the accusers about the head with a shovel. Bonko egged him on, urging him to bash and bash and bash until the bashee was dead. Plon was now in something of a panic. Bonko, who was a fine judge of distance, was absolutely correct that they were very far away from Pointy Town and its puppet clinic. Also, the prang had been severe enough to render the jalopy motionless. Crank it as frantically as he could, it was not going anywhere. Steam continued to hiss from the bonnet. "What are we going to do?" wailed Plon. "You had better think of something quickly, because I am fading fast," said Bonko, "It is as if I am in a long, dark tunnel, and there is an unearthly light towards which I feel impelled to go." "Don't go into the light!" screamed Plon, remembering certain supernatural thriller films he had seen. "But it is such an attractive light," said Bonko, "I feel drawn to it." Claud Plon could think of nothing but to repeat his shrieked words. At which point the jalopy burst into flames. The ventriloquist and his dummy would surely have been engulfed and burned to a crisp had not a big red fire engine screeched to a halt beside them, bells clanging, and the fire been doused by untold gallons of water spurting from a hose trained upon the jalopy by three heroic firemen. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-06-2829:40fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-06-21Thu, 21 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On Knowing Your Shovellers 09:16 On Headbag 17:39 On The Daily Strangling Of Serpents ON KNOWING YOUR SHOVELLERS Let us imagine you are sitting at home, in an armchair, with your feet up, listening to Scriabin on the radio perhaps, or reading Martin Amis's very sensible new novel Lionel Asbo : State Of England, or simply gazing vacantly into space, like a dimwit or a simpleton, though you need not actually be a dimwit or a simpleton, merely dozing, half-asleep, at the border of the Land of Nod. Then imagine that your poppet rushes into the room, from the front garden, crying "Dennis! Dennis! Come and see!" Whatever you have been doing, or not doing, you sit bolt upright and ask "What is it?" "Come and see the shoveller!" cries your poppet. It is important to note, and indeed it is the very crux of my argument, that, while still sat in your armchair, before following your poppet out to the front garden, you do not know what she is talking about. Note, too, that I did not write, you have no idea what she is talking about. There is a difference, and a critical one. It is not the case that, at this stage, you have no idea. On the contrary, you have a very good idea. You know that, once you are in the front garden, in response to your poppet's urgent beckoning, you will see one of two things. But because you do not know which, it is fair to say that you do not know what she is talking about. Thus may we calibrate the efficacy of human communication through words. Let us leave you in your armchair for a moment, and examine what you know. You know that, from the vantage point of your front garden, a shoveller can be seen. But what kind of shoveller? There are, as I have indicated, two types. The shoveller may be a person with a shovel, or it may be a duck. Before hoisting yourself out of the armchair and making your slow, creaking, exhausted way into the front garden, you might want to ascertain the type of shoveller your poppet is eager for you to see. You can ask, "Is it a person with a shovel or a duck?" But it may be that your poppet has already rushed back out, and is out of earshot, in which case you might make an educated guess. For example, which type of shoveller is likely to spark your poppet's excitement, and spark it sufficiently that she wishes to share it with you? If you, or she, or both, are fanatical ornithologists, it is a near certainty that she is talking about a duck. But what if ornithology plays no important part in either of your lives? Astonishingly, such people do exist! In that case, guesswork will avail you little. Conversely, your home might be slap bang next to important roadworks on the Blister Lane Bypass, the racket of which has been causing you grief while listening to Scriabin or reading Martin Amis or dropping off to sleep. In that case, in all likelihood your poppet has seen a person with a shovel. But why would that spark her excitement, so much so that she rushes in, to tell you about it, and rushes out again, to see? Even if we grant the possibility that you, or she, or both, are fanatical civil engineers, there will be shovellers--that is, persons with shovels--aplenty to be seen for the duration of the roadworks which, being important, will be a period of weeks or even months. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-06-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On Knowing Your Shovellers 09:16 On Headbag 17:39 On The Daily Strangling Of Serpents ON KNOWING YOUR SHOVELLERS Let us imagine you are sitting at home, in an armchair, with your feet up, listening to Scriabin on the radio perhaps, or reading Martin Amis's very sensible new novel Lionel Asbo : State Of England, or simply gazing vacantly into space, like a dimwit or a simpleton, though you need not actually be a dimwit or a simpleton, merely dozing, half-asleep, at the border of the Land of Nod. Then imagine that your poppet rushes into the room, from the front garden, crying "Dennis! Dennis! Come and see!" Whatever you have been doing, or not doing, you sit bolt upright and ask "What is it?" "Come and see the shoveller!" cries your poppet. It is important to note, and indeed it is the very crux of my argument, that, while still sat in your armchair, before following your poppet out to the front garden, you do not know what she is talking about. Note, too, that I did not write, you have no idea what she is talking about. There is a difference, and a critical one. It is not the case that, at this stage, you have no idea. On the contrary, you have a very good idea. You know that, once you are in the front garden, in response to your poppet's urgent beckoning, you will see one of two things. But because you do not know which, it is fair to say that you do not know what she is talking about. Thus may we calibrate the efficacy of human communication through words. Let us leave you in your armchair for a moment, and examine what you know. You know that, from the vantage point of your front garden, a shoveller can be seen. But what kind of shoveller? There are, as I have indicated, two types. The shoveller may be a person with a shovel, or it may be a duck. Before hoisting yourself out of the armchair and making your slow, creaking, exhausted way into the front garden, you might want to ascertain the type of shoveller your poppet is eager for you to see. You can ask, "Is it a person with a shovel or a duck?" But it may be that your poppet has already rushed back out, and is out of earshot, in which case you might make an educated guess. For example, which type of shoveller is likely to spark your poppet's excitement, and spark it sufficiently that she wishes to share it with you? If you, or she, or both, are fanatical ornithologists, it is a near certainty that she is talking about a duck. But what if ornithology plays no important part in either of your lives? Astonishingly, such people do exist! In that case, guesswork will avail you little. Conversely, your home might be slap bang next to important roadworks on the Blister Lane Bypass, the racket of which has been causing you grief while listening to Scriabin or reading Martin Amis or dropping off to sleep. In that case, in all likelihood your poppet has seen a person with a shovel. But why would that spark her excitement, so much so that she rushes in, to tell you about it, and rushes out again, to see? Even if we grant the possibility that you, or she, or both, are fanatical civil engineers, there will be shovellers--that is, persons with shovels--aplenty to be seen for the duration of the roadworks which, being important, will be a period of weeks or even months. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-06-2128:05fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-06-14Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On Aphinar 09:54 On Dumbing Down 18:41 On Poptones ON APHINAR To the Director Dear Sir I have come to enquire if I have anything left on account with you. I wish to change today my booking on this ship whose name I don't even know, but anyway it must be the ship from Aphinar. There are shipping lines going all over the place, but helpless and unhappy as I am, I can't find a single one--the first dog you meet in the street will tell you this. Send me the prices of the ship from Aphinar to Suez. I am completely paralysed, so I wish to embark in good time. Please let me know when I should be carried aboard... Thus Arthur Rimbaud's last recorded words, dictated in a delirium to his sister Isabelle from his Marseille hospital bed on the eve of his death on 10 November 1891. As Charles Nicholl notes in Somebody Else : Arthur Rimbaud In Africa 188-1891 (1997), Where or what Aphinar is no one is sure. The phrase he uses is le service d'Aphinar, which seems to mean 'the ship from Aphinar' but could equally mean 'the Aphinar shipping line', so one cannot be quite sure if Aphinar is a place or a company, or even a particular captain. One cannot even be sure that 'Aphinar' is what Rimbaud said: it is only Isabelle's transcription. Was it rather Al Finar, the Arab word for 'lighthouse', and was this phantom ship which he wished to board 'in good time' the one that would carry him away from the light and into darkness? But we must begin somewhere, so, in the teeth of uncertainty, we dismiss the shipping line, the captain, the lighthouse, and we say Aphinar is a place, a city, a distant city across the sea, and we set out to find it. We pack twelve tusks, divided into five lots, into a pippy bag and we sling it over our shoulder. Mindful that Rimbaud had lost his right leg to the surgeon's saw on 27 May, we hobble our own right leg by less drastic means--twine and cord, perhaps, or a tight burlap sack. And so on crutches we make our way to the docks. It may be that we are setting out on a journey from which there will be no return, a hopeless and pointless journey, like the one undertaken by the Japanese student who left her homeland in search of the fictional loot hidden under snow by the criminal robber and kidnapper Carl Showalter in Fargo (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1996). The poor girl perished on her quest, and we too may face death before we reach Aphinar. At the docks, we lean upon our crutches and we cast an eye over the ships. We did not get a chance, on the way here, to ask questions about shipping of a dog in the street. The street was empty of dogs, as if Rimbaud had been here ahead of us and poisoned all the dogs, just as he poisoned thousands of dogs in Harar, after a cur pissed on his animal hides hung out to dry in the hot dusty Ethiopian air. The air here is neither hot nor dusty. It is bitter cold, even icy, and a glance at the sky reveals the near certainty of snow. And so we gaze from ship to ship. Look, there is the Herzogin Cecilie, magically restored from its wrecking off the Devonshire coast! It gleams and glistens, even shimmers. We haul ourselves on to the gangplank, and it seems scarcely solid beneath our foot. A phantom ship, perhaps, for a phantom voyage, to the distant city of Aphinar. Aboard, the captain greets us. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-06-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On Aphinar 09:54 On Dumbing Down 18:41 On Poptones ON APHINAR To the Director Dear Sir I have come to enquire if I have anything left on account with you. I wish to change today my booking on this ship whose name I don't even know, but anyway it must be the ship from Aphinar. There are shipping lines going all over the place, but helpless and unhappy as I am, I can't find a single one--the first dog you meet in the street will tell you this. Send me the prices of the ship from Aphinar to Suez. I am completely paralysed, so I wish to embark in good time. Please let me know when I should be carried aboard... Thus Arthur Rimbaud's last recorded words, dictated in a delirium to his sister Isabelle from his Marseille hospital bed on the eve of his death on 10 November 1891. As Charles Nicholl notes in Somebody Else : Arthur Rimbaud In Africa 188-1891 (1997), Where or what Aphinar is no one is sure. The phrase he uses is le service d'Aphinar, which seems to mean 'the ship from Aphinar' but could equally mean 'the Aphinar shipping line', so one cannot be quite sure if Aphinar is a place or a company, or even a particular captain. One cannot even be sure that 'Aphinar' is what Rimbaud said: it is only Isabelle's transcription. Was it rather Al Finar, the Arab word for 'lighthouse', and was this phantom ship which he wished to board 'in good time' the one that would carry him away from the light and into darkness? But we must begin somewhere, so, in the teeth of uncertainty, we dismiss the shipping line, the captain, the lighthouse, and we say Aphinar is a place, a city, a distant city across the sea, and we set out to find it. We pack twelve tusks, divided into five lots, into a pippy bag and we sling it over our shoulder. Mindful that Rimbaud had lost his right leg to the surgeon's saw on 27 May, we hobble our own right leg by less drastic means--twine and cord, perhaps, or a tight burlap sack. And so on crutches we make our way to the docks. It may be that we are setting out on a journey from which there will be no return, a hopeless and pointless journey, like the one undertaken by the Japanese student who left her homeland in search of the fictional loot hidden under snow by the criminal robber and kidnapper Carl Showalter in Fargo (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1996). The poor girl perished on her quest, and we too may face death before we reach Aphinar. At the docks, we lean upon our crutches and we cast an eye over the ships. We did not get a chance, on the way here, to ask questions about shipping of a dog in the street. The street was empty of dogs, as if Rimbaud had been here ahead of us and poisoned all the dogs, just as he poisoned thousands of dogs in Harar, after a cur pissed on his animal hides hung out to dry in the hot dusty Ethiopian air. The air here is neither hot nor dusty. It is bitter cold, even icy, and a glance at the sky reveals the near certainty of snow. And so we gaze from ship to ship. Look, there is the Herzogin Cecilie, magically restored from its wrecking off the Devonshire coast! It gleams and glistens, even shimmers. We haul ourselves on to the gangplank, and it seems scarcely solid beneath our foot. A phantom ship, perhaps, for a phantom voyage, to the distant city of Aphinar. Aboard, the captain greets us. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-06-1428:51fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-31Thu, 31 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 On A Plague Of Boils ON A PLAGUE OF BOILS When one is covered from head to toe in suppurating boils, one finds that invitations to sophisticated cocktail parties, unlike the boils, dry up. I discovered this through personal experience. There was a time when, like Job, I was tested by the Lord. One such test the Lord devised was to strike me with a plague of boils. It could not have come at a worse time, hot on the heels of a plague of locusts, an infestation of mice, and a bloody ridiculous gas bill. I wouldn't mind, but it's not as if I actually get to see any of the gas unless it is already up in flames, burning away. But try telling that to the automaton on the other end of the so-called gas helpline. All you get is a flea in your ear. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention the plague of fleas. That was another test from the Lord, between the locusts and the mice. So I was not best pleased to find myself one day completely covered in suppurating boils, particularly when I was due to attend a sophisticated cocktail party that very evening. "O Lord," I implored, on my knees, "I understand why thee tormentest me so, for I am but a snivelling wretch unworthy to crawl upon my belly like a worm or other creeping thing. Having said that, could thee perhaps show mercy and remove from my hideous flesh this plague of suppurating boils, given that I have received an invitation to attend a sophisticated cocktail party this evening and in my present state am barely able to present myself in civilised human company?" To which I am afraid the Lord replied in a booming authoritarian roar which made the walls tremble. I cannot recall His precise words, but the tone was not reassuring. I got the distinct impression that He expected me to suffer the boils in silence, with hopeless resignation to his Lordly whims, and not to bother Him with pathetic self-pitying supplications. So after a while I got to my feet and went out to the chemist's. Luckily there were not many people about at this early hour. Those few that did see me looked on me with horror, or turned their backs, or shielded their eyes. One or two vomited. I cannot say I blamed them, as before leaving the house I had checked my appearance in the hallway mirror. I was not a pretty sight. I dressed as best as I could, in the few pitiful mice-nibbled rags the Lord had seen fit to leave me with, and I wafted a sprig of hyacinths in front of me as I walked, to mask as far as possible the stink of the suppurations, which was considerable. The chemist and I went back a long way, having been childhood tobogganing pals. Indeed, we had even tobogganed as adults, when conditions were right on the slopes, and he was able to drag himself away from his dispensary. I knew that he, too, had been driven crackers by his gas bills. So I expected a degree of sympathy as I pushed open the door and the little bell clanged and he hove into view behind his counter. "By Saint Spivack and all the holy martyrs of mediaeval Ravenna!" he cried, "You're a sight for sore eyes!" I nodded in agreement, which was unwise, as a glob of pus was shaken free from one of my boils and landed on the clean scrubbed linoleum of the chemist's shop floor. "The least you can do is mop that up," he said, handing me a mop. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 On A Plague Of Boils ON A PLAGUE OF BOILS When one is covered from head to toe in suppurating boils, one finds that invitations to sophisticated cocktail parties, unlike the boils, dry up. I discovered this through personal experience. There was a time when, like Job, I was tested by the Lord. One such test the Lord devised was to strike me with a plague of boils. It could not have come at a worse time, hot on the heels of a plague of locusts, an infestation of mice, and a bloody ridiculous gas bill. I wouldn't mind, but it's not as if I actually get to see any of the gas unless it is already up in flames, burning away. But try telling that to the automaton on the other end of the so-called gas helpline. All you get is a flea in your ear. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention the plague of fleas. That was another test from the Lord, between the locusts and the mice. So I was not best pleased to find myself one day completely covered in suppurating boils, particularly when I was due to attend a sophisticated cocktail party that very evening. "O Lord," I implored, on my knees, "I understand why thee tormentest me so, for I am but a snivelling wretch unworthy to crawl upon my belly like a worm or other creeping thing. Having said that, could thee perhaps show mercy and remove from my hideous flesh this plague of suppurating boils, given that I have received an invitation to attend a sophisticated cocktail party this evening and in my present state am barely able to present myself in civilised human company?" To which I am afraid the Lord replied in a booming authoritarian roar which made the walls tremble. I cannot recall His precise words, but the tone was not reassuring. I got the distinct impression that He expected me to suffer the boils in silence, with hopeless resignation to his Lordly whims, and not to bother Him with pathetic self-pitying supplications. So after a while I got to my feet and went out to the chemist's. Luckily there were not many people about at this early hour. Those few that did see me looked on me with horror, or turned their backs, or shielded their eyes. One or two vomited. I cannot say I blamed them, as before leaving the house I had checked my appearance in the hallway mirror. I was not a pretty sight. I dressed as best as I could, in the few pitiful mice-nibbled rags the Lord had seen fit to leave me with, and I wafted a sprig of hyacinths in front of me as I walked, to mask as far as possible the stink of the suppurations, which was considerable. The chemist and I went back a long way, having been childhood tobogganing pals. Indeed, we had even tobogganed as adults, when conditions were right on the slopes, and he was able to drag himself away from his dispensary. I knew that he, too, had been driven crackers by his gas bills. So I expected a degree of sympathy as I pushed open the door and the little bell clanged and he hove into view behind his counter. "By Saint Spivack and all the holy martyrs of mediaeval Ravenna!" he cried, "You're a sight for sore eyes!" I nodded in agreement, which was unwise, as a glob of pus was shaken free from one of my boils and landed on the clean scrubbed linoleum of the chemist's shop floor. "The least you can do is mop that up," he said, handing me a mop. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-3129:39fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-24Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On Aphinar 09:54 On Dumbing Down 18:41 On Poptones ON APHINAR To the Director Dear Sir I have come to enquire if I have anything left on account with you. I wish to change today my booking on this ship whose name I don't even know, but anyway it must be the ship from Aphinar. There are shipping lines going all over the place, but helpless and unhappy as I am, I can't find a single one--the first dog you meet in the street will tell you this. Send me the prices of the ship from Aphinar to Suez. I am completely paralysed, so I wish to embark in good time. Please let me know when I should be carried aboard... Thus Arthur Rimbaud's last recorded words, dictated in a delirium to his sister Isabelle from his Marseille hospital bed on the eve of his death on 10 November 1891. As Charles Nicholl notes in Somebody Else : Arthur Rimbaud In Africa 188-1891 (1997), Where or what Aphinar is no one is sure. The phrase he uses is le service d'Aphinar, which seems to mean 'the ship from Aphinar' but could equally mean 'the Aphinar shipping line', so one cannot be quite sure if Aphinar is a place or a company, or even a particular captain. One cannot even be sure that 'Aphinar' is what Rimbaud said: it is only Isabelle's transcription. Was it rather Al Finar, the Arab word for 'lighthouse', and was this phantom ship which he wished to board 'in good time' the one that would carry him away from the light and into darkness? But we must begin somewhere, so, in the teeth of uncertainty, we dismiss the shipping line, the captain, the lighthouse, and we say Aphinar is a place, a city, a distant city across the sea, and we set out to find it. We pack twelve tusks, divided into five lots, into a pippy bag and we sling it over our shoulder. Mindful that Rimbaud had lost his right leg to the surgeon's saw on 27 May, we hobble our own right leg by less drastic means--twine and cord, perhaps, or a tight burlap sack. And so on crutches we make our way to the docks. It may be that we are setting out on a journey from which there will be no return, a hopeless and pointless journey, like the one undertaken by the Japanese student who left her homeland in search of the fictional loot hidden under snow by the criminal robber and kidnapper Carl Showalter in Fargo (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1996). The poor girl perished on her quest, and we too may face death before we reach Aphinar. At the docks, we lean upon our crutches and we cast an eye over the ships. We did not get a chance, on the way here, to ask questions about shipping of a dog in the street. The street was empty of dogs, as if Rimbaud had been here ahead of us and poisoned all the dogs, just as he poisoned thousands of dogs in Harar, after a cur pissed on his animal hides hung out to dry in the hot dusty Ethiopian air. The air here is neither hot nor dusty. It is bitter cold, even icy, and a glance at the sky reveals the near certainty of snow. And so we gaze from ship to ship. Look, there is the Herzogin Cecilie, magically restored from its wrecking off the Devonshire coast! It gleams and glistens, even shimmers. We haul ourselves on to the gangplank, and it seems scarcely solid beneath our foot. A phantom ship, perhaps, for a phantom voyage, to the distant city of Aphinar. Aboard, the captain greets us. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On Aphinar 09:54 On Dumbing Down 18:41 On Poptones ON APHINAR To the Director Dear Sir I have come to enquire if I have anything left on account with you. I wish to change today my booking on this ship whose name I don't even know, but anyway it must be the ship from Aphinar. There are shipping lines going all over the place, but helpless and unhappy as I am, I can't find a single one--the first dog you meet in the street will tell you this. Send me the prices of the ship from Aphinar to Suez. I am completely paralysed, so I wish to embark in good time. Please let me know when I should be carried aboard... Thus Arthur Rimbaud's last recorded words, dictated in a delirium to his sister Isabelle from his Marseille hospital bed on the eve of his death on 10 November 1891. As Charles Nicholl notes in Somebody Else : Arthur Rimbaud In Africa 188-1891 (1997), Where or what Aphinar is no one is sure. The phrase he uses is le service d'Aphinar, which seems to mean 'the ship from Aphinar' but could equally mean 'the Aphinar shipping line', so one cannot be quite sure if Aphinar is a place or a company, or even a particular captain. One cannot even be sure that 'Aphinar' is what Rimbaud said: it is only Isabelle's transcription. Was it rather Al Finar, the Arab word for 'lighthouse', and was this phantom ship which he wished to board 'in good time' the one that would carry him away from the light and into darkness? But we must begin somewhere, so, in the teeth of uncertainty, we dismiss the shipping line, the captain, the lighthouse, and we say Aphinar is a place, a city, a distant city across the sea, and we set out to find it. We pack twelve tusks, divided into five lots, into a pippy bag and we sling it over our shoulder. Mindful that Rimbaud had lost his right leg to the surgeon's saw on 27 May, we hobble our own right leg by less drastic means--twine and cord, perhaps, or a tight burlap sack. And so on crutches we make our way to the docks. It may be that we are setting out on a journey from which there will be no return, a hopeless and pointless journey, like the one undertaken by the Japanese student who left her homeland in search of the fictional loot hidden under snow by the criminal robber and kidnapper Carl Showalter in Fargo (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1996). The poor girl perished on her quest, and we too may face death before we reach Aphinar. At the docks, we lean upon our crutches and we cast an eye over the ships. We did not get a chance, on the way here, to ask questions about shipping of a dog in the street. The street was empty of dogs, as if Rimbaud had been here ahead of us and poisoned all the dogs, just as he poisoned thousands of dogs in Harar, after a cur pissed on his animal hides hung out to dry in the hot dusty Ethiopian air. The air here is neither hot nor dusty. It is bitter cold, even icy, and a glance at the sky reveals the near certainty of snow. And so we gaze from ship to ship. Look, there is the Herzogin Cecilie, magically restored from its wrecking off the Devonshire coast! It gleams and glistens, even shimmers. We haul ourselves on to the gangplank, and it seems scarcely solid beneath our foot. A phantom ship, perhaps, for a phantom voyage, to the distant city of Aphinar. Aboard, the captain greets us. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-2428:51fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-17Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part Four 12:50 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part Five ON THE ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A CARTOGRAPHER : PART FOUR Parts One, Two, and Three. And now, Part Four ... Buttercase's map of Sumatra was his first and, arguably, finest cartographic achievement. Having abandoned his shipmates, his first step was to enter the general store in Blimbing, and, using the small sum of cash he had stolen from the purser's hatbox, he bought a knapsack, some cakes, a compass, a shirt, a fetching little hat, a jar containing a substance no longer obtainable on earth, although it was quite common at the time, a guide-book, some clips, a lead-lined smock, and a windjammer, among other things. Then he set out on foot to cover the whole island. It took him five years. He began by keeping to the coastal routes, tramping from Blimbing all the way up to Oleleh, then along the eastern coast, through Edi, Balei, and Rupat until, once past Telok Betong, he returned to his starting-point. He took the opportunity to call in to the general store and have his clips de-rusted and his hat stitched. Then he headed off into the interior, zigzagging his way nor'east, nor'west, nor'east, nor'west, until he reached Segli. All this time he had been taking copious notes, and he was now ready to begin work on his map. He returned to Blimbing on a motorbike and holed up in a shack. Sustained by Rumanian beans and hooch, he worked for a further two years, using an enormous sheet of Waterbath paper and a collection of coloured pencils. A stupendously detailed description of the map appears in Crone's Anthology Of Sumatran Maps Concocted By Felons (Hooting Yard Press, 1937), to which the reader is referred. But that's quite enough about maps for the time being. Of more interest is the fact that at around this time Buttercase fell in with a gang of ne'er-do-wells who haunted the more disgusting sinks of vice and iniquity in Blimbing and, when it was learned that he was an accomplished accordionist, he was invited to join their jazz band. The band was led by the scrofulous but benign cornettist Lip Suk Jab, a Korean who had been hounded out of his country following the infamous Unserrated Postage Stamp Scandal of 1922. Suk Jab's musical gifts were slight, but what he lacked in technique he made up for with what can only be described as stage presence. Slightly less than five-feet tall and impossibly rotund, he held audiences in thrall. Several critics have attempted to explain precisely what it was about the man that was so spellbinding. Was it his occasional impersonations of Constantin Brancusi or Cicely Courtneidge? Was it the metal harness he strapped to his head which emitted incandescent light? Was it the pocketfuls of custard triangles with which he showered the audience at the end of each show? Who can say? What we do know is that, when his regular accordionist was drowned in a freak dandelion-hammering accident, he cajoled Buttercase into joining his band. The next thirty years passed in a whirl. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part Four 12:50 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part Five ON THE ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A CARTOGRAPHER : PART FOUR Parts One, Two, and Three. And now, Part Four ... Buttercase's map of Sumatra was his first and, arguably, finest cartographic achievement. Having abandoned his shipmates, his first step was to enter the general store in Blimbing, and, using the small sum of cash he had stolen from the purser's hatbox, he bought a knapsack, some cakes, a compass, a shirt, a fetching little hat, a jar containing a substance no longer obtainable on earth, although it was quite common at the time, a guide-book, some clips, a lead-lined smock, and a windjammer, among other things. Then he set out on foot to cover the whole island. It took him five years. He began by keeping to the coastal routes, tramping from Blimbing all the way up to Oleleh, then along the eastern coast, through Edi, Balei, and Rupat until, once past Telok Betong, he returned to his starting-point. He took the opportunity to call in to the general store and have his clips de-rusted and his hat stitched. Then he headed off into the interior, zigzagging his way nor'east, nor'west, nor'east, nor'west, until he reached Segli. All this time he had been taking copious notes, and he was now ready to begin work on his map. He returned to Blimbing on a motorbike and holed up in a shack. Sustained by Rumanian beans and hooch, he worked for a further two years, using an enormous sheet of Waterbath paper and a collection of coloured pencils. A stupendously detailed description of the map appears in Crone's Anthology Of Sumatran Maps Concocted By Felons (Hooting Yard Press, 1937), to which the reader is referred. But that's quite enough about maps for the time being. Of more interest is the fact that at around this time Buttercase fell in with a gang of ne'er-do-wells who haunted the more disgusting sinks of vice and iniquity in Blimbing and, when it was learned that he was an accomplished accordionist, he was invited to join their jazz band. The band was led by the scrofulous but benign cornettist Lip Suk Jab, a Korean who had been hounded out of his country following the infamous Unserrated Postage Stamp Scandal of 1922. Suk Jab's musical gifts were slight, but what he lacked in technique he made up for with what can only be described as stage presence. Slightly less than five-feet tall and impossibly rotund, he held audiences in thrall. Several critics have attempted to explain precisely what it was about the man that was so spellbinding. Was it his occasional impersonations of Constantin Brancusi or Cicely Courtneidge? Was it the metal harness he strapped to his head which emitted incandescent light? Was it the pocketfuls of custard triangles with which he showered the audience at the end of each show? Who can say? What we do know is that, when his regular accordionist was drowned in a freak dandelion-hammering accident, he cajoled Buttercase into joining his band. The next thirty years passed in a whirl. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-1728:04fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-03Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part One 09:55 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part Two 16:48 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part Three ON THE ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A CARTOGRAPHER : PART ONE In a comment on yesterday's piece of Hoonery, Banished To A Pompous Land pleaded for the resurrection of a story which has--unaccountably--never been reissued since its original appearance in the Massacre anthology published by Indelible Inc twenty years ago. Here, then, in several parts over the next few days, is Accidental Deaths Of Twelve Cartographers, No. 8 : Ken Buttercase. Please note that Nos. 1-7 and 9-12 were never written. With some misgivings, I have transcribed it exactly, resisting the temptation to mop up certain infelicities. The parents of the great cartographer Ken Buttercase were employed by a small railway in a remote country. They lived in a wooden hut which served as a signal-box. A threadbare curtain of rep divided the hut into two halves. In one half, the Buttercases ate and slept and baked and washed; the other half contained the signalling controls and was also used to store an ever-changing collection of broken locomotive machinery. Once a day, at noon or thereabouts, a cart would trundle to the door of the hut; two railway workers would deliver some broken bits and pieces and take others away. Mr or Mrs Buttercase would sign one chit for the deliveries, another chit for the pieces removed, and help the two officials--one of whom was tubercular--to load and offload the invariably rusty pieces of metal. Their duties left them little time to devote to their only child. Let us examine these duties in some detail. The railway itself was not busy--the one train passed the hut four times a day; heading north at 4 a.m. and 4 p.m., and heading south at 10 a.m. and 10.15 p.m. Before its passing, the signals had to be set; the cranks, winches, levers, pulleys, knobs, fulcra, and transistor motors all had to be adjusted with frightening precision. In order for this to be done, the broken locomotive-parts had to be shoved out of the way, into the other half of the hut. They could not be kept outside, exposed to the elements, as the company regulations forbade such a practice. Nor could they be stored permanently on the other side of the rep curtain, as not only was this--as we have seen--the family's living quarters, it also served as the work-room devoted to carrying out the many other tasks they had to perform, which we shall examine in due course. Once all the broken stuff had been moved out of the way, the signalling equipment could be set. Readjustment, back to the original coordinates, took place once the train had passed, after which the day's conglomeration of broken bits and pieces could be shifted back to the other half of the hut. There was a great deal of paperwork. Buttercase's parents carried this out at the tiny wooden escritoire next to the oven. Every day an inventory had to be taken of the heteroclite jumble of rubbish cluttered on the other side of the curtain. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part One 09:55 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part Two 16:48 On The Accidental Death Of A Cartographer : Part Three ON THE ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A CARTOGRAPHER : PART ONE In a comment on yesterday's piece of Hoonery, Banished To A Pompous Land pleaded for the resurrection of a story which has--unaccountably--never been reissued since its original appearance in the Massacre anthology published by Indelible Inc twenty years ago. Here, then, in several parts over the next few days, is Accidental Deaths Of Twelve Cartographers, No. 8 : Ken Buttercase. Please note that Nos. 1-7 and 9-12 were never written. With some misgivings, I have transcribed it exactly, resisting the temptation to mop up certain infelicities. The parents of the great cartographer Ken Buttercase were employed by a small railway in a remote country. They lived in a wooden hut which served as a signal-box. A threadbare curtain of rep divided the hut into two halves. In one half, the Buttercases ate and slept and baked and washed; the other half contained the signalling controls and was also used to store an ever-changing collection of broken locomotive machinery. Once a day, at noon or thereabouts, a cart would trundle to the door of the hut; two railway workers would deliver some broken bits and pieces and take others away. Mr or Mrs Buttercase would sign one chit for the deliveries, another chit for the pieces removed, and help the two officials--one of whom was tubercular--to load and offload the invariably rusty pieces of metal. Their duties left them little time to devote to their only child. Let us examine these duties in some detail. The railway itself was not busy--the one train passed the hut four times a day; heading north at 4 a.m. and 4 p.m., and heading south at 10 a.m. and 10.15 p.m. Before its passing, the signals had to be set; the cranks, winches, levers, pulleys, knobs, fulcra, and transistor motors all had to be adjusted with frightening precision. In order for this to be done, the broken locomotive-parts had to be shoved out of the way, into the other half of the hut. They could not be kept outside, exposed to the elements, as the company regulations forbade such a practice. Nor could they be stored permanently on the other side of the rep curtain, as not only was this--as we have seen--the family's living quarters, it also served as the work-room devoted to carrying out the many other tasks they had to perform, which we shall examine in due course. Once all the broken stuff had been moved out of the way, the signalling equipment could be set. Readjustment, back to the original coordinates, took place once the train had passed, after which the day's conglomeration of broken bits and pieces could be shifted back to the other half of the hut. There was a great deal of paperwork. Buttercase's parents carried this out at the tiny wooden escritoire next to the oven. Every day an inventory had to be taken of the heteroclite jumble of rubbish cluttered on the other side of the curtain. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-05-0328:17fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-26Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 On Wings Of Song 07:56 On The Owl Of Celestial Protection 18:09 On Hiking Pickles ON WINGS OF SONG I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin. My irritability keeps me alive and kicking. That was me, sitting bolt upright in bed upon waking at dawn, singing my little heart out, like a chaffinch or a linnet. I sang A Song From Under The Floorboards by Magazine. Now, regular listeners to my radio show on Resonance104.4FM, Hooting Yard On The Air, will be well aware that I cannot sing for toffee. Recite prose, yes. Sing, no. But while I would never dream of assailing the ears of an unsuspecting public by singing--or attempting to sing--on the airwaves, there is no reason why I should not do so in the privacy of my own home. It has become apparent to me, you see, that the lives of people in film musicals have that little extra spark, simply because they have the facility to burst into song at appropriate moments in their day. I am not personally acquainted with any chimney sweeps, but it seems clear that Bert, in Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson, 1964), as portrayed by Dick Van Dyke, almost certainly has a happier and more fulfilling life than the average sweep, simply due to the fact that he gets to sing about it. The same is true of many of the nuns in The Sound Of Music (Robert Wise, 1965). Their lives, circumscribed by the iron rules of convent life, and with Nazis running rampage outwith the nunnery walls, must have been fairly grim. Who can doubt that by belting out Climb Every Mountain once in a while, their hearts were immeasurably cheered? Having recourse to a repertoire of songs also allows one to provide a musical commentary upon one's day, which can be a straightforward reflection of one's mood (Zippity Doo Dah) or an ironic commentary upon it (Zippity Doo Dah, Queuing In The Gutter For The Soup Kitchen Version). In the more anarchic musicals, of course, there is little or no connection between what is going on in the characters' lives and the songs they choose to break into, often suddenly and without warning. It is this latter approach that appeals to me. After all, when I woke up I was not particularly angry, nor ill, nor even irritable. I may have been somewhat ugly, before preening and primping myself in the mirror until I took on the bedazzling appearance of a Sun God. But Howard Devoto's Dostoyevsky-inspired ditty seemed just the thing, at the time, as did Hans Werner Henze's raucous and discordant Essay On Pigs while I prepared what our Belgian pals call het ontbijt. In musicals, the characters usually have the benefit of accompaniment, whether it be a full orchestra or, in certain trendy pop musicals, a beat combo. A penurious scribbler such as myself obviously cannot employ a troupe of musicians to stand ready, out of sight in a corner of whichever room I happen to be in, to strike up the tune in those heady moments before I start singing. At the same time, one does not wish to limit oneself simply to an a cappella soundtrack. In the circumstances, the best thing to do is to throw caution to the winds and to carry on regardless. That is why, after breakfast, as I pottered aimlessly about before taking my morning stroll, I delivered a spine-tingling version of Oye Como Va by Santana. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 On Wings Of Song 07:56 On The Owl Of Celestial Protection 18:09 On Hiking Pickles ON WINGS OF SONG I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin. My irritability keeps me alive and kicking. That was me, sitting bolt upright in bed upon waking at dawn, singing my little heart out, like a chaffinch or a linnet. I sang A Song From Under The Floorboards by Magazine. Now, regular listeners to my radio show on Resonance104.4FM, Hooting Yard On The Air, will be well aware that I cannot sing for toffee. Recite prose, yes. Sing, no. But while I would never dream of assailing the ears of an unsuspecting public by singing--or attempting to sing--on the airwaves, there is no reason why I should not do so in the privacy of my own home. It has become apparent to me, you see, that the lives of people in film musicals have that little extra spark, simply because they have the facility to burst into song at appropriate moments in their day. I am not personally acquainted with any chimney sweeps, but it seems clear that Bert, in Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson, 1964), as portrayed by Dick Van Dyke, almost certainly has a happier and more fulfilling life than the average sweep, simply due to the fact that he gets to sing about it. The same is true of many of the nuns in The Sound Of Music (Robert Wise, 1965). Their lives, circumscribed by the iron rules of convent life, and with Nazis running rampage outwith the nunnery walls, must have been fairly grim. Who can doubt that by belting out Climb Every Mountain once in a while, their hearts were immeasurably cheered? Having recourse to a repertoire of songs also allows one to provide a musical commentary upon one's day, which can be a straightforward reflection of one's mood (Zippity Doo Dah) or an ironic commentary upon it (Zippity Doo Dah, Queuing In The Gutter For The Soup Kitchen Version). In the more anarchic musicals, of course, there is little or no connection between what is going on in the characters' lives and the songs they choose to break into, often suddenly and without warning. It is this latter approach that appeals to me. After all, when I woke up I was not particularly angry, nor ill, nor even irritable. I may have been somewhat ugly, before preening and primping myself in the mirror until I took on the bedazzling appearance of a Sun God. But Howard Devoto's Dostoyevsky-inspired ditty seemed just the thing, at the time, as did Hans Werner Henze's raucous and discordant Essay On Pigs while I prepared what our Belgian pals call het ontbijt. In musicals, the characters usually have the benefit of accompaniment, whether it be a full orchestra or, in certain trendy pop musicals, a beat combo. A penurious scribbler such as myself obviously cannot employ a troupe of musicians to stand ready, out of sight in a corner of whichever room I happen to be in, to strike up the tune in those heady moments before I start singing. At the same time, one does not wish to limit oneself simply to an a cappella soundtrack. In the circumstances, the best thing to do is to throw caution to the winds and to carry on regardless. That is why, after breakfast, as I pottered aimlessly about before taking my morning stroll, I delivered a spine-tingling version of Oye Como Va by Santana. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-2626:40fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-19Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 On Fate 08:59 On The Love Song Of Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp 17:25 On Reggae For Swans ON FATE It came as something of a shock when I learned that my fate was written in the stars. I had no idea that every last particular of my life, from cradle to grave, was foretold in the barely visible movements, thousands and millions of miles away, of fiery burning rocks scattered across the sky. As soon as I learned this, I was avid to know what lay in store for me. Only then did I realise that I could not read the stars, so I went to consult a stargazer. He ushered me in to his observatory, high on a promontory, and tapped a spindly finger on the end of his telescope. He bade me peer through it, and I saw manifold stars, impossibly distant, burning bright in the night sky. "Gosh!" I said, "How lovely they are. Yet to me, senseless, devoid of meaning." "That is where I come in," he said, lighting his pipe and puffing on it with the air of a great sage. Then he faffed about with some gubbins and projected the image seen through the telescope on to a canvas screen. "See this star?", he said, pointing with a pointy stick at one bright twinkle among the myriad, "This is your guiding star." I could only say "Gosh!" again. "The official name of this star is B76428-552," he said, "But that is a dull as ditchwater name for a star, so, as with other stars, we give it a more memorable nickname." "And what is the nickname of my guiding star?" I asked. "We call it Fascist Groove Thang," he said, "It is among a cluster of stars nicknamed after pop records made thirty-odd years ago, when it was first observed through my mighty telescope. I have kept a careful eye on it ever since. That is how I knew you would come to visit me in my observatory today, though I must have misread the signs and portents, for you arrived ten minutes later than I expected." "Ah," I said, "The delay was on account of important roadworks at the Blister Lane Bypass. My bus was diverted down a side road rife with lupins." The stargazer puffed his pipe, even more sagely. "Still, that is a conundrum, and one I must puzzle out. The stars ought to have foretold the important roadworks. They almost certainly did. Much more likely that I somehow misread the signs and portents. I am getting a bit slapdash in my dotage, and my eyesight is no longer what it was. Once it was piercing, like a hawk." I commiserated with him, recommended some proprietary eye-drops, and then begged him to reveal what the stars told him about my future. He used the pointy stick to describe arcs and angles across the screen, and finally pointed once again at Fascist Groove Thang, so bright! so twinkly! "Well, Ivan Denisovich," he said, "It seems that next Thursday, you will meet a tall, dark stranger, you may have a stroke of good luck, and an opportunity may arise at work. Also, there may be an incident involving a dog, or possibly a tortoise." "Wow!" I said, "The person who told me that my fate was laid out in detail in the stars obviously knew what they were talking about. That's four things that will happen on just one day of my allotted span." The stargazer's countenance suddenly darkened. He took a long, sage, puff on his pipe and he frowned. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 On Fate 08:59 On The Love Song Of Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp 17:25 On Reggae For Swans ON FATE It came as something of a shock when I learned that my fate was written in the stars. I had no idea that every last particular of my life, from cradle to grave, was foretold in the barely visible movements, thousands and millions of miles away, of fiery burning rocks scattered across the sky. As soon as I learned this, I was avid to know what lay in store for me. Only then did I realise that I could not read the stars, so I went to consult a stargazer. He ushered me in to his observatory, high on a promontory, and tapped a spindly finger on the end of his telescope. He bade me peer through it, and I saw manifold stars, impossibly distant, burning bright in the night sky. "Gosh!" I said, "How lovely they are. Yet to me, senseless, devoid of meaning." "That is where I come in," he said, lighting his pipe and puffing on it with the air of a great sage. Then he faffed about with some gubbins and projected the image seen through the telescope on to a canvas screen. "See this star?", he said, pointing with a pointy stick at one bright twinkle among the myriad, "This is your guiding star." I could only say "Gosh!" again. "The official name of this star is B76428-552," he said, "But that is a dull as ditchwater name for a star, so, as with other stars, we give it a more memorable nickname." "And what is the nickname of my guiding star?" I asked. "We call it Fascist Groove Thang," he said, "It is among a cluster of stars nicknamed after pop records made thirty-odd years ago, when it was first observed through my mighty telescope. I have kept a careful eye on it ever since. That is how I knew you would come to visit me in my observatory today, though I must have misread the signs and portents, for you arrived ten minutes later than I expected." "Ah," I said, "The delay was on account of important roadworks at the Blister Lane Bypass. My bus was diverted down a side road rife with lupins." The stargazer puffed his pipe, even more sagely. "Still, that is a conundrum, and one I must puzzle out. The stars ought to have foretold the important roadworks. They almost certainly did. Much more likely that I somehow misread the signs and portents. I am getting a bit slapdash in my dotage, and my eyesight is no longer what it was. Once it was piercing, like a hawk." I commiserated with him, recommended some proprietary eye-drops, and then begged him to reveal what the stars told him about my future. He used the pointy stick to describe arcs and angles across the screen, and finally pointed once again at Fascist Groove Thang, so bright! so twinkly! "Well, Ivan Denisovich," he said, "It seems that next Thursday, you will meet a tall, dark stranger, you may have a stroke of good luck, and an opportunity may arise at work. Also, there may be an incident involving a dog, or possibly a tortoise." "Wow!" I said, "The person who told me that my fate was laid out in detail in the stars obviously knew what they were talking about. That's four things that will happen on just one day of my allotted span." The stargazer's countenance suddenly darkened. He took a long, sage, puff on his pipe and he frowned. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-1928:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-12Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 On King Jasper's Castle, Its Electrical Wiring System, Its Janitor, And Its Chatelaine 08:42 On King Jasper's Bones 17:23 On Easter Sunday ON KING JASPER'S CASTLE, ITS ELECTRICAL WIRING SYSTEM, ITS JANITOR, AND ITS CHATELAINE If I knew the first thing about the ballet, I would tell you all about Crepingeour's ground-breaking work King Jasper's Castle, Its Electrical Wiring System, Its Janitor, And Its Chatelaine. It was literally a ground-breaking ballet, in that some of the steps choreographed involved tremendously heavy thumping, in big boots, upon caked mud. But alas and alack, I completely lack ballet chops. So instead I will turn my attention to King Jasper's Castle, Its Electrical Wiring System, Its Janitor, And Its Chatelaine, the play by Pickles on which the ballet is based. My source is Basing Ballets On Pickles Plays : A Study Of Crepingeour And His Followers In The Crepingeourist School by Biff Blunkett, the noted balletomane and Crepingeourist. I had best press on before I get bogged down in further folderol. The plot of King Jasper's Castle, Etcetera is so convoluted that I am not going to attempt to summarise it here. What you need to know is that the setting is a castle, belonging to King Jasper, situated on a bleak promontory overlooking a bleaker sea. The castle's electrical wiring system is as complicated as the plot of the play, if not more so. Its maintenance and seemingly endless tweaking and repair is the responsibility of the janitor, who is employed by the castle's chatelaine. Neither the janitor nor the chatelaine has a given name, though whether this is an oversight on Pickles' part, or an oh so clever literary device, is moot. Arguments have been thrashed out on both sides. There are other Pickles plays with nameless characters, some where characters swap their names around between acts, and several where, though every character has a name, those names are unpronounceable in any human tongue, or indeed in bestial grunts, howls, or birdsong. Not for nothing is Pickles labelled a "difficult" playwright, just as he was called a "difficult" child by those paid to watch over him in his infancy. But King Jasper's Castle, Etcetera is not, in itself, a difficult play, for either actors or audience. Indeed it is often the case that the cast, whether professional or amateur, will dispense with rehearsals entirely, and simply jump on to a stage impromptu and start performing it. The only people who are disconcerted by this are the scene-shifters, who become all a-dither. Still, from what I have read, that is only to be expected of scene-shifters. See for example Biff Blunkett's magisterial study Dithering Scene-Shifters In Theatrical Performances Of Pickles Plays. That said, Pickles has to bear some responsibility for the dithering, for his plays have become notorious among scene-shifters for their rapid and bewildering shifts of scene. In King Jasper's Castle, Etcetera, for example, Act One alone requires twenty-two different sets in its seven separate scenes, as can be tabulated by a competent tabulator with an eagle on the script, as follows: Scene One : The pantry in King Jasper's castle--a greyhound racing stadium--hotel lobby--the castle drawbridge. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 On King Jasper's Castle, Its Electrical Wiring System, Its Janitor, And Its Chatelaine 08:42 On King Jasper's Bones 17:23 On Easter Sunday ON KING JASPER'S CASTLE, ITS ELECTRICAL WIRING SYSTEM, ITS JANITOR, AND ITS CHATELAINE If I knew the first thing about the ballet, I would tell you all about Crepingeour's ground-breaking work King Jasper's Castle, Its Electrical Wiring System, Its Janitor, And Its Chatelaine. It was literally a ground-breaking ballet, in that some of the steps choreographed involved tremendously heavy thumping, in big boots, upon caked mud. But alas and alack, I completely lack ballet chops. So instead I will turn my attention to King Jasper's Castle, Its Electrical Wiring System, Its Janitor, And Its Chatelaine, the play by Pickles on which the ballet is based. My source is Basing Ballets On Pickles Plays : A Study Of Crepingeour And His Followers In The Crepingeourist School by Biff Blunkett, the noted balletomane and Crepingeourist. I had best press on before I get bogged down in further folderol. The plot of King Jasper's Castle, Etcetera is so convoluted that I am not going to attempt to summarise it here. What you need to know is that the setting is a castle, belonging to King Jasper, situated on a bleak promontory overlooking a bleaker sea. The castle's electrical wiring system is as complicated as the plot of the play, if not more so. Its maintenance and seemingly endless tweaking and repair is the responsibility of the janitor, who is employed by the castle's chatelaine. Neither the janitor nor the chatelaine has a given name, though whether this is an oversight on Pickles' part, or an oh so clever literary device, is moot. Arguments have been thrashed out on both sides. There are other Pickles plays with nameless characters, some where characters swap their names around between acts, and several where, though every character has a name, those names are unpronounceable in any human tongue, or indeed in bestial grunts, howls, or birdsong. Not for nothing is Pickles labelled a "difficult" playwright, just as he was called a "difficult" child by those paid to watch over him in his infancy. But King Jasper's Castle, Etcetera is not, in itself, a difficult play, for either actors or audience. Indeed it is often the case that the cast, whether professional or amateur, will dispense with rehearsals entirely, and simply jump on to a stage impromptu and start performing it. The only people who are disconcerted by this are the scene-shifters, who become all a-dither. Still, from what I have read, that is only to be expected of scene-shifters. See for example Biff Blunkett's magisterial study Dithering Scene-Shifters In Theatrical Performances Of Pickles Plays. That said, Pickles has to bear some responsibility for the dithering, for his plays have become notorious among scene-shifters for their rapid and bewildering shifts of scene. In King Jasper's Castle, Etcetera, for example, Act One alone requires twenty-two different sets in its seven separate scenes, as can be tabulated by a competent tabulator with an eagle on the script, as follows: Scene One : The pantry in King Jasper's castle--a greyhound racing stadium--hotel lobby--the castle drawbridge. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-1229:12fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-05Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 On The Livers Of Polar Bears 10:33 On Eggheads 18:14 On Horst Gack ON THE LIVERS OF POLAR BEARS Dobson was no stranger to controversy, but rarely did he create so tumultuous a brouhaha as was caused by his pamphlet Hints And Tips For Intrepid Explorers In The Polar Wastes (out of print). Dobson himself had of course never been anywhere near either the Arctic or the Antarctic, and one of the many puzzles he left behind for the unwary biographer is the question of why he ever thought he was qualified to address the subject. He was only too ready to admit to his ignorance of certain matters, made plain in pamphlets such as My Blithering Ignorance Of Vast Swathes Of Ornithology and When It Comes To Ice Hockey, I Have No Idea What I Am Talking About, both of which are tragically out of print. Yet he felt able to compile a list of hints and tips for polar exploration, and ensured that Marigold Chew ran off more copies on the Gestetner machine in the potting shed than she did of almost any other pamphlet he ever wrote. Indeed, a number of their breakfasts were ruined during a period in the 1950s when the pamphleteer insisted that his inamorata gobble down her kedgeree in double quick time so she could hurry off to the shed to crank out another dozen copies. Oddly, he does seem to have actually had some success in selling them, though this may have been due to the breathtakingly gorgeous mezzotint of a polar bear, by the noted mezzotintist Rex Tint, which was used on the cover. There was a sort of polar bear fad at the time, occasioned by the popular radio serial The Adventures Of Martin The Polar Bear, starring Cicely Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert. The historian and cultural commentator Bevis Sebag has suggested, compellingly, that most of the people who bought Dobson's pamphlet tore off the cover, placed the mezzotint in a frame and hung it on the wall of their parlour, and chucked the pamphlet itself into the bin. But some people obviously did read it, otherwise there would not have been a tumultuous brouhaha. And a tumultuous brouhaha there was, with knobs on! Several very foolish explorers went off to the Arctic or the Antarctic clutching copies of Dobson's pamphlet, to the exclusion of any other written guidance whatsoever. It is fair to say that their lives were in his hands. Because his "hints and tips" were almost entirely spurious, idiotic, irrelevant, wrong-headed, fantastical, and outright dangerous, not one of these several fools ever returned alive from the polar wastes. Hence the tumultuous brouhaha, when their grieving relicts and orphans blamed the pamphleteer and tried to have him prosecuted in a court of law. There were a few weeks during which Dobson had to face noisy marches and demonstrations, a temporary encampment of earnest young persons in tents outside his house, and some unkind newspaper headlines, including OUT OF PRINT PAMPHLETEER SENT EXPLORERS TO CERTAIN DEATH, BEREAVED TOT SHAMES PAMPHLETEER WITH HEART-RENDING MESSAGE SCRIBBLED WITH CRAYONS ON PLACARD, and ANTARCTIC WIDOWS' ICE CUBE PROTEST SCUPPERED BY UNEXPECTEDLY BALMY WEATHER SPELL. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 On The Livers Of Polar Bears 10:33 On Eggheads 18:14 On Horst Gack ON THE LIVERS OF POLAR BEARS Dobson was no stranger to controversy, but rarely did he create so tumultuous a brouhaha as was caused by his pamphlet Hints And Tips For Intrepid Explorers In The Polar Wastes (out of print). Dobson himself had of course never been anywhere near either the Arctic or the Antarctic, and one of the many puzzles he left behind for the unwary biographer is the question of why he ever thought he was qualified to address the subject. He was only too ready to admit to his ignorance of certain matters, made plain in pamphlets such as My Blithering Ignorance Of Vast Swathes Of Ornithology and When It Comes To Ice Hockey, I Have No Idea What I Am Talking About, both of which are tragically out of print. Yet he felt able to compile a list of hints and tips for polar exploration, and ensured that Marigold Chew ran off more copies on the Gestetner machine in the potting shed than she did of almost any other pamphlet he ever wrote. Indeed, a number of their breakfasts were ruined during a period in the 1950s when the pamphleteer insisted that his inamorata gobble down her kedgeree in double quick time so she could hurry off to the shed to crank out another dozen copies. Oddly, he does seem to have actually had some success in selling them, though this may have been due to the breathtakingly gorgeous mezzotint of a polar bear, by the noted mezzotintist Rex Tint, which was used on the cover. There was a sort of polar bear fad at the time, occasioned by the popular radio serial The Adventures Of Martin The Polar Bear, starring Cicely Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert. The historian and cultural commentator Bevis Sebag has suggested, compellingly, that most of the people who bought Dobson's pamphlet tore off the cover, placed the mezzotint in a frame and hung it on the wall of their parlour, and chucked the pamphlet itself into the bin. But some people obviously did read it, otherwise there would not have been a tumultuous brouhaha. And a tumultuous brouhaha there was, with knobs on! Several very foolish explorers went off to the Arctic or the Antarctic clutching copies of Dobson's pamphlet, to the exclusion of any other written guidance whatsoever. It is fair to say that their lives were in his hands. Because his "hints and tips" were almost entirely spurious, idiotic, irrelevant, wrong-headed, fantastical, and outright dangerous, not one of these several fools ever returned alive from the polar wastes. Hence the tumultuous brouhaha, when their grieving relicts and orphans blamed the pamphleteer and tried to have him prosecuted in a court of law. There were a few weeks during which Dobson had to face noisy marches and demonstrations, a temporary encampment of earnest young persons in tents outside his house, and some unkind newspaper headlines, including OUT OF PRINT PAMPHLETEER SENT EXPLORERS TO CERTAIN DEATH, BEREAVED TOT SHAMES PAMPHLETEER WITH HEART-RENDING MESSAGE SCRIBBLED WITH CRAYONS ON PLACARD, and ANTARCTIC WIDOWS' ICE CUBE PROTEST SCUPPERED BY UNEXPECTEDLY BALMY WEATHER SPELL. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-04-0528:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-23Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:18 On Scree 10:59 On Certain Ants 15:39 On The Bad Vicarage 24:26 Acts Of Homicide, And The Invention Of Pedestrians ON SCREE I failed to mention, in yesterday's essay about his love song, that Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp was a mountaineer. So let me put that right without further ado. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp was a mountaineer, a noted mountaineer. Elsewhere, I wrote of him that "Physically, [he] was not really cut out for mountaineering. He was described by a contemporary as 'a figure of untold puniness', and he was indeed tiny and weak, short-sighted, lanky and prone to swooning fits. He was terrified of gnats, horseflies and fruitbats. He had an oversensitive digestive system and had to subsist mostly on thin soup or broth. It was difficult to find a mountaineering team willing to recruit so wretched a specimen, so Ah-Fang did most of his clambering up sheer rock faces solo, a man alone testing himself against the elements". This description was called into question by Brian Phantasm, who took me to task in the pages of Puny Mountaineers Monthly, accusing me of getting my Ah-Fangs mixed up. As if! There were not exactly dozens of Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorps who were accomplished mountaineers, in love with Mrs Gubbins, and perished in the Hindenburg disaster. Granted, there may have been a couple of others, but--tellingly--Mr Phantasm--sorry, Doctor Phantasm--though what he is a doctor of God alone knows--the doctoring of signatures on counterfeit documents, probably--um--I think I have lost my thread. Let me begin that sentence again. Granted, there may have been a couple of other Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorps who met the necessary criteria, but--tellingly--Doctor Phantasm does not identify the one he accuses me of getting mixed up with the Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp I was writing about. I hope that is clear. I am becoming somewhat befuddled in defending myself against these outrageous charges, and outrageous they are, as is Doctor Phantasm's dress sense, but it is best to cast a veil over that, and a very thick veil, made of many blankets, as if he were a prisoner being ushered between police car and police station, covered to outwit the press photographers. It is my fond hope that one day Phantasm himself will be placed under arrest, and then he might stop attacking me in the pages of little-read magazines. Our initial falling out, some years ago, was occasioned by a piece he wrote in News Of The Screes, a small circulation mountaineering journal devoted, as its title suggests, to scree, the accumulation of broken rock fragments at the base of crags, mountain cliffs, or valley shoulders. It was an ill-written and intemperate rant, the gist of which, when one got past the swearwords, was that the word "scree" should be dropped and replaced by "talus", which means the same thing and has become the scientifically-approved term. "Scree" is of Old Norse origin, whereas "talus" derives from French. Now, I am neither Norse nor French, and Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp was Sino-Dutch, so my championing of "scree" is not based on any infantile sense of chauvinism. But champion "scree" I do, without apology, in all weathers. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:18 On Scree 10:59 On Certain Ants 15:39 On The Bad Vicarage 24:26 Acts Of Homicide, And The Invention Of Pedestrians ON SCREE I failed to mention, in yesterday's essay about his love song, that Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp was a mountaineer. So let me put that right without further ado. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp was a mountaineer, a noted mountaineer. Elsewhere, I wrote of him that "Physically, [he] was not really cut out for mountaineering. He was described by a contemporary as 'a figure of untold puniness', and he was indeed tiny and weak, short-sighted, lanky and prone to swooning fits. He was terrified of gnats, horseflies and fruitbats. He had an oversensitive digestive system and had to subsist mostly on thin soup or broth. It was difficult to find a mountaineering team willing to recruit so wretched a specimen, so Ah-Fang did most of his clambering up sheer rock faces solo, a man alone testing himself against the elements". This description was called into question by Brian Phantasm, who took me to task in the pages of Puny Mountaineers Monthly, accusing me of getting my Ah-Fangs mixed up. As if! There were not exactly dozens of Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorps who were accomplished mountaineers, in love with Mrs Gubbins, and perished in the Hindenburg disaster. Granted, there may have been a couple of others, but--tellingly--Mr Phantasm--sorry, Doctor Phantasm--though what he is a doctor of God alone knows--the doctoring of signatures on counterfeit documents, probably--um--I think I have lost my thread. Let me begin that sentence again. Granted, there may have been a couple of other Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorps who met the necessary criteria, but--tellingly--Doctor Phantasm does not identify the one he accuses me of getting mixed up with the Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp I was writing about. I hope that is clear. I am becoming somewhat befuddled in defending myself against these outrageous charges, and outrageous they are, as is Doctor Phantasm's dress sense, but it is best to cast a veil over that, and a very thick veil, made of many blankets, as if he were a prisoner being ushered between police car and police station, covered to outwit the press photographers. It is my fond hope that one day Phantasm himself will be placed under arrest, and then he might stop attacking me in the pages of little-read magazines. Our initial falling out, some years ago, was occasioned by a piece he wrote in News Of The Screes, a small circulation mountaineering journal devoted, as its title suggests, to scree, the accumulation of broken rock fragments at the base of crags, mountain cliffs, or valley shoulders. It was an ill-written and intemperate rant, the gist of which, when one got past the swearwords, was that the word "scree" should be dropped and replaced by "talus", which means the same thing and has become the scientifically-approved term. "Scree" is of Old Norse origin, whereas "talus" derives from French. Now, I am neither Norse nor French, and Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp was Sino-Dutch, so my championing of "scree" is not based on any infantile sense of chauvinism. But champion "scree" I do, without apology, in all weathers. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-2328:53fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-15Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 On Fate 09:01 On The Love Song Of Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp 17:26 On Reggae For Swans ON FATE It came as something of a shock when I learned that my fate was written in the stars. I had no idea that every last particular of my life, from cradle to grave, was foretold in the barely visible movements, thousands and millions of miles away, of fiery burning rocks scattered across the sky. As soon as I learned this, I was avid to know what lay in store for me. Only then did I realise that I could not read the stars, so I went to consult a stargazer. He ushered me in to his observatory, high on a promontory, and tapped a spindly finger on the end of his telescope. He bade me peer through it, and I saw manifold stars, impossibly distant, burning bright in the night sky. "Gosh!" I said, "How lovely they are. Yet to me, senseless, devoid of meaning." "That is where I come in," he said, lighting his pipe and puffing on it with the air of a great sage. Then he faffed about with some gubbins and projected the image seen through the telescope on to a canvas screen. "See this star?", he said, pointing with a pointy stick at one bright twinkle among the myriad, "This is your guiding star." I could only say "Gosh!" again. "The official name of this star is B76428-552," he said, "But that is a dull as ditchwater name for a star, so, as with other stars, we give it a more memorable nickname." "And what is the nickname of my guiding star?" I asked. "We call it Fascist Groove Thang," he said, "It is among a cluster of stars nicknamed after pop records made thirty-odd years ago, when it was first observed through my mighty telescope. I have kept a careful eye on it ever since. That is how I knew you would come to visit me in my observatory today, though I must have misread the signs and portents, for you arrived ten minutes later than I expected." "Ah," I said, "The delay was on account of important roadworks at the Blister Lane Bypass. My bus was diverted down a side road rife with lupins." The stargazer puffed his pipe, even more sagely. "Still, that is a conundrum, and one I must puzzle out. The stars ought to have foretold the important roadworks. They almost certainly did. Much more likely that I somehow misread the signs and portents. I am getting a bit slapdash in my dotage, and my eyesight is no longer what it was. Once it was piercing, like a hawk." I commiserated with him, recommended some proprietary eye-drops, and then begged him to reveal what the stars told him about my future. He used the pointy stick to describe arcs and angles across the screen, and finally pointed once again at Fascist Groove Thang, so bright! so twinkly! "Well, Ivan Denisovich," he said, "It seems that next Thursday, you will meet a tall, dark stranger, you may have a stroke of good luck, and an opportunity may arise at work. Also, there may be an incident involving a dog, or possibly a tortoise." "Wow!" I said, "The person who told me that my fate was laid out in detail in the stars obviously knew what they were talking about. That's four things that will happen on just one day of my allotted span." The stargazer's countenance suddenly darkened. He took a long, sage, puff on his pipe and he frowned. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 On Fate 09:01 On The Love Song Of Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp 17:26 On Reggae For Swans ON FATE It came as something of a shock when I learned that my fate was written in the stars. I had no idea that every last particular of my life, from cradle to grave, was foretold in the barely visible movements, thousands and millions of miles away, of fiery burning rocks scattered across the sky. As soon as I learned this, I was avid to know what lay in store for me. Only then did I realise that I could not read the stars, so I went to consult a stargazer. He ushered me in to his observatory, high on a promontory, and tapped a spindly finger on the end of his telescope. He bade me peer through it, and I saw manifold stars, impossibly distant, burning bright in the night sky. "Gosh!" I said, "How lovely they are. Yet to me, senseless, devoid of meaning." "That is where I come in," he said, lighting his pipe and puffing on it with the air of a great sage. Then he faffed about with some gubbins and projected the image seen through the telescope on to a canvas screen. "See this star?", he said, pointing with a pointy stick at one bright twinkle among the myriad, "This is your guiding star." I could only say "Gosh!" again. "The official name of this star is B76428-552," he said, "But that is a dull as ditchwater name for a star, so, as with other stars, we give it a more memorable nickname." "And what is the nickname of my guiding star?" I asked. "We call it Fascist Groove Thang," he said, "It is among a cluster of stars nicknamed after pop records made thirty-odd years ago, when it was first observed through my mighty telescope. I have kept a careful eye on it ever since. That is how I knew you would come to visit me in my observatory today, though I must have misread the signs and portents, for you arrived ten minutes later than I expected." "Ah," I said, "The delay was on account of important roadworks at the Blister Lane Bypass. My bus was diverted down a side road rife with lupins." The stargazer puffed his pipe, even more sagely. "Still, that is a conundrum, and one I must puzzle out. The stars ought to have foretold the important roadworks. They almost certainly did. Much more likely that I somehow misread the signs and portents. I am getting a bit slapdash in my dotage, and my eyesight is no longer what it was. Once it was piercing, like a hawk." I commiserated with him, recommended some proprietary eye-drops, and then begged him to reveal what the stars told him about my future. He used the pointy stick to describe arcs and angles across the screen, and finally pointed once again at Fascist Groove Thang, so bright! so twinkly! "Well, Ivan Denisovich," he said, "It seems that next Thursday, you will meet a tall, dark stranger, you may have a stroke of good luck, and an opportunity may arise at work. Also, there may be an incident involving a dog, or possibly a tortoise." "Wow!" I said, "The person who told me that my fate was laid out in detail in the stars obviously knew what they were talking about. That's four things that will happen on just one day of my allotted span." The stargazer's countenance suddenly darkened. He took a long, sage, puff on his pipe and he frowned. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-1528:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-08Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On The Plains Of Gath 09:19 On Groovy Bongos 18:11 On And On And On ON THE PLAINS OF GATH And the Lord came unto the plains of Gath. And he was footsore, having walked for many days without rest. And he sat him down upon one of the tussocks which grow upon the plains of Gath. Then there came a widow woman driving before her a goat. And the goat was thin and bony and of Satanic mien. And the Lord said unto the widow woman: "Woman! I am your Lord and I am footsore having walked for many days without rest. I have great thirst. Succour me with milk from your goat. This I command." Thereupon the widow woman did stop upon her journey and she tied her goat with a halter to a post that was stuck fast in the earth upon the plains of Gath. And she sat down upon the tussock next to the Lord and took from her pouch an infusion of herbs and roots all rolled in the leaf of a phryxinga shrub and one end of this she ignited with fire from heaven and she breathed in the fumes thereof. "My goat is old and tired and thin and bony and has no milk to give," said the widow woman. "Then thou shalt roast in the pits of hell for eternity," said the Lord. But before the Lord could make good his threat there came passing upon the plains of Gath several more widow women, some with goats and some with widows' mites. And the Lord was sore affrighted. Then the widows all together began a keening and a caterwauling and made so mighty a din that the Lord placed his hands over his ears. And the goats did join in, braying, and the widows' mites did join in, buzzing. And so great was the racket of the keening and the braying and the buzzing that the sun itself trembled and hid and darkness fell upon the plains of Gath. Then from out of the darkness there came a minstrel toiling across the plains of Gath. And when he came upon the Lord and the widow women and the goats and the widows' mites he did stop and he placed his lyre upon the ground and listened. And when after many hours passed and the hubbub ceased the minstrel did speak unto the widow women. "Women! I have come far, for I am of a brutish Germanic tribe, a stranger in the plains of Gath. I am a minstrel, but I have put aside my lyre for I am bewitched by the din of your keening and caterwauling, and the braying of your goats, and the buzzing of your widows' mites. Come follow me, on the long journey back to the tenebrous Teutonic forests from whence I came, that you might keen and caterwaul and bray and buzz to my tribespeople, for your racket will be as balm to their ears in the land of Improv." But before the widow women could follow the minstrel from that place, the Lord rose up from his tussock and with great fury he shouted, "Is there not one among you who will give succour to your Lord in his grievous state upon the plains of Gath in the darkness?" And there was silence. And then the sun did reappear, flooding the plains of Gath with light, and close by the tussock a fountain burst forth from the soil, shooting a jet of pure bubbling water high into the air. And the Lord did stand beneath it with his head upturned and his mouth open and he drank of the water. And when he was sated he took a rod and a staff and began to smite the widow women and the goats and the minstrel in terrible rage. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On The Plains Of Gath 09:19 On Groovy Bongos 18:11 On And On And On ON THE PLAINS OF GATH And the Lord came unto the plains of Gath. And he was footsore, having walked for many days without rest. And he sat him down upon one of the tussocks which grow upon the plains of Gath. Then there came a widow woman driving before her a goat. And the goat was thin and bony and of Satanic mien. And the Lord said unto the widow woman: "Woman! I am your Lord and I am footsore having walked for many days without rest. I have great thirst. Succour me with milk from your goat. This I command." Thereupon the widow woman did stop upon her journey and she tied her goat with a halter to a post that was stuck fast in the earth upon the plains of Gath. And she sat down upon the tussock next to the Lord and took from her pouch an infusion of herbs and roots all rolled in the leaf of a phryxinga shrub and one end of this she ignited with fire from heaven and she breathed in the fumes thereof. "My goat is old and tired and thin and bony and has no milk to give," said the widow woman. "Then thou shalt roast in the pits of hell for eternity," said the Lord. But before the Lord could make good his threat there came passing upon the plains of Gath several more widow women, some with goats and some with widows' mites. And the Lord was sore affrighted. Then the widows all together began a keening and a caterwauling and made so mighty a din that the Lord placed his hands over his ears. And the goats did join in, braying, and the widows' mites did join in, buzzing. And so great was the racket of the keening and the braying and the buzzing that the sun itself trembled and hid and darkness fell upon the plains of Gath. Then from out of the darkness there came a minstrel toiling across the plains of Gath. And when he came upon the Lord and the widow women and the goats and the widows' mites he did stop and he placed his lyre upon the ground and listened. And when after many hours passed and the hubbub ceased the minstrel did speak unto the widow women. "Women! I have come far, for I am of a brutish Germanic tribe, a stranger in the plains of Gath. I am a minstrel, but I have put aside my lyre for I am bewitched by the din of your keening and caterwauling, and the braying of your goats, and the buzzing of your widows' mites. Come follow me, on the long journey back to the tenebrous Teutonic forests from whence I came, that you might keen and caterwaul and bray and buzz to my tribespeople, for your racket will be as balm to their ears in the land of Improv." But before the widow women could follow the minstrel from that place, the Lord rose up from his tussock and with great fury he shouted, "Is there not one among you who will give succour to your Lord in his grievous state upon the plains of Gath in the darkness?" And there was silence. And then the sun did reappear, flooding the plains of Gath with light, and close by the tussock a fountain burst forth from the soil, shooting a jet of pure bubbling water high into the air. And the Lord did stand beneath it with his head upturned and his mouth open and he drank of the water. And when he was sated he took a rod and a staff and began to smite the widow women and the goats and the minstrel in terrible rage. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-0829:31fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-01Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On Speed 08:42 On The Latin Mass And Moby-Dick 15:51 On Quadruple Points 23:55 Science ON SPEED You will recall the film Speed (Jan de Bont, 1994) in which Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are aboard a bus which will explode if it goes below fifty miles per hour, having been primed with a bomb by cackling evildoer Dennis "Don't try to grow a brain, Jack!" Hopper. I have been wondering if a similar adrenalin-thumping conceit could be applied to the writing of prose. I am not suggesting I do anything so foolhardy as to ask a disgruntled and slightly maimed ex-police officer to hitch me up to a bomb which will detonate if I stop writing... well, I suppose that is what I am suggesting. Cowardice, or sheer common sense, persuades me, however, to hit upon a less perilous incentive. I have just spent ten minutes staring vacantly at the screen trying to think what that incentive might be. In Speed, Dennis Hopper is gleeful when a television reporter describes the fiendish quandary into which he has placed the bus passengers as "the whim of a madman". He repeats the phrase to himself, chuckling. Now I am an almost inhumanly sensible chap, and not a madman at all, but perhaps the whim of a madman is precisely what I need to give vent to, if I wish to prime my prose with the innards-wrenching pell-mell momentum of the film. Of course, not everyone would agree that Speed is an appropriate model. Dennis Hopper rather overdoes the criminal mania, Keanu Reeves is wooden, and the best that can be said of Sandra Bullock is that she is irritating. And even though Keanu's fellow bomb-defusion expert Jeff Daniels is killed off, you know that Keanu himself, and Sandra Bullock, will escape unscathed, and Dennis Hopper come to a grisly end, because it's that sort of film. But predictability has its own special charms. And predictability plus innards-wrenching pell-mell momentum is clearly popular, when we consider that Speed reportedly earned its makers over three-hundred-and-fifty million dollars. Now if I could only devise my madman's whim, perhaps I could make a similar sum from a piece of prose. The glum bat of misery swoops o'er my bonce as I stare at the screen and, regretfully, admit to myself that this present piece of prose is not the one that will earn millions. Having said that, should any readers feel impelled to deposit a vast sum of money into the Hooting Yard Paypal account, I would be most grateful. But, just as Sandra Bullock has to keep her foot on the accelerator of that bus, I have to keep tippy-tapping away. It is true that I will not be blown to kingdom come if I stop. In fact, nothing at all will happen. I do not need to grow a brain to know that. Indeed, I have the freedom to get up and walk away and make a cup of tea, so I think that is what I shall do, right now. If I had a University of Arizona Wildcats tee-shirt, I would take the opportunity to change into it while the kettle is a-boiling. You will recall that Sandra Bullock's wearing of a top with the Arizona Wildcats' logo proves to be a pivot on which the plot of Speed hinges. When last I saw the film I had not yet learned of that other great mainstay of Arizona life, the regional dish greasy doings. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 On Speed 08:42 On The Latin Mass And Moby-Dick 15:51 On Quadruple Points 23:55 Science ON SPEED You will recall the film Speed (Jan de Bont, 1994) in which Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are aboard a bus which will explode if it goes below fifty miles per hour, having been primed with a bomb by cackling evildoer Dennis "Don't try to grow a brain, Jack!" Hopper. I have been wondering if a similar adrenalin-thumping conceit could be applied to the writing of prose. I am not suggesting I do anything so foolhardy as to ask a disgruntled and slightly maimed ex-police officer to hitch me up to a bomb which will detonate if I stop writing... well, I suppose that is what I am suggesting. Cowardice, or sheer common sense, persuades me, however, to hit upon a less perilous incentive. I have just spent ten minutes staring vacantly at the screen trying to think what that incentive might be. In Speed, Dennis Hopper is gleeful when a television reporter describes the fiendish quandary into which he has placed the bus passengers as "the whim of a madman". He repeats the phrase to himself, chuckling. Now I am an almost inhumanly sensible chap, and not a madman at all, but perhaps the whim of a madman is precisely what I need to give vent to, if I wish to prime my prose with the innards-wrenching pell-mell momentum of the film. Of course, not everyone would agree that Speed is an appropriate model. Dennis Hopper rather overdoes the criminal mania, Keanu Reeves is wooden, and the best that can be said of Sandra Bullock is that she is irritating. And even though Keanu's fellow bomb-defusion expert Jeff Daniels is killed off, you know that Keanu himself, and Sandra Bullock, will escape unscathed, and Dennis Hopper come to a grisly end, because it's that sort of film. But predictability has its own special charms. And predictability plus innards-wrenching pell-mell momentum is clearly popular, when we consider that Speed reportedly earned its makers over three-hundred-and-fifty million dollars. Now if I could only devise my madman's whim, perhaps I could make a similar sum from a piece of prose. The glum bat of misery swoops o'er my bonce as I stare at the screen and, regretfully, admit to myself that this present piece of prose is not the one that will earn millions. Having said that, should any readers feel impelled to deposit a vast sum of money into the Hooting Yard Paypal account, I would be most grateful. But, just as Sandra Bullock has to keep her foot on the accelerator of that bus, I have to keep tippy-tapping away. It is true that I will not be blown to kingdom come if I stop. In fact, nothing at all will happen. I do not need to grow a brain to know that. Indeed, I have the freedom to get up and walk away and make a cup of tea, so I think that is what I shall do, right now. If I had a University of Arizona Wildcats tee-shirt, I would take the opportunity to change into it while the kettle is a-boiling. You will recall that Sandra Bullock's wearing of a top with the Arizona Wildcats' logo proves to be a pivot on which the plot of Speed hinges. When last I saw the film I had not yet learned of that other great mainstay of Arizona life, the regional dish greasy doings. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-03-0129:03fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-02-23Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On Barking Up The Wrong Tree 09:14 On Government-Controlled Origami 17:16 On The Devil In The Detail ON BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE There may be circumstances in which you wish to ascertain whether your dog is barking up the wrong tree. I wouldn't know; I don't keep a dog myself. But I can imagine a situation where such knowledge could prove critical. If I speak of the matter in the abstract, that is because of a total lack of hands-on dog-based experience on my part. Some might argue I am precluded from pronouncements about the issue--if we can call it an issue--by dint of this lack, but I beg to differ, much as a dog might beg for a bone from his master's table. Note that in spite of a deep ignorance of dogs and their ways I am yet able to pluck from the storehouse a vivid illustrative example of common dog (or doglike) behaviour to get my point across. Let those who scoff be hushed, so we can get on with it. Though for present purposes we need consider only an abstract dog barking abstractedly up an abstract tree, I find that concrete examples can be a boon to the dimwit. Not that I think for one minute that anyone reading this is a dimwit, you understand. Still, it is best to be on the safe side, and a scribbler never knows if or when his words may fall into the clutches of a dunderpate. So for our examples let us take one dog and four trees, a mastiff, say, and a pine and a larch and a sycamore and a wych elm. However unlikely it may be in the real world, let us say there is, in the middle of nowhere, that is in a vast and otherwise featureless flat expanse of land, a row of four trees, planted in a straight line, equidistant, with roughly six yards between them. Blot everything else out of your mind. Well, everything except the dog, which you need to remember, though it has not yet entered the scene. So far we just have the line of trees, the pine and the larch and the sycamore and the wych elm. We could have a line of more, or slightly fewer, trees, but four is a manageable number for the dimwits. Now, look! Here comes a monkey, scampering towards the trees at high speed. I did not mention the monkey earlier, partly because I did not wish to overtax your brain and partly because, in any case, it will soon be out of sight. The monkey, you see, is being pursued by the dog, the mastiff, and is hurtling pell mell towards the line of trees, up the trunk of one of which it will climb with breathtaking monkeyish agility, and then conceal itself in the high leafage. This duly accomplished, the monkey is, as promised, out of sight. Enter the dog, panting, in hot pursuit. Those of you who are keen on dogs may wish, at this point, to form a closer bond with our abstract mastiff, so let us dub it Desmond. Imagine Desmond now, stopping short of the line of trees. It is intelligent enough to realise that the monkey must be hidden high up in either the pine or the larch or the sycamore or the wych elm, but not sufficiently savvy to know, just yet, which one. I ought to point out here that I hold no opinion either way on the intelligence of dogs, nor do I have a clue whereabouts in the hierarchy of canine intelligence the mastiff can be placed, as compared, say, to a boxer or a dachshund. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-02-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 On Barking Up The Wrong Tree 09:14 On Government-Controlled Origami 17:16 On The Devil In The Detail ON BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE There may be circumstances in which you wish to ascertain whether your dog is barking up the wrong tree. I wouldn't know; I don't keep a dog myself. But I can imagine a situation where such knowledge could prove critical. If I speak of the matter in the abstract, that is because of a total lack of hands-on dog-based experience on my part. Some might argue I am precluded from pronouncements about the issue--if we can call it an issue--by dint of this lack, but I beg to differ, much as a dog might beg for a bone from his master's table. Note that in spite of a deep ignorance of dogs and their ways I am yet able to pluck from the storehouse a vivid illustrative example of common dog (or doglike) behaviour to get my point across. Let those who scoff be hushed, so we can get on with it. Though for present purposes we need consider only an abstract dog barking abstractedly up an abstract tree, I find that concrete examples can be a boon to the dimwit. Not that I think for one minute that anyone reading this is a dimwit, you understand. Still, it is best to be on the safe side, and a scribbler never knows if or when his words may fall into the clutches of a dunderpate. So for our examples let us take one dog and four trees, a mastiff, say, and a pine and a larch and a sycamore and a wych elm. However unlikely it may be in the real world, let us say there is, in the middle of nowhere, that is in a vast and otherwise featureless flat expanse of land, a row of four trees, planted in a straight line, equidistant, with roughly six yards between them. Blot everything else out of your mind. Well, everything except the dog, which you need to remember, though it has not yet entered the scene. So far we just have the line of trees, the pine and the larch and the sycamore and the wych elm. We could have a line of more, or slightly fewer, trees, but four is a manageable number for the dimwits. Now, look! Here comes a monkey, scampering towards the trees at high speed. I did not mention the monkey earlier, partly because I did not wish to overtax your brain and partly because, in any case, it will soon be out of sight. The monkey, you see, is being pursued by the dog, the mastiff, and is hurtling pell mell towards the line of trees, up the trunk of one of which it will climb with breathtaking monkeyish agility, and then conceal itself in the high leafage. This duly accomplished, the monkey is, as promised, out of sight. Enter the dog, panting, in hot pursuit. Those of you who are keen on dogs may wish, at this point, to form a closer bond with our abstract mastiff, so let us dub it Desmond. Imagine Desmond now, stopping short of the line of trees. It is intelligent enough to realise that the monkey must be hidden high up in either the pine or the larch or the sycamore or the wych elm, but not sufficiently savvy to know, just yet, which one. I ought to point out here that I hold no opinion either way on the intelligence of dogs, nor do I have a clue whereabouts in the hierarchy of canine intelligence the mastiff can be placed, as compared, say, to a boxer or a dachshund. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-02-2329:26fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-02-02Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 On Tin Foil 08:43 On Apps 16:19 On Babinsky's Idiot Half-Brother ON TIN FOIL Unaccountably, I missed by two years the centenary of the replacement of tin by aluminium in the manufacture of what we still call tin foil. As so often, we have boffins in Switzerland to thank for this innovation, namely Dr. Lauber, Neher & Cie., who opened the world's first aluminium foil rolling plant in Emmishofen in 1910. For those of you, and I know there are many, who like to keep track of these things, Emmishofen is in the canton of Thurgau, or Thurgovia, in ancient times the home of the people of the Pfyn culture, who apparently kept large numbers of pigs. As I say, I neglected to mention the centenary at the time, and I know that many readers will have been drumming their fingers impatiently for the past two years, wondering when I am going to get round to telling you what to do with all that tin foil you have accumulated in your kitchen drawer. Well, I am delighted to say that at long last I can turn my attention to this splendidly versatile material. Just bear in mind that when I talk about tin foil I mean aluminium foil, and I am not expecting you to try to track down a stash of the old tin stuff, even if there is any still available, which I suspect there is not. The best thing you can do with your tin foil is to fashion for yourself a conical tin foil hat. It is important that you make a cone shape, rather than trying to mould the tin foil into the approximate shape of, say, a Homburg or a trilby or a stovepipe hat. Though the wonder of tin foil is that all these hat types could quite easily be made, you must stick to the cone. In part, this is in homage to Jimmy Goddard and the copper cone he used for daily communication with space people. But do not jump to the conclusion that your tin foil cone hat will help you to talk to space people. It won't. Nor will it protect you from weird unearthly menacing electromagnetic rays and beams and invisible hoo-hah. If such phenomena exist, and can dislodge and jumble and even control the innards of your brain, they are hardly likely to be dissuaded by a sheet of tin foil, are they? Nonetheless, when forming your surplus tin foil into a hat, it is well to pay tribute to Jimmy Goddard and the STAR Fellowship, for as Jesus said, "A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work" (Mark 6 : 4-5). But you can do mighty work, wearing your conical tin foil hat. I am thinking specifically of amateur dramatics. Some might call that leisure, rather than work, but believe you me, if you put your heart and soul into it, amateur dramatics can feel like work, and mighty work at that. There are several parts in the repertoire where the wearing of a conical tin foil hat is absolutely essential. Consider, for example, Old Nahamkin in The Man Who Came To Dinner In A Shiny Pointy Hat by Belper Frisson. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-02-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 On Tin Foil 08:43 On Apps 16:19 On Babinsky's Idiot Half-Brother ON TIN FOIL Unaccountably, I missed by two years the centenary of the replacement of tin by aluminium in the manufacture of what we still call tin foil. As so often, we have boffins in Switzerland to thank for this innovation, namely Dr. Lauber, Neher & Cie., who opened the world's first aluminium foil rolling plant in Emmishofen in 1910. For those of you, and I know there are many, who like to keep track of these things, Emmishofen is in the canton of Thurgau, or Thurgovia, in ancient times the home of the people of the Pfyn culture, who apparently kept large numbers of pigs. As I say, I neglected to mention the centenary at the time, and I know that many readers will have been drumming their fingers impatiently for the past two years, wondering when I am going to get round to telling you what to do with all that tin foil you have accumulated in your kitchen drawer. Well, I am delighted to say that at long last I can turn my attention to this splendidly versatile material. Just bear in mind that when I talk about tin foil I mean aluminium foil, and I am not expecting you to try to track down a stash of the old tin stuff, even if there is any still available, which I suspect there is not. The best thing you can do with your tin foil is to fashion for yourself a conical tin foil hat. It is important that you make a cone shape, rather than trying to mould the tin foil into the approximate shape of, say, a Homburg or a trilby or a stovepipe hat. Though the wonder of tin foil is that all these hat types could quite easily be made, you must stick to the cone. In part, this is in homage to Jimmy Goddard and the copper cone he used for daily communication with space people. But do not jump to the conclusion that your tin foil cone hat will help you to talk to space people. It won't. Nor will it protect you from weird unearthly menacing electromagnetic rays and beams and invisible hoo-hah. If such phenomena exist, and can dislodge and jumble and even control the innards of your brain, they are hardly likely to be dissuaded by a sheet of tin foil, are they? Nonetheless, when forming your surplus tin foil into a hat, it is well to pay tribute to Jimmy Goddard and the STAR Fellowship, for as Jesus said, "A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work" (Mark 6 : 4-5). But you can do mighty work, wearing your conical tin foil hat. I am thinking specifically of amateur dramatics. Some might call that leisure, rather than work, but believe you me, if you put your heart and soul into it, amateur dramatics can feel like work, and mighty work at that. There are several parts in the repertoire where the wearing of a conical tin foil hat is absolutely essential. Consider, for example, Old Nahamkin in The Man Who Came To Dinner In A Shiny Pointy Hat by Belper Frisson. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-02-0229:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2012-01-26Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 On Gulls' Eggs 07:14 On Clunks 13:56 On Skippy The Bush Kangaroo 19:49 On Feral Goblins ON GULLS' EGGS We have learned that the best place in which to store your collection of gulls' eggs is a fogou. It is indubitably useful to know that. But what if you have no gulls' eggs to store away? What then? "Oh woe is me! for I have not two gulls' eggs to rub together!" This is the plaintive cry of the otherwise happy fellow whose fogou lies empty. It is a cry that, however often heard, never fails to tug at the heartstrings, for those whose hearts have tuggable strings, which is most of us, or so I like to think, for I believe in the inherent goodness of humanity, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And goodness knows there is contrary evidence aplenty! I think it was Molesworth 2 who observed "Reality is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder", and even I can see the truth of that. So perhaps it is fair to say there is a measure of unreality about my belief in goodness. Real or unreal, however, I know that when I hear a poor benighted soul bewailing his utter lack of gulls' eggs, I weep. I would like to think you would weep too. But what can we do about it? No matter how copious and salty our tears, tears alone will not drum up a clutch of gulls' eggs to give to the fellow bereft. Imagine if they did! If, as each tear rolled down our cheek, la!, we could pluck from the air a fresh gull's egg and hand it, with great care, so as not to crush it, to the tenant of a gulls' eggless fogou. Perhaps that is not so improbable as you may think. Sophocles, for example, believed that the tears of the birds known as the Meleagrides solidified into amber. Yes, yes, I know it is something of a stretch to conclude from that that the tears of good-hearted humans could solidify into gulls' eggs, but it is at least worth holding in our heads for a little while. For were it so we could solve the whole problem of the poor fellow and his fogou and his lack of gulls' eggs. You will say that there are more urgent matters to be addressed in this vale of tears. War, pestilence, famine, disease, rust, inclement weather... all these, it is true, may place a greater strain on our heartstrings than the man without gulls' eggs ever could. Are we, then, to cast him aside, like so much chaff? I have heard it said, by those whom I suspect subscribe to Molesworth 2's tragic vision, that the man would be better off filling his fogou with chaff, and have done with it. Reluctant as I am to admit as much, there is some merit in this view. Chaff is easily gathered. One need not go clambering about on remote coastal promontories, at risk of toppling on to the sea-smashed rocks far below, to raid the nest of a gull for its complement of eggs. That, quite frankly, is going to be how you are going to get hold of some gulls' eggs, because never in a million years, in Molesworth 2's unspeakably sordid reality, will your tears solidify in some implausible Sophoclean fashion into gulls' eggs, much as I might wish such a happenstance to occur. There will have to come a point where the man ceases his plaintive wailing and settles for a fogou full of chaff rather than of gulls' eggs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-01-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 On Gulls' Eggs 07:14 On Clunks 13:56 On Skippy The Bush Kangaroo 19:49 On Feral Goblins ON GULLS' EGGS We have learned that the best place in which to store your collection of gulls' eggs is a fogou. It is indubitably useful to know that. But what if you have no gulls' eggs to store away? What then? "Oh woe is me! for I have not two gulls' eggs to rub together!" This is the plaintive cry of the otherwise happy fellow whose fogou lies empty. It is a cry that, however often heard, never fails to tug at the heartstrings, for those whose hearts have tuggable strings, which is most of us, or so I like to think, for I believe in the inherent goodness of humanity, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And goodness knows there is contrary evidence aplenty! I think it was Molesworth 2 who observed "Reality is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder", and even I can see the truth of that. So perhaps it is fair to say there is a measure of unreality about my belief in goodness. Real or unreal, however, I know that when I hear a poor benighted soul bewailing his utter lack of gulls' eggs, I weep. I would like to think you would weep too. But what can we do about it? No matter how copious and salty our tears, tears alone will not drum up a clutch of gulls' eggs to give to the fellow bereft. Imagine if they did! If, as each tear rolled down our cheek, la!, we could pluck from the air a fresh gull's egg and hand it, with great care, so as not to crush it, to the tenant of a gulls' eggless fogou. Perhaps that is not so improbable as you may think. Sophocles, for example, believed that the tears of the birds known as the Meleagrides solidified into amber. Yes, yes, I know it is something of a stretch to conclude from that that the tears of good-hearted humans could solidify into gulls' eggs, but it is at least worth holding in our heads for a little while. For were it so we could solve the whole problem of the poor fellow and his fogou and his lack of gulls' eggs. You will say that there are more urgent matters to be addressed in this vale of tears. War, pestilence, famine, disease, rust, inclement weather... all these, it is true, may place a greater strain on our heartstrings than the man without gulls' eggs ever could. Are we, then, to cast him aside, like so much chaff? I have heard it said, by those whom I suspect subscribe to Molesworth 2's tragic vision, that the man would be better off filling his fogou with chaff, and have done with it. Reluctant as I am to admit as much, there is some merit in this view. Chaff is easily gathered. One need not go clambering about on remote coastal promontories, at risk of toppling on to the sea-smashed rocks far below, to raid the nest of a gull for its complement of eggs. That, quite frankly, is going to be how you are going to get hold of some gulls' eggs, because never in a million years, in Molesworth 2's unspeakably sordid reality, will your tears solidify in some implausible Sophoclean fashion into gulls' eggs, much as I might wish such a happenstance to occur. There will have to come a point where the man ceases his plaintive wailing and settles for a fogou full of chaff rather than of gulls' eggs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2012-01-2629:07fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-12-08Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Ten Tarleton Tales--V 05:22 British Psychology 10:19 On The Inspector Of Nuisances 13:22 Farmers In The Coalition 22:13 Stubbings TEN TARLETON TALES--V I would sing to you of Tarleton, of the gleets, of the balcony, if I could. If I could sing I would. But how can I sing, mouth crammed with pebbles, penned in a pound, atop the tor? And what an irony that it was Tarleton who bustled me hence, arms flapping, half blinding me with the glint of his shiny shiny epaulettes? I would have sung of him surely, and without smirking. Cars passed below as we climbed the tor. I would have waved to them, to their drivers, for help, if I thought help would come. My mind was a chaos. The higher we climbed, the tinier the cars appeared, until they seemed like motes of dust. They put the pound at the top of the tor to discourage attempts to escape. As further discouragement, the fence was electrified. Tarleton had keys to the panel upon which a lever or knobs or whatever could be pulled or depressed or whatever to cut off the circuit, temporarily, to allow the gate to be opened. He crammed my mouth with pebbles before he pushed me into the pound. I thought of the gleets, and of Krakatoa. Oh, Tarleton, Tarleton! What became of the balcony you? Things were so different then. Fresh from your Messerschmitt, not a hint of the gleets, eating a crab apple and suffering in silence. It was noble suffering. Even the crab apple was noble. Certainly your shiny shiny epaulettes gave you a noble cast. I wanted to fashion a laurel wreath for your brow, but there were no laurels. Just the bare balcony and a vista of snow. Nor did I sing then, though I could have done, I ought to have done, I wish I had done. I would have sung of you, Tarleton, and recorded it upon magnetic tape, and had a platter made of it, and it would have shot to the top of the hit parade. It would have dislodged Russ Conway. Regrets, regrets. Now there are pebbles in my mouth, and I am penned in a pound, and you have stomped away back down the tor. You will get into your car, parked in a gully, tiny as a mote of dust, from up here, and you will drive away, or be driven away, by your chauffeur, his own epaulettes less shiny shiny than yours, ignoble epaulettes. And when you drive away, will you think of the gleets, the balcony, Tarleton? Or will your head be filled with flummery? The dog in the pound on the tor is small and hairy and oriental. Its yap curdles my blood. Would that the pebbles had been crammed in my ears and not my mouth! Or as well as, for all the difference it would make. The sun passes behind a cloud. The electrified fence hums. I think, not sing, of Tarleton, of the gleets, of the balcony. And Boodles yaps. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-12-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Ten Tarleton Tales--V 05:22 British Psychology 10:19 On The Inspector Of Nuisances 13:22 Farmers In The Coalition 22:13 Stubbings TEN TARLETON TALES--V I would sing to you of Tarleton, of the gleets, of the balcony, if I could. If I could sing I would. But how can I sing, mouth crammed with pebbles, penned in a pound, atop the tor? And what an irony that it was Tarleton who bustled me hence, arms flapping, half blinding me with the glint of his shiny shiny epaulettes? I would have sung of him surely, and without smirking. Cars passed below as we climbed the tor. I would have waved to them, to their drivers, for help, if I thought help would come. My mind was a chaos. The higher we climbed, the tinier the cars appeared, until they seemed like motes of dust. They put the pound at the top of the tor to discourage attempts to escape. As further discouragement, the fence was electrified. Tarleton had keys to the panel upon which a lever or knobs or whatever could be pulled or depressed or whatever to cut off the circuit, temporarily, to allow the gate to be opened. He crammed my mouth with pebbles before he pushed me into the pound. I thought of the gleets, and of Krakatoa. Oh, Tarleton, Tarleton! What became of the balcony you? Things were so different then. Fresh from your Messerschmitt, not a hint of the gleets, eating a crab apple and suffering in silence. It was noble suffering. Even the crab apple was noble. Certainly your shiny shiny epaulettes gave you a noble cast. I wanted to fashion a laurel wreath for your brow, but there were no laurels. Just the bare balcony and a vista of snow. Nor did I sing then, though I could have done, I ought to have done, I wish I had done. I would have sung of you, Tarleton, and recorded it upon magnetic tape, and had a platter made of it, and it would have shot to the top of the hit parade. It would have dislodged Russ Conway. Regrets, regrets. Now there are pebbles in my mouth, and I am penned in a pound, and you have stomped away back down the tor. You will get into your car, parked in a gully, tiny as a mote of dust, from up here, and you will drive away, or be driven away, by your chauffeur, his own epaulettes less shiny shiny than yours, ignoble epaulettes. And when you drive away, will you think of the gleets, the balcony, Tarleton? Or will your head be filled with flummery? The dog in the pound on the tor is small and hairy and oriental. Its yap curdles my blood. Would that the pebbles had been crammed in my ears and not my mouth! Or as well as, for all the difference it would make. The sun passes behind a cloud. The electrified fence hums. I think, not sing, of Tarleton, of the gleets, of the balcony. And Boodles yaps. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-12-0829:31fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-24Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 The Wooden Lake 08:05 Groovy Janitor 13:39 Instructions 17:15 Coverdale, Tyndale, King James 23:15 The Necessity Of Puddings : A Postscript THE WOODEN LAKE The vast expanse of the wooden lake out past the spinney has been wilfully ignored by the writers of gazetteers of the hinterland of the spinney. Why should that be? It is as if they want it kept a secret, the vast wooden lake, stretching as far as the eye can see, with here and there along its shore clumps of aspen and larch and plane trees, clumps of lupin and hollyhock and spurge. I lie secreted in one such clump, armed with my binoculars and a bird scarifier. My socks are damp. The wooden lake is not a lake entirely of wood, of course. Only its surface is of wood, plank after plank after plank of planed and varnished hornbeam slotted together by master carpenters to form a vast flat expanse covering every inch of the lake which broods below. You need not ice nor skates to cross the lake, you can simply walk across it, though early in the morning when dewdrops have fallen it can be slippery, so smoothly planed and varnished are the planks. I stamped across the lake to reach the clump I hide in, I stamped in my big black boots. When you read the gazetteers, or look at maps, loose-leaf or in atlases, you will find not a trace of the wooden lake. Sometimes its location is simply ignored, sometimes there is a pretence that it is the site of wild woods or a donkey sanctuary or an industrial estate riddled with canneries. But here is only wood, not metal, unless one takes into account the nails used to strengthen the slotting together of planks hewn from thousands upon thousands of hornbeams. Along with my binoculars and bird scarifier, I have a hammer, stowed in my clump, but no nails. In the village on the other side of the spinney, the village nearest to the wooden lake, you will never hear a word spoken, in the pub or the post office or at the smithy's forge, about the vast expanse of wood stretching as far as the eye can see on the other side of the spinney. Just as in the gazetteers you can buy in the village shop, there is a conspiracy of silence. I am persona non grata in the village. Under the surface of the wooden lake, the waters churn and boil. Somewhere in the vastness of the deeps there is a creature, fierce and flippered and gigantic, a blasphemous cephalopod such as no one can look upon without being frozen and blinded and driven insane. At least, that is my theory, a theory which over the years has grown into a conviction, calcified into monomania. I know I am right. That is why the lake is covered by a vast expanse of wood. That is why I was physically ejected from the village with kicks and curses. That is why I am hidden in a clump with my binoculars and my bird scarifier and my hammer. I am not so foolish as to think that I can scare the monster with the scarifier, as it might scare a starling or a sparrow or a pipit. But I have no proof that it will not be, let us say, slightly disconcerted, long enough, at least, for me to hare across the plankage to the spot where it has burst forth, and to bash it on its giant head with my hammer. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 The Wooden Lake 08:05 Groovy Janitor 13:39 Instructions 17:15 Coverdale, Tyndale, King James 23:15 The Necessity Of Puddings : A Postscript THE WOODEN LAKE The vast expanse of the wooden lake out past the spinney has been wilfully ignored by the writers of gazetteers of the hinterland of the spinney. Why should that be? It is as if they want it kept a secret, the vast wooden lake, stretching as far as the eye can see, with here and there along its shore clumps of aspen and larch and plane trees, clumps of lupin and hollyhock and spurge. I lie secreted in one such clump, armed with my binoculars and a bird scarifier. My socks are damp. The wooden lake is not a lake entirely of wood, of course. Only its surface is of wood, plank after plank after plank of planed and varnished hornbeam slotted together by master carpenters to form a vast flat expanse covering every inch of the lake which broods below. You need not ice nor skates to cross the lake, you can simply walk across it, though early in the morning when dewdrops have fallen it can be slippery, so smoothly planed and varnished are the planks. I stamped across the lake to reach the clump I hide in, I stamped in my big black boots. When you read the gazetteers, or look at maps, loose-leaf or in atlases, you will find not a trace of the wooden lake. Sometimes its location is simply ignored, sometimes there is a pretence that it is the site of wild woods or a donkey sanctuary or an industrial estate riddled with canneries. But here is only wood, not metal, unless one takes into account the nails used to strengthen the slotting together of planks hewn from thousands upon thousands of hornbeams. Along with my binoculars and bird scarifier, I have a hammer, stowed in my clump, but no nails. In the village on the other side of the spinney, the village nearest to the wooden lake, you will never hear a word spoken, in the pub or the post office or at the smithy's forge, about the vast expanse of wood stretching as far as the eye can see on the other side of the spinney. Just as in the gazetteers you can buy in the village shop, there is a conspiracy of silence. I am persona non grata in the village. Under the surface of the wooden lake, the waters churn and boil. Somewhere in the vastness of the deeps there is a creature, fierce and flippered and gigantic, a blasphemous cephalopod such as no one can look upon without being frozen and blinded and driven insane. At least, that is my theory, a theory which over the years has grown into a conviction, calcified into monomania. I know I am right. That is why the lake is covered by a vast expanse of wood. That is why I was physically ejected from the village with kicks and curses. That is why I am hidden in a clump with my binoculars and my bird scarifier and my hammer. I am not so foolish as to think that I can scare the monster with the scarifier, as it might scare a starling or a sparrow or a pipit. But I have no proof that it will not be, let us say, slightly disconcerted, long enough, at least, for me to hare across the plankage to the spot where it has burst forth, and to bash it on its giant head with my hammer. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-2430:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-20Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Two Dinners 04:31 Art Squad 12:08 Guns Before Butter 23:44 Camp Dabbler TWO DINNERS Compare and contrast: a list of the grub rustled up by the Merchant Taylors' Company to welcome Prince Henry into their ranks in the summer of 1607: Swans, godwit, shovellers, partridges, owls, cuckoos, ringdoves, pullets, ducklings, teal, peacocks, rabbits, leverets and a great turkey... along with 1,300 eggs, three great lobsters and 200 prawns, salmon, salt fish, plaice, sole, dory, carp and tenches, sirloins and ribs of beef, mutton and lambs' dowsets, neats' tongues and sweet breads, and to conclude the evening, figs, dates, prunes, currants, almonds, strawberries, gooseberries, cherries, pears, apples, damsons, oranges and quinces. Twenty-eight barrels of beer were provided to slake the diners' thirst, together with more than 440 gallons of wine. from Ben Jonson by Ian Donaldson (2011), reviewed here (thanks to Elberry for the link) The dinner began with a soup of asps in simmering oil. On each side was a dish of vegetables, one containing thistles and burdocks, and the other fuming acid. Other side dishes, of turtles, rats, bats and moles, were garnished with live coals. For the fish course he ate a dish of snakes in boiling tar and pitch. His roast was a screech owl in a sauce of glowing brimstone. The salad proved to be spider webs full of small explosive squibs, a plate of butterfly wings and manna worms, a dish of toads surrounded with flies, crickets, grasshoppers, church beetles, spiders, and caterpillars. He washed all this down with flaming brandy, and for dessert ate the four large candles standing on the table, both of the hanging side lamps with their contents, and finally the large center lamp, oil, wick and all. This leaving the room in darkness, Dufour's face shone out in a mask of living flames. from Miracle Mongers And Their Methods: A Complete Expose Of The Modus Operandi Of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc by Harry Houdini (1921) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Two Dinners 04:31 Art Squad 12:08 Guns Before Butter 23:44 Camp Dabbler TWO DINNERS Compare and contrast: a list of the grub rustled up by the Merchant Taylors' Company to welcome Prince Henry into their ranks in the summer of 1607: Swans, godwit, shovellers, partridges, owls, cuckoos, ringdoves, pullets, ducklings, teal, peacocks, rabbits, leverets and a great turkey... along with 1,300 eggs, three great lobsters and 200 prawns, salmon, salt fish, plaice, sole, dory, carp and tenches, sirloins and ribs of beef, mutton and lambs' dowsets, neats' tongues and sweet breads, and to conclude the evening, figs, dates, prunes, currants, almonds, strawberries, gooseberries, cherries, pears, apples, damsons, oranges and quinces. Twenty-eight barrels of beer were provided to slake the diners' thirst, together with more than 440 gallons of wine. from Ben Jonson by Ian Donaldson (2011), reviewed here (thanks to Elberry for the link) The dinner began with a soup of asps in simmering oil. On each side was a dish of vegetables, one containing thistles and burdocks, and the other fuming acid. Other side dishes, of turtles, rats, bats and moles, were garnished with live coals. For the fish course he ate a dish of snakes in boiling tar and pitch. His roast was a screech owl in a sauce of glowing brimstone. The salad proved to be spider webs full of small explosive squibs, a plate of butterfly wings and manna worms, a dish of toads surrounded with flies, crickets, grasshoppers, church beetles, spiders, and caterpillars. He washed all this down with flaming brandy, and for dessert ate the four large candles standing on the table, both of the hanging side lamps with their contents, and finally the large center lamp, oil, wick and all. This leaving the room in darkness, Dufour's face shone out in a mask of living flames. from Miracle Mongers And Their Methods: A Complete Expose Of The Modus Operandi Of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc by Harry Houdini (1921) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-2029:04fullfalsehooting-yard-special-woolfson-and-tay_202012Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hooting-yard-special-woolfson-and-tay_202012Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hooting-yard-special-woolfson-and-tay_20201259:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-17Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Advice Regarding Eggs 03:57 A Boaty Picnic 07:25 The Fatal Flaw In The Great Escape 15:05 Neither Dobson Nor Blotzmann Nor Joost Van Dongelbraacke 18:47 Poop Or Orlop? 22:38 Nature Notes 25:30 For Want Of Fitting Audience ADVICE REGARDING EGGS Here at Hooting Yard we are regularly inundated with queries relating to eggs. Here, for example, is a plaintive plea from reader Tim Thurn: Q--When you are dining with an intimate friend, and an omelette au rhum is served, what do you do? My spies tell me that Tim has copied out this question from Rambles In Womanland by Max O'Rell (1903), wherein the answer is given thus: A--Without any ceremony, you take a spoon, and, taking the burning liquid, you pour it over the dish gently and unceasingly. If you are careless, and fail to keep the pink and blue flame alive, it goes out at once, and you have to eat, instead of a delicacy, a dish fit only for people who like, or are used to have, their palates scraped by rough food. If you would be sure to be successful, you will ask your friend to help you watch the flame, and you will even ask him to lift the omelette gently so that the rhum may be poured all over it until the whole of the alcohol contained in the liquor is burned out. I might add that taking a spoon without any ceremony is easier said than done, but my remarks on that will have to wait for our series on spoons and ceremonies, which is forthcoming. A BOATY PICNIC When you are planning a boaty picnic, the very first thing you need to do, before deciding upon the menu, which is our chief preoccupation today, is to check what the forecast says about the conditions of the weather and the sea. If, for example, you find out that it will be choppy, with squalls, then you would do best to avoid a dish such as clotted pollock dabs, suitably fishy but too rich, too creamy, and in the event potentially nauseating. Something plainer, like boiled sweets in gravy, would be better for your picnic, provided of course that the gravy is not too gamey. Rank gravies should be avoided at all times, but especially when out in a boat, picnicking on the high seas. Some might say that any gravy, even the plainest, even with boiled sweets swimming in it, is an unsuitable item for a picnic menu, what with the supposed need for bowls and spoons and bibs, but I say it can be poured into beakers with sealed lids and glugged therefrom, with no bowl or spoon in sight. You will probably still want bibs, but they are essential for any maritime feast, what with all the sloshing about of the boat upon the waters. And believe you me, boats will slosh about, even on the calmest waters, that is just how it is. Greasy and slippery foods ought also be avoided when packing the hamper before boarding the boat. Think, rather, of taking hard, chewy, and even stale items. A boaty picnic can be a splendid way of using up leftovers, for what proves unpalatable can be chucked overboard into the sea, where it will be devoured by the many ravenous scavenging befinned and beflippered beings that cavort within the waters, often just below the surface, with great snapping jaws. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Advice Regarding Eggs 03:57 A Boaty Picnic 07:25 The Fatal Flaw In The Great Escape 15:05 Neither Dobson Nor Blotzmann Nor Joost Van Dongelbraacke 18:47 Poop Or Orlop? 22:38 Nature Notes 25:30 For Want Of Fitting Audience ADVICE REGARDING EGGS Here at Hooting Yard we are regularly inundated with queries relating to eggs. Here, for example, is a plaintive plea from reader Tim Thurn: Q--When you are dining with an intimate friend, and an omelette au rhum is served, what do you do? My spies tell me that Tim has copied out this question from Rambles In Womanland by Max O'Rell (1903), wherein the answer is given thus: A--Without any ceremony, you take a spoon, and, taking the burning liquid, you pour it over the dish gently and unceasingly. If you are careless, and fail to keep the pink and blue flame alive, it goes out at once, and you have to eat, instead of a delicacy, a dish fit only for people who like, or are used to have, their palates scraped by rough food. If you would be sure to be successful, you will ask your friend to help you watch the flame, and you will even ask him to lift the omelette gently so that the rhum may be poured all over it until the whole of the alcohol contained in the liquor is burned out. I might add that taking a spoon without any ceremony is easier said than done, but my remarks on that will have to wait for our series on spoons and ceremonies, which is forthcoming. A BOATY PICNIC When you are planning a boaty picnic, the very first thing you need to do, before deciding upon the menu, which is our chief preoccupation today, is to check what the forecast says about the conditions of the weather and the sea. If, for example, you find out that it will be choppy, with squalls, then you would do best to avoid a dish such as clotted pollock dabs, suitably fishy but too rich, too creamy, and in the event potentially nauseating. Something plainer, like boiled sweets in gravy, would be better for your picnic, provided of course that the gravy is not too gamey. Rank gravies should be avoided at all times, but especially when out in a boat, picnicking on the high seas. Some might say that any gravy, even the plainest, even with boiled sweets swimming in it, is an unsuitable item for a picnic menu, what with the supposed need for bowls and spoons and bibs, but I say it can be poured into beakers with sealed lids and glugged therefrom, with no bowl or spoon in sight. You will probably still want bibs, but they are essential for any maritime feast, what with all the sloshing about of the boat upon the waters. And believe you me, boats will slosh about, even on the calmest waters, that is just how it is. Greasy and slippery foods ought also be avoided when packing the hamper before boarding the boat. Think, rather, of taking hard, chewy, and even stale items. A boaty picnic can be a splendid way of using up leftovers, for what proves unpalatable can be chucked overboard into the sea, where it will be devoured by the many ravenous scavenging befinned and beflippered beings that cavort within the waters, often just below the surface, with great snapping jaws. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-1730:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-13Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:05 Old Key's Almanacke 11:41 Bewlay The Landgrave 17:46 Monkey-Annoyance Expert 22:57 Little Dagobert OLD KEY'S ALMANACKE For several centuries, Old Key's Almanacke has proved an eerily and unerringly accurate prognostication of significant events due to occur in the next twelvemonth. Here is what lies in store in the Year of Our Lord MMXIV, as predicted by Old Key himself. January : "Cones" appear at the site of a road closure. February : Scientists discover a new anagram of Pol Pot. March : A scribbler publishes a fatuity in The Guardian. April : Down at the docks, noisome ooze and bilgewater. May : The De Botton Conundrum is solved, to universal rejoicing. June : In a hotel, a doctor demands his sausages. July : Vince Cable stands windswept upon Westminster Bridge. August : The mighty look on the works of Ozymandias and despair! September : The crystal ball is cloudy, but we descry something about a footballer and his hamstring. October : Eggs hatch on a farm. November : The iFry is launched, a simulacrum of Stephen Fry that witters incessantly and is small enough to be tossed into a wastepaper basket. December : Jesus Christ returns, his image appearing on a slice of toast. BEWLAY THE LANDGRAVE Forty years ago, David Bowie demanded "Lay me place and bake me pie!", not unreasonably in the circumstances, as he added, "I'm starving for me gravy!" We have all, I think, been there, as they say nowadays. I have certainly had gravy hankerings of my own, most recently this very morning. Oddly enough, the first stirrings of a gravy craving stole upon me shortly after I had finished my breakfast of eggy cornflakes and smokers' poptarts. I left the house to take a turn around the duckpond over by the viaduct, and there came a constriction in my throat, a throbbing in the head, and a pang in the belly. Gravy, I thought, I'm starving for me gravy. I was unlikely to find any by the duckpond, so I wheeled about and set off in the opposite direction, towards the parade of shops. Past the hatter's and the haberdasher's and the ironmonger's there is a pie shop. To my dismay, I saw that its shutters were down, and there was no aroma of baking. I hammered my fists upon the shutters and screeched the words of David Bowie quoted above. Clearly gravy starvation was playing havoc with my common sense, for as I well knew, the pie shop did not have an in-store dining facility, so even had it been open I could not sensibly have demanded that my place be laid. I made such a din that the ironmonger came out of his shop, next door, to see what was afoot. He was armed with a sample of his ironmongery, a wrench or a crowbar, and who can blame him? I was hardly the picture of an upstanding citizen, in my gravy-famished hysteria. He dealt me a hefty thump on my cranium and used harsh words. Sprawled on the paving slabs, I gasped an apology for causing such a racket. I was about to explain that I was starving for me gravy when the ironmonger recognised me. "Good grief, Stipendiary Landgrave Pursuivant to the County Infanta, it is you!" he cried, and immediately proceeded to mumble his own, fawning, apology, helping me to my feet and dusting me down as he did so. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:05 Old Key's Almanacke 11:41 Bewlay The Landgrave 17:46 Monkey-Annoyance Expert 22:57 Little Dagobert OLD KEY'S ALMANACKE For several centuries, Old Key's Almanacke has proved an eerily and unerringly accurate prognostication of significant events due to occur in the next twelvemonth. Here is what lies in store in the Year of Our Lord MMXIV, as predicted by Old Key himself. January : "Cones" appear at the site of a road closure. February : Scientists discover a new anagram of Pol Pot. March : A scribbler publishes a fatuity in The Guardian. April : Down at the docks, noisome ooze and bilgewater. May : The De Botton Conundrum is solved, to universal rejoicing. June : In a hotel, a doctor demands his sausages. July : Vince Cable stands windswept upon Westminster Bridge. August : The mighty look on the works of Ozymandias and despair! September : The crystal ball is cloudy, but we descry something about a footballer and his hamstring. October : Eggs hatch on a farm. November : The iFry is launched, a simulacrum of Stephen Fry that witters incessantly and is small enough to be tossed into a wastepaper basket. December : Jesus Christ returns, his image appearing on a slice of toast. BEWLAY THE LANDGRAVE Forty years ago, David Bowie demanded "Lay me place and bake me pie!", not unreasonably in the circumstances, as he added, "I'm starving for me gravy!" We have all, I think, been there, as they say nowadays. I have certainly had gravy hankerings of my own, most recently this very morning. Oddly enough, the first stirrings of a gravy craving stole upon me shortly after I had finished my breakfast of eggy cornflakes and smokers' poptarts. I left the house to take a turn around the duckpond over by the viaduct, and there came a constriction in my throat, a throbbing in the head, and a pang in the belly. Gravy, I thought, I'm starving for me gravy. I was unlikely to find any by the duckpond, so I wheeled about and set off in the opposite direction, towards the parade of shops. Past the hatter's and the haberdasher's and the ironmonger's there is a pie shop. To my dismay, I saw that its shutters were down, and there was no aroma of baking. I hammered my fists upon the shutters and screeched the words of David Bowie quoted above. Clearly gravy starvation was playing havoc with my common sense, for as I well knew, the pie shop did not have an in-store dining facility, so even had it been open I could not sensibly have demanded that my place be laid. I made such a din that the ironmonger came out of his shop, next door, to see what was afoot. He was armed with a sample of his ironmongery, a wrench or a crowbar, and who can blame him? I was hardly the picture of an upstanding citizen, in my gravy-famished hysteria. He dealt me a hefty thump on my cranium and used harsh words. Sprawled on the paving slabs, I gasped an apology for causing such a racket. I was about to explain that I was starving for me gravy when the ironmonger recognised me. "Good grief, Stipendiary Landgrave Pursuivant to the County Infanta, it is you!" he cried, and immediately proceeded to mumble his own, fawning, apology, helping me to my feet and dusting me down as he did so. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-1328:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-10Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:57 Two Sparrows 08:51 Levin On Lennon (And Ono) 14:12 Charging Ostrich Of Fire 19:31 VerEecke Revisited 21:49 Bo'sun's Wig TWO SPARROWS We take as our text for today's lesson the Gospel of Matthew, chapter ten, verse twenty-nine: Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. Sometimes it so happens that you will go to a sparrow-seller to make purchase of a pair of sparrows, only for him to state an asking price of more than a farthing. Or he might charge a farthing for a single sparrow, but throw in a second sparrow with a "Buy One, Get One Free" offer, in which case you will pay a farthing for two sparrows even if the one sparrow costs a farthing in itself. Thereagain, you might find yourself being offered a free sparrow by a seller of, say, partridges or linnets, who has an unwanted stock of sparrows and cannot wait to be rid of them, for they are greedily eating up his grain and millet that he would rather feed to his partridges or linnets. So when we ask the question, as we must, are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?, the answer is no, not always, not in all circumstances, come what may, for there may be times and places where we will be asked to pay more, or less, for a pair of sparrows. And from this we can learn much about the ways of God and Man. Yes, the honest sparrow-seller will hand us two sparrows upon receipt of a farthing, but not all sparrow-sellers are honest, while some sparrow-sellers are too honest for their own good. And, as with sparrow-sellers, so too those from whom we buy other birds, not just partridges and linnets, but starlings, and kittiwakes, and seagulls. But what of the second part of the verse from Matthew 10, that one of them--that is, the sparrows--that one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father? The first part of the verse is a question. The second part is not. It states, quite vehemently and unchallengeably, that, without your Father, one of the sparrows will not fall on the ground. But which of the sparrows is it that shall not fall? One of them will, and one of them will remain in the air, in flight and birdy swooping, until your Father appears, at which point, we must assume, it will plunge towards the earth, just because your Father has arrived. The more one studies this passage, and I have studied it for years and years, the more problems it raises. Why does one sparrow fall on the ground without your Father? Why does the other sparrow fall on the ground when your Father appears? Is your Father armed with a shotgun, or a catapult? Does His mere presence induce in the tiny frail sparrow a heart attack? And if He can have that effect on a sparrow, what of other birds, partridges, say, or linnets, or starlings or kittiwakes or seagulls or robins or wrens, or even hummingbirds? These are profound questions, and we must dig deep to answer them, deeper, certainly, than a sparrow may need to dig to light upon a fat juicy earthworm for its morning snack. My own experience has taught me that all that digging will be as nought unless one has first found a sparrow-seller to sell one a pair of sparrows for a farthing. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:57 Two Sparrows 08:51 Levin On Lennon (And Ono) 14:12 Charging Ostrich Of Fire 19:31 VerEecke Revisited 21:49 Bo'sun's Wig TWO SPARROWS We take as our text for today's lesson the Gospel of Matthew, chapter ten, verse twenty-nine: Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. Sometimes it so happens that you will go to a sparrow-seller to make purchase of a pair of sparrows, only for him to state an asking price of more than a farthing. Or he might charge a farthing for a single sparrow, but throw in a second sparrow with a "Buy One, Get One Free" offer, in which case you will pay a farthing for two sparrows even if the one sparrow costs a farthing in itself. Thereagain, you might find yourself being offered a free sparrow by a seller of, say, partridges or linnets, who has an unwanted stock of sparrows and cannot wait to be rid of them, for they are greedily eating up his grain and millet that he would rather feed to his partridges or linnets. So when we ask the question, as we must, are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?, the answer is no, not always, not in all circumstances, come what may, for there may be times and places where we will be asked to pay more, or less, for a pair of sparrows. And from this we can learn much about the ways of God and Man. Yes, the honest sparrow-seller will hand us two sparrows upon receipt of a farthing, but not all sparrow-sellers are honest, while some sparrow-sellers are too honest for their own good. And, as with sparrow-sellers, so too those from whom we buy other birds, not just partridges and linnets, but starlings, and kittiwakes, and seagulls. But what of the second part of the verse from Matthew 10, that one of them--that is, the sparrows--that one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father? The first part of the verse is a question. The second part is not. It states, quite vehemently and unchallengeably, that, without your Father, one of the sparrows will not fall on the ground. But which of the sparrows is it that shall not fall? One of them will, and one of them will remain in the air, in flight and birdy swooping, until your Father appears, at which point, we must assume, it will plunge towards the earth, just because your Father has arrived. The more one studies this passage, and I have studied it for years and years, the more problems it raises. Why does one sparrow fall on the ground without your Father? Why does the other sparrow fall on the ground when your Father appears? Is your Father armed with a shotgun, or a catapult? Does His mere presence induce in the tiny frail sparrow a heart attack? And if He can have that effect on a sparrow, what of other birds, partridges, say, or linnets, or starlings or kittiwakes or seagulls or robins or wrens, or even hummingbirds? These are profound questions, and we must dig deep to answer them, deeper, certainly, than a sparrow may need to dig to light upon a fat juicy earthworm for its morning snack. My own experience has taught me that all that digging will be as nought unless one has first found a sparrow-seller to sell one a pair of sparrows for a farthing. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-1029:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-03Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:29 The Bottomless Viper Pit Of Gaar 18:25 The Breadcrumbs Man 24:13 Societies THE BOTTOMLESS VIPER PIT OF GAAR On this day, two hundred years ago, was born Cornelius Crake, the man who proved conclusively that the Bottomless Viper Pit of Gaar was indeed bottomless. Well, perhaps not conclusively, for arguments continue to rage on the fringes of what I suppose we can call the Bottomless Viper Pit community. There remains a handful of doubting Thomases, wild-eyed loons for the most part, and I use the word "loons" advisedly, for at their meetings they all make noises not unlike loons, those birds of the order Gaviiformes, sometimes confused with cormorants by people less expert in ornithology than myself. I can state with quiet and rather compelling confidence that I have never mistaken a loon for a cormorant, nor a cormorant for a loon, and I will pursue through the courts anybody who claims I have, so be very, very careful. Gosh, I really must learn to avoid mentioning birds so early in a piece which is meant to be addressing another subject entirely. Such is my enthusiasm for our avian friends that I get quite carried away, and babble on recklessly, so spirited that I actually forget the existence of full stops, just breathlessly adding phrase after phrase, connected by commas, about loons and cormorants and all sorts of other birds, robins and ducks and even ostriches, until I have completely lost track of what I intended to write about when first I set fingertip to tippytapper, and I am led, or I suppose in truth I should say I lead myself, down unintended bird-haunted paths, for example by saying I lose track, the word "track" makes me think of a rail, and of course a rail, apart from being a track, such as a locomotive might thunder along, is also a type of bird, an entire family of birds in fact, the Rallidae, including the coot and the gallinule and the crake. Ah, crake, Crake! As often happens when one is miffling down the by-ways of ornithology, one is led inexorably back to where one started, in this case, with Cornelius Crake, whose two hundredth birthday we celebrate today. He it was who, as I have mentioned, proved conclusively, or almost conclusively, were it not for a curiously persistent band of wild-eyed loons, the bottomlessness of the Bottomless Viper Pit of Gaar. A country parson who devoted his time equally between the spiritual welfare of his peasant flock and the intense study of pits, Crake first came to public attention with his pamphlet on the Bottomless Viper Pit of Shoeburyness. Written in Latin, with footnotes in Dog Latin and an index in Pig Latin, it was little read, but the front cover caused a sensation. It featured a mezzotint by the nineteenth-century mezzotintist Rexus Tintus, depicting literally millions of vipers writhing in a bottomless pit. "I tried to count each and every viper in this sensational mezzotint," wrote Wilkie Collins, "but there were simply too many of them. And the pit itself was bottomless." Incidentally, did you know that there is no such bird as a "wilkie"? This in spite of the fact that it would make a very suitable name for a bird, as can be proved by pretending it is and trying it out on the tongue. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:29 The Bottomless Viper Pit Of Gaar 18:25 The Breadcrumbs Man 24:13 Societies THE BOTTOMLESS VIPER PIT OF GAAR On this day, two hundred years ago, was born Cornelius Crake, the man who proved conclusively that the Bottomless Viper Pit of Gaar was indeed bottomless. Well, perhaps not conclusively, for arguments continue to rage on the fringes of what I suppose we can call the Bottomless Viper Pit community. There remains a handful of doubting Thomases, wild-eyed loons for the most part, and I use the word "loons" advisedly, for at their meetings they all make noises not unlike loons, those birds of the order Gaviiformes, sometimes confused with cormorants by people less expert in ornithology than myself. I can state with quiet and rather compelling confidence that I have never mistaken a loon for a cormorant, nor a cormorant for a loon, and I will pursue through the courts anybody who claims I have, so be very, very careful. Gosh, I really must learn to avoid mentioning birds so early in a piece which is meant to be addressing another subject entirely. Such is my enthusiasm for our avian friends that I get quite carried away, and babble on recklessly, so spirited that I actually forget the existence of full stops, just breathlessly adding phrase after phrase, connected by commas, about loons and cormorants and all sorts of other birds, robins and ducks and even ostriches, until I have completely lost track of what I intended to write about when first I set fingertip to tippytapper, and I am led, or I suppose in truth I should say I lead myself, down unintended bird-haunted paths, for example by saying I lose track, the word "track" makes me think of a rail, and of course a rail, apart from being a track, such as a locomotive might thunder along, is also a type of bird, an entire family of birds in fact, the Rallidae, including the coot and the gallinule and the crake. Ah, crake, Crake! As often happens when one is miffling down the by-ways of ornithology, one is led inexorably back to where one started, in this case, with Cornelius Crake, whose two hundredth birthday we celebrate today. He it was who, as I have mentioned, proved conclusively, or almost conclusively, were it not for a curiously persistent band of wild-eyed loons, the bottomlessness of the Bottomless Viper Pit of Gaar. A country parson who devoted his time equally between the spiritual welfare of his peasant flock and the intense study of pits, Crake first came to public attention with his pamphlet on the Bottomless Viper Pit of Shoeburyness. Written in Latin, with footnotes in Dog Latin and an index in Pig Latin, it was little read, but the front cover caused a sensation. It featured a mezzotint by the nineteenth-century mezzotintist Rexus Tintus, depicting literally millions of vipers writhing in a bottomless pit. "I tried to count each and every viper in this sensational mezzotint," wrote Wilkie Collins, "but there were simply too many of them. And the pit itself was bottomless." Incidentally, did you know that there is no such bird as a "wilkie"? This in spite of the fact that it would make a very suitable name for a bird, as can be proved by pretending it is and trying it out on the tongue. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-11-0329:56fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-10-20Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Two Dinners 04:58 Art Squad 12:09 Guns Before Butter 23:46 Camp Dabbler TWO DINNERS Compare and contrast: a list of the grub rustled up by the Merchant Taylors' Company to welcome Prince Henry into their ranks in the summer of 1607: Swans, godwit, shovellers, partridges, owls, cuckoos, ringdoves, pullets, ducklings, teal, peacocks, rabbits, leverets and a great turkey... along with 1,300 eggs, three great lobsters and 200 prawns, salmon, salt fish, plaice, sole, dory, carp and tenches, sirloins and ribs of beef, mutton and lambs' dowsets, neats' tongues and sweet breads, and to conclude the evening, figs, dates, prunes, currants, almonds, strawberries, gooseberries, cherries, pears, apples, damsons, oranges and quinces. Twenty-eight barrels of beer were provided to slake the diners' thirst, together with more than 440 gallons of wine. from Ben Jonson by Ian Donaldson (2011), reviewed here (thanks to Elberry for the link) The dinner began with a soup of asps in simmering oil. On each side was a dish of vegetables, one containing thistles and burdocks, and the other fuming acid. Other side dishes, of turtles, rats, bats and moles, were garnished with live coals. For the fish course he ate a dish of snakes in boiling tar and pitch. His roast was a screech owl in a sauce of glowing brimstone. The salad proved to be spider webs full of small explosive squibs, a plate of butterfly wings and manna worms, a dish of toads surrounded with flies, crickets, grasshoppers, church beetles, spiders, and caterpillars. He washed all this down with flaming brandy, and for dessert ate the four large candles standing on the table, both of the hanging side lamps with their contents, and finally the large center lamp, oil, wick and all. This leaving the room in darkness, Dufour's face shone out in a mask of living flames. from Miracle Mongers And Their Methods: A Complete Expose Of The Modus Operandi Of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc by Harry Houdini (1921) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-10-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Two Dinners 04:58 Art Squad 12:09 Guns Before Butter 23:46 Camp Dabbler TWO DINNERS Compare and contrast: a list of the grub rustled up by the Merchant Taylors' Company to welcome Prince Henry into their ranks in the summer of 1607: Swans, godwit, shovellers, partridges, owls, cuckoos, ringdoves, pullets, ducklings, teal, peacocks, rabbits, leverets and a great turkey... along with 1,300 eggs, three great lobsters and 200 prawns, salmon, salt fish, plaice, sole, dory, carp and tenches, sirloins and ribs of beef, mutton and lambs' dowsets, neats' tongues and sweet breads, and to conclude the evening, figs, dates, prunes, currants, almonds, strawberries, gooseberries, cherries, pears, apples, damsons, oranges and quinces. Twenty-eight barrels of beer were provided to slake the diners' thirst, together with more than 440 gallons of wine. from Ben Jonson by Ian Donaldson (2011), reviewed here (thanks to Elberry for the link) The dinner began with a soup of asps in simmering oil. On each side was a dish of vegetables, one containing thistles and burdocks, and the other fuming acid. Other side dishes, of turtles, rats, bats and moles, were garnished with live coals. For the fish course he ate a dish of snakes in boiling tar and pitch. His roast was a screech owl in a sauce of glowing brimstone. The salad proved to be spider webs full of small explosive squibs, a plate of butterfly wings and manna worms, a dish of toads surrounded with flies, crickets, grasshoppers, church beetles, spiders, and caterpillars. He washed all this down with flaming brandy, and for dessert ate the four large candles standing on the table, both of the hanging side lamps with their contents, and finally the large center lamp, oil, wick and all. This leaving the room in darkness, Dufour's face shone out in a mask of living flames. from Miracle Mongers And Their Methods: A Complete Expose Of The Modus Operandi Of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc by Harry Houdini (1921) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-10-2030:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-10-13Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 The Distance Between The Aerodrome And The Zoo 04:36 Fifties Finnish Fairground Fun 08:02 Pie Shop Deep Space Six 13:58 Weep, Pontius, For Thou Art Become Noddy 20:42 "For convenience the following list is inserted..." 26:25 Galvanism, Thoroughly Explained THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE AERODROME AND THE ZOO Please note that the distance between the aerodrome and the zoo is very great. It is recommended that you wear a pair of stout hiking boots. When disembarking from the aeroplane, beware of propellers! Try to remain unruffled when presenting your bags for inspection at the customs shed. May the Lord have mercy on your soul. Oops! I forgot to mention that before landing, be sure to pluck the hairs from your chinny chin chin. The regime has grave suspicions about men with beards, and not with reason. The King has spoken, and that is enough. There are twenty-four points of interest between the aerodrome and the zoo, and I wish I could say that they were arranged alphabetically. In a better-ordered Kingdom, they would be. Alas, the designation of the points of interest fell to a Ministry stuffed with illiterates, rough brutes for the most part, but those who found favour with the King through mighty feats of arms. That is why there is a martial aspect to over half the points of interest, meaning that they may not be everybody's cup of tea. There will be enforced stops, however, en route. At each point of interest along the way you will find a kiosk where refreshments may be obtained. Be warned that prices are subject to galloping inflation, so anything I told you now would almost certainly be out of date by the time you embark upon the holiday of a lifetime. It is, sadly, impossible to get from the aerodrome to the zoo without having to make a crossing of the harsh and inhospitable glinka. Everything you have heard about the glinka is true. You will need some kind of protective clothing against the wind. There are creatures in the wind, you will hear the sound of mandolins, and you will want to cling to your darling, for wild is the wind. If your darling is not accompanying you, more's the pity. You will need a pre-stamped ticket to enter the zoo, if you are not torn apart by wolves before you get there. The sentries are chosen for their acuity of vision, and can spot a counterfeit ticket at fifty paces, so do not even think of trying to bluff your way through the magnificent iron gates with a forgery. To labour the point, you will see heads on spikes, their eyes pecked out by birds, all around the perimeter. No holiday would be complete without a sprint around the perimeter of the zoo, incidentally. You may wish to replace your stout hiking boots with a pair of plimsolls. The King's Marshals will be on hand to harry you and hector you, with their pointy lances and their guttural shrieks. The King's cartographers are working hard on an approved route back from the zoo to the aerodrome. Thus far they have not come up with an officially sanctioned itinerary, so there are several holding camps, with rudimentary ersatz-canvas tents and barbed wire in place next to the bog on the far side of the zoo. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-10-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 The Distance Between The Aerodrome And The Zoo 04:36 Fifties Finnish Fairground Fun 08:02 Pie Shop Deep Space Six 13:58 Weep, Pontius, For Thou Art Become Noddy 20:42 "For convenience the following list is inserted..." 26:25 Galvanism, Thoroughly Explained THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE AERODROME AND THE ZOO Please note that the distance between the aerodrome and the zoo is very great. It is recommended that you wear a pair of stout hiking boots. When disembarking from the aeroplane, beware of propellers! Try to remain unruffled when presenting your bags for inspection at the customs shed. May the Lord have mercy on your soul. Oops! I forgot to mention that before landing, be sure to pluck the hairs from your chinny chin chin. The regime has grave suspicions about men with beards, and not with reason. The King has spoken, and that is enough. There are twenty-four points of interest between the aerodrome and the zoo, and I wish I could say that they were arranged alphabetically. In a better-ordered Kingdom, they would be. Alas, the designation of the points of interest fell to a Ministry stuffed with illiterates, rough brutes for the most part, but those who found favour with the King through mighty feats of arms. That is why there is a martial aspect to over half the points of interest, meaning that they may not be everybody's cup of tea. There will be enforced stops, however, en route. At each point of interest along the way you will find a kiosk where refreshments may be obtained. Be warned that prices are subject to galloping inflation, so anything I told you now would almost certainly be out of date by the time you embark upon the holiday of a lifetime. It is, sadly, impossible to get from the aerodrome to the zoo without having to make a crossing of the harsh and inhospitable glinka. Everything you have heard about the glinka is true. You will need some kind of protective clothing against the wind. There are creatures in the wind, you will hear the sound of mandolins, and you will want to cling to your darling, for wild is the wind. If your darling is not accompanying you, more's the pity. You will need a pre-stamped ticket to enter the zoo, if you are not torn apart by wolves before you get there. The sentries are chosen for their acuity of vision, and can spot a counterfeit ticket at fifty paces, so do not even think of trying to bluff your way through the magnificent iron gates with a forgery. To labour the point, you will see heads on spikes, their eyes pecked out by birds, all around the perimeter. No holiday would be complete without a sprint around the perimeter of the zoo, incidentally. You may wish to replace your stout hiking boots with a pair of plimsolls. The King's Marshals will be on hand to harry you and hector you, with their pointy lances and their guttural shrieks. The King's cartographers are working hard on an approved route back from the zoo to the aerodrome. Thus far they have not come up with an officially sanctioned itinerary, so there are several holding camps, with rudimentary ersatz-canvas tents and barbed wire in place next to the bog on the far side of the zoo. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-10-1330:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-10-06Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:38 Curious Dabbling 06:41 The Tyger 14:48 Forgotten Head : A Childhood Memoir 20:03 Real Orghast 22:14 Exercising The Cranial Integuments 25:16 In Pointy Town CURIOUS DABBLING Over at The Dabbler this week I turn my attention to some lesser-known editions of the Bible, as noted by Isaac Disraeli in his Curiosities Of Literature. This is a splendid work, highly recommended to Hooting Yard readers. To take just one essay at random, in Amusements Of The Learned, we are told that When Petavius was employed in his Dogma Thealogiea, a work of the most profound and extensive erudition, the great recreation of the learned father was at the end of every second hour, to twirl his chair for five minutes. Twirling in a seated position wasn't good enough for Cardinal Richelieu. He preferred "violent exercises; and he was once discovered jumping with his servant, to try who could reach the highest side of a wall." Most amusing, perhaps, is the manner in which Baruch Spinoza liked to unwind from his philosophical labours: After protracted studies Spinoza, would... unbend his mind by setting spiders to fight each other; he observed their combats with so much interest, that he was often seized with immoderate fits of laughter. THE TYGER "Ah, Mr Blake. So glad you could make it. Do come in." The man ushering William Blake into his opulent townhouse was a natural philosopher, an alchemist, and the owner of a splendid private menagerie. "I had better make sure you are the right Mr Blake," he gabbled as he steered Blake into the lobby, "You are the poet and engraver and angel-spotter and occasional nudist?" William Blake nodded in affirmation. "Good, good," said his host, "Let us go then, you and I. Come into the garden, Maud, ha ha!, to quote a pair of poems yet unwritten." Blake's eyes boggled as he entered the garden at the back of the townhouse. It was a teeming profusion of vegetation, wild and uncultivated. "It is like a forest," he said. "It is not like a forest, Mr Blake. It is a forest!" said the other, and when he spoke, from somewhere in the garden came the howling of monkeys and the cawing of strange exotic birds. "But this is what I have brought you to see, Mr Blake," and he pointed towards a great stone slab surrounded by choking weeds, upon which was heaped a pile of kindling. "If, Mr Blake, you are thinking that it looks like a funeral pyre, you are correct. But we must wait for nightfall. Come, let us repair to the gazebo and drink lemonade." And as William Blake drank from a pewter tankard of lemonade in the gazebo, his companion told him a startling thing. "In the course of my alchemical researches, Mr Blake, I had occasion to discover an elixir, of potable gold and several other ingredients, the drinking of which, unlike this lemonade, has conferred upon me eternal youth. I cannot die. I am immortal!" Blake could only gawp. The sun sank below the horizon. "At last it is night time!" said his host, "Come, let us return to the great stone slab! My assistant, Mungo, should be waiting for us there." As indeed he was, a shrivelled and hunchbacked monstrosity with one mad eye. Blake noticed that he was holding a length of chain, the other end of which was concealed in the shrubbery. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-10-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:38 Curious Dabbling 06:41 The Tyger 14:48 Forgotten Head : A Childhood Memoir 20:03 Real Orghast 22:14 Exercising The Cranial Integuments 25:16 In Pointy Town CURIOUS DABBLING Over at The Dabbler this week I turn my attention to some lesser-known editions of the Bible, as noted by Isaac Disraeli in his Curiosities Of Literature. This is a splendid work, highly recommended to Hooting Yard readers. To take just one essay at random, in Amusements Of The Learned, we are told that When Petavius was employed in his Dogma Thealogiea, a work of the most profound and extensive erudition, the great recreation of the learned father was at the end of every second hour, to twirl his chair for five minutes. Twirling in a seated position wasn't good enough for Cardinal Richelieu. He preferred "violent exercises; and he was once discovered jumping with his servant, to try who could reach the highest side of a wall." Most amusing, perhaps, is the manner in which Baruch Spinoza liked to unwind from his philosophical labours: After protracted studies Spinoza, would... unbend his mind by setting spiders to fight each other; he observed their combats with so much interest, that he was often seized with immoderate fits of laughter. THE TYGER "Ah, Mr Blake. So glad you could make it. Do come in." The man ushering William Blake into his opulent townhouse was a natural philosopher, an alchemist, and the owner of a splendid private menagerie. "I had better make sure you are the right Mr Blake," he gabbled as he steered Blake into the lobby, "You are the poet and engraver and angel-spotter and occasional nudist?" William Blake nodded in affirmation. "Good, good," said his host, "Let us go then, you and I. Come into the garden, Maud, ha ha!, to quote a pair of poems yet unwritten." Blake's eyes boggled as he entered the garden at the back of the townhouse. It was a teeming profusion of vegetation, wild and uncultivated. "It is like a forest," he said. "It is not like a forest, Mr Blake. It is a forest!" said the other, and when he spoke, from somewhere in the garden came the howling of monkeys and the cawing of strange exotic birds. "But this is what I have brought you to see, Mr Blake," and he pointed towards a great stone slab surrounded by choking weeds, upon which was heaped a pile of kindling. "If, Mr Blake, you are thinking that it looks like a funeral pyre, you are correct. But we must wait for nightfall. Come, let us repair to the gazebo and drink lemonade." And as William Blake drank from a pewter tankard of lemonade in the gazebo, his companion told him a startling thing. "In the course of my alchemical researches, Mr Blake, I had occasion to discover an elixir, of potable gold and several other ingredients, the drinking of which, unlike this lemonade, has conferred upon me eternal youth. I cannot die. I am immortal!" Blake could only gawp. The sun sank below the horizon. "At last it is night time!" said his host, "Come, let us return to the great stone slab! My assistant, Mungo, should be waiting for us there." As indeed he was, a shrivelled and hunchbacked monstrosity with one mad eye. Blake noticed that he was holding a length of chain, the other end of which was concealed in the shrubbery. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-10-0628:09fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-09-22Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--XIV 07:58 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--XV 14:31 Born To Boogie? 18:46 Heroes In The Seaweed OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--XIV Minnie had chosen well in Potcap. Everything went according to plan. Aloysius Batlip supplied a tiny cadet named Vig, who scurried among the mourners with the funeral schedule, ticking off the names, logging the times, counting the animals, and ensuring that Minnie's wishes were met to the letter. As she had expected, the Reverend Chew's sermon was the centrepiece of the funeral. His ovation lasted for thirteen and three quarter minutes. He stood poised in the pulpit of the Gravelflap auditorium, and as the rustle of applause finally died, he peered over his sinister spectacles at the twenty-six mourners, cleared his throat, and began to speak. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in memory of Lars Talc. How can I, in my treacly voice, do justice to the memory of such a man? I could tell you the story of his life, but he was ninety-four, and it would take days, even weeks, to recount even the merest essentials. Were I to pick only selected, epiphanic incidents--the reinvention of bleach, the ascent of the mountain at Hoon, a fist-fight with a bus conductor, the creation of the postage stamp zoo--I would be imposing on the memory of his life a partial, fragmentary view which would be irreconcilable with the mighty genius he was. It will not do. What, then? It has been suggested to me that I could sing all one hundred and fourteen works from his magisterial songbook. But how could my puny, fluting tones equal the bliss of hearing Talc perform them himself? And, thanks to Minnie, we have the tape recordings. No, a recital by me would be quite, quite unendurable. How to get the measure of the man? Take you on a tour through his wardrobe? Read snatches from his books? Tell childhood anecdotes? Bluster? Gabble? Gibber? Hold up his example as a paragon of what it means to be a Finn? To be human? None of these will suffice. "So let me say this. He owed me a great deal of money. He was covered in dust. He couldn't tell the difference between a heron & a moorhen. He never learned the rules of ice hockey. He was often plagued by mysterious boils. He had a scar on his left shin. He confused the different metallic elements. His hair was often unkempt. He set fire to a Bible. His pigs were neglected. Adept at ping pong, he weighted his bat. He once suffered from scrofula. His tent had many holes. He never wore a hat. His gas bills drove him crackers. He spoke umpteen languages. His mother told me he was terrified of swans. Geology was beyond him. He hankered for doilies. He counted toads. His bath was made of tin. His first marriage was disastrous. He could not ride a bicycle. He spat out mayonnaise. He avoided paying for hotel rooms by clambering down fire escapes. Once he built his own bridge. He burned himself in effigy. He loved to eat turnips. He often drooled. His thumbs were deformed. Rust and rime engaged his attention. He was much travelled. He designed his own pen-nibs. He kept a photograph of Ricardo Montalban in his bureau. His eyesight was atrocious. Candles have been lit for him. His credentials were spotless. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-09-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--XIV 07:58 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--XV 14:31 Born To Boogie? 18:46 Heroes In The Seaweed OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--XIV Minnie had chosen well in Potcap. Everything went according to plan. Aloysius Batlip supplied a tiny cadet named Vig, who scurried among the mourners with the funeral schedule, ticking off the names, logging the times, counting the animals, and ensuring that Minnie's wishes were met to the letter. As she had expected, the Reverend Chew's sermon was the centrepiece of the funeral. His ovation lasted for thirteen and three quarter minutes. He stood poised in the pulpit of the Gravelflap auditorium, and as the rustle of applause finally died, he peered over his sinister spectacles at the twenty-six mourners, cleared his throat, and began to speak. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in memory of Lars Talc. How can I, in my treacly voice, do justice to the memory of such a man? I could tell you the story of his life, but he was ninety-four, and it would take days, even weeks, to recount even the merest essentials. Were I to pick only selected, epiphanic incidents--the reinvention of bleach, the ascent of the mountain at Hoon, a fist-fight with a bus conductor, the creation of the postage stamp zoo--I would be imposing on the memory of his life a partial, fragmentary view which would be irreconcilable with the mighty genius he was. It will not do. What, then? It has been suggested to me that I could sing all one hundred and fourteen works from his magisterial songbook. But how could my puny, fluting tones equal the bliss of hearing Talc perform them himself? And, thanks to Minnie, we have the tape recordings. No, a recital by me would be quite, quite unendurable. How to get the measure of the man? Take you on a tour through his wardrobe? Read snatches from his books? Tell childhood anecdotes? Bluster? Gabble? Gibber? Hold up his example as a paragon of what it means to be a Finn? To be human? None of these will suffice. "So let me say this. He owed me a great deal of money. He was covered in dust. He couldn't tell the difference between a heron & a moorhen. He never learned the rules of ice hockey. He was often plagued by mysterious boils. He had a scar on his left shin. He confused the different metallic elements. His hair was often unkempt. He set fire to a Bible. His pigs were neglected. Adept at ping pong, he weighted his bat. He once suffered from scrofula. His tent had many holes. He never wore a hat. His gas bills drove him crackers. He spoke umpteen languages. His mother told me he was terrified of swans. Geology was beyond him. He hankered for doilies. He counted toads. His bath was made of tin. His first marriage was disastrous. He could not ride a bicycle. He spat out mayonnaise. He avoided paying for hotel rooms by clambering down fire escapes. Once he built his own bridge. He burned himself in effigy. He loved to eat turnips. He often drooled. His thumbs were deformed. Rust and rime engaged his attention. He was much travelled. He designed his own pen-nibs. He kept a photograph of Ricardo Montalban in his bureau. His eyesight was atrocious. Candles have been lit for him. His credentials were spotless. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-09-2230:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-09-08Thu, 08 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--VIII 04:05 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--IX 16:24 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--X 21:03 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--XI OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--VIII On the morning of the second Tuesday in July, as Lars Talc was passing along the Avenue Ack on his way to the scientifico-medical club, a mighty thunderstorm was blasting the heavens, booming in gong-sounds. The lightning was very slender and nimble, and as if playing very near. Flashes lacing two clouds above or a cloud and the earth started upon the eyes in live veins of rincing or riddling liquid white, inched and jagged as if it were the shivering of a bright riband string which had once been kept bound round a blade and danced back into its pleating. Several strong thrills of light followed each flash but a grey smother of Finnish darkness blotted the eyes if they had seen the fork, and dull furry thickened scapes of it were left in them. At fourteen minutes past nine, high above Talc, a cloud charged with positive electricity unleashed a bolt of lightning towards the negatively-charged earth upon which he trod. The lightning flew from side to side, forking through the thinnest air, and sought, near the ground, a splendid conductor, which it found in a wee sliver of tungsten, or wolfram, embedded by Bewg in the bony core of the talismanic horn which Talc carried in the breast pocket of his dashing blazer. From there, the lightning bolt zipped across Talc's chest, through one of his metal buttons, down to the buckle of his belt, shot through his right leg, ankle, and foot, and crashed into the waiting earth. Moments later, Talc, too, toppled to the ground. His eyes were bulging, his brain was a fuzzing jelly, his limbs were at once numbed yet quivering, twitching, spastic. Burned striae on his flesh sizzled hotly. His gaze fixed upon the Finnish heavens, he thought of musketry, tickets, bunny rabbits, a well, fjords, ig, Minnie, ping pong, Bewg, the horn, Marseilles, his songbook, Chodd, angels, adjutants, penk, a motorboat, dappled things, dim things, destruction, defiance, dolour, dust, and death. He expired at fourteen and a half minutes past nine in the morning, on the second Tuesday in July, struck by lightning on the Avenue Ack, on his way to a scientifico-medical club he had joined by dint of intrigue. OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--IX […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-09-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--VIII 04:05 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--IX 16:24 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--X 21:03 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--XI OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--VIII On the morning of the second Tuesday in July, as Lars Talc was passing along the Avenue Ack on his way to the scientifico-medical club, a mighty thunderstorm was blasting the heavens, booming in gong-sounds. The lightning was very slender and nimble, and as if playing very near. Flashes lacing two clouds above or a cloud and the earth started upon the eyes in live veins of rincing or riddling liquid white, inched and jagged as if it were the shivering of a bright riband string which had once been kept bound round a blade and danced back into its pleating. Several strong thrills of light followed each flash but a grey smother of Finnish darkness blotted the eyes if they had seen the fork, and dull furry thickened scapes of it were left in them. At fourteen minutes past nine, high above Talc, a cloud charged with positive electricity unleashed a bolt of lightning towards the negatively-charged earth upon which he trod. The lightning flew from side to side, forking through the thinnest air, and sought, near the ground, a splendid conductor, which it found in a wee sliver of tungsten, or wolfram, embedded by Bewg in the bony core of the talismanic horn which Talc carried in the breast pocket of his dashing blazer. From there, the lightning bolt zipped across Talc's chest, through one of his metal buttons, down to the buckle of his belt, shot through his right leg, ankle, and foot, and crashed into the waiting earth. Moments later, Talc, too, toppled to the ground. His eyes were bulging, his brain was a fuzzing jelly, his limbs were at once numbed yet quivering, twitching, spastic. Burned striae on his flesh sizzled hotly. His gaze fixed upon the Finnish heavens, he thought of musketry, tickets, bunny rabbits, a well, fjords, ig, Minnie, ping pong, Bewg, the horn, Marseilles, his songbook, Chodd, angels, adjutants, penk, a motorboat, dappled things, dim things, destruction, defiance, dolour, dust, and death. He expired at fourteen and a half minutes past nine in the morning, on the second Tuesday in July, struck by lightning on the Avenue Ack, on his way to a scientifico-medical club he had joined by dint of intrigue. OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--IX […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-09-0829:53fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-09-01Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--V 08:08 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--VI 18:50 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--VII OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--V Dr Franklin first showed that lightning is the same as the electricity made by the electrical machine. As the electricity of the electrical machine is got by rubbing glass, so much of the electricity of the air is caused by the rubbing of moist air against dry air. A great deal is made by the turning into vapour or mist of the salt water of the ocean by the sun's heat or the blowing of the wind. More water is turned into vapour during the heat of summer and autumn than in winter, and this is why there is more lightning in warm than in cold weather. There is always a good deal of electricity n the air, and in clear weather it is generally positive electricity, but during fogs, rains, or snows it is usually negative electricity, though it changes often. It sometimes happens that two clouds, one charged with positive electricity and the other with negative electricity, come near each other, and then the two kinds of electricity rub together, when a flash of lightning is seen, and thunder is heard. The lightning is the same thing as the spark from an electrical machine, the only difference being that a flash of lightning is sometimes several miles long, and the spark only a few inches. The little spark gives out only a snapping sound, but if we were able to make a spark as large as a flash of lightning, it would cause as much noise as thunder. When a cloud filled with one kind of electricity comes near the earth while the earth is filled with electricity of the opposite kind, the cloud may discharge its electricity to the earth. If any tall object, such as a tree, a steeple, or a house, happens to be near where the cloud discharges, the electricity will often pass down it to the earth. In this way houses are sometimes injured and set on fire, and great trees are split up into small pieces. Sometimes, too, human beings and animals are struck and killed. It is not safe, therefore, to stand under a tree or close to a high house during a thunder-storm. We see lightning in several different forms; sometimes its flash is straight, sometimes it is forked or zig-zag, sometimes it is round like a ball, and sometimes it spreads over the clouds like a sheet of fire. When a thunder-cloud is near the earth the flash comes straight down to the earth, because there is but little air for it to pass through, but when the cloud is a considerable distance from the earth, the air in the path of the lightning is made denser or thicker by being pushed together, and as lightning can pass quicker through thin than through thick air, it flies from side to side so as to pass where it is thinnest. Thus its path is zig-zag or forked. When there is a very great charge of electricity in a cloud it sometimes forces its way through the air in the shape of a ball. What is called sheet lightning is either the reflection or shine on clouds of a stroke of zig-zag lightning which is too far off to be seen, or light discharges of electricity from clouds which have not enough to cause zig-zag lightning. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-09-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--V 08:08 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--VI 18:50 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--VII OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--V Dr Franklin first showed that lightning is the same as the electricity made by the electrical machine. As the electricity of the electrical machine is got by rubbing glass, so much of the electricity of the air is caused by the rubbing of moist air against dry air. A great deal is made by the turning into vapour or mist of the salt water of the ocean by the sun's heat or the blowing of the wind. More water is turned into vapour during the heat of summer and autumn than in winter, and this is why there is more lightning in warm than in cold weather. There is always a good deal of electricity n the air, and in clear weather it is generally positive electricity, but during fogs, rains, or snows it is usually negative electricity, though it changes often. It sometimes happens that two clouds, one charged with positive electricity and the other with negative electricity, come near each other, and then the two kinds of electricity rub together, when a flash of lightning is seen, and thunder is heard. The lightning is the same thing as the spark from an electrical machine, the only difference being that a flash of lightning is sometimes several miles long, and the spark only a few inches. The little spark gives out only a snapping sound, but if we were able to make a spark as large as a flash of lightning, it would cause as much noise as thunder. When a cloud filled with one kind of electricity comes near the earth while the earth is filled with electricity of the opposite kind, the cloud may discharge its electricity to the earth. If any tall object, such as a tree, a steeple, or a house, happens to be near where the cloud discharges, the electricity will often pass down it to the earth. In this way houses are sometimes injured and set on fire, and great trees are split up into small pieces. Sometimes, too, human beings and animals are struck and killed. It is not safe, therefore, to stand under a tree or close to a high house during a thunder-storm. We see lightning in several different forms; sometimes its flash is straight, sometimes it is forked or zig-zag, sometimes it is round like a ball, and sometimes it spreads over the clouds like a sheet of fire. When a thunder-cloud is near the earth the flash comes straight down to the earth, because there is but little air for it to pass through, but when the cloud is a considerable distance from the earth, the air in the path of the lightning is made denser or thicker by being pushed together, and as lightning can pass quicker through thin than through thick air, it flies from side to side so as to pass where it is thinnest. Thus its path is zig-zag or forked. When there is a very great charge of electricity in a cloud it sometimes forces its way through the air in the shape of a ball. What is called sheet lightning is either the reflection or shine on clouds of a stroke of zig-zag lightning which is too far off to be seen, or light discharges of electricity from clouds which have not enough to cause zig-zag lightning. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-09-0129:42fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-25Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--III 12:55 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--IV OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--III "Thursday," he wrote in his journal, "I could not stomach breakfast. Minnie reproached me. She has been hiding my socks again, God blast her! Today I found them in the coal-shed, after an hour's search. An hour I could have better spent mulling over Bewg's latest clue, which seems to be utterly without meaning. I spent much of the morning polishing off my paper on musketry. The post brought an anonymous letter, accusing me of having joined the scientifico-medical club by dint of intrigue, and threatening exposure unless I paid an unwarrantable sum of money into a secret bank account. I tore the letter to shreds in fury. Exposure? Intrigue? Dint? "After lunch, as I was about to settle to some serious Bewg-related musings, I was further distracted by a visit from Chodd. Apparently, I was meant to have completed by today the design for the new Electro-Magnetic Apparatus Museum tickets. The opening is next month and before then the Committee has to approve my design and get billions of the confounded things printed. I admitted to Chodd that this task had completely slipped my mind. I do not know why on earth I was asked to do it. To show willing, I fetched from the crate in the goose-shed my Simplified Ticket Design Handbook, and also dug out a few rough sketches I had made last time I designed some tickets (for the Small Zoo Railway) about forty years ago. "Chodd was contemptuous. His small flat ears, which poke out from his head at a grotesque angle, turned purple with irritability. I badgered him for information. What size should the tickets be? How many colours were permissible? Would the tickets be perforated and torn from a large sheet, or pre-snipped? What fonts were available? I realised I should have sought all this information earlier, and Chodd realised it too, and used my ignorance against me, spitting into my mahogany spittoon with undisguised venom. When eventually I had sketched a design which I thought perfectly adequate "Chodd had the nerve to insist that a separate design was necessary for the reduced-rate entry fee for children. Bah! Children! What do they care for Electro-Magnetism? It was my turn to spit, but I did as I was bid. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--III 12:55 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--IV OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--III "Thursday," he wrote in his journal, "I could not stomach breakfast. Minnie reproached me. She has been hiding my socks again, God blast her! Today I found them in the coal-shed, after an hour's search. An hour I could have better spent mulling over Bewg's latest clue, which seems to be utterly without meaning. I spent much of the morning polishing off my paper on musketry. The post brought an anonymous letter, accusing me of having joined the scientifico-medical club by dint of intrigue, and threatening exposure unless I paid an unwarrantable sum of money into a secret bank account. I tore the letter to shreds in fury. Exposure? Intrigue? Dint? "After lunch, as I was about to settle to some serious Bewg-related musings, I was further distracted by a visit from Chodd. Apparently, I was meant to have completed by today the design for the new Electro-Magnetic Apparatus Museum tickets. The opening is next month and before then the Committee has to approve my design and get billions of the confounded things printed. I admitted to Chodd that this task had completely slipped my mind. I do not know why on earth I was asked to do it. To show willing, I fetched from the crate in the goose-shed my Simplified Ticket Design Handbook, and also dug out a few rough sketches I had made last time I designed some tickets (for the Small Zoo Railway) about forty years ago. "Chodd was contemptuous. His small flat ears, which poke out from his head at a grotesque angle, turned purple with irritability. I badgered him for information. What size should the tickets be? How many colours were permissible? Would the tickets be perforated and torn from a large sheet, or pre-snipped? What fonts were available? I realised I should have sought all this information earlier, and Chodd realised it too, and used my ignorance against me, spitting into my mahogany spittoon with undisguised venom. When eventually I had sketched a design which I thought perfectly adequate "Chodd had the nerve to insist that a separate design was necessary for the reduced-rate entry fee for children. Bah! Children! What do they care for Electro-Magnetism? It was my turn to spit, but I did as I was bid. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-2526:49fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-18Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--I 13:39 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--II OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--I Lars Talc was passing along the Avenue Ack, on his way to a certain scientifico-medical club founded by a philanthropist, which he had succeeded in joining by dint of intrigue. He knew that at noon, at the close of the meeting, each member, after drawing lots, would be given a reconnoitering trail to follow, baited with an interesting prize. He had last taken part in this escapade the previous month--stormy June--and still kept, tucked in his blazer pocket, the prize he had managed to track down over eleven excruciating days. The philanthropist himself was unable to distribute the prize trails, as he was plagued with whitlows and other complaints. Indeed, he rarely attended the meetings any more, and when he did, he crouched in the darkest corner of the chamber, sucking boiled sweets and tugging at his matted hair. He had assigned the job of presiding over the meetings, and handing out the reconnoitering trails, to his assistant, Bewg. Bewg was astonishingly tall, almost a freak, and wore a cardboard hat which he covered with cellophane during rainstorms. Ignorant of science and medicine--and of virtually everything else--he was nonetheless masterly as the club's president, for reasons which will become apparent. What else is there to say about him for the present? His eyes were different colours (violet and puce); he was fond of badgers; he had once pole-vaulted for his country, and won a medal. Bear in mind that this story is set in Finland. The scientifico-medical club--its exact name is unknown--had been established by the philanthropist twelve years ago. It met on the second Tuesday of every month, in chambers let by a circus impresario. Usually the members would gather in the outer room, cold and pokey and crammed with a bewildering agglomeration of worm-eaten furniture. There were so many tables, chairs, chaises longues, escritoires, tallboys, bureaux, umbrella-stands, reliquaries, trestles, musnuds, pallets, brackets, hammocks, bins, easels, divans, dressers, wardrobes and bunks in the room, all of them ready to crumble to dust, that the eleven members of the club, haplessly wedged between cots and benches as they sipped their tumblers of hooch, let out yelps of glee when, at last, Bewg unlatched the door of the inner chamber and admitted them to the meeting room. This was more spacious, though colder, and virtually empty of furnishings, save for a dozen exquisitely comfortable armchairs, a small side-table, a display cabinet, and a lectern. Finnish timber burned in the grate, but Bewg insisted on throwing all the windows open. The room was cold even at the height of summer, what with certain architectural niceties, air-draughts, and the northern climate. The members sank into their armchairs, Bewg handed out the agenda, and the meeting began. Last month, Hairgrub had delivered his paper on muskotti (nutmeg). As ever, he was puckish. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--I 13:39 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--II OBSEQUIES FOR LARS TALC, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING--I Lars Talc was passing along the Avenue Ack, on his way to a certain scientifico-medical club founded by a philanthropist, which he had succeeded in joining by dint of intrigue. He knew that at noon, at the close of the meeting, each member, after drawing lots, would be given a reconnoitering trail to follow, baited with an interesting prize. He had last taken part in this escapade the previous month--stormy June--and still kept, tucked in his blazer pocket, the prize he had managed to track down over eleven excruciating days. The philanthropist himself was unable to distribute the prize trails, as he was plagued with whitlows and other complaints. Indeed, he rarely attended the meetings any more, and when he did, he crouched in the darkest corner of the chamber, sucking boiled sweets and tugging at his matted hair. He had assigned the job of presiding over the meetings, and handing out the reconnoitering trails, to his assistant, Bewg. Bewg was astonishingly tall, almost a freak, and wore a cardboard hat which he covered with cellophane during rainstorms. Ignorant of science and medicine--and of virtually everything else--he was nonetheless masterly as the club's president, for reasons which will become apparent. What else is there to say about him for the present? His eyes were different colours (violet and puce); he was fond of badgers; he had once pole-vaulted for his country, and won a medal. Bear in mind that this story is set in Finland. The scientifico-medical club--its exact name is unknown--had been established by the philanthropist twelve years ago. It met on the second Tuesday of every month, in chambers let by a circus impresario. Usually the members would gather in the outer room, cold and pokey and crammed with a bewildering agglomeration of worm-eaten furniture. There were so many tables, chairs, chaises longues, escritoires, tallboys, bureaux, umbrella-stands, reliquaries, trestles, musnuds, pallets, brackets, hammocks, bins, easels, divans, dressers, wardrobes and bunks in the room, all of them ready to crumble to dust, that the eleven members of the club, haplessly wedged between cots and benches as they sipped their tumblers of hooch, let out yelps of glee when, at last, Bewg unlatched the door of the inner chamber and admitted them to the meeting room. This was more spacious, though colder, and virtually empty of furnishings, save for a dozen exquisitely comfortable armchairs, a small side-table, a display cabinet, and a lectern. Finnish timber burned in the grate, but Bewg insisted on throwing all the windows open. The room was cold even at the height of summer, what with certain architectural niceties, air-draughts, and the northern climate. The members sank into their armchairs, Bewg handed out the agenda, and the meeting began. Last month, Hairgrub had delivered his paper on muskotti (nutmeg). As ever, he was puckish. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-1828:34fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-11Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Little Stint 07:41 The Care And Feeding Of Pigtapes 13:19 William Tell : Third Statement Of Particulars 21:42 The Cruel Sea THE LITTLE STINT Dear Mr Key, writes Tzipi Blankette, I recently stumbled upon your Hooting Yard website and so enthralling did I find it that, using clever speed-reading techniques, I have read the entire contents, dating back to 2003, in a matter of hours. What has particularly impressed me is your tremendous erudition on the subject of birds. I have always been interested in ornithology, passionately so, but my knowledge of the subject is scant and flimsy. I can honestly say I have learned more through speed-reading your work than from any other birdy source at which I have supped, to put it poetically. Yes, Mr Key, I confess I am something of a poet. The reason I am being so bold as to write to you is that I am currently working on a sonnet sequence about little stints. I know almost nothing of the little stint, but I read carefully your postage yesterday, where you gave, in a footnote, an explanation of the term "unstinting". I would be enormously grateful if you could expand upon this, and perhaps share with a poor Plathian versifier your boundless knowledge of this tiny wading bird. Yours sincerely, Tzipi Blankette. I often receive letters from bird-ignorant readers in awe of my avian learning. Usually, I cast them straight into the pneumatic waste chute, because, quite frankly, if I replied to them all I would never get any other work done, and our feathered friends are just one teensy weensy fragment among my many and varied interests, which also include the Kennedy Assassination, the Hindenburg Disaster, eggs and bees, to name but four. It so happened, however, that Ms Blankette's letter plopped through the letterbox just as I was putting the finishing touches to my new book, Crush Your Business Rivals By Unleashing Your Inner Little Stint. This is the first in a series of management guides for top CEOs which I hope will be bestsellers in the burgeoning market for management guides for top CEOs. Unfortunately for Ms Blankette, however, I have already signed a contract with a global publishing concern specialising in management guides for top CEOs, under the terms of which I am unable to reproduce any of the text on this website. The book itself will contain ninety-nine percent of my knowledge of the little stint, so all I am able to do here to help out the fledgling poetess is to cobble together a few dribs and drabs that didn't quite make it into my manuscript. Under no circumstances must you confuse the little stint with Temminck's stint. Try to remember the wise old rustic saying "When it comes to stints, there are two words / The little and Temminck are different birds". Having said that, matters are confused further by the fact that not only are there two words for the two different stints, but there are dozens of other words for the little stint itself, depending on where you are in the world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Little Stint 07:41 The Care And Feeding Of Pigtapes 13:19 William Tell : Third Statement Of Particulars 21:42 The Cruel Sea THE LITTLE STINT Dear Mr Key, writes Tzipi Blankette, I recently stumbled upon your Hooting Yard website and so enthralling did I find it that, using clever speed-reading techniques, I have read the entire contents, dating back to 2003, in a matter of hours. What has particularly impressed me is your tremendous erudition on the subject of birds. I have always been interested in ornithology, passionately so, but my knowledge of the subject is scant and flimsy. I can honestly say I have learned more through speed-reading your work than from any other birdy source at which I have supped, to put it poetically. Yes, Mr Key, I confess I am something of a poet. The reason I am being so bold as to write to you is that I am currently working on a sonnet sequence about little stints. I know almost nothing of the little stint, but I read carefully your postage yesterday, where you gave, in a footnote, an explanation of the term "unstinting". I would be enormously grateful if you could expand upon this, and perhaps share with a poor Plathian versifier your boundless knowledge of this tiny wading bird. Yours sincerely, Tzipi Blankette. I often receive letters from bird-ignorant readers in awe of my avian learning. Usually, I cast them straight into the pneumatic waste chute, because, quite frankly, if I replied to them all I would never get any other work done, and our feathered friends are just one teensy weensy fragment among my many and varied interests, which also include the Kennedy Assassination, the Hindenburg Disaster, eggs and bees, to name but four. It so happened, however, that Ms Blankette's letter plopped through the letterbox just as I was putting the finishing touches to my new book, Crush Your Business Rivals By Unleashing Your Inner Little Stint. This is the first in a series of management guides for top CEOs which I hope will be bestsellers in the burgeoning market for management guides for top CEOs. Unfortunately for Ms Blankette, however, I have already signed a contract with a global publishing concern specialising in management guides for top CEOs, under the terms of which I am unable to reproduce any of the text on this website. The book itself will contain ninety-nine percent of my knowledge of the little stint, so all I am able to do here to help out the fledgling poetess is to cobble together a few dribs and drabs that didn't quite make it into my manuscript. Under no circumstances must you confuse the little stint with Temminck's stint. Try to remember the wise old rustic saying "When it comes to stints, there are two words / The little and Temminck are different birds". Having said that, matters are confused further by the fact that not only are there two words for the two different stints, but there are dozens of other words for the little stint itself, depending on where you are in the world. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-1129:50fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-04Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Marzipan Wolf 04:53 Athlete Wrestling With A Python MARZIPAN WOLF A life-size marzipan wolf makes a splendid teatime treat at gatherings of the extended family. For smaller kinship grouplets, it can be portioned up and served piecemeal after supper over several days, or even weeks, depending on the portion sizes. The first thing to do is to commandeer the kitchen, together with any adjacent pantries, larders and icehouses. If you employ skivvies, drive them out, with a broom if necessary. They can busy themselves awhile in an outbuilding or annexe, or you can just dismiss them, with or without character references. Bear in mind, however, that when you have finished making your life-size marzipan wolf you will probably want the skivvies back in the kitchen, toiling through all the hours God sends, so whatever you decide to do, treat them with kindness, or at least what passes for kindness in your bleak forbidding grim authoritarian household. Next, acquire a large glob of marzipan. It should be at least the size, if not the shape, of an average adult wolf. If you are not sure what that is, make study of wolves, for example by combing through reference books, preferably illustrated, by watching informative documentary films at the local fleapit, or by stalking the heaths and moors at dead of night. Remember that in moonlight it can be difficult to judge distance, so get as close to any pack of heath or moorland wolves as you possibly can. Wear dark clothing and night-vision goggles, if they are available in your neck of the woods. Once you are alone in your kitchen with a wolf-size glob of marzipan on the countertop, you can proceed to mould it into the shape of a wolf. The basic idea is to go for absolute verisimilitude, so that the members of your extended family or smaller kinship grouplet do a double-take. "My oh my! What on earth is a wolf doing, sitting there without a care in the world on an enormous cake-stand in the middle of the dining table?" they will exclaim, before blinking a couple of times and adding, "Oh! Silly me! Look, it is all yellow and made out of marzipan!" It can be a very tricky effect to pull off successfully, especially if you are cack-handed. Nor should you even begin the project if you are suffering from delirium tremens or from any other condition which causes you to shake uncontrollably, such as having recently spent five hours atop a vibrating platform or watched a terrifying non-documentary film about spooks and ghosties and monsters at the local fleapit. Steady-handed, then, mould the marzipan accordingly, and place it on the aforementioned enormous cake-stand in the middle of your dining table. You are now ready to throw open the doors of the dining room and beckon your extended family or smaller kinship grouplet, who will be lounging around in the parlour glugging sherry and exchanging anecdotes, or, if puritanical, as they probably are given the bleak forbidding grim authoritarian nature of your household, sipping from tumblers of tap water and frowning in silence. Bon appetit! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Marzipan Wolf 04:53 Athlete Wrestling With A Python MARZIPAN WOLF A life-size marzipan wolf makes a splendid teatime treat at gatherings of the extended family. For smaller kinship grouplets, it can be portioned up and served piecemeal after supper over several days, or even weeks, depending on the portion sizes. The first thing to do is to commandeer the kitchen, together with any adjacent pantries, larders and icehouses. If you employ skivvies, drive them out, with a broom if necessary. They can busy themselves awhile in an outbuilding or annexe, or you can just dismiss them, with or without character references. Bear in mind, however, that when you have finished making your life-size marzipan wolf you will probably want the skivvies back in the kitchen, toiling through all the hours God sends, so whatever you decide to do, treat them with kindness, or at least what passes for kindness in your bleak forbidding grim authoritarian household. Next, acquire a large glob of marzipan. It should be at least the size, if not the shape, of an average adult wolf. If you are not sure what that is, make study of wolves, for example by combing through reference books, preferably illustrated, by watching informative documentary films at the local fleapit, or by stalking the heaths and moors at dead of night. Remember that in moonlight it can be difficult to judge distance, so get as close to any pack of heath or moorland wolves as you possibly can. Wear dark clothing and night-vision goggles, if they are available in your neck of the woods. Once you are alone in your kitchen with a wolf-size glob of marzipan on the countertop, you can proceed to mould it into the shape of a wolf. The basic idea is to go for absolute verisimilitude, so that the members of your extended family or smaller kinship grouplet do a double-take. "My oh my! What on earth is a wolf doing, sitting there without a care in the world on an enormous cake-stand in the middle of the dining table?" they will exclaim, before blinking a couple of times and adding, "Oh! Silly me! Look, it is all yellow and made out of marzipan!" It can be a very tricky effect to pull off successfully, especially if you are cack-handed. Nor should you even begin the project if you are suffering from delirium tremens or from any other condition which causes you to shake uncontrollably, such as having recently spent five hours atop a vibrating platform or watched a terrifying non-documentary film about spooks and ghosties and monsters at the local fleapit. Steady-handed, then, mould the marzipan accordingly, and place it on the aforementioned enormous cake-stand in the middle of your dining table. You are now ready to throw open the doors of the dining room and beckon your extended family or smaller kinship grouplet, who will be lounging around in the parlour glugging sherry and exchanging anecdotes, or, if puritanical, as they probably are given the bleak forbidding grim authoritarian nature of your household, sipping from tumblers of tap water and frowning in silence. Bon appetit! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-08-0427:53fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-07-28Thu, 28 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:14 Dobson In A Mosh Pit 19:54 Ambrose And Ploppo 21:33 Urgh DOBSON IN A MOSH PIT "I think," said Dobson, at breakfast one foul and rain-sodden Tuesday morning, "It is time we had our own mosh pit." Marigold Chew raised an eyebrow. "Do you actually know what a mosh pit is?" she asked. "Not exactly," replied the twentieth century's greatest out of print pamphleteer, "But I suspect it would be a good use of that part of the garden overhung by laburnum and sycamore and larch. You know that patch o'er which hangs leafage so dense that it is forever in shadow, and is home to brambles and nettles and dockweed. I cannot even remember the last time I sat or stood in it nor even walked through it, nor can I recall ever seeing you doing so, O cherished one. It is unused ground, and no ground ought to be unused on this earth, according to some authorities." "Which authorities might they be, Dobson?" asked Marigold Chew. "I think there is a maxim to that effect in the Maxims of Bombastus Dogend, or I could be thinking of Listerine Optrex, also a great one for maxims. I can check later." "So let me get this straight," said Marigold Chew, marshalling with her fork the last few caraway seeds on her breakfast plate, "You intend to dig a pit in a shady arbour in the garden, and dub it a mosh pit, without any clear understanding--without any understanding at all--of what a mosh pit is?" "I shall look it up in a thick and exhaustive reference book," said Dobson, mad with cornflakes. "So you will be going to the mobile library?" said Marigold Chew. "That is my plan," said the pamphleteer, and he got up from the table and proceeded to don his Andalusian Sewage Inspector's boots. "Today is Tuesday," said Marigold Chew, "So the mobile library is in quite a different, and distant, bailiwick." "And you think I am going to let that stop me?" shouted Dobson melodramatically as he crashed out of the door into the downpour. Untold hours later, Dobson came crashing back through the door, sopping wet, with a gleam in his eye and a thin, pained smile playing about his lips, as if he were Ronald Colman shooting a scene for Random Harvest (Mervyn LeRoy, 1942). "Well, Dobson, what news?" asked Marigold Chew. Dobson took his pipe from his pocket, crammed into it a thub of Rotting Orchard Fruit 'n' Conkers Pipe Tobacco from his other pocket, lit up and puffed, and said: "I had a deal of difficulty finding the thick and exhaustive reference book I sought. Actually, before that I had a deal of difficulty finding the mobile library itself. There is a new mobile librarian, of wild and untrammelled mien, with an unruly beard, whose grasp of the schedule is weak. He had driven the pantechnicon to quite an unsuitable bailiwick, near cliffs, where the native peasants, having never seen the mobile library before, stood in a ring around it, holding aloft their pitchforks and sticks tipped with tarry burning rags, gawping. I think they may have had it in mind to sacrifice the mobile librarian on a pyre." "Gosh!" said Marigold Chew. "Be that as it may," continued Dobson, "I barged my way through the seething peasant throng and climbed into the pantechnicon. The wild unruly beardy person was engaged in some sort of haphazard reshelving exercise, oblivious to the peasants outside. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-07-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:14 Dobson In A Mosh Pit 19:54 Ambrose And Ploppo 21:33 Urgh DOBSON IN A MOSH PIT "I think," said Dobson, at breakfast one foul and rain-sodden Tuesday morning, "It is time we had our own mosh pit." Marigold Chew raised an eyebrow. "Do you actually know what a mosh pit is?" she asked. "Not exactly," replied the twentieth century's greatest out of print pamphleteer, "But I suspect it would be a good use of that part of the garden overhung by laburnum and sycamore and larch. You know that patch o'er which hangs leafage so dense that it is forever in shadow, and is home to brambles and nettles and dockweed. I cannot even remember the last time I sat or stood in it nor even walked through it, nor can I recall ever seeing you doing so, O cherished one. It is unused ground, and no ground ought to be unused on this earth, according to some authorities." "Which authorities might they be, Dobson?" asked Marigold Chew. "I think there is a maxim to that effect in the Maxims of Bombastus Dogend, or I could be thinking of Listerine Optrex, also a great one for maxims. I can check later." "So let me get this straight," said Marigold Chew, marshalling with her fork the last few caraway seeds on her breakfast plate, "You intend to dig a pit in a shady arbour in the garden, and dub it a mosh pit, without any clear understanding--without any understanding at all--of what a mosh pit is?" "I shall look it up in a thick and exhaustive reference book," said Dobson, mad with cornflakes. "So you will be going to the mobile library?" said Marigold Chew. "That is my plan," said the pamphleteer, and he got up from the table and proceeded to don his Andalusian Sewage Inspector's boots. "Today is Tuesday," said Marigold Chew, "So the mobile library is in quite a different, and distant, bailiwick." "And you think I am going to let that stop me?" shouted Dobson melodramatically as he crashed out of the door into the downpour. Untold hours later, Dobson came crashing back through the door, sopping wet, with a gleam in his eye and a thin, pained smile playing about his lips, as if he were Ronald Colman shooting a scene for Random Harvest (Mervyn LeRoy, 1942). "Well, Dobson, what news?" asked Marigold Chew. Dobson took his pipe from his pocket, crammed into it a thub of Rotting Orchard Fruit 'n' Conkers Pipe Tobacco from his other pocket, lit up and puffed, and said: "I had a deal of difficulty finding the thick and exhaustive reference book I sought. Actually, before that I had a deal of difficulty finding the mobile library itself. There is a new mobile librarian, of wild and untrammelled mien, with an unruly beard, whose grasp of the schedule is weak. He had driven the pantechnicon to quite an unsuitable bailiwick, near cliffs, where the native peasants, having never seen the mobile library before, stood in a ring around it, holding aloft their pitchforks and sticks tipped with tarry burning rags, gawping. I think they may have had it in mind to sacrifice the mobile librarian on a pyre." "Gosh!" said Marigold Chew. "Be that as it may," continued Dobson, "I barged my way through the seething peasant throng and climbed into the pantechnicon. The wild unruly beardy person was engaged in some sort of haphazard reshelving exercise, oblivious to the peasants outside. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-07-2829:06fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-07-14Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Depressed Horse Never Knew Saucepans 22:01 Unhinged By Cream Crackers DEPRESSED HORSE NEVER KNEW SAUCEPANS Last week I spent some time as usual updating my log of Outa_Spaceman's cardboard reality interventions. Commonly, my practice is to log the details of each intervention on a piece of cardboard and then to stow the piece of cardboard away in a cardboard box and forget about it. Intervention number 187, however, haunted my thoughts, night and day, until I felt impelled to take the lid off the cardboard box and remove the piece of cardboard on which I had logged the details. I propped it up against a similar, but empty, cardboard box in my fustiparlour, to keep it within my purview at all times, or at least at those times when I was indoors. "Depressed horse never knew saucepans" reads the legend on intervention number 187. Where had I heard those words, in that order, before? Was it the title piece in a slim volume of twee verse by Dennis Beerpint? Was it a chapter heading from a bestselling paperback potboiler by Pebblehead? Or could it be the code phrase uttered by international woman of mystery Primrose Dent to gain access to her secret subterranean headquarters? Luckily, there are reference books where one can look up this sort of thing, so I looked them up. That is, I looked up Beerpint and Pebblehead and Primrose Dent, in a biographical reference book, but grew none the wiser. I then consulted reference works on depression, horses, and saucepans, still to no avail. Yet the words continued to swirl around in my brain, their origin tantalisingly out of reach. Previously on Hooting Yard, as they say in the American television series, when faced with such quandaries I have stalked off into the deep dense dark woods of Woohoohoodiwoo and sought the counsel of the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman. That freakish crone is a dab hand in the arts of recovered memory syndrome, and more than once she has brought bubbling to the surface of my cranium material which might otherwise have remained forever obscure and buried. On this occasion, however, my people learned from her people that the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman had gone on her holidays, to some benighted and dilapidated seaside resort, to suck sticks of rock and commune with seagulls in bird-language from the balcony of her seashore chalet. It came as something of a surprise to me to learn that the eldritch hag took holidays, like normal people do, and as I am ill-equipped to deal with surprises of any nature, I took to my bed for forty-eight hours, tossing and turning and whimpering weakly, as illusory phantasms gambolled and frolicked across the ceiling of my boudoir. The boudoir adjoins the fustiparlour, and by keeping the door open I was able to peer at the piece of cardboard propped against the empty cardboard box upon which I had logged the details of intervention number 187, including, of course, those haunting words. By the time I was ready to face the world again, I had resolved to try to forget all about the depressed horse that never knew saucepans. The first step in my forgetting was to put the piece of cardboard back in the cardboard box where all my cardboard signage loggings were stored, but I made the mistake of preparing a snack before so doing. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-07-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Depressed Horse Never Knew Saucepans 22:01 Unhinged By Cream Crackers DEPRESSED HORSE NEVER KNEW SAUCEPANS Last week I spent some time as usual updating my log of Outa_Spaceman's cardboard reality interventions. Commonly, my practice is to log the details of each intervention on a piece of cardboard and then to stow the piece of cardboard away in a cardboard box and forget about it. Intervention number 187, however, haunted my thoughts, night and day, until I felt impelled to take the lid off the cardboard box and remove the piece of cardboard on which I had logged the details. I propped it up against a similar, but empty, cardboard box in my fustiparlour, to keep it within my purview at all times, or at least at those times when I was indoors. "Depressed horse never knew saucepans" reads the legend on intervention number 187. Where had I heard those words, in that order, before? Was it the title piece in a slim volume of twee verse by Dennis Beerpint? Was it a chapter heading from a bestselling paperback potboiler by Pebblehead? Or could it be the code phrase uttered by international woman of mystery Primrose Dent to gain access to her secret subterranean headquarters? Luckily, there are reference books where one can look up this sort of thing, so I looked them up. That is, I looked up Beerpint and Pebblehead and Primrose Dent, in a biographical reference book, but grew none the wiser. I then consulted reference works on depression, horses, and saucepans, still to no avail. Yet the words continued to swirl around in my brain, their origin tantalisingly out of reach. Previously on Hooting Yard, as they say in the American television series, when faced with such quandaries I have stalked off into the deep dense dark woods of Woohoohoodiwoo and sought the counsel of the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman. That freakish crone is a dab hand in the arts of recovered memory syndrome, and more than once she has brought bubbling to the surface of my cranium material which might otherwise have remained forever obscure and buried. On this occasion, however, my people learned from her people that the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman had gone on her holidays, to some benighted and dilapidated seaside resort, to suck sticks of rock and commune with seagulls in bird-language from the balcony of her seashore chalet. It came as something of a surprise to me to learn that the eldritch hag took holidays, like normal people do, and as I am ill-equipped to deal with surprises of any nature, I took to my bed for forty-eight hours, tossing and turning and whimpering weakly, as illusory phantasms gambolled and frolicked across the ceiling of my boudoir. The boudoir adjoins the fustiparlour, and by keeping the door open I was able to peer at the piece of cardboard propped against the empty cardboard box upon which I had logged the details of intervention number 187, including, of course, those haunting words. By the time I was ready to face the world again, I had resolved to try to forget all about the depressed horse that never knew saucepans. The first step in my forgetting was to put the piece of cardboard back in the cardboard box where all my cardboard signage loggings were stored, but I made the mistake of preparing a snack before so doing. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-07-1428:03fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-07-07Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Ten Tarleton Tales--V 05:22 British Psychology 10:19 On The Inspector Of Nuisances 13:22 Farmers In The Coalition 22:13 Stubbings TEN TARLETON TALES--V I would sing to you of Tarleton, of the gleets, of the balcony, if I could. If I could sing I would. But how can I sing, mouth crammed with pebbles, penned in a pound, atop the tor? And what an irony that it was Tarleton who bustled me hence, arms flapping, half blinding me with the glint of his shiny shiny epaulettes? I would have sung of him surely, and without smirking. Cars passed below as we climbed the tor. I would have waved to them, to their drivers, for help, if I thought help would come. My mind was a chaos. The higher we climbed, the tinier the cars appeared, until they seemed like motes of dust. They put the pound at the top of the tor to discourage attempts to escape. As further discouragement, the fence was electrified. Tarleton had keys to the panel upon which a lever or knobs or whatever could be pulled or depressed or whatever to cut off the circuit, temporarily, to allow the gate to be opened. He crammed my mouth with pebbles before he pushed me into the pound. I thought of the gleets, and of Krakatoa. Oh, Tarleton, Tarleton! What became of the balcony you? Things were so different then. Fresh from your Messerschmitt, not a hint of the gleets, eating a crab apple and suffering in silence. It was noble suffering. Even the crab apple was noble. Certainly your shiny shiny epaulettes gave you a noble cast. I wanted to fashion a laurel wreath for your brow, but there were no laurels. Just the bare balcony and a vista of snow. Nor did I sing then, though I could have done, I ought to have done, I wish I had done. I would have sung of you, Tarleton, and recorded it upon magnetic tape, and had a platter made of it, and it would have shot to the top of the hit parade. It would have dislodged Russ Conway. Regrets, regrets. Now there are pebbles in my mouth, and I am penned in a pound, and you have stomped away back down the tor. You will get into your car, parked in a gully, tiny as a mote of dust, from up here, and you will drive away, or be driven away, by your chauffeur, his own epaulettes less shiny shiny than yours, ignoble epaulettes. And when you drive away, will you think of the gleets, the balcony, Tarleton? Or will your head be filled with flummery? The dog in the pound on the tor is small and hairy and oriental. Its yap curdles my blood. Would that the pebbles had been crammed in my ears and not my mouth! Or as well as, for all the difference it would make. The sun passes behind a cloud. The electrified fence hums. I think, not sing, of Tarleton, of the gleets, of the balcony. And Boodles yaps. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-07-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Ten Tarleton Tales--V 05:22 British Psychology 10:19 On The Inspector Of Nuisances 13:22 Farmers In The Coalition 22:13 Stubbings TEN TARLETON TALES--V I would sing to you of Tarleton, of the gleets, of the balcony, if I could. If I could sing I would. But how can I sing, mouth crammed with pebbles, penned in a pound, atop the tor? And what an irony that it was Tarleton who bustled me hence, arms flapping, half blinding me with the glint of his shiny shiny epaulettes? I would have sung of him surely, and without smirking. Cars passed below as we climbed the tor. I would have waved to them, to their drivers, for help, if I thought help would come. My mind was a chaos. The higher we climbed, the tinier the cars appeared, until they seemed like motes of dust. They put the pound at the top of the tor to discourage attempts to escape. As further discouragement, the fence was electrified. Tarleton had keys to the panel upon which a lever or knobs or whatever could be pulled or depressed or whatever to cut off the circuit, temporarily, to allow the gate to be opened. He crammed my mouth with pebbles before he pushed me into the pound. I thought of the gleets, and of Krakatoa. Oh, Tarleton, Tarleton! What became of the balcony you? Things were so different then. Fresh from your Messerschmitt, not a hint of the gleets, eating a crab apple and suffering in silence. It was noble suffering. Even the crab apple was noble. Certainly your shiny shiny epaulettes gave you a noble cast. I wanted to fashion a laurel wreath for your brow, but there were no laurels. Just the bare balcony and a vista of snow. Nor did I sing then, though I could have done, I ought to have done, I wish I had done. I would have sung of you, Tarleton, and recorded it upon magnetic tape, and had a platter made of it, and it would have shot to the top of the hit parade. It would have dislodged Russ Conway. Regrets, regrets. Now there are pebbles in my mouth, and I am penned in a pound, and you have stomped away back down the tor. You will get into your car, parked in a gully, tiny as a mote of dust, from up here, and you will drive away, or be driven away, by your chauffeur, his own epaulettes less shiny shiny than yours, ignoble epaulettes. And when you drive away, will you think of the gleets, the balcony, Tarleton? Or will your head be filled with flummery? The dog in the pound on the tor is small and hairy and oriental. Its yap curdles my blood. Would that the pebbles had been crammed in my ears and not my mouth! Or as well as, for all the difference it would make. The sun passes behind a cloud. The electrified fence hums. I think, not sing, of Tarleton, of the gleets, of the balcony. And Boodles yaps. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-07-0729:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-30Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:22 Hudson's Head Revisited 09:35 Dabbling With The Law 13:25 Bonkers Alibis 18:38 Variation On A Theme Of Gerard Manley Hopkins 23:30 Dances With Blodgett HUDSON'S HEAD REVISITED Like Hudson, I wanted to gain possession of a man's head, to carry it across the sea and drop it like an apple. And like Hudson, I wanted to do so without violating any laws or doing harm to the man whose head it was. I was not so concerned about the head having a set of unique and terrible teeth, in fact any head would do. But the logistics were an absolute nightmare. In spite of a first class education and the possession of an acute and incisive mind, I could not fathom how I might get hold of someone's head, detached from the rest of their body, without either breaking the law or doing them a mischief. When first this desire consumed me, I did not bother myself with such niceties. I might be at an elegant and sophisticated cocktail party, and I would take someone aside, steer them to a corner where we would not be overheard, and say: "Can I have your head? I want to take it across the sea, and drop it like an apple of discord." There would then follow a discussion in the course of which the familiar objections, of criminal intent and physical harm, would be raised. I blustered my way through these by wearing a fixed grin and waving my arms a lot, but the difficulties would not go away. I was unwilling to abandon the project entirely, however, so I sought advice from a Jesuit priest. The Jesuits are rightly famed for their casuistry, and I felt sure I would gain some useful tips. If anyone could pluck from the air a method of gaining possession of a man's head, legally and harmlessly, Father Ninian Tonguelash was that man! I found him, kneeling, deep in prayer, at the altar rail in the Lady Chapel of a large and important cathedral. I knelt down beside him and whispered: "A man's head, Father. How might I gain possession of one?" He turned to me, did something mysterious and significant with his rosary beads, and asked me to explain further, so I did so. "Hmm," he said, Jesuitically, when I had outlined my plans, "It is a pretty conundrum, to be sure. Now, listen. Moored at the docks there is a Jesuit packet steamer, the Ignatius Loyola. It is due to set sail across the sea tomorrow night. Meet me at the dockside at ten o' clock. I will have something for you." I thanked him, and left him to his prayers. I spent the next twenty-four hours sorting out my affairs and packing a suitcase. At the appointed time, I made my way to the docks. Father Tonguelash was already there, leaning against a wooden dockside appurtenance smoking a high tar cigarette. "Here," he said, handing me a bag, "Take this, with my blessing." It was a burlap bag, and from its size and shape and heft I knew at once that it contained a man's head. I was about to fire a volley of questions at the Jesuit, but he held a nicotine-stained finger to his lips and shooshed me. "You had better go aboard," he said, "The Ignatius Loyola is about to chug out." "Thank you, Father," I said, "How can I repay you?" "There is no need," he said, "Just don't open the bag until you reach land." I promised I would obey, as one should always obey a Jesuit, and I boarded the steamer, where I was shown to my cabin. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:22 Hudson's Head Revisited 09:35 Dabbling With The Law 13:25 Bonkers Alibis 18:38 Variation On A Theme Of Gerard Manley Hopkins 23:30 Dances With Blodgett HUDSON'S HEAD REVISITED Like Hudson, I wanted to gain possession of a man's head, to carry it across the sea and drop it like an apple. And like Hudson, I wanted to do so without violating any laws or doing harm to the man whose head it was. I was not so concerned about the head having a set of unique and terrible teeth, in fact any head would do. But the logistics were an absolute nightmare. In spite of a first class education and the possession of an acute and incisive mind, I could not fathom how I might get hold of someone's head, detached from the rest of their body, without either breaking the law or doing them a mischief. When first this desire consumed me, I did not bother myself with such niceties. I might be at an elegant and sophisticated cocktail party, and I would take someone aside, steer them to a corner where we would not be overheard, and say: "Can I have your head? I want to take it across the sea, and drop it like an apple of discord." There would then follow a discussion in the course of which the familiar objections, of criminal intent and physical harm, would be raised. I blustered my way through these by wearing a fixed grin and waving my arms a lot, but the difficulties would not go away. I was unwilling to abandon the project entirely, however, so I sought advice from a Jesuit priest. The Jesuits are rightly famed for their casuistry, and I felt sure I would gain some useful tips. If anyone could pluck from the air a method of gaining possession of a man's head, legally and harmlessly, Father Ninian Tonguelash was that man! I found him, kneeling, deep in prayer, at the altar rail in the Lady Chapel of a large and important cathedral. I knelt down beside him and whispered: "A man's head, Father. How might I gain possession of one?" He turned to me, did something mysterious and significant with his rosary beads, and asked me to explain further, so I did so. "Hmm," he said, Jesuitically, when I had outlined my plans, "It is a pretty conundrum, to be sure. Now, listen. Moored at the docks there is a Jesuit packet steamer, the Ignatius Loyola. It is due to set sail across the sea tomorrow night. Meet me at the dockside at ten o' clock. I will have something for you." I thanked him, and left him to his prayers. I spent the next twenty-four hours sorting out my affairs and packing a suitcase. At the appointed time, I made my way to the docks. Father Tonguelash was already there, leaning against a wooden dockside appurtenance smoking a high tar cigarette. "Here," he said, handing me a bag, "Take this, with my blessing." It was a burlap bag, and from its size and shape and heft I knew at once that it contained a man's head. I was about to fire a volley of questions at the Jesuit, but he held a nicotine-stained finger to his lips and shooshed me. "You had better go aboard," he said, "The Ignatius Loyola is about to chug out." "Thank you, Father," I said, "How can I repay you?" "There is no need," he said, "Just don't open the bag until you reach land." I promised I would obey, as one should always obey a Jesuit, and I boarded the steamer, where I was shown to my cabin. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-3028:46fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-23Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Bashed On The Bonce With A Sap By A Copper 04:28 Eelworm In Phlox, Etc 11:12 A Ticket 17:39 A Note on Bags 21:59 The Boot Is On The Other Foot BASHED ON THE BONCE WITH A SAP BY A COPPER Bashed On The Bonce With A Sap By A Copper is a fascinating addition to what St Clair McKelway (1905-1980) called the "annals of crime and rascality". It is subtitled The Collected Arrests Of Detective Captain Cargpan, Volume One, which has devotees of the legendary policeman salivating with pleasure at the prospect of further bashing collections. For the time being, though, even Cargpan's greatest fans ought to be sated by this rip roaring record of thousands of arrests. It includes famous cases such as Dinsmore the budgerigar trainer, the weighted jam-jar man, and the spectral cardigan-knitter of Cardiganshire, together with a host of the undeservedly obscure and neglected, including the beekeeper Plath and the toastrack poisoner of Box. The Detective Captain himself emerges as perhaps a more complex figure than hitherto acknowledged. I was surprised to learn, for example, that on many occasions he had his sidekicks rough up a culprit before bashing them on the bonce with his sap. Sometimes he whacked his lead-weighted sap on their bonce and in the kidneys. And it comes as a complete revelation to learn that he sometimes lit his pipe, crammed with acrid Serbian pipe tobacco, with one hand while simultaneously sapping a malefactor with the other. Most pipe smokers need one hand to hold the pipe and the other to steady the lit lucifer. It is a measure of Cargpan's insouciance that he was able to deploy his pipe-igniting skills with such aplomb in the face of incorrigible villainy. Among the incidental pleasures of the book are the glimpses we get of the Detective Captain arriving at, and leaving, the scenes of arrest; a virtuoso description, covering forty pages, of the glint in his eye; and the lyrical evocation of the cellar down at the nick, its appurtenances and decor, the scene of so many vivid post-arrest roughings-up. For, in spite of that subtitle, this is not a mere record of Cargpan's arrests alone. We are led from arrest to confession in almost every case, whether the miscreant blubs like a baby instantly, or it takes the sidekicks as long as ten minutes to extract an admission of their squalid criminality. In almost every case, note, because of course now and then one bash from Cargpan's sap was all it took to send a ne'er-do-well spinning into the fiery satanic realm of death. If I have one criticism of the book, it is the absence of lurid high definition colour photographs of hapless villains reaping the grisly deserts of their malfeasance. Otherwise, it is a cracking good read, in more ways than one. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Bashed On The Bonce With A Sap By A Copper 04:28 Eelworm In Phlox, Etc 11:12 A Ticket 17:39 A Note on Bags 21:59 The Boot Is On The Other Foot BASHED ON THE BONCE WITH A SAP BY A COPPER Bashed On The Bonce With A Sap By A Copper is a fascinating addition to what St Clair McKelway (1905-1980) called the "annals of crime and rascality". It is subtitled The Collected Arrests Of Detective Captain Cargpan, Volume One, which has devotees of the legendary policeman salivating with pleasure at the prospect of further bashing collections. For the time being, though, even Cargpan's greatest fans ought to be sated by this rip roaring record of thousands of arrests. It includes famous cases such as Dinsmore the budgerigar trainer, the weighted jam-jar man, and the spectral cardigan-knitter of Cardiganshire, together with a host of the undeservedly obscure and neglected, including the beekeeper Plath and the toastrack poisoner of Box. The Detective Captain himself emerges as perhaps a more complex figure than hitherto acknowledged. I was surprised to learn, for example, that on many occasions he had his sidekicks rough up a culprit before bashing them on the bonce with his sap. Sometimes he whacked his lead-weighted sap on their bonce and in the kidneys. And it comes as a complete revelation to learn that he sometimes lit his pipe, crammed with acrid Serbian pipe tobacco, with one hand while simultaneously sapping a malefactor with the other. Most pipe smokers need one hand to hold the pipe and the other to steady the lit lucifer. It is a measure of Cargpan's insouciance that he was able to deploy his pipe-igniting skills with such aplomb in the face of incorrigible villainy. Among the incidental pleasures of the book are the glimpses we get of the Detective Captain arriving at, and leaving, the scenes of arrest; a virtuoso description, covering forty pages, of the glint in his eye; and the lyrical evocation of the cellar down at the nick, its appurtenances and decor, the scene of so many vivid post-arrest roughings-up. For, in spite of that subtitle, this is not a mere record of Cargpan's arrests alone. We are led from arrest to confession in almost every case, whether the miscreant blubs like a baby instantly, or it takes the sidekicks as long as ten minutes to extract an admission of their squalid criminality. In almost every case, note, because of course now and then one bash from Cargpan's sap was all it took to send a ne'er-do-well spinning into the fiery satanic realm of death. If I have one criticism of the book, it is the absence of lurid high definition colour photographs of hapless villains reaping the grisly deserts of their malfeasance. Otherwise, it is a cracking good read, in more ways than one. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-2328:22fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-16Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Two Monks 04:08 Skew, Whiff 10:15 Bird Binder 17:16 My Inner Glove Compartment 23:58 Am I So Poised? TWO MONKS Alfred Wesley Wishart's phrase "two monks took the blood of a duck", which appears above in today's quotation, was appropriated by the poet Dennis Beerpint as the title of a lengthy, as-yet-unpublished work. It may be that he is still writing it, but our regular Beerpint-watcher, Dan Sprawl, is currently in hospital with a case of jangling cav and pag, so news is limited. What we do know is that the prose-poem compares the image of monks draining blood from a duck with the concept of being "washed in the blood of the lamb". Here is an extract: Then Brother Fabrizius strangled another teal. "Hand me that retort, Brother Arpad, so that I may decant into it this teal's gore." Brother Arpad reached for the retort and in so doing smashed an alembic. There was a sound of bells. The monks were called to compline. For each canonical hour they allocated a duck to be slaughtered for its blood. At compline, a teal. At matins, a merganser. At prime, a pintail. At tierce, a shoveler. At sext, a wigeon. At nones, a smew. And at vespers, a bufflehead. Out in the fields, sweet little lambs gambolled and frolicked. They would not frolic for long, for soon, in the monastery, it would be bathtime. SKEW, WHIFF Mr Skew and Mr Whiff went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. They met at the foot of the hill, at a point equidistant from Fort Hoity, where Mr Skew was aide-de-camp, and Fort Toity, where Mr Whiff had charge of the goats. It did not need two to fetch and carry a pail of water, but Mr Skew and Mr Whiff were Brothers Of The Salt, and whenever a pail of water was needed, either at Fort Hoity or at Fort Toity, they would arrange to meet and stroll up the hill together, arm in arm, fraternally. They were able to stroll, rather than clamber and pant and strain, because a pathway had been cut into the hill at a very gentle gradient, winding round and round and round until it reached the top, where the well was. The well had its own pail, attached to a hefty rope. Mr Skew or Mr Whiff would lower this pail to fill it with well-water, raise it, and pour the water from the well-pail into an empty pail. Either Mr Skew would have brought an empty pail from Fort Hoity, or Mr Whiff the same from Fort Toity. It was within the bounds of possibility that Mr Skew and Mr Whiff would both bring empty pails at the same time, but this never, ever happened. The water replenishment schedules at Fort Hoity and Fort Toity never quite clicked into alignment. Mr Skew and Mr Whiff arranged their meetings at the foot of the hill by bell and flag. The one was audible, the other visible, across the expanse of marshland that separated Fort Hoity from Fort Toity. The bell might not be heard if, say, fighter jets on practice runs were screaming across the sky, nor the flag be seen if there was a thick and eerie mist o'er the marshes. That is why Mr Skew and Mr Whiff, between them, had devised the system of using both bell and flag, just in case. Fighter jets can come screaming without warning, mists can descend in the blink of an eye. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Two Monks 04:08 Skew, Whiff 10:15 Bird Binder 17:16 My Inner Glove Compartment 23:58 Am I So Poised? TWO MONKS Alfred Wesley Wishart's phrase "two monks took the blood of a duck", which appears above in today's quotation, was appropriated by the poet Dennis Beerpint as the title of a lengthy, as-yet-unpublished work. It may be that he is still writing it, but our regular Beerpint-watcher, Dan Sprawl, is currently in hospital with a case of jangling cav and pag, so news is limited. What we do know is that the prose-poem compares the image of monks draining blood from a duck with the concept of being "washed in the blood of the lamb". Here is an extract: Then Brother Fabrizius strangled another teal. "Hand me that retort, Brother Arpad, so that I may decant into it this teal's gore." Brother Arpad reached for the retort and in so doing smashed an alembic. There was a sound of bells. The monks were called to compline. For each canonical hour they allocated a duck to be slaughtered for its blood. At compline, a teal. At matins, a merganser. At prime, a pintail. At tierce, a shoveler. At sext, a wigeon. At nones, a smew. And at vespers, a bufflehead. Out in the fields, sweet little lambs gambolled and frolicked. They would not frolic for long, for soon, in the monastery, it would be bathtime. SKEW, WHIFF Mr Skew and Mr Whiff went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. They met at the foot of the hill, at a point equidistant from Fort Hoity, where Mr Skew was aide-de-camp, and Fort Toity, where Mr Whiff had charge of the goats. It did not need two to fetch and carry a pail of water, but Mr Skew and Mr Whiff were Brothers Of The Salt, and whenever a pail of water was needed, either at Fort Hoity or at Fort Toity, they would arrange to meet and stroll up the hill together, arm in arm, fraternally. They were able to stroll, rather than clamber and pant and strain, because a pathway had been cut into the hill at a very gentle gradient, winding round and round and round until it reached the top, where the well was. The well had its own pail, attached to a hefty rope. Mr Skew or Mr Whiff would lower this pail to fill it with well-water, raise it, and pour the water from the well-pail into an empty pail. Either Mr Skew would have brought an empty pail from Fort Hoity, or Mr Whiff the same from Fort Toity. It was within the bounds of possibility that Mr Skew and Mr Whiff would both bring empty pails at the same time, but this never, ever happened. The water replenishment schedules at Fort Hoity and Fort Toity never quite clicked into alignment. Mr Skew and Mr Whiff arranged their meetings at the foot of the hill by bell and flag. The one was audible, the other visible, across the expanse of marshland that separated Fort Hoity from Fort Toity. The bell might not be heard if, say, fighter jets on practice runs were screaming across the sky, nor the flag be seen if there was a thick and eerie mist o'er the marshes. That is why Mr Skew and Mr Whiff, between them, had devised the system of using both bell and flag, just in case. Fighter jets can come screaming without warning, mists can descend in the blink of an eye. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-1628:34fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-09Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 (Two Broken) 03:58 I Lost My Rag 16:24 The Forty Thieves (TWO BROKEN) Canon Freddy Hood (Principal of Pusey House)--cream jug. Lord Hailsham (Quintin Hogg)--set of Pyrex dishes. Naomi Mitchison--Highland rug. Ian and Mary Mikardo--breakfast coffee set. Chips Channon--edition of Shelley. J B S Haldane--kitten. Elwyn Jones--model donkey. Tony Benn--silver card case. Graham Sutherland--drawing (by G Sutherland). Ronald Searle--drawing (by R Searle). Evelyn Waugh--copy of Helena (by E Waugh). Nancy Mitford--copy of The Blessing (by N Mitford). Seretse and Ruth Khama--fish knives. Ted and Barbara Castle--face towels. Jim and Audrey Callaghan--four ashtrays (two broken). Some of the gifts given to Tom Driberg and Ena Binfield at their wedding in 1951, as listed by Francis Wheen in Tom Driberg : His Life And Indiscretions (1990). I LOST MY RAG I was at a swish cocktail party some time ago, dapper in my duds, leaning against a mantelpiece, when I overheard a snatch of conversation. One chap told another chap how he had lost his rag. My ears pricked up. I detached myself from my roost and stalked across to the chaps, butting in on their chat oblivious to the social niceties, as is my way. "Did you just say you've lost your rag?" I demanded of the baldy beardy one of the pair. He mumbled some blather in response, but I was barely listening, and I continued. "I, too, have recently lost my rag. I wonder if there is a rag thief at large? You and I ought to join forces to recover our rags." The chap blinked, sized me up, and, in the manner of swish cocktail party guests the world over, discovered a sudden interest in someone or something on the far side of the room. I left the party shortly afterwards, dapper in my duds, with the conviction that there was more to the loss of my rag than I had previously realised. It was a couple of weeks before the night of the cocktail party that I had lost my rag. It was a Wednesday. The sun that day was so bright it bleached the sky. I rooted around in a drawer to find my sunglasses, the same drawer where I kept my rag safe. But to my horror it was gone! The rag I had treasured for years was not in the drawer, and nor was it anywhere else in the house, which I turned upside down in my increasingly frantic searching. Eventually I slumped in the middle of the floor and held my head in my hands and sobbed convulsively. Grubby and greasy and tattered and stained, my rag was my talisman. It had been given to me one special day years and years before, by a twinkly-eyed ancient, who pressed it into my hands as I was walking across Sawdust Bridge. "Here, sonny, take this rag," he croaked, in a voice both sepulchral and wise, "It is your rag, and so long as you keep it safe no harm will ever befall you. It is the rag of immortality." I never forgot those words. Even when, the very next day, harm befell me in the form of a sprained ankle, the result of an accident when cormorant hunting with my papa, I kept my faith in the rag. Common sense would suggest I was deluded, but common sense could go hang. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 (Two Broken) 03:58 I Lost My Rag 16:24 The Forty Thieves (TWO BROKEN) Canon Freddy Hood (Principal of Pusey House)--cream jug. Lord Hailsham (Quintin Hogg)--set of Pyrex dishes. Naomi Mitchison--Highland rug. Ian and Mary Mikardo--breakfast coffee set. Chips Channon--edition of Shelley. J B S Haldane--kitten. Elwyn Jones--model donkey. Tony Benn--silver card case. Graham Sutherland--drawing (by G Sutherland). Ronald Searle--drawing (by R Searle). Evelyn Waugh--copy of Helena (by E Waugh). Nancy Mitford--copy of The Blessing (by N Mitford). Seretse and Ruth Khama--fish knives. Ted and Barbara Castle--face towels. Jim and Audrey Callaghan--four ashtrays (two broken). Some of the gifts given to Tom Driberg and Ena Binfield at their wedding in 1951, as listed by Francis Wheen in Tom Driberg : His Life And Indiscretions (1990). I LOST MY RAG I was at a swish cocktail party some time ago, dapper in my duds, leaning against a mantelpiece, when I overheard a snatch of conversation. One chap told another chap how he had lost his rag. My ears pricked up. I detached myself from my roost and stalked across to the chaps, butting in on their chat oblivious to the social niceties, as is my way. "Did you just say you've lost your rag?" I demanded of the baldy beardy one of the pair. He mumbled some blather in response, but I was barely listening, and I continued. "I, too, have recently lost my rag. I wonder if there is a rag thief at large? You and I ought to join forces to recover our rags." The chap blinked, sized me up, and, in the manner of swish cocktail party guests the world over, discovered a sudden interest in someone or something on the far side of the room. I left the party shortly afterwards, dapper in my duds, with the conviction that there was more to the loss of my rag than I had previously realised. It was a couple of weeks before the night of the cocktail party that I had lost my rag. It was a Wednesday. The sun that day was so bright it bleached the sky. I rooted around in a drawer to find my sunglasses, the same drawer where I kept my rag safe. But to my horror it was gone! The rag I had treasured for years was not in the drawer, and nor was it anywhere else in the house, which I turned upside down in my increasingly frantic searching. Eventually I slumped in the middle of the floor and held my head in my hands and sobbed convulsively. Grubby and greasy and tattered and stained, my rag was my talisman. It had been given to me one special day years and years before, by a twinkly-eyed ancient, who pressed it into my hands as I was walking across Sawdust Bridge. "Here, sonny, take this rag," he croaked, in a voice both sepulchral and wise, "It is your rag, and so long as you keep it safe no harm will ever befall you. It is the rag of immortality." I never forgot those words. Even when, the very next day, harm befell me in the form of a sprained ankle, the result of an accident when cormorant hunting with my papa, I kept my faith in the rag. Common sense would suggest I was deluded, but common sense could go hang. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-0926:37fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-02Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Hop With Tongs 01:51 The King's Speech 07:48 The Worm In The Bud 15:59 The Worm In The Bud : Notes For Your Reading Group 19:58 Those Reading Groups HOP WITH TONGS You will need to keep your wits about you, now, to manoeuvre the fierce tongs with precision, on the hop. I realise, having skipped the first page, that you have no idea what I am talking about, but you are just going to have to catch up as best you can. If the mitten on your left hand is smouldering, as is probably the case, take it off, place it somewhere out of harm's way, and put on one of the spares from the pile. Try to do this without letting go of the fierce, fierce tongs in your other hand, and keep hopping. You should try to stray no more than a couple of yards from the skirting-board. If the room has been built without a skirting-board, as can happen in some barbaric buildings, summon one into being, visually, through the power of your imagination. An imaginary skirting-board may not pass muster with certain jaundiced souls, but your soul is not yet jaundiced, is it? At least, it shouldn't be, not while you brandish the fierce, fierce, fierce tongs, and hop. THE KING'S SPEECH Hello there. I am the King. See my crown. See my sceptre. See my baubles and my magnificence. I am like unto a god, am I not? When I snap my fingers, equerries come sprinting. They fawn and scrape. I demand sausages, and sausages are fetched. I demand the sun to be blotted out, and the sun is blotted out. I demand the head of my enemy impaled upon an iron spike, and my enemy is tracked to his lair and beheaded and his head is impaled upon an iron spike and it is brought to me by my equerries. If I should change my mind and wish to unbehead my enemy and show him mercy, to have him skip and frolic about the palace for my amusement, then his head is plucked from the spike and glued back on to his neck and his body is animated by fearsome bolts of electricity and he jerks and skips and frolics as is my whim. Should I wish to engage him in conversation a ventriloquist is found, in some remote village, and brought to the palace to practise his skills. The conversation might go something like this: King - When you have finished skipping and frolicking, would you like a bite of my sausage? Enemy--Oh yes please Sire! King - Then a bite of my sausage you shall have! Cease your cavortings and chew! Enemy--Thank you Sire! Then one of my equerries will work the jaws of my enemy, by sleight of hand, to bite off a portion of sausage. Further bolts of electricity will be applied if necessary, when the equerry is standing well back, unless the equerry is dispensable. Some equerries are, some aren't. To help me remember which is which I have them wear different-coloured caps. I designed the caps myself, for I take a great deal of interest in uniforms and insignia. When an equerry wears incorrect dress, or is insufficiently spruce, I fly into a rage and order the laying waste of that part of my kingdom from whence the offending equerry hails. Alas, there are fibbing equerries, and on occasion entirely innocent parts of the kingdom have been obliterated by fire and sword. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Hop With Tongs 01:51 The King's Speech 07:48 The Worm In The Bud 15:59 The Worm In The Bud : Notes For Your Reading Group 19:58 Those Reading Groups HOP WITH TONGS You will need to keep your wits about you, now, to manoeuvre the fierce tongs with precision, on the hop. I realise, having skipped the first page, that you have no idea what I am talking about, but you are just going to have to catch up as best you can. If the mitten on your left hand is smouldering, as is probably the case, take it off, place it somewhere out of harm's way, and put on one of the spares from the pile. Try to do this without letting go of the fierce, fierce tongs in your other hand, and keep hopping. You should try to stray no more than a couple of yards from the skirting-board. If the room has been built without a skirting-board, as can happen in some barbaric buildings, summon one into being, visually, through the power of your imagination. An imaginary skirting-board may not pass muster with certain jaundiced souls, but your soul is not yet jaundiced, is it? At least, it shouldn't be, not while you brandish the fierce, fierce, fierce tongs, and hop. THE KING'S SPEECH Hello there. I am the King. See my crown. See my sceptre. See my baubles and my magnificence. I am like unto a god, am I not? When I snap my fingers, equerries come sprinting. They fawn and scrape. I demand sausages, and sausages are fetched. I demand the sun to be blotted out, and the sun is blotted out. I demand the head of my enemy impaled upon an iron spike, and my enemy is tracked to his lair and beheaded and his head is impaled upon an iron spike and it is brought to me by my equerries. If I should change my mind and wish to unbehead my enemy and show him mercy, to have him skip and frolic about the palace for my amusement, then his head is plucked from the spike and glued back on to his neck and his body is animated by fearsome bolts of electricity and he jerks and skips and frolics as is my whim. Should I wish to engage him in conversation a ventriloquist is found, in some remote village, and brought to the palace to practise his skills. The conversation might go something like this: King - When you have finished skipping and frolicking, would you like a bite of my sausage? Enemy--Oh yes please Sire! King - Then a bite of my sausage you shall have! Cease your cavortings and chew! Enemy--Thank you Sire! Then one of my equerries will work the jaws of my enemy, by sleight of hand, to bite off a portion of sausage. Further bolts of electricity will be applied if necessary, when the equerry is standing well back, unless the equerry is dispensable. Some equerries are, some aren't. To help me remember which is which I have them wear different-coloured caps. I designed the caps myself, for I take a great deal of interest in uniforms and insignia. When an equerry wears incorrect dress, or is insufficiently spruce, I fly into a rage and order the laying waste of that part of my kingdom from whence the offending equerry hails. Alas, there are fibbing equerries, and on occasion entirely innocent parts of the kingdom have been obliterated by fire and sword. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-06-0227:45fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-05-19Thu, 19 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 "Slowly the moon came out and splashed..." 12:20 The Moorhen Appreciation Society 17:08 Pang Hill Plop Pit 21:36 Git On A Bough "SLOWLY THE MOON CAME OUT AND SPLASHED..." "Slowly the moon came out and splashed its evil coldness over the desert, and slowly Halloran twisted his body around and stared with burning, widened eyes at them... They were walking towards him with maddening deliberation, the most evil, the most unholy-looking, hideously repulsive group he had ever seen. The two might have been cowboys, except for their faces. They were dressed in regular range gear; ropes, belted guns, loudly checked shirts and handkerchiefs, stitched boots, faded blue jeans--their heavy, batwing chaps flapping in the night like wings of grisly birds of evil. But the faces under the tall sombreros! ... they were the faces of ghoulish beasts with snapping black eyes, huge canine nostrils, coarsely matted hair. Halloran stared and his tongue was hot and thick when he tried to move it. The word werewolves seemed to tumble over and over in his numbed mind." -- Eric Lennox, Lair Of The Damned THE MOORHEN APPRECIATION SOCIETY The most popular search terms that bring unwitting Interwebshire hikers to the gates of Hooting Yard remain bees, Googie Withers, and lobster diagram, but I was pleased to note a new entrant yesterday. Two people arrived here after typing in moorhen appreciation society. Well, we know all about moorhens here, and we appreciate them too, so I trust the visiting hikers went away suitably gleeful. Meanwhile, pursuing my own researches, I discovered the existence of the Moorhen Appreciation Society on Facebook Facecloth. I was charmed, to say the least, by its single item of "news", which is "I saw a moorhen this morning". I cannot say the same for myself, alas, though I did spot a few squirrels, one of which was carrying, in its squirrel-jaws, the shredded remains of a Mars Bar wrapper. I am fairly sure that Dobson was at one time a member of his local Moorhen Appreciation Society. The out of print pamphleteer joined it for reasons we can only guess at, for as we know the space in the human brain devoted to ornithological matters was in Dobson's case either utterly vacant or so clogged up the synapses misfired. He was forced to resign his membership when it became clear that he could not tell the difference between a moorhen and a heron, and embroiled the Society in legal entanglements in the bird courts. His pamphlet Well, They Both Have Beaks And Feathers, For Christ's Sake! (out of print) recounts the whole sorry saga, though it is quite an exasperating read for those of us who are more engaged with the avian world than Dobson was. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-05-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 "Slowly the moon came out and splashed..." 12:20 The Moorhen Appreciation Society 17:08 Pang Hill Plop Pit 21:36 Git On A Bough "SLOWLY THE MOON CAME OUT AND SPLASHED..." "Slowly the moon came out and splashed its evil coldness over the desert, and slowly Halloran twisted his body around and stared with burning, widened eyes at them... They were walking towards him with maddening deliberation, the most evil, the most unholy-looking, hideously repulsive group he had ever seen. The two might have been cowboys, except for their faces. They were dressed in regular range gear; ropes, belted guns, loudly checked shirts and handkerchiefs, stitched boots, faded blue jeans--their heavy, batwing chaps flapping in the night like wings of grisly birds of evil. But the faces under the tall sombreros! ... they were the faces of ghoulish beasts with snapping black eyes, huge canine nostrils, coarsely matted hair. Halloran stared and his tongue was hot and thick when he tried to move it. The word werewolves seemed to tumble over and over in his numbed mind." -- Eric Lennox, Lair Of The Damned THE MOORHEN APPRECIATION SOCIETY The most popular search terms that bring unwitting Interwebshire hikers to the gates of Hooting Yard remain bees, Googie Withers, and lobster diagram, but I was pleased to note a new entrant yesterday. Two people arrived here after typing in moorhen appreciation society. Well, we know all about moorhens here, and we appreciate them too, so I trust the visiting hikers went away suitably gleeful. Meanwhile, pursuing my own researches, I discovered the existence of the Moorhen Appreciation Society on Facebook Facecloth. I was charmed, to say the least, by its single item of "news", which is "I saw a moorhen this morning". I cannot say the same for myself, alas, though I did spot a few squirrels, one of which was carrying, in its squirrel-jaws, the shredded remains of a Mars Bar wrapper. I am fairly sure that Dobson was at one time a member of his local Moorhen Appreciation Society. The out of print pamphleteer joined it for reasons we can only guess at, for as we know the space in the human brain devoted to ornithological matters was in Dobson's case either utterly vacant or so clogged up the synapses misfired. He was forced to resign his membership when it became clear that he could not tell the difference between a moorhen and a heron, and embroiled the Society in legal entanglements in the bird courts. His pamphlet Well, They Both Have Beaks And Feathers, For Christ's Sake! (out of print) recounts the whole sorry saga, though it is quite an exasperating read for those of us who are more engaged with the avian world than Dobson was. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-05-1926:26fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-04-21Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:05 Anniversary 05:26 Fee Fi Fo Fum 16:30 Q & A : Lothar Preen 18:05 All Hail Gervase Beerpint 18:23 Q & A : Lothar Preen 18:49 And When Did You Last See Your Potatoes? 18:59 Q & A : Lothar Preen 19:22 The Majesty of Parliament 19:58 P.P.S. ANNIVERSARY 'Twas on this day in the year Two Thousand and Four Mr Key came a-knocking at a filthy black door. The door was in Denmark Street off the Charing Cross Road Where the Sex Pistols rehearsed and punk rock did explode. But now behind the door was a radio station, By far the finest in the entire nation. For this was the home of Resonance FM, A radiophonic treasure, a jewel, a gem. As Mr Key did upon the black door knock The time was approaching four o clock. A buzzer buzzed, and in he stepped Into a hallway that had never been swept. Then through to a back room where laptops did hum "Mr Key" said a fellow, "Thank God you have come!" He was tall and bearded was this man, The then station manager Knut Aufermann. In a corner a bucket caught leaks from the ceiling And upon the walls the paint was peeling. It was a squalid place for sure (Resonance is not based there any more.) "I am here to broadcast my first ever radio show," Said Mr Key. Said Knut "Yes, I know. You must clamber up that narrow stair And when you get to the top please beware The floor above is close to collapse It will last another year or two perhaps." So up the stairs climbed Mr Key Where he met a man called Malachi. "Hello," he said, "I'm your sound engineer. My job's to ensure the audience can hear The sensible prose you're going to spout As our transmitter beams it out To all four corners of the planetary sphere. It is nearly time, so sit down here." He proffered a chair that was falling to bits, But Mr Key sat and gathered his wits He cleared his throat and tested the microphone And he started to speak in mellifluous baritone "This is Hooting Yard On the Air," he said. Indeed it was. And those seven words led To seven whole years of Hooting Yard shows To hours and hours of lopsided prose For the moral instruction of a grateful nation On the world's most astonishing radio station. And the shows are not lost in the dust of the past Hundreds can be heard in the form of podcast Yet 'twas babble o' the future when he knocked on that door On the fourteenth of April, Two Thousand and Four. The first ever episode of Hooting Yard On The Air will be repeated on Resonance104.4FM today ay 6.30 PM. A podcast will be available for download in the near future. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-04-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:05 Anniversary 05:26 Fee Fi Fo Fum 16:30 Q & A : Lothar Preen 18:05 All Hail Gervase Beerpint 18:23 Q & A : Lothar Preen 18:49 And When Did You Last See Your Potatoes? 18:59 Q & A : Lothar Preen 19:22 The Majesty of Parliament 19:58 P.P.S. ANNIVERSARY 'Twas on this day in the year Two Thousand and Four Mr Key came a-knocking at a filthy black door. The door was in Denmark Street off the Charing Cross Road Where the Sex Pistols rehearsed and punk rock did explode. But now behind the door was a radio station, By far the finest in the entire nation. For this was the home of Resonance FM, A radiophonic treasure, a jewel, a gem. As Mr Key did upon the black door knock The time was approaching four o clock. A buzzer buzzed, and in he stepped Into a hallway that had never been swept. Then through to a back room where laptops did hum "Mr Key" said a fellow, "Thank God you have come!" He was tall and bearded was this man, The then station manager Knut Aufermann. In a corner a bucket caught leaks from the ceiling And upon the walls the paint was peeling. It was a squalid place for sure (Resonance is not based there any more.) "I am here to broadcast my first ever radio show," Said Mr Key. Said Knut "Yes, I know. You must clamber up that narrow stair And when you get to the top please beware The floor above is close to collapse It will last another year or two perhaps." So up the stairs climbed Mr Key Where he met a man called Malachi. "Hello," he said, "I'm your sound engineer. My job's to ensure the audience can hear The sensible prose you're going to spout As our transmitter beams it out To all four corners of the planetary sphere. It is nearly time, so sit down here." He proffered a chair that was falling to bits, But Mr Key sat and gathered his wits He cleared his throat and tested the microphone And he started to speak in mellifluous baritone "This is Hooting Yard On the Air," he said. Indeed it was. And those seven words led To seven whole years of Hooting Yard shows To hours and hours of lopsided prose For the moral instruction of a grateful nation On the world's most astonishing radio station. And the shows are not lost in the dust of the past Hundreds can be heard in the form of podcast Yet 'twas babble o' the future when he knocked on that door On the fourteenth of April, Two Thousand and Four. The first ever episode of Hooting Yard On The Air will be repeated on Resonance104.4FM today ay 6.30 PM. A podcast will be available for download in the near future. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-04-2127:42fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-04-07Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Notes And Queries 11:15 Pillow Pamphlets 18:49 Lars Tax, The Circus Strongman 23:19 Ornithological Dabbling NOTES AND QUERIES "How can I allay my fear of death?" asked a latter-day Edgar Allan Poe in Notes & Queries in yesterday's Grauniad. A decidedly fatuous answer was given by one Fred Huckle of London SW1, who suggested "Develop a belief in some form of reincarnation." In other words, become a credulous nincompoop and cram your brain with poppycock. One may as well advise someone to "develop a belief" in a flat earth or fairies or the legendary "third Miliband". That, at least, was my initial reaction. I turned elsewhere in the paper and chortled at Boris Johnson's vision of next year's Diamond Jubilee, with a "royal quinquereme" sailing the Thames from Putney to Tower Bridge, "probably rowed by oiled and manacled MPs". But as is the way with these things I remained preoccupied by Mr Huckle's twaddle, and eventually chucked the Grauniad to one side and started rummaging among the bookshelves to do a spot of research. Some hours later I found what I was looking for. Far from dispensing foolish advice, Mr Huckle was clearly familiar with the case of Prince Fulgencio, as related in Dobson's pamphlet The Case Of Prince Fulgencio (out of print). I quote: Prince Fulgencio was terrified of death. So titanic was his ego that, though mildly fearful on his own account, he agonised over the great peril the world would face in the event of his dissolution. How in heaven, he wondered, would the mass of humanity cope without Prince Fulgencio there as guide and saviour and model and paragon? He did not know that the scrofulous peasants huddled in their hovels in the shadow of his palace prayed daily for his death, and hatched plots against him. It happened that one day Prince Fulgencio was riding through the deep dark forest astride his trusty horse, Keith, when he came upon the hut of a wizard. The Prince was much troubled that day, as usual, about the prospect of his demise, and he wondered if he might find succour in the wizard's woohoo. Dismounting, he barged into the hut in his shouty blustery violent way, and found the wizard standing in the middle of a pentangle scraped on the floor, waving his arms about in haphazard yet highly significant magical passing movements, intoning gibberish, and listening to an Alain De Botton podcast on his iDeBotton. "Ho there, wizardy man!" shouted Prince Fulgencio, "I am Prince Fulgencio and I am terrified of death! What can you do to give me succour? "My name is Huckle," croaked the wise old wizard, removing from his filthy ears the headphones, together with a couple of crumbs of impacted earwax, "If ye seek succour you must bring me a frog and a toad and a goose and a squirrel and twigs of hazel and larch and sycamore and a chest of gold." Prince Fulgencio was not a prince to tolerate impertinence from wizards. He biffed Huckle in the chops with his jewel-encrusted princely sceptre-cum-bludgeon and shouted at him again, this time louder and in a voice more searing and raucous, like a crow with an Asbo. "Oof!" said the wizard, "Steady on, guv. Alright, I'll give you succour. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-04-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Notes And Queries 11:15 Pillow Pamphlets 18:49 Lars Tax, The Circus Strongman 23:19 Ornithological Dabbling NOTES AND QUERIES "How can I allay my fear of death?" asked a latter-day Edgar Allan Poe in Notes & Queries in yesterday's Grauniad. A decidedly fatuous answer was given by one Fred Huckle of London SW1, who suggested "Develop a belief in some form of reincarnation." In other words, become a credulous nincompoop and cram your brain with poppycock. One may as well advise someone to "develop a belief" in a flat earth or fairies or the legendary "third Miliband". That, at least, was my initial reaction. I turned elsewhere in the paper and chortled at Boris Johnson's vision of next year's Diamond Jubilee, with a "royal quinquereme" sailing the Thames from Putney to Tower Bridge, "probably rowed by oiled and manacled MPs". But as is the way with these things I remained preoccupied by Mr Huckle's twaddle, and eventually chucked the Grauniad to one side and started rummaging among the bookshelves to do a spot of research. Some hours later I found what I was looking for. Far from dispensing foolish advice, Mr Huckle was clearly familiar with the case of Prince Fulgencio, as related in Dobson's pamphlet The Case Of Prince Fulgencio (out of print). I quote: Prince Fulgencio was terrified of death. So titanic was his ego that, though mildly fearful on his own account, he agonised over the great peril the world would face in the event of his dissolution. How in heaven, he wondered, would the mass of humanity cope without Prince Fulgencio there as guide and saviour and model and paragon? He did not know that the scrofulous peasants huddled in their hovels in the shadow of his palace prayed daily for his death, and hatched plots against him. It happened that one day Prince Fulgencio was riding through the deep dark forest astride his trusty horse, Keith, when he came upon the hut of a wizard. The Prince was much troubled that day, as usual, about the prospect of his demise, and he wondered if he might find succour in the wizard's woohoo. Dismounting, he barged into the hut in his shouty blustery violent way, and found the wizard standing in the middle of a pentangle scraped on the floor, waving his arms about in haphazard yet highly significant magical passing movements, intoning gibberish, and listening to an Alain De Botton podcast on his iDeBotton. "Ho there, wizardy man!" shouted Prince Fulgencio, "I am Prince Fulgencio and I am terrified of death! What can you do to give me succour? "My name is Huckle," croaked the wise old wizard, removing from his filthy ears the headphones, together with a couple of crumbs of impacted earwax, "If ye seek succour you must bring me a frog and a toad and a goose and a squirrel and twigs of hazel and larch and sycamore and a chest of gold." Prince Fulgencio was not a prince to tolerate impertinence from wizards. He biffed Huckle in the chops with his jewel-encrusted princely sceptre-cum-bludgeon and shouted at him again, this time louder and in a voice more searing and raucous, like a crow with an Asbo. "Oof!" said the wizard, "Steady on, guv. Alright, I'll give you succour. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-04-0726:20fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-03-31Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:36 Things Beginning With B 08:31 The Funnel, Volume Two 09:03 About The Funnel 16:30 Dogs & Frogs & Toad-Like Creatures 20:42 In Heaven THINGS BEGINNING WITH B Dobson's pamphlet Things Beginning With B (out of print) is chiefly remarkable for the paucity of things beginning with B to which it attends. After a few ill-tempered prefatory remarks in which the twentieth century's titanic pamphleteer gets off his chest certain moans and grumbles about rain and mud and swans, he embarks upon a surprisingly knowledgeable account of bees. This display of unlikely learning puzzled Dobsonists for many a year, until Aloysius Nestingbird discovered that the passage is copied out in its entirety from a Victorian work of natural history entitled Everything A Sickly Victorian Infant Needs To Know About Bees, Wasps And Hornets by Mrs Lachrima Baste. Dobson next announces that he is going to give the most thorough account of breakfast ever attempted in English prose. He does not. Following a short paragraph about eggs, containing nothing that the average hen coop observer would not learn in a morning, the pamphleteer asserts that the "breakfast of the future" will be smokers' poptarts, a product at that time newly introduced to the ever-burgeoning breakfast food market. While admitting that he has yet to try this toothsome savoury himself, Dobson sings the praises of the smokers' poptart to so ludicrous an extent that one suspects he was in the pay of the manufacturers. As indeed he was. It was Nestingbird, again, who winkled out the embarrassing truth. Facing a large gas bill and a fine imposed upon him for an offence described as "throwing pebbles, with menace, at swans", Dobson was more than usually desperate for cash, and it seems that when a representative from the smokers' poptarts manufacturers' association came a-calling, the pamphleteer struck a shabby deal. As hairy persons in the 1960s might have put it, he "sold out to The Man, man". Thus it is that the bulk of Things Beginning With B is nothing more than an extended paean to smokers' poptarts, for having exhausted his flights of wittering guff about the breakfast product, Dobson brings the pamphlet to an abrupt close with the preposterous claim that, bees and breakfast aside, there is nothing much of any interest that begins with the letter B. It is not known how much money Dobson received for his poptart puffery. The records show that, although the swans-and-pebbles-related fine was paid in full, his gas supply was cut off on St Creak's Day of that year, and not reinstated until the first day of Vice President Nixon's visit to Venezuela, as recounted in Six Crises (1962). THE FUNNEL, VOLUME TWO Queasy woodpecker. Ergot root. Toxic yeast. Unimaginable idiocy. Orange pips. Albino starling. Death flotilla. Gushing hazard. Jellied kohl. Lethal zookeeper. X-rayed clinker. Vertiginous banisters. Nothing more. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-03-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:36 Things Beginning With B 08:31 The Funnel, Volume Two 09:03 About The Funnel 16:30 Dogs & Frogs & Toad-Like Creatures 20:42 In Heaven THINGS BEGINNING WITH B Dobson's pamphlet Things Beginning With B (out of print) is chiefly remarkable for the paucity of things beginning with B to which it attends. After a few ill-tempered prefatory remarks in which the twentieth century's titanic pamphleteer gets off his chest certain moans and grumbles about rain and mud and swans, he embarks upon a surprisingly knowledgeable account of bees. This display of unlikely learning puzzled Dobsonists for many a year, until Aloysius Nestingbird discovered that the passage is copied out in its entirety from a Victorian work of natural history entitled Everything A Sickly Victorian Infant Needs To Know About Bees, Wasps And Hornets by Mrs Lachrima Baste. Dobson next announces that he is going to give the most thorough account of breakfast ever attempted in English prose. He does not. Following a short paragraph about eggs, containing nothing that the average hen coop observer would not learn in a morning, the pamphleteer asserts that the "breakfast of the future" will be smokers' poptarts, a product at that time newly introduced to the ever-burgeoning breakfast food market. While admitting that he has yet to try this toothsome savoury himself, Dobson sings the praises of the smokers' poptart to so ludicrous an extent that one suspects he was in the pay of the manufacturers. As indeed he was. It was Nestingbird, again, who winkled out the embarrassing truth. Facing a large gas bill and a fine imposed upon him for an offence described as "throwing pebbles, with menace, at swans", Dobson was more than usually desperate for cash, and it seems that when a representative from the smokers' poptarts manufacturers' association came a-calling, the pamphleteer struck a shabby deal. As hairy persons in the 1960s might have put it, he "sold out to The Man, man". Thus it is that the bulk of Things Beginning With B is nothing more than an extended paean to smokers' poptarts, for having exhausted his flights of wittering guff about the breakfast product, Dobson brings the pamphlet to an abrupt close with the preposterous claim that, bees and breakfast aside, there is nothing much of any interest that begins with the letter B. It is not known how much money Dobson received for his poptart puffery. The records show that, although the swans-and-pebbles-related fine was paid in full, his gas supply was cut off on St Creak's Day of that year, and not reinstated until the first day of Vice President Nixon's visit to Venezuela, as recounted in Six Crises (1962). THE FUNNEL, VOLUME TWO Queasy woodpecker. Ergot root. Toxic yeast. Unimaginable idiocy. Orange pips. Albino starling. Death flotilla. Gushing hazard. Jellied kohl. Lethal zookeeper. X-rayed clinker. Vertiginous banisters. Nothing more. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-03-3127:33fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-03-17Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 07:06 Fruiterer's Gleam 12:59 Victims Of Spontaneous Human Combustion In Nineteenth-Century Literature : A Complete List 16:31 Deckhand With Mop 19:36 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet KNITTED BULGARIAN FOLK TALE PUPPET Ahoy, Mr Key!, writes Dr Ruth Pastry, Thank you so much for affording us readers a glimpse of the inner workings of Hooting Yard in your piece on that Olympics logo. Brief as it was, I was fascinated by the reference to the editorial conclave, and to the fact that the bloated janitor remains an unreconstructed Blunkettite. The real reason I am writing, however, is because I am desperate to find out what Mrs Gubbins was knitting. Can you tell me? Well, Ruth, yes I can! A few weeks ago, the octogenarian crone was approached by a charity working with the filthy and destitute denizens of that cluster of hovels out Pointy Town way. As you may know, these ill-starred wretches are even lower than the lowest of the low, wallowing in a dank pit of turpitude and lacking even the most basic sanitation. Other charitable organisations shun them because, you know, there are limits. Anyway, Mrs Gubbins was asked to knit something for them, and she wisely decided to bring a little joy to their hearts--if they actually have beating human hearts--by making for them a life-size knitted puppet of Ugo, hero of a series of exciting Bulgarian folk tales. We have published a number of Ugo stories here at Hooting Yard, so this would be an opportune time to pluck them from the Archive and present all six here afresh, some three years after they originally appeared: Ugo Goofs Off Ugo lived in Plovdiv. In the fog, Ugo goofed off. "There you go, Ugo, goofing off again," said Ugo's ma. It was foggy. Ugo stepped in some goo. He got it on his boots. "Ma, I've got goo on my boots," said Ugo. Ugo's ma gave him a rag to wipe the goo off his boots. She had a drawer of gewgaws. Gewgaws and rags. Ugo's ma was blind, so when Ugo goofed off and got goo on his boots, she opened the drawer of gewgaws and rags and rummaged, feeling for a rag rather than a gewgaw, for if she gave Ugo a gewgaw he wouldn't get the goo off his boots, but with a rag he would. Ugo sat in the porch after goofing off and wiped the goo off his boots with a rag. In the fog. In Plovdiv. Ugo's Pal Ulf In Plovdiv, Ugo had a pal called Ulf. Ulf had the plague. "Look at my bubo, Ugo," said Ulf. "Oooh!" said Ugo when he saw the bubo. Ugo had the flu. His ma made him a tincture for his flu but there was not much she could do about Ulf's bubo. In the Plovdiv lazaretto, Ulf mooched about in a foul mood. Ugo and Ugo's ma brought food for Ulf. "Have some pancakes, Ulf," said Ugo. Ulf gobbled a pancake. "Far be it from me to poo-poo you, Ulf," said Ugo's ma, "But you should put the pancake on your bubo, like a poultice." "Oh," said Ulf. He did as bid, and soon his bubo was gone. But Ugo still had the flu, so his ma was thrown for a loop. She could cure the plague but not the flu, and did not know what else she could do. For the time being. In the lazaretto in Plovdiv. Ugo's Pod In the old town of Plovdiv, Ugo plopped his pod onto a stool. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-03-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 07:06 Fruiterer's Gleam 12:59 Victims Of Spontaneous Human Combustion In Nineteenth-Century Literature : A Complete List 16:31 Deckhand With Mop 19:36 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet KNITTED BULGARIAN FOLK TALE PUPPET Ahoy, Mr Key!, writes Dr Ruth Pastry, Thank you so much for affording us readers a glimpse of the inner workings of Hooting Yard in your piece on that Olympics logo. Brief as it was, I was fascinated by the reference to the editorial conclave, and to the fact that the bloated janitor remains an unreconstructed Blunkettite. The real reason I am writing, however, is because I am desperate to find out what Mrs Gubbins was knitting. Can you tell me? Well, Ruth, yes I can! A few weeks ago, the octogenarian crone was approached by a charity working with the filthy and destitute denizens of that cluster of hovels out Pointy Town way. As you may know, these ill-starred wretches are even lower than the lowest of the low, wallowing in a dank pit of turpitude and lacking even the most basic sanitation. Other charitable organisations shun them because, you know, there are limits. Anyway, Mrs Gubbins was asked to knit something for them, and she wisely decided to bring a little joy to their hearts--if they actually have beating human hearts--by making for them a life-size knitted puppet of Ugo, hero of a series of exciting Bulgarian folk tales. We have published a number of Ugo stories here at Hooting Yard, so this would be an opportune time to pluck them from the Archive and present all six here afresh, some three years after they originally appeared: Ugo Goofs Off Ugo lived in Plovdiv. In the fog, Ugo goofed off. "There you go, Ugo, goofing off again," said Ugo's ma. It was foggy. Ugo stepped in some goo. He got it on his boots. "Ma, I've got goo on my boots," said Ugo. Ugo's ma gave him a rag to wipe the goo off his boots. She had a drawer of gewgaws. Gewgaws and rags. Ugo's ma was blind, so when Ugo goofed off and got goo on his boots, she opened the drawer of gewgaws and rags and rummaged, feeling for a rag rather than a gewgaw, for if she gave Ugo a gewgaw he wouldn't get the goo off his boots, but with a rag he would. Ugo sat in the porch after goofing off and wiped the goo off his boots with a rag. In the fog. In Plovdiv. Ugo's Pal Ulf In Plovdiv, Ugo had a pal called Ulf. Ulf had the plague. "Look at my bubo, Ugo," said Ulf. "Oooh!" said Ugo when he saw the bubo. Ugo had the flu. His ma made him a tincture for his flu but there was not much she could do about Ulf's bubo. In the Plovdiv lazaretto, Ulf mooched about in a foul mood. Ugo and Ugo's ma brought food for Ulf. "Have some pancakes, Ulf," said Ugo. Ulf gobbled a pancake. "Far be it from me to poo-poo you, Ulf," said Ugo's ma, "But you should put the pancake on your bubo, like a poultice." "Oh," said Ulf. He did as bid, and soon his bubo was gone. But Ugo still had the flu, so his ma was thrown for a loop. She could cure the plague but not the flu, and did not know what else she could do. For the time being. In the lazaretto in Plovdiv. Ugo's Pod In the old town of Plovdiv, Ugo plopped his pod onto a stool. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-03-1728:01fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-03-10Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Bloaters And Mayonnaise 03:50 Adventures Of The Pointyhead Detectives 15:15 Ingrate Ghoul, Scattered Sprig 17:00 Mayonnaise And Bleach 21:15 Bemufflement Of Clangings BLOATERS AND MAYONNAISE A Brechtian sea-shanty, once sung in music halls: There's a blighter eating bloaters. He won't have no mayonnaise. He hates Continental sauces and Continental ways. He never wears a beret, nor strings onions round his neck. He's a bloater-eating blighter dancing a hornpipe on the deck. For he's a sailing blighter on the good ship Marmaduke. He eats so many bloaters that soon he starts to puke. He vomits on the orlop deck and again upon the poop. The other sailors pick him up and chuck him in the soup. By soup of course I mean the sea, the churning broiling sea. And the blighter eating bloaters, well in truth that man was me. I puked some more and then I swam until I reached the shore. It was a Continental shore o lumme guv, o lor'. Now I must eat mayonnaise and Continental sauces. But now at last I'm mindful of globalising forces. So give me sauce and condiments to accompany my bloaters, and I will explain all about socioeconomic motors, the engines of commerce and exchange and of all sorts of trades. Give me my breakfast bloaters and don't stint on mayonnaise! ADVENTURES OF THE POINTYHEAD DETECTIVES The pointyhead detectives had very few adventures. Much of their time was spent reclining upon divans, cogitating, an activity not conducive to venturesome antics. And when not cogitating, they directed most of their energies towards the precise disposition of the divans within their so-called deduction chamber, an ill-appointed room off a remote corridor on an otherwise deserted storey of the police headquarters annexe on the far side of town. Sometimes they determined that the divans were best placed in regular geometric formation, at other times that they were best scattered higgledy piggledy in the available space. On Easter Sundays and other Christian festivals the pointyhead detectives experimented with divan-arrangements somewhere between orderly and chaotic. They had never been able to settle upon an optimum disposition, for they were only too aware that some crimes were best solved with the divans lined up in a row, or in a stellar pattern, while other crimes were cracked when the divans were arranged haphazardly. The one thing they all agreed upon was the effectiveness of their cerebral approach, as pointyhead detectives, reclining upon divans, smoking their pipes, looking to the untrained eye as if they were half-asleep and lost in lassitude. So when a cub scribbler from Let's Outwit Brainy Criminals! magazine was dispatched to police headquarters to interview the pointyhead detectives and to write up their adventures for a feature article, he was rapidly plunged into despair. There were only so many ways of describing a pointyhead detective reclining upon a divan, cogitating, before repeating oneself. Even discussions about the disposition of the divans were carried out quietly and thoughtfully and without rancour or fist-fights. The scribbler slumped in a corner of the deduction chamber and wept salt tears. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-03-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Bloaters And Mayonnaise 03:50 Adventures Of The Pointyhead Detectives 15:15 Ingrate Ghoul, Scattered Sprig 17:00 Mayonnaise And Bleach 21:15 Bemufflement Of Clangings BLOATERS AND MAYONNAISE A Brechtian sea-shanty, once sung in music halls: There's a blighter eating bloaters. He won't have no mayonnaise. He hates Continental sauces and Continental ways. He never wears a beret, nor strings onions round his neck. He's a bloater-eating blighter dancing a hornpipe on the deck. For he's a sailing blighter on the good ship Marmaduke. He eats so many bloaters that soon he starts to puke. He vomits on the orlop deck and again upon the poop. The other sailors pick him up and chuck him in the soup. By soup of course I mean the sea, the churning broiling sea. And the blighter eating bloaters, well in truth that man was me. I puked some more and then I swam until I reached the shore. It was a Continental shore o lumme guv, o lor'. Now I must eat mayonnaise and Continental sauces. But now at last I'm mindful of globalising forces. So give me sauce and condiments to accompany my bloaters, and I will explain all about socioeconomic motors, the engines of commerce and exchange and of all sorts of trades. Give me my breakfast bloaters and don't stint on mayonnaise! ADVENTURES OF THE POINTYHEAD DETECTIVES The pointyhead detectives had very few adventures. Much of their time was spent reclining upon divans, cogitating, an activity not conducive to venturesome antics. And when not cogitating, they directed most of their energies towards the precise disposition of the divans within their so-called deduction chamber, an ill-appointed room off a remote corridor on an otherwise deserted storey of the police headquarters annexe on the far side of town. Sometimes they determined that the divans were best placed in regular geometric formation, at other times that they were best scattered higgledy piggledy in the available space. On Easter Sundays and other Christian festivals the pointyhead detectives experimented with divan-arrangements somewhere between orderly and chaotic. They had never been able to settle upon an optimum disposition, for they were only too aware that some crimes were best solved with the divans lined up in a row, or in a stellar pattern, while other crimes were cracked when the divans were arranged haphazardly. The one thing they all agreed upon was the effectiveness of their cerebral approach, as pointyhead detectives, reclining upon divans, smoking their pipes, looking to the untrained eye as if they were half-asleep and lost in lassitude. So when a cub scribbler from Let's Outwit Brainy Criminals! magazine was dispatched to police headquarters to interview the pointyhead detectives and to write up their adventures for a feature article, he was rapidly plunged into despair. There were only so many ways of describing a pointyhead detective reclining upon a divan, cogitating, before repeating oneself. Even discussions about the disposition of the divans were carried out quietly and thoughtfully and without rancour or fist-fights. The scribbler slumped in a corner of the deduction chamber and wept salt tears. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-03-1028:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-02-24Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 The Tiny-Headed Boy 03:12 Origin Of The Potato Disorder, Revisited 08:19 The Duggleby Splash 11:07 Big Ears Addresses The Parley-In-Exile 18:31 The Old Rugged Cross 20:52 The Ruffian Biffo, His Book THE TINY-HEADED BOY The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled. He was microcephalic. He had a tiny head. His hat was made of flowers and his coat was made of lead. He fixed his gaze upon the sea and this is what he said: "I am a tiny-headed boy, alone upon the ocean. My head was of an average size until I drank a potion. I drank it from a pot I found on a shelf upon the poop. A potion recommended on Gwyneth Paltrow's website, Goop. The ingredients are rain and hail and dew and melted snow, heated on the burning poop deck 'til they are aglow. When it's hot, you gulp it down and say a little prayer. Oh burning ship! Oh boundless sea! Oh solids, liquids, air! And soon enough you find your head will shrink until it's tiny. And you stand upon the burning deck and sail across the briny." The boy stood on the ship in flames and resolved to say no more. He stared across the sea until he came in sight of shore. And like the potion he had gulped, his spirits were now aglow. Ahead of him lay the coast of the Land of Gwyneth Paltrow! ORIGIN OF THE POTATO DISORDER, REVISITED Trebizondo Culpeper snorted. His was a mighty snort, caused on this occasion by his reading, in the Standard, of the well-known science lecturer Dr. J. Q. Rumball's theory that the origin of the potato disorder was of an electrical nature. Trebizondo Culpeper gathered about him a buzz of acolytes, keen young Trebizondo Culpeperists with bright eyes and intriguingly windswept hairstyles. "Hark!" boomed Trebizondo Culpeper, waving the newspaper aloft, "Rumball is spouting forth his electrical theory of the origin of the potato disorder. Never has it been clearer to me that it is wholly and utterly a matter of gas! Fan out, now, youngsters, fan out and spread the word!" And so the Trebizondo Culpeperists went each to his own cubicle, and took up his stylus, and scraped on flat sheets of gleaming Trebizondoculpeperite(tm) screeds to the Standard, and to other newspapers, and to magazines and journals and important institutions, discrediting Rumball and his theory and making the case for a gas origin of the potato disorder. In his eyrie, Trebizondo Culpeper beamed with glee. He ground the Standard under his boot, and he poked pins into a waxen doll of Dr. J. Q. Rumball, and he unscrewed the nozzle on his canister, and put the siphon to his plumpish bulbous lips, and he took a deep, deep draught of the gas. And when he exhaled, all about him shrivelled and withered and died. He clapped his hands, and called to an acolyte to bring him a platter of newly disordered potatoes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-02-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 The Tiny-Headed Boy 03:12 Origin Of The Potato Disorder, Revisited 08:19 The Duggleby Splash 11:07 Big Ears Addresses The Parley-In-Exile 18:31 The Old Rugged Cross 20:52 The Ruffian Biffo, His Book THE TINY-HEADED BOY The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled. He was microcephalic. He had a tiny head. His hat was made of flowers and his coat was made of lead. He fixed his gaze upon the sea and this is what he said: "I am a tiny-headed boy, alone upon the ocean. My head was of an average size until I drank a potion. I drank it from a pot I found on a shelf upon the poop. A potion recommended on Gwyneth Paltrow's website, Goop. The ingredients are rain and hail and dew and melted snow, heated on the burning poop deck 'til they are aglow. When it's hot, you gulp it down and say a little prayer. Oh burning ship! Oh boundless sea! Oh solids, liquids, air! And soon enough you find your head will shrink until it's tiny. And you stand upon the burning deck and sail across the briny." The boy stood on the ship in flames and resolved to say no more. He stared across the sea until he came in sight of shore. And like the potion he had gulped, his spirits were now aglow. Ahead of him lay the coast of the Land of Gwyneth Paltrow! ORIGIN OF THE POTATO DISORDER, REVISITED Trebizondo Culpeper snorted. His was a mighty snort, caused on this occasion by his reading, in the Standard, of the well-known science lecturer Dr. J. Q. Rumball's theory that the origin of the potato disorder was of an electrical nature. Trebizondo Culpeper gathered about him a buzz of acolytes, keen young Trebizondo Culpeperists with bright eyes and intriguingly windswept hairstyles. "Hark!" boomed Trebizondo Culpeper, waving the newspaper aloft, "Rumball is spouting forth his electrical theory of the origin of the potato disorder. Never has it been clearer to me that it is wholly and utterly a matter of gas! Fan out, now, youngsters, fan out and spread the word!" And so the Trebizondo Culpeperists went each to his own cubicle, and took up his stylus, and scraped on flat sheets of gleaming Trebizondoculpeperite(tm) screeds to the Standard, and to other newspapers, and to magazines and journals and important institutions, discrediting Rumball and his theory and making the case for a gas origin of the potato disorder. In his eyrie, Trebizondo Culpeper beamed with glee. He ground the Standard under his boot, and he poked pins into a waxen doll of Dr. J. Q. Rumball, and he unscrewed the nozzle on his canister, and put the siphon to his plumpish bulbous lips, and he took a deep, deep draught of the gas. And when he exhaled, all about him shrivelled and withered and died. He clapped his hands, and called to an acolyte to bring him a platter of newly disordered potatoes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-02-2427:45fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-02-17Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Maintenance Of Reservoirs 07:57 Horn Of Plenty 13:09 Jamboree 21:49 The Polyglots THE MAINTENANCE OF RESERVOIRS My attention was drawn to a letter in today's Grauniad: Brian Simpson (Obituary, 2 February) was indeed a gifted raconteur. At a British legal history conference many years ago, his presentation on 19th-century case law on liability for reservoir maintenance wasn't just learned and lucid, it was also one of the best stand-up comedy routines I've ever seen or heard.--Dr J B Post, Castletownbere, County Cork, Ireland The good doctor Post does not give the precise date of the legal history conference to which he refers, which is a pity, as it leaves us unclear whether the late Brian Simpson was inspired by the out of print pamphleteer Dobson, or vice versa. For nineteenth-century case law on liability for reservoir maintenance was, as any Dobsonist knows, a pet subject, even a Shandean hobby-horse, of the pamphleteer's. His antipathy to public speaking meant that he would never have had an audience rollicking in the aisles, as Simpson did, and not even the most enthusiastic Dobsonist would call his many pamphlets on the subject funny, or even mildly amusing. If anything, the Dobsonian brow was beclouded by a mist of deathly seriousness whenever he addressed the issue of reservoir maintenance, from any angle. For he was fascinated not just by nineteenth-century case law on liability, but by the minutiae of reservoir maintenance in other centuries, and in fields other than the legal, such as general water management, engineering, geography, geology, history, archaeology, and the by-ways of fanatical and hysterical religion. It has been said that Dobson's interest in reservoir maintenance began after he toppled from a dam into an ill-maintained reservoir one St Mungo's Day in a year no scholar has ever been able to pin down with any certainty. What he was doing atop the dam in the first place is one of those ineffable mysteries that drives sensible persons to the brink of madness if they cannot be persuaded to drop the matter. One is reminded of the tragic case of F X Spray, who lost his wits after thirty years of increasingly monomaniacal research, without ever having ascertained which dam Dobson toppled from, in which country, on what date, in what year, and whether the boots he was wearing at whatever time it was had any role to play in his topplement. Adding to the tragedy of the Spray case is the possibility that the pamphleteer's interest in reservoir maintenance was not occasioned by his own experience at all. New research into his benighted infancy suggests that among the few periodicals to which his parents subscribed was Annals Of Reservoir Maintenance, bound copies of which were found in a dustbin about a mile from the pamphleteer's childhood home, at least one volume carrying on its reindeer-hide cover a thumbprint almost certainly belonging to Dobson pere. But these are matters of conjecture, and conjecture is the enemy of blinkered certainty, as well we know. Wearing our blinkers, we are able to assert that Dobson wrote no fewer than a dozen pamphlets on the subject of reservoir maintenance, each of them, alas, now out of print. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-02-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Maintenance Of Reservoirs 07:57 Horn Of Plenty 13:09 Jamboree 21:49 The Polyglots THE MAINTENANCE OF RESERVOIRS My attention was drawn to a letter in today's Grauniad: Brian Simpson (Obituary, 2 February) was indeed a gifted raconteur. At a British legal history conference many years ago, his presentation on 19th-century case law on liability for reservoir maintenance wasn't just learned and lucid, it was also one of the best stand-up comedy routines I've ever seen or heard.--Dr J B Post, Castletownbere, County Cork, Ireland The good doctor Post does not give the precise date of the legal history conference to which he refers, which is a pity, as it leaves us unclear whether the late Brian Simpson was inspired by the out of print pamphleteer Dobson, or vice versa. For nineteenth-century case law on liability for reservoir maintenance was, as any Dobsonist knows, a pet subject, even a Shandean hobby-horse, of the pamphleteer's. His antipathy to public speaking meant that he would never have had an audience rollicking in the aisles, as Simpson did, and not even the most enthusiastic Dobsonist would call his many pamphlets on the subject funny, or even mildly amusing. If anything, the Dobsonian brow was beclouded by a mist of deathly seriousness whenever he addressed the issue of reservoir maintenance, from any angle. For he was fascinated not just by nineteenth-century case law on liability, but by the minutiae of reservoir maintenance in other centuries, and in fields other than the legal, such as general water management, engineering, geography, geology, history, archaeology, and the by-ways of fanatical and hysterical religion. It has been said that Dobson's interest in reservoir maintenance began after he toppled from a dam into an ill-maintained reservoir one St Mungo's Day in a year no scholar has ever been able to pin down with any certainty. What he was doing atop the dam in the first place is one of those ineffable mysteries that drives sensible persons to the brink of madness if they cannot be persuaded to drop the matter. One is reminded of the tragic case of F X Spray, who lost his wits after thirty years of increasingly monomaniacal research, without ever having ascertained which dam Dobson toppled from, in which country, on what date, in what year, and whether the boots he was wearing at whatever time it was had any role to play in his topplement. Adding to the tragedy of the Spray case is the possibility that the pamphleteer's interest in reservoir maintenance was not occasioned by his own experience at all. New research into his benighted infancy suggests that among the few periodicals to which his parents subscribed was Annals Of Reservoir Maintenance, bound copies of which were found in a dustbin about a mile from the pamphleteer's childhood home, at least one volume carrying on its reindeer-hide cover a thumbprint almost certainly belonging to Dobson pere. But these are matters of conjecture, and conjecture is the enemy of blinkered certainty, as well we know. Wearing our blinkers, we are able to assert that Dobson wrote no fewer than a dozen pamphlets on the subject of reservoir maintenance, each of them, alas, now out of print. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-02-1728:11fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-02-03Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Galvanic Batteries, Heads Of Swans 13:11 Problems With The Wiring 14:46 Aesop's Foibles 16:23 Inklings Of Nute GALVANIC BATTERIES, HEADS OF SWANS It is a simple enough matter to embed a galvanic battery in the graceful head of a swan, provided, that is, you are a boffin with some training in the basic techniques of veterinary surgery. The layperson or amateur is likely to face difficulties not only with the bloody business of embedding, but also in telling the difference between a galvanic battery and other types of battery, and indeed in knowing what a swan looks like. The ornithological ignorance of some people is breathtaking, and that includes boffins. For example, I once met a boffin, an acknowledged wizard at home in the lab heating various substances in glass tubes over a Bunsen burner, who mistook a heron for a cassowary, if you can imagine such bird-blindness. And do not get me started on the story of the boffin who pointed at a flock of swooping swifts in the sky and said "Ah, I love the sight of swooping pratincoles!" A boffin who has grasped the basics of veterinary surgery, however, should know a swan when they see one and, depending on their field of boffinhood, ought to be able to pick a galvanic battery out of a line-up of various types of battery. There are cases where the name of the battery-type is etched or stamped on the body of the battery itself, for ease of identification, and then no familiarity with batteries is required. However, it is rare, o rare indeed!, to find a bird so etched or stamped. One must learn at least a few basic identification skills, to pick a swan out of a line-up. But I ought not give the impression that the putative embedder must first pick out a galvanic battery, and then select a swan, from a pair of line-ups like identity parades such as are arranged by coppers following an arrest connected to a heist. It is much more common to be called in to perform the embedding and to find a galvanic battery and a swan already provided, the one resting on a countertop and the other, stunned with anaesthetic, fast asleep in a basket. Even the most stupid person will know which is the battery and which is the bird, I hope, and to allay even the merest smidgen of doubt, some form of signage can be installed, cheaply, using a couple of sheets of cardboard and a magic marker pen. To make absolutely sure, the words "Galvanic Battery" and "Swan" on the signs can be accompanied by simple pictograms for the illiterate. Add to each sign an emboldened arrow pointing clearly towards what a beardy French intellectual would call "the referent", and Bob's your uncle. Now, I mentioned that the embedding is a bloody business, and so it is. There is no way of slicing an opening in the graceful head of the swan without causing a flow of hot red swan-gore. It is helpful to have a gaggle of eager unpaid interns to staunch this, and to mop up inevitable spillages, so the embedder can get on with the task at hand, which is to embed the galvanic battery into the swan's head by shoving it, o so delicately!, through the bloody slit until it is lodged firmly next to the swan's brain. Note that the brain of a swan will always be located in its head, rather than elsewhere in its anatomy. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-02-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Galvanic Batteries, Heads Of Swans 13:11 Problems With The Wiring 14:46 Aesop's Foibles 16:23 Inklings Of Nute GALVANIC BATTERIES, HEADS OF SWANS It is a simple enough matter to embed a galvanic battery in the graceful head of a swan, provided, that is, you are a boffin with some training in the basic techniques of veterinary surgery. The layperson or amateur is likely to face difficulties not only with the bloody business of embedding, but also in telling the difference between a galvanic battery and other types of battery, and indeed in knowing what a swan looks like. The ornithological ignorance of some people is breathtaking, and that includes boffins. For example, I once met a boffin, an acknowledged wizard at home in the lab heating various substances in glass tubes over a Bunsen burner, who mistook a heron for a cassowary, if you can imagine such bird-blindness. And do not get me started on the story of the boffin who pointed at a flock of swooping swifts in the sky and said "Ah, I love the sight of swooping pratincoles!" A boffin who has grasped the basics of veterinary surgery, however, should know a swan when they see one and, depending on their field of boffinhood, ought to be able to pick a galvanic battery out of a line-up of various types of battery. There are cases where the name of the battery-type is etched or stamped on the body of the battery itself, for ease of identification, and then no familiarity with batteries is required. However, it is rare, o rare indeed!, to find a bird so etched or stamped. One must learn at least a few basic identification skills, to pick a swan out of a line-up. But I ought not give the impression that the putative embedder must first pick out a galvanic battery, and then select a swan, from a pair of line-ups like identity parades such as are arranged by coppers following an arrest connected to a heist. It is much more common to be called in to perform the embedding and to find a galvanic battery and a swan already provided, the one resting on a countertop and the other, stunned with anaesthetic, fast asleep in a basket. Even the most stupid person will know which is the battery and which is the bird, I hope, and to allay even the merest smidgen of doubt, some form of signage can be installed, cheaply, using a couple of sheets of cardboard and a magic marker pen. To make absolutely sure, the words "Galvanic Battery" and "Swan" on the signs can be accompanied by simple pictograms for the illiterate. Add to each sign an emboldened arrow pointing clearly towards what a beardy French intellectual would call "the referent", and Bob's your uncle. Now, I mentioned that the embedding is a bloody business, and so it is. There is no way of slicing an opening in the graceful head of the swan without causing a flow of hot red swan-gore. It is helpful to have a gaggle of eager unpaid interns to staunch this, and to mop up inevitable spillages, so the embedder can get on with the task at hand, which is to embed the galvanic battery into the swan's head by shoving it, o so delicately!, through the bloody slit until it is lodged firmly next to the swan's brain. Note that the brain of a swan will always be located in its head, rather than elsewhere in its anatomy. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-02-0329:31fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-01-27Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Git On Drayhorse 03:48 Government Canoe 08:27 De Quincey's Potato Anachronism 11:04 When My Head Is Empty 15:11 Hen Project 17:56 Gumshoe's Mortar, Mobster's Pestle 23:04 Advice On Grunting GIT ON DRAYHORSE Speaking of drayhorses, as we were yesterday, I could not help but notice that the phrase "Git on drayhorse" is an anagram of "Hooting Yarders". This has the vexing implication that my average reader or listener is a git mounted on a drayhorse. One pictures a rustic lane along which a great grey drayhorse is plodding, atop which is a git, leafing through a copy of Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags perhaps, or listening to my radio show on a pair of headphones jammed into their gitty ears. Now I do not wish to think of any Hooting Yard devotee as a git. Perhaps what we have here is akin to that phenomenon where otherwise staid and reasonable persons turn into psychotic maniacs when they get behind the driving wheel of a car. Does the placid and altogether lovely Hooting Yarder become a git at the moment of plopping in to the saddle of their great grey drayhorse? I suppose it is possible. Anagrammatic determinism being what it is, all I can do is to plead with my readers and listeners to find for themselves an alternative means of pulling their carts along the country lanes. Many of you will, I know, be toiling along those very lanes today, engarbed in peasant rags, transporting your carts piled high with rustic muck from one filthy field to another, or perhaps rolling in to a market square at the centre of a squalid hamlet. And what better way to pass the time, as the wind howls through the branches of larches and pines, than to read a tale from Befuddled By Cormorants or to listen on your iHoot to a morally instructive episode of Hooting Yard On The Air? But doing so need not, must not, make you a git. So eschew your drayhorse, I beg of you, and if you cannot afford a fume-belching tractor, pull the damned cart yourself. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-01-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Git On Drayhorse 03:48 Government Canoe 08:27 De Quincey's Potato Anachronism 11:04 When My Head Is Empty 15:11 Hen Project 17:56 Gumshoe's Mortar, Mobster's Pestle 23:04 Advice On Grunting GIT ON DRAYHORSE Speaking of drayhorses, as we were yesterday, I could not help but notice that the phrase "Git on drayhorse" is an anagram of "Hooting Yarders". This has the vexing implication that my average reader or listener is a git mounted on a drayhorse. One pictures a rustic lane along which a great grey drayhorse is plodding, atop which is a git, leafing through a copy of Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags perhaps, or listening to my radio show on a pair of headphones jammed into their gitty ears. Now I do not wish to think of any Hooting Yard devotee as a git. Perhaps what we have here is akin to that phenomenon where otherwise staid and reasonable persons turn into psychotic maniacs when they get behind the driving wheel of a car. Does the placid and altogether lovely Hooting Yarder become a git at the moment of plopping in to the saddle of their great grey drayhorse? I suppose it is possible. Anagrammatic determinism being what it is, all I can do is to plead with my readers and listeners to find for themselves an alternative means of pulling their carts along the country lanes. Many of you will, I know, be toiling along those very lanes today, engarbed in peasant rags, transporting your carts piled high with rustic muck from one filthy field to another, or perhaps rolling in to a market square at the centre of a squalid hamlet. And what better way to pass the time, as the wind howls through the branches of larches and pines, than to read a tale from Befuddled By Cormorants or to listen on your iHoot to a morally instructive episode of Hooting Yard On The Air? But doing so need not, must not, make you a git. So eschew your drayhorse, I beg of you, and if you cannot afford a fume-belching tractor, pull the damned cart yourself. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-01-2728:32fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-01-20Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Goblin Colour Codes 04:44 Retired Blacksmiths! 08:55 Aguirre, The Wrath Of Candleford 14:39 Hooting Yard Advent Calendar (vi) 16:08 Otter Sanctuary Sandwich Paste 24:51 O Baleful Pig GOBLIN COLOUR CODES One of the more intractable problems in goblin identification has at last been resolved with the formal adoption of a colour coding system. According to a press release from the World Council Of Goblins, the new scheme comes into immediate effect, and any goblin discovered not to be wearing a tunic, badge, or dye-patch of the appropriate colour will be catapulted into the stratosphere, daddy-o. Designed to benefit both the goblin and non-goblin communities, the colour coding is the result of decades of tireless work by Bim and Bam and Nat, the trio of retired blacksmiths who set themselves the task back at the 1954 UGINAK Conference. So much time has passed that neither Bim nor Bam nor Mat, nor any of their special rapporteurs nor aides de camp can remember what UGINAK stands for. It is thought Julian Assange got hold of a draft copy of the press release some months ago, but failed to leak it on his website. If so, this is possibly because the Antipodean chancer is actually a goblin himself, and fears the implications of the new system. Alternatively, it could be because the press release is in the form of Tolkieny runes scratched on bark, making it worse than useless in the age of digital twittering. Bim and Bam and Nat hit on the inspired idea to match each of the seven distinct types of active goblin to a colour of the rainbow. This is surprising when one considers that both Bim and Nat are colour-blind and Bam is so aged and creaky and stooped that he can no longer angle his head to look upon the sky. In spite of these obstacles, the threesome have arrived at a classification system which can only be described as flawless. It cannot be described in any other way whatsoever, so don't even try to use another word. We employed a team of unpaid interns to translate the runes, locking the scalliwags in a cellar lit by a single Toc H lamp until their work was done. Then we had them deported to a remote atoll, to live on barnacles and rainwater, from motives of simple cruelty. This is what they came up with: Red : Hobgoblins. Orange : Fat Goblins. Yellow : Pilfering Goblins. Green : Teutonic Forest Goblins. Blue : Goblins found under sinks. Indigo : Wet Goblins. Violet : All other goblins not classified above. We cannot swear to the accuracy of the interns' translation, but for the time being this will have to do. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-01-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Goblin Colour Codes 04:44 Retired Blacksmiths! 08:55 Aguirre, The Wrath Of Candleford 14:39 Hooting Yard Advent Calendar (vi) 16:08 Otter Sanctuary Sandwich Paste 24:51 O Baleful Pig GOBLIN COLOUR CODES One of the more intractable problems in goblin identification has at last been resolved with the formal adoption of a colour coding system. According to a press release from the World Council Of Goblins, the new scheme comes into immediate effect, and any goblin discovered not to be wearing a tunic, badge, or dye-patch of the appropriate colour will be catapulted into the stratosphere, daddy-o. Designed to benefit both the goblin and non-goblin communities, the colour coding is the result of decades of tireless work by Bim and Bam and Nat, the trio of retired blacksmiths who set themselves the task back at the 1954 UGINAK Conference. So much time has passed that neither Bim nor Bam nor Mat, nor any of their special rapporteurs nor aides de camp can remember what UGINAK stands for. It is thought Julian Assange got hold of a draft copy of the press release some months ago, but failed to leak it on his website. If so, this is possibly because the Antipodean chancer is actually a goblin himself, and fears the implications of the new system. Alternatively, it could be because the press release is in the form of Tolkieny runes scratched on bark, making it worse than useless in the age of digital twittering. Bim and Bam and Nat hit on the inspired idea to match each of the seven distinct types of active goblin to a colour of the rainbow. This is surprising when one considers that both Bim and Nat are colour-blind and Bam is so aged and creaky and stooped that he can no longer angle his head to look upon the sky. In spite of these obstacles, the threesome have arrived at a classification system which can only be described as flawless. It cannot be described in any other way whatsoever, so don't even try to use another word. We employed a team of unpaid interns to translate the runes, locking the scalliwags in a cellar lit by a single Toc H lamp until their work was done. Then we had them deported to a remote atoll, to live on barnacles and rainwater, from motives of simple cruelty. This is what they came up with: Red : Hobgoblins. Orange : Fat Goblins. Yellow : Pilfering Goblins. Green : Teutonic Forest Goblins. Blue : Goblins found under sinks. Indigo : Wet Goblins. Violet : All other goblins not classified above. We cannot swear to the accuracy of the interns' translation, but for the time being this will have to do. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-01-2028:57fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2011-01-13Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:05 Old Key's Almanacke 11:41 Bewlay The Landgrave 17:46 Monkey-Annoyance Expert 22:57 Little Dagobert OLD KEY'S ALMANACKE For several centuries, Old Key's Almanacke has proved an eerily and unerringly accurate prognostication of significant events due to occur in the next twelvemonth. Here is what lies in store in the Year of Our Lord MMXIV, as predicted by Old Key himself. January : "Cones" appear at the site of a road closure. February : Scientists discover a new anagram of Pol Pot. March : A scribbler publishes a fatuity in The Guardian. April : Down at the docks, noisome ooze and bilgewater. May : The De Botton Conundrum is solved, to universal rejoicing. June : In a hotel, a doctor demands his sausages. July : Vince Cable stands windswept upon Westminster Bridge. August : The mighty look on the works of Ozymandias and despair! September : The crystal ball is cloudy, but we descry something about a footballer and his hamstring. October : Eggs hatch on a farm. November : The iFry is launched, a simulacrum of Stephen Fry that witters incessantly and is small enough to be tossed into a wastepaper basket. December : Jesus Christ returns, his image appearing on a slice of toast. BEWLAY THE LANDGRAVE Forty years ago, David Bowie demanded "Lay me place and bake me pie!", not unreasonably in the circumstances, as he added, "I'm starving for me gravy!" We have all, I think, been there, as they say nowadays. I have certainly had gravy hankerings of my own, most recently this very morning. Oddly enough, the first stirrings of a gravy craving stole upon me shortly after I had finished my breakfast of eggy cornflakes and smokers' poptarts. I left the house to take a turn around the duckpond over by the viaduct, and there came a constriction in my throat, a throbbing in the head, and a pang in the belly. Gravy, I thought, I'm starving for me gravy. I was unlikely to find any by the duckpond, so I wheeled about and set off in the opposite direction, towards the parade of shops. Past the hatter's and the haberdasher's and the ironmonger's there is a pie shop. To my dismay, I saw that its shutters were down, and there was no aroma of baking. I hammered my fists upon the shutters and screeched the words of David Bowie quoted above. Clearly gravy starvation was playing havoc with my common sense, for as I well knew, the pie shop did not have an in-store dining facility, so even had it been open I could not sensibly have demanded that my place be laid. I made such a din that the ironmonger came out of his shop, next door, to see what was afoot. He was armed with a sample of his ironmongery, a wrench or a crowbar, and who can blame him? I was hardly the picture of an upstanding citizen, in my gravy-famished hysteria. He dealt me a hefty thump on my cranium and used harsh words. Sprawled on the paving slabs, I gasped an apology for causing such a racket. I was about to explain that I was starving for me gravy when the ironmonger recognised me. "Good grief, Stipendiary Landgrave Pursuivant to the County Infanta, it is you!" he cried, and immediately proceeded to mumble his own, fawning, apology, helping me to my feet and dusting me down as he did so. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-01-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:05 Old Key's Almanacke 11:41 Bewlay The Landgrave 17:46 Monkey-Annoyance Expert 22:57 Little Dagobert OLD KEY'S ALMANACKE For several centuries, Old Key's Almanacke has proved an eerily and unerringly accurate prognostication of significant events due to occur in the next twelvemonth. Here is what lies in store in the Year of Our Lord MMXIV, as predicted by Old Key himself. January : "Cones" appear at the site of a road closure. February : Scientists discover a new anagram of Pol Pot. March : A scribbler publishes a fatuity in The Guardian. April : Down at the docks, noisome ooze and bilgewater. May : The De Botton Conundrum is solved, to universal rejoicing. June : In a hotel, a doctor demands his sausages. July : Vince Cable stands windswept upon Westminster Bridge. August : The mighty look on the works of Ozymandias and despair! September : The crystal ball is cloudy, but we descry something about a footballer and his hamstring. October : Eggs hatch on a farm. November : The iFry is launched, a simulacrum of Stephen Fry that witters incessantly and is small enough to be tossed into a wastepaper basket. December : Jesus Christ returns, his image appearing on a slice of toast. BEWLAY THE LANDGRAVE Forty years ago, David Bowie demanded "Lay me place and bake me pie!", not unreasonably in the circumstances, as he added, "I'm starving for me gravy!" We have all, I think, been there, as they say nowadays. I have certainly had gravy hankerings of my own, most recently this very morning. Oddly enough, the first stirrings of a gravy craving stole upon me shortly after I had finished my breakfast of eggy cornflakes and smokers' poptarts. I left the house to take a turn around the duckpond over by the viaduct, and there came a constriction in my throat, a throbbing in the head, and a pang in the belly. Gravy, I thought, I'm starving for me gravy. I was unlikely to find any by the duckpond, so I wheeled about and set off in the opposite direction, towards the parade of shops. Past the hatter's and the haberdasher's and the ironmonger's there is a pie shop. To my dismay, I saw that its shutters were down, and there was no aroma of baking. I hammered my fists upon the shutters and screeched the words of David Bowie quoted above. Clearly gravy starvation was playing havoc with my common sense, for as I well knew, the pie shop did not have an in-store dining facility, so even had it been open I could not sensibly have demanded that my place be laid. I made such a din that the ironmonger came out of his shop, next door, to see what was afoot. He was armed with a sample of his ironmongery, a wrench or a crowbar, and who can blame him? I was hardly the picture of an upstanding citizen, in my gravy-famished hysteria. He dealt me a hefty thump on my cranium and used harsh words. Sprawled on the paving slabs, I gasped an apology for causing such a racket. I was about to explain that I was starving for me gravy when the ironmonger recognised me. "Good grief, Stipendiary Landgrave Pursuivant to the County Infanta, it is you!" he cried, and immediately proceeded to mumble his own, fawning, apology, helping me to my feet and dusting me down as he did so. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2011-01-1328:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-12-06Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Cetacean News Roundup 03:06 A Remarkable Amount Of Mud 07:28 In A Bog With Baring-Gould 12:13 How To Excommunicate Vermin 14:24 Have You Seen This Man? 21:55 Hooting Yard Christmas Gift Guide CETACEAN NEWS ROUNDUP I am grateful to reader Theo Gott, who reminded me of this seasonal squib which originally appeared here six long years ago. The television presenter Adrian Chiles read the newspaper headline Porpoises rescue Dick Van Dyke and was consumed by jealousy. Ever since he was tiny, Chiles had hankered to feature in an exciting news story alongside sea creatures, and now his thunder had been stolen by the octogenarian pretend chimney-sweep! It was too much to bear. Yet, rather than turning his twisted mental havoc upon Dick Van Dyke, the West Bromwich Albion-supporting anchorman began to plot vengeance against the very sea creatures which until now had fascinated him. In his mania, he decided to obliterate the largest sea creature he could obtain, to obliterate it in the most disgusting way, by eating it. And he decided to make of his revenge a festive occasion, by arranging his foul dinner to take place on the day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. What demons swept through his maddened mind, to so finesse his unutterable act? Alas, no hint was given of his motives in the newspaper report which followed, in the cheaply-photocopied Weekly Cetacean News Roundup, under the headline A Whale's Christmas In Chiles. A REMARKABLE AMOUNT OF MUD Sabine Baring-Gould Week continues, with another snippet from Purcell's biography. It is 1867, and our hero (aetat. 33) has been appointed to the position "with the depressing title of Perpetual Curate" to Dalton... "Dalton, a hamlet in Swaledale, was called, not without reason, 'Dalton i't Muck', by reason of the remarkable amount of mud through which its few inhabitants had in winter to make their way. A profusion of wild flowers in summer was an agreeable feature of the place though somewhat outweighed by at least three disadvantages: the smallness of the stipend, the stupidity of the people, and the enthusiasm of the Viscountess Downe... "The natives were perhaps affected by the mud." I am reminded of Ruskin's peasants of the Vaudois valleys, "where the marshes... blast their helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-12-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Cetacean News Roundup 03:06 A Remarkable Amount Of Mud 07:28 In A Bog With Baring-Gould 12:13 How To Excommunicate Vermin 14:24 Have You Seen This Man? 21:55 Hooting Yard Christmas Gift Guide CETACEAN NEWS ROUNDUP I am grateful to reader Theo Gott, who reminded me of this seasonal squib which originally appeared here six long years ago. The television presenter Adrian Chiles read the newspaper headline Porpoises rescue Dick Van Dyke and was consumed by jealousy. Ever since he was tiny, Chiles had hankered to feature in an exciting news story alongside sea creatures, and now his thunder had been stolen by the octogenarian pretend chimney-sweep! It was too much to bear. Yet, rather than turning his twisted mental havoc upon Dick Van Dyke, the West Bromwich Albion-supporting anchorman began to plot vengeance against the very sea creatures which until now had fascinated him. In his mania, he decided to obliterate the largest sea creature he could obtain, to obliterate it in the most disgusting way, by eating it. And he decided to make of his revenge a festive occasion, by arranging his foul dinner to take place on the day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. What demons swept through his maddened mind, to so finesse his unutterable act? Alas, no hint was given of his motives in the newspaper report which followed, in the cheaply-photocopied Weekly Cetacean News Roundup, under the headline A Whale's Christmas In Chiles. A REMARKABLE AMOUNT OF MUD Sabine Baring-Gould Week continues, with another snippet from Purcell's biography. It is 1867, and our hero (aetat. 33) has been appointed to the position "with the depressing title of Perpetual Curate" to Dalton... "Dalton, a hamlet in Swaledale, was called, not without reason, 'Dalton i't Muck', by reason of the remarkable amount of mud through which its few inhabitants had in winter to make their way. A profusion of wild flowers in summer was an agreeable feature of the place though somewhat outweighed by at least three disadvantages: the smallness of the stipend, the stupidity of the people, and the enthusiasm of the Viscountess Downe... "The natives were perhaps affected by the mud." I am reminded of Ruskin's peasants of the Vaudois valleys, "where the marshes... blast their helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-12-0628:19fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-12-02Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 A Lucky Find 05:12 A Note On Gnomes 10:33 Debilite sociale 13:37 Urban House Numbers 19:10 The Custard Sermon 21:15 Slack-Jawed Dribbler 25:30 Mephitic Odours & Perverted Telegraph Boys A LUCKY FIND Burrowing through the dust-caked and tottering piles in Old Pa Dustcake's secondhand bookshop the other day, I was delighted to light upon a copy of Pebblehead's absurdly precocious autobiography I, Pebblehead! Published when he was still wet behind the ears, it was his first bestselling paperback. The fact that he was completely unknown to the world when he wrote it, and had lived so short and uneventful a life up to that point, makes its astounding success all the more bewildering. The prose is callow, clunky, and at times incoherent, the narrative devoid of incident save for the famous hydroelectric power station picnic explosion disaster and its aftermath, to which an entire, lengthy chapter is devoted. Yet the presses kept rolling as more and more copies had to be printed to satisfy the public's seemingly hysterical demand. One observer calculated that more copies were sold than there are stars in the heavens. That being so, one might think it would be an easy title to track down, in shops such as Old Pa Dustcake's, even so many years after publication. But one hardly ever sees a copy for sale. One explanation, which I find quite convincing, is that a flaw in the binding caused the majority of the books to fall apart when touched by human skin. Luckily, when I was rummaging in the shop, I was wearing my sinister black mittens, simply to strike a pose, you understand. A NOTE ON GNOMES When keeping a tally of gnomes, it is important to be aware of the different varieties, including newly-discovered types of gnome. It is all very well being able to spot, for example, well-known gnomes such as garden gnomes, the gnomes of Zurich, and Rudolf Steiner's curiously disturbing invisible gnomes, but what will it profit a man if he tallies up some types of gnome but overlooks others entirely? Consider, for example, the exhausted pipe-cleaner gnomes mentioned in passing on page 149 of Kate Atkinson's novel Started Early, Took My Dog (2010). To the best of my knowledge, these busy little fellows have not previously been recorded in any authoritative list of gnome-types. Now they have been brought to light, however, it is clear that one must keep an eye out for them when conducting a gnome tally. Ms Atkinson has little to say about them, although she does note their propensity for drunkenness. We should not be surprised at this, for it does not take much to intoxicate a gnome. And we can hardly begrudge these gnomes their pots of foaming Norwegian lager after a hard day's pipe-cleaning. Even though you are not a gnome, I expect you too would be exhausted if you were up at the crack of dawn, armed with a scrubbing brush and a bucket of bleach, off to clean pipes until nightfall. Gnomes are particularly suited to cleaning duties, of course, even when suffering from hangovers, as they usually are. Yet somehow in his magisterial survey of common gnome occupations, Blotzmann omits the pipe-cleaner gnomes, jumping, in his alphabetic list, from oilrig janitor gnomes directly to potting shed snack preparation gnomes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-12-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 A Lucky Find 05:12 A Note On Gnomes 10:33 Debilite sociale 13:37 Urban House Numbers 19:10 The Custard Sermon 21:15 Slack-Jawed Dribbler 25:30 Mephitic Odours & Perverted Telegraph Boys A LUCKY FIND Burrowing through the dust-caked and tottering piles in Old Pa Dustcake's secondhand bookshop the other day, I was delighted to light upon a copy of Pebblehead's absurdly precocious autobiography I, Pebblehead! Published when he was still wet behind the ears, it was his first bestselling paperback. The fact that he was completely unknown to the world when he wrote it, and had lived so short and uneventful a life up to that point, makes its astounding success all the more bewildering. The prose is callow, clunky, and at times incoherent, the narrative devoid of incident save for the famous hydroelectric power station picnic explosion disaster and its aftermath, to which an entire, lengthy chapter is devoted. Yet the presses kept rolling as more and more copies had to be printed to satisfy the public's seemingly hysterical demand. One observer calculated that more copies were sold than there are stars in the heavens. That being so, one might think it would be an easy title to track down, in shops such as Old Pa Dustcake's, even so many years after publication. But one hardly ever sees a copy for sale. One explanation, which I find quite convincing, is that a flaw in the binding caused the majority of the books to fall apart when touched by human skin. Luckily, when I was rummaging in the shop, I was wearing my sinister black mittens, simply to strike a pose, you understand. A NOTE ON GNOMES When keeping a tally of gnomes, it is important to be aware of the different varieties, including newly-discovered types of gnome. It is all very well being able to spot, for example, well-known gnomes such as garden gnomes, the gnomes of Zurich, and Rudolf Steiner's curiously disturbing invisible gnomes, but what will it profit a man if he tallies up some types of gnome but overlooks others entirely? Consider, for example, the exhausted pipe-cleaner gnomes mentioned in passing on page 149 of Kate Atkinson's novel Started Early, Took My Dog (2010). To the best of my knowledge, these busy little fellows have not previously been recorded in any authoritative list of gnome-types. Now they have been brought to light, however, it is clear that one must keep an eye out for them when conducting a gnome tally. Ms Atkinson has little to say about them, although she does note their propensity for drunkenness. We should not be surprised at this, for it does not take much to intoxicate a gnome. And we can hardly begrudge these gnomes their pots of foaming Norwegian lager after a hard day's pipe-cleaning. Even though you are not a gnome, I expect you too would be exhausted if you were up at the crack of dawn, armed with a scrubbing brush and a bucket of bleach, off to clean pipes until nightfall. Gnomes are particularly suited to cleaning duties, of course, even when suffering from hangovers, as they usually are. Yet somehow in his magisterial survey of common gnome occupations, Blotzmann omits the pipe-cleaner gnomes, jumping, in his alphabetic list, from oilrig janitor gnomes directly to potting shed snack preparation gnomes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-12-0229:07fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-11-25Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Nine Years Ago (Again) 06:35 Four Uncanny Tales 10:37 Kew. Turge. 15:55 Moptop Of Gath 20:21 Fingringhoe 24:55 St Dunstan's Cup NINE YEARS AGO (AGAIN) There seem to be a few vaporous stirrings within the Key head, so it is not entirely vacant. Those stirrings may yet lead to some sweeping pargraphs of majestic prose. Meanwhile, here is a piece that first appeared on this day nine years ago: Devoted readers of Hooting Yard--are there any other kind?--know that we do our utmost to bring you the very, very best in modern, cutting-edge soup recipes. As part of the latest tranche, here is a marvellous example, provided by Dr Ruth Pastry's sister Maud: Ingredients: 1 lb each of apricots, breadcrumbs, coleslaw, dandelions, edelweiss stalks, flapjacks and goldfish brains; 6 tbsp honey; 2 oz isinglass; 1 lb each of jackdaw feathers, ketchup, love-lies-bleeding, marmalade, nougat and oxlips; 1 pea; 1 tub quicklime; 4 oz each of raisins*, spikenard and toffee; 15 tsp unspeakable goo; 1 family-size catering pack of vinegar; 3 whelks; as much xanthium as you can stomach; 12 pkts yeast; 44 zinnias. Method: Pound everything beginning with a vowel into a mulch. Smear it on to the inside of a big bowl. Put the bowl somewhere safe and below freezing point for a week. Cut everything else up into chunks the size of a newborn baby's fist, then chargrill. Go and get the bowl and toss the chunks in haphazardly. Place the bowl under an outside spigot and fill to the brim with water. Leave to stand for as long as you like, depending on how hungry you are. Transfer to a cauldron. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer. Pour in some milk. Re-boil, indefatigably. Ladle off the scum from the top. Serve with hibiscus clumps and cocoa. * NOTE : The mention of raisins in Maud Pastry's recipe prompts me to quote this splendid passage from Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World (Fourth Estate): If [Islamic fundamentalist suicide-bombers] die in the struggle, so much the better--since they will be welcomed into paradise by seventy-two virgins, ready to satisfy every sensual need. (This titillating inducement may not be all it seems. A scholarly new Koranic study by Christoph Luxenberg suggests that the legend of the virgins is based on a misinterpretation of the word hur, which translates from Arabic as 'houris' but in the Syriac language meant 'white raisins'. Imagine the disappointment of a suicide-bomber who arrives in heaven expecting a bevy of gorgeous maidens, 'chaste as hidden pearls', only to be offered a bowl of dried grapes instead.) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-11-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Nine Years Ago (Again) 06:35 Four Uncanny Tales 10:37 Kew. Turge. 15:55 Moptop Of Gath 20:21 Fingringhoe 24:55 St Dunstan's Cup NINE YEARS AGO (AGAIN) There seem to be a few vaporous stirrings within the Key head, so it is not entirely vacant. Those stirrings may yet lead to some sweeping pargraphs of majestic prose. Meanwhile, here is a piece that first appeared on this day nine years ago: Devoted readers of Hooting Yard--are there any other kind?--know that we do our utmost to bring you the very, very best in modern, cutting-edge soup recipes. As part of the latest tranche, here is a marvellous example, provided by Dr Ruth Pastry's sister Maud: Ingredients: 1 lb each of apricots, breadcrumbs, coleslaw, dandelions, edelweiss stalks, flapjacks and goldfish brains; 6 tbsp honey; 2 oz isinglass; 1 lb each of jackdaw feathers, ketchup, love-lies-bleeding, marmalade, nougat and oxlips; 1 pea; 1 tub quicklime; 4 oz each of raisins*, spikenard and toffee; 15 tsp unspeakable goo; 1 family-size catering pack of vinegar; 3 whelks; as much xanthium as you can stomach; 12 pkts yeast; 44 zinnias. Method: Pound everything beginning with a vowel into a mulch. Smear it on to the inside of a big bowl. Put the bowl somewhere safe and below freezing point for a week. Cut everything else up into chunks the size of a newborn baby's fist, then chargrill. Go and get the bowl and toss the chunks in haphazardly. Place the bowl under an outside spigot and fill to the brim with water. Leave to stand for as long as you like, depending on how hungry you are. Transfer to a cauldron. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer. Pour in some milk. Re-boil, indefatigably. Ladle off the scum from the top. Serve with hibiscus clumps and cocoa. * NOTE : The mention of raisins in Maud Pastry's recipe prompts me to quote this splendid passage from Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World (Fourth Estate): If [Islamic fundamentalist suicide-bombers] die in the struggle, so much the better--since they will be welcomed into paradise by seventy-two virgins, ready to satisfy every sensual need. (This titillating inducement may not be all it seems. A scholarly new Koranic study by Christoph Luxenberg suggests that the legend of the virgins is based on a misinterpretation of the word hur, which translates from Arabic as 'houris' but in the Syriac language meant 'white raisins'. Imagine the disappointment of a suicide-bomber who arrives in heaven expecting a bevy of gorgeous maidens, 'chaste as hidden pearls', only to be offered a bowl of dried grapes instead.) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-11-2529:11fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-11-18Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Dealey Plaza Craft Project 06:45 O Say Can You See 13:15 Ambrose And Ploppo 14:54 Christopher Smart Recipe Time 17:12 Hoofprint Advice DEALEY PLAZA CRAFT PROJECT Fifty-four years ago, on this day, John F Kennedy was assassinated. Seven years ago, on this day, I marked the anniversary with a piece in The Dabbler ... Hello readers! I am going to show you how to make a lovely scale model of Dealey Plaza, the site in Dallas, Texas, of the Kennedy assassination on 22 November 1963. First, get some plasticine. Before removing the packaging, wash your hands thoroughly in warm water. If your hands are really grubby, for instance if you have been doing grubby things, use swarfega. I am making no moral judgement on your indulgence in grubby practices, merely noting that warm water by itself will not suffice to cleanse the pollution from your fleshly extremities. As for your immortal soul, far be it from me to pronounce upon the peril in which it is placed by your unconscionable grubbiness. After all, I am no saint. That being said, I abhor the kind of grubbiness to which you may have fallen prey, albeit I do not make it my business to go about declaring my own rectitude, for that would be to boast, and thus itself sinful. Once or twice, maybe, I have dipped my toe in the slimy puddle of moral turpitude, and that was quite enough for me. Now to the second stage of this exciting project. With your prayer book or catechism resting upon the work surface in easy reach, open the packet of plasticine. Intone three Hail Marys, break off some plasticine, and begin to mould it into the shape of the grassy knoll. It is advisable at this point to go and fetch your rosary beads. Before completing the grassy knoll part of the model, open up that tin of swarfega and clean your hands again. You can never be too careful. When you have made a passable model of the grassy knoll, take some matchsticks and press them into the plasticine to represent the white picket fence. Say a Novena. Now grab another chunk of plasticine and fashion a miniature version of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Remember to tweak a tiny tubular shape poking out of the sixth floor window to show assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's mail order Mannlicher- Carcano rifle with which he shot the President. Some people would insert the word "allegedly" into that sentence, but not me. I have read Case Closed by Gerald Posner so I know whereof I speak.. A pink blob of plasticine will do for Jackie Kennedy's pillbox hat. The underpass over the Stemmons Freeway is quite tricky to make out of plasticine, so you may wish to use a few bits of cardboard. Your local supermarket probably has packaging and boxes piled up somewhere for customers to take away. Go and get sufficient boxes to cut enough cardboard for the underpass, and while you are out and about, drop into your nearest Catholic church and make your confession to Father O'Flaherty. If your priest has a different name, don't worry. If you don't have a priest, do worry, for you will burn in hell, however skilfully you manage to complete your plasticine and cardboard model of Dealey Plaza. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-11-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Dealey Plaza Craft Project 06:45 O Say Can You See 13:15 Ambrose And Ploppo 14:54 Christopher Smart Recipe Time 17:12 Hoofprint Advice DEALEY PLAZA CRAFT PROJECT Fifty-four years ago, on this day, John F Kennedy was assassinated. Seven years ago, on this day, I marked the anniversary with a piece in The Dabbler ... Hello readers! I am going to show you how to make a lovely scale model of Dealey Plaza, the site in Dallas, Texas, of the Kennedy assassination on 22 November 1963. First, get some plasticine. Before removing the packaging, wash your hands thoroughly in warm water. If your hands are really grubby, for instance if you have been doing grubby things, use swarfega. I am making no moral judgement on your indulgence in grubby practices, merely noting that warm water by itself will not suffice to cleanse the pollution from your fleshly extremities. As for your immortal soul, far be it from me to pronounce upon the peril in which it is placed by your unconscionable grubbiness. After all, I am no saint. That being said, I abhor the kind of grubbiness to which you may have fallen prey, albeit I do not make it my business to go about declaring my own rectitude, for that would be to boast, and thus itself sinful. Once or twice, maybe, I have dipped my toe in the slimy puddle of moral turpitude, and that was quite enough for me. Now to the second stage of this exciting project. With your prayer book or catechism resting upon the work surface in easy reach, open the packet of plasticine. Intone three Hail Marys, break off some plasticine, and begin to mould it into the shape of the grassy knoll. It is advisable at this point to go and fetch your rosary beads. Before completing the grassy knoll part of the model, open up that tin of swarfega and clean your hands again. You can never be too careful. When you have made a passable model of the grassy knoll, take some matchsticks and press them into the plasticine to represent the white picket fence. Say a Novena. Now grab another chunk of plasticine and fashion a miniature version of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Remember to tweak a tiny tubular shape poking out of the sixth floor window to show assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's mail order Mannlicher- Carcano rifle with which he shot the President. Some people would insert the word "allegedly" into that sentence, but not me. I have read Case Closed by Gerald Posner so I know whereof I speak.. A pink blob of plasticine will do for Jackie Kennedy's pillbox hat. The underpass over the Stemmons Freeway is quite tricky to make out of plasticine, so you may wish to use a few bits of cardboard. Your local supermarket probably has packaging and boxes piled up somewhere for customers to take away. Go and get sufficient boxes to cut enough cardboard for the underpass, and while you are out and about, drop into your nearest Catholic church and make your confession to Father O'Flaherty. If your priest has a different name, don't worry. If you don't have a priest, do worry, for you will burn in hell, however skilfully you manage to complete your plasticine and cardboard model of Dealey Plaza. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-11-1825:25fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-11-04Thu, 04 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Book Reviews 04:19 Monkeys And Squirrels 13:24 Five Last Songs BOOK REVIEWS Another snippet from Richard O'Connor's 1967 biography of Ambrose Bierce: "The book-reviewing end of his chores, predictably, loosed [Bierce's] most savage energies... He once composed what may be the shortest, nastiest book review on the record by listing its title, author and publisher and adding the one-line comment, 'The covers of this book are too far apart'. "Occasionally, like an eagle swooping down on the carrion-littered plains of literature, he would quote one paragraph of a current novel as an example of hopelessly bad writing. Such as : 'She remained inactive in his embrace for a considerable period, then modestly disengaging herself looked him full in the countenance and signified a desire for self-communion. By love's instinct he divined her purpose--she wanted to consider his proposal apart from the influence of the glamour of his personal presence. With the innate tact of a truly genteel nature he bade her good evening in French, and with measured tread paced away into the gathering gloom'." Alas, we are not told the titles of the two books under review. MONKEYS AND SQUIRRELS The super soaraway Dabbler is rapidly proving to be the one thing (apart from Hooting Yard of course... so make that one of the two things) that justifies the very existence of het internet, so it pains me to have to chuck a brickbat, but chuck a brickbat I must. Quite frankly, it passeth all understanding that a postage with the promising title Important monkey / flying squirrel insight news signally fails to mention Dobson's ground-breaking pamphlet A Detailed Account Of How I Provided Emergency Medical Assistance, Despite Having Not A Jot Of Training, To A Flying Squirrel Exhausted And Maimed After Being Pursued And Attacked By A Small Tough-Guy Japanese Macaque Monkey Which Mistook It For A Predatory Bird, With Several Diagrams And An Afterword Quoting A Jethro Tull Song Lyric (out of print). We tend not to think of the great pamphleteer as the sort of chap to dispense succour to small wounded animals. After all, he was much more likely to throw pebbles at swans, or to rain imprecations down upon puppies. But painstaking research has shown that the "detailed account" he gives is absolutely factual. What happened was that Dobson took a detour through a monkey and squirrel sanctuary while on his way home from a visit to Hubermann's, that most gorgeous of department stores, where he had bought a large supply of bandages and liniment. His purchases were made with a distinct purpose, for sloshing around in his head was the idea of writing a pamphlet about bandages and liniment as part of a projected series with the collective title Various Things You Can Smear On Wounds And Various Methods Of Protecting Wounds From The Elements. According to his notes, there were to be at least twelve pamphlets in the series, but not a single one was ever written, possibly because of the turn of events in the monkey and squirrel sanctuary. Close to the perimeter fence, Dobson chanced upon a mewling and maimed flying squirrel, and saw a small Japanese macaque monkey scampering away with squirrel blood dripping from its gob. The pamphleteer put two and two together. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-11-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Book Reviews 04:19 Monkeys And Squirrels 13:24 Five Last Songs BOOK REVIEWS Another snippet from Richard O'Connor's 1967 biography of Ambrose Bierce: "The book-reviewing end of his chores, predictably, loosed [Bierce's] most savage energies... He once composed what may be the shortest, nastiest book review on the record by listing its title, author and publisher and adding the one-line comment, 'The covers of this book are too far apart'. "Occasionally, like an eagle swooping down on the carrion-littered plains of literature, he would quote one paragraph of a current novel as an example of hopelessly bad writing. Such as : 'She remained inactive in his embrace for a considerable period, then modestly disengaging herself looked him full in the countenance and signified a desire for self-communion. By love's instinct he divined her purpose--she wanted to consider his proposal apart from the influence of the glamour of his personal presence. With the innate tact of a truly genteel nature he bade her good evening in French, and with measured tread paced away into the gathering gloom'." Alas, we are not told the titles of the two books under review. MONKEYS AND SQUIRRELS The super soaraway Dabbler is rapidly proving to be the one thing (apart from Hooting Yard of course... so make that one of the two things) that justifies the very existence of het internet, so it pains me to have to chuck a brickbat, but chuck a brickbat I must. Quite frankly, it passeth all understanding that a postage with the promising title Important monkey / flying squirrel insight news signally fails to mention Dobson's ground-breaking pamphlet A Detailed Account Of How I Provided Emergency Medical Assistance, Despite Having Not A Jot Of Training, To A Flying Squirrel Exhausted And Maimed After Being Pursued And Attacked By A Small Tough-Guy Japanese Macaque Monkey Which Mistook It For A Predatory Bird, With Several Diagrams And An Afterword Quoting A Jethro Tull Song Lyric (out of print). We tend not to think of the great pamphleteer as the sort of chap to dispense succour to small wounded animals. After all, he was much more likely to throw pebbles at swans, or to rain imprecations down upon puppies. But painstaking research has shown that the "detailed account" he gives is absolutely factual. What happened was that Dobson took a detour through a monkey and squirrel sanctuary while on his way home from a visit to Hubermann's, that most gorgeous of department stores, where he had bought a large supply of bandages and liniment. His purchases were made with a distinct purpose, for sloshing around in his head was the idea of writing a pamphlet about bandages and liniment as part of a projected series with the collective title Various Things You Can Smear On Wounds And Various Methods Of Protecting Wounds From The Elements. According to his notes, there were to be at least twelve pamphlets in the series, but not a single one was ever written, possibly because of the turn of events in the monkey and squirrel sanctuary. Close to the perimeter fence, Dobson chanced upon a mewling and maimed flying squirrel, and saw a small Japanese macaque monkey scampering away with squirrel blood dripping from its gob. The pamphleteer put two and two together. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-11-0429:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-28Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Take One Weasel... 03:27 Drenched Crows 04:34 That Terrible Well 06:48 The Defiant Ones 16:11 Nature Notes 19:44 Alpine Zombie 23:36 O Anglepoise Man! TAKE ONE WEASEL... Here is a simple method of grasping a weasel by the scruff of its neck, hypnotising it, and having it do your bidding. 1. Take one weasel. 2. Grasp the weasel by the scruff of its neck and hold it so that its head is no more than a couple of inches from your eyes. 3. Stare into the eyes of the weasel while making hypnotic weaselly noises. 4. Place the weasel carefully on your floor and issue it with a command. 5. When the weasel returns from its mission, pick it up by the scruff of the neck, and repeat step 3, substituting hypnotic weaselly noises with antihypnotic weaselly noises. 6. Release the weasel. What could be simpler than that? Indeed, the only difficulty most students find is to think up a suitable command for the hypnotised weasel to obey. Experience shows that tasks involving high-pitched squealing and savagery are likely to achieve the best results. If you are of a squeamish disposition, command the weasel to do its slashing and slaughtering in another room, or even outside, in your front garden, if you have a front garden. Try to remember that weasels will attack most effectively if set upon organisms of equal size, or smaller than themselves, although in certain circumstances they can prove lethal and terrifying pitted against larger beings, particularly if such beings are tethered to a stout post. Advanced students may wish to attempt the grasping, hypnotising, and commanding of more than one weasel at a time. Even more advanced students can omit steps 5 and 6, and maintain a pack of hypnotised weasels primed and ready to do their bidding in perpetuity, or until the weasels die. DRENCHED CROWS I squelched across the marsh, in driving rain, and linnets sang within my brain. There were no linnets to be seen, just crows, drenched crows, drenched crows. I lit my pipe and sucked, and heard the caw of a drenched crow. The rain was pelting down as I made my slopping way from marsh to town. And in the town, no linnets, no, nor crows. Just shuttered kiosks and the stadium. An athlete threw his javelin in the air. I watched it soar then stab the sodden grass. I went to the canteen. An arty print of crows hung on the wall. I slurped a bowl of steaming warming broth, and then I caught a bus back to the marsh. THAT TERRIBLE WELL One has to ask : did Ambrose Bierce grow up on Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard, or an eerily exact replica of it? "The Old Oaken Bucket"--published in The Wasp, 3rd November 1883--begins thus: With what anguish of mind I remember my childhood Recalled in the light of knowledge since gained, The malarious farm, the wet, fungus-grown wildwood, The chills then contracted that since have remained; The scum-covered duck pond, the pigsty close by it, The ditch where the sour-smelling house drainage fell, The damp, shaded dwelling, the foul barnyard nigh it--But worse than all else was that terrible well, And the old oaken bucket, the mould-crusted bucket, That moss-covered bucket that hung in the well. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Take One Weasel... 03:27 Drenched Crows 04:34 That Terrible Well 06:48 The Defiant Ones 16:11 Nature Notes 19:44 Alpine Zombie 23:36 O Anglepoise Man! TAKE ONE WEASEL... Here is a simple method of grasping a weasel by the scruff of its neck, hypnotising it, and having it do your bidding. 1. Take one weasel. 2. Grasp the weasel by the scruff of its neck and hold it so that its head is no more than a couple of inches from your eyes. 3. Stare into the eyes of the weasel while making hypnotic weaselly noises. 4. Place the weasel carefully on your floor and issue it with a command. 5. When the weasel returns from its mission, pick it up by the scruff of the neck, and repeat step 3, substituting hypnotic weaselly noises with antihypnotic weaselly noises. 6. Release the weasel. What could be simpler than that? Indeed, the only difficulty most students find is to think up a suitable command for the hypnotised weasel to obey. Experience shows that tasks involving high-pitched squealing and savagery are likely to achieve the best results. If you are of a squeamish disposition, command the weasel to do its slashing and slaughtering in another room, or even outside, in your front garden, if you have a front garden. Try to remember that weasels will attack most effectively if set upon organisms of equal size, or smaller than themselves, although in certain circumstances they can prove lethal and terrifying pitted against larger beings, particularly if such beings are tethered to a stout post. Advanced students may wish to attempt the grasping, hypnotising, and commanding of more than one weasel at a time. Even more advanced students can omit steps 5 and 6, and maintain a pack of hypnotised weasels primed and ready to do their bidding in perpetuity, or until the weasels die. DRENCHED CROWS I squelched across the marsh, in driving rain, and linnets sang within my brain. There were no linnets to be seen, just crows, drenched crows, drenched crows. I lit my pipe and sucked, and heard the caw of a drenched crow. The rain was pelting down as I made my slopping way from marsh to town. And in the town, no linnets, no, nor crows. Just shuttered kiosks and the stadium. An athlete threw his javelin in the air. I watched it soar then stab the sodden grass. I went to the canteen. An arty print of crows hung on the wall. I slurped a bowl of steaming warming broth, and then I caught a bus back to the marsh. THAT TERRIBLE WELL One has to ask : did Ambrose Bierce grow up on Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard, or an eerily exact replica of it? "The Old Oaken Bucket"--published in The Wasp, 3rd November 1883--begins thus: With what anguish of mind I remember my childhood Recalled in the light of knowledge since gained, The malarious farm, the wet, fungus-grown wildwood, The chills then contracted that since have remained; The scum-covered duck pond, the pigsty close by it, The ditch where the sour-smelling house drainage fell, The damp, shaded dwelling, the foul barnyard nigh it--But worse than all else was that terrible well, And the old oaken bucket, the mould-crusted bucket, That moss-covered bucket that hung in the well. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-2828:27fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-21Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Further Spookiness At South Mimms 03:31 The Despicable Noodles 12:16 Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich & Wynken, Blynken & Nod 14:54 Maud Wasp And The Top Glintist 21:41 Where Is The Emperor? FURTHER SPOOKINESS AT SOUTH MIMMS What is it about South Mimms? Further revelations from Strange Cults And Secret Societies Of Modern London by Elliott O'Donnell (1934): "On All Hallows E'en certain members of the [Ghost] Circle were invited to meet, at eleven at night, in secrecy, at cross-roads not far from South Mimms. All turned up, the founder, as usual, arriving first, and on the neighbouring clock striking midnight, they were surprised to see a herd of pigs trotting down the road towards them, road and pigs gleaming white in the moonbeams. Never had any of the members of the Ghost Circle seen such pigs! They seemed to be positively gigantic, but thin. On they came, perfectly noiselessly, and on arriving at the cross-roads, they passed through a gateway into a field, leaving in their wake a current of icy air. There was something so strange and eerie about them that several members of the Ghost Circle, overcoming a certain reluctance, ran to the gate to have another look at them. The field, which afforded no cover of any kind, was very large, and it was empty, save for cattle. The pigs had inexplicably vanished. "The members of the Circle learned subsequently that the cross-roads were known to be haunted by a herd of phantom pigs, but only on All Hallows E'en." I think at the end of this month the Hooting Yard Phantom Pig Spotting Club should convene at that cross-roads in South Mimms. Be there or be square, as the hepcats used to say, half a century ago, daddy-o! THE DESPICABLE NOODLES "These noodles are despicable!" shouted the priest. He was glaring at the bowl set before him, his eyes glistening like globs of molten fire. Or rather, his eye, for he had just the one. He had plucked out its twin, years ago, in an act of penitence for sins as despicable as his noodles. "They are the last noodles in the monastery pantry, Father," said the monk. "I am a Monsignor!" shouted the priest, "And you will address me as Your Magnificence!" He was a very shouty Monsignor. "Forgive me, Monsignor, but I do not think that is the correct form of address for your station within the hierarchy of the Church," said the monk. Deftly, he placed a pair of chopsticks next to the bowl. "Now eat up before your noodles go cold." The Monsignor's eye burned with even greater ferocity and he banged his fist upon the table. He had only the one fist, for the arm to which its twin had once formed the extremity had been ripped from its socket, years ago, in an agricultural mishap. "Cold and despicable noodles!" he shouted, "Is this how you welcome My Magnificence to your shabby abbey?" "This is a monastery rather than an abbey, Monsignor," replied the monk, tucking a bib of golden cloth under his superior's chin, "And though the shabbiness of its fabric is unarguable, our souls are pure, or at least as pure as constant and hysterical prayer can make them." The Monsignor swept the bowl aside with his one forearm, and it clattered to the floor, strewing the noodles all kim kam. The bowl did not break, for it was made of tin. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Further Spookiness At South Mimms 03:31 The Despicable Noodles 12:16 Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich & Wynken, Blynken & Nod 14:54 Maud Wasp And The Top Glintist 21:41 Where Is The Emperor? FURTHER SPOOKINESS AT SOUTH MIMMS What is it about South Mimms? Further revelations from Strange Cults And Secret Societies Of Modern London by Elliott O'Donnell (1934): "On All Hallows E'en certain members of the [Ghost] Circle were invited to meet, at eleven at night, in secrecy, at cross-roads not far from South Mimms. All turned up, the founder, as usual, arriving first, and on the neighbouring clock striking midnight, they were surprised to see a herd of pigs trotting down the road towards them, road and pigs gleaming white in the moonbeams. Never had any of the members of the Ghost Circle seen such pigs! They seemed to be positively gigantic, but thin. On they came, perfectly noiselessly, and on arriving at the cross-roads, they passed through a gateway into a field, leaving in their wake a current of icy air. There was something so strange and eerie about them that several members of the Ghost Circle, overcoming a certain reluctance, ran to the gate to have another look at them. The field, which afforded no cover of any kind, was very large, and it was empty, save for cattle. The pigs had inexplicably vanished. "The members of the Circle learned subsequently that the cross-roads were known to be haunted by a herd of phantom pigs, but only on All Hallows E'en." I think at the end of this month the Hooting Yard Phantom Pig Spotting Club should convene at that cross-roads in South Mimms. Be there or be square, as the hepcats used to say, half a century ago, daddy-o! THE DESPICABLE NOODLES "These noodles are despicable!" shouted the priest. He was glaring at the bowl set before him, his eyes glistening like globs of molten fire. Or rather, his eye, for he had just the one. He had plucked out its twin, years ago, in an act of penitence for sins as despicable as his noodles. "They are the last noodles in the monastery pantry, Father," said the monk. "I am a Monsignor!" shouted the priest, "And you will address me as Your Magnificence!" He was a very shouty Monsignor. "Forgive me, Monsignor, but I do not think that is the correct form of address for your station within the hierarchy of the Church," said the monk. Deftly, he placed a pair of chopsticks next to the bowl. "Now eat up before your noodles go cold." The Monsignor's eye burned with even greater ferocity and he banged his fist upon the table. He had only the one fist, for the arm to which its twin had once formed the extremity had been ripped from its socket, years ago, in an agricultural mishap. "Cold and despicable noodles!" he shouted, "Is this how you welcome My Magnificence to your shabby abbey?" "This is a monastery rather than an abbey, Monsignor," replied the monk, tucking a bib of golden cloth under his superior's chin, "And though the shabbiness of its fabric is unarguable, our souls are pure, or at least as pure as constant and hysterical prayer can make them." The Monsignor swept the bowl aside with his one forearm, and it clattered to the floor, strewing the noodles all kim kam. The bowl did not break, for it was made of tin. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-2129:35fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-14Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Wool 05:12 X 12:57 Y 18:06 Z 20:47 An Irish Writer Of Some Repute 24:58 Foul And Beastly Vice At South Mimms WOOL This piece first appeared in 2010. I am reposting it today for reasons which I am sure will be obvious to the woolly-brained among you. If you are a certain type of folk singer, or vicar, or countryside rambler, you will as likely as not be wearing a jumper or sweater or pullover made of wool. It may conceivably be a polo neck. You more than anyone will know that there is good wool and there is bad wool. I would go so far as to say that, in the matter of wool, there is no middle ground, no grey area. Either the wool is good, or it is bad, and there's an end on't. If your jumper or sweater or pullover has been knitted from good wool, you should count your blessings. Depending on where you live, good wool can be hard to come by. You may have had to send away to some far distant woolly apparel concern to have one of their catalogue items delivered to you through the mails, in a packet. The costs of transportation and packaging will have added to the basic price of your chosen jumper or sweater or pullover, but the outlay is justified when it is guaranteed that the knitwork was done with good wool. But woe betide you if for some reason you are forced to wear something made from bad wool. Bad wool comes from bad sheep. They may be diseased, or repugnant, or unseemly, or all three. That does not stop unscrupulous shearers from shearing the wool from them and selling it on to equally unscrupulous wool merchants, who in turn have it processed and knitted into garments. It is both sad and astounding what reserves of human skill can be deployed into making something out of bad wool. Spotting a garment on a market stall, or for sale from the barrow of a barrow boy, it may not be immediately apparent whether the wool is good wool or bad wool. It may not even become evident when you put it on, pulling it over your head and inserting your arms and tucking it about yourself. But if it is made from bad wool it will contaminate you, as surely as night follows day. That is the thing about garb knitted from bad wool. The knitting was bad and the garb is bad, because of the bad wool. And, disporting it upon your frame, sashaying along the boulevards of your faubourg, it will make you bad too. It is a wonder that bad wool has not been made illegal. Perhaps there are happy lands where that is the case. Is that not a pleasing thought, a happy land where all the wool is good, and none of it bad? Alas, it is an impossible dream. For there will always be bad sheep, and bad shearers, and unscrupulous merchants, and ne'er-do-well traders and barrow boys. Hence, if you are wearing good wool, I repeat, count your blessings, count them until kingdom come, and then count them over again. And if you are wearing bad wool, reflect upon the circumstance, ask what you have done to deserve bad wool. It is likely that you have brought the bad wool upon yourself, through your own contamination, for bad attracts bad, in persons and wool as in other phenomena of the boundless universe. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Wool 05:12 X 12:57 Y 18:06 Z 20:47 An Irish Writer Of Some Repute 24:58 Foul And Beastly Vice At South Mimms WOOL This piece first appeared in 2010. I am reposting it today for reasons which I am sure will be obvious to the woolly-brained among you. If you are a certain type of folk singer, or vicar, or countryside rambler, you will as likely as not be wearing a jumper or sweater or pullover made of wool. It may conceivably be a polo neck. You more than anyone will know that there is good wool and there is bad wool. I would go so far as to say that, in the matter of wool, there is no middle ground, no grey area. Either the wool is good, or it is bad, and there's an end on't. If your jumper or sweater or pullover has been knitted from good wool, you should count your blessings. Depending on where you live, good wool can be hard to come by. You may have had to send away to some far distant woolly apparel concern to have one of their catalogue items delivered to you through the mails, in a packet. The costs of transportation and packaging will have added to the basic price of your chosen jumper or sweater or pullover, but the outlay is justified when it is guaranteed that the knitwork was done with good wool. But woe betide you if for some reason you are forced to wear something made from bad wool. Bad wool comes from bad sheep. They may be diseased, or repugnant, or unseemly, or all three. That does not stop unscrupulous shearers from shearing the wool from them and selling it on to equally unscrupulous wool merchants, who in turn have it processed and knitted into garments. It is both sad and astounding what reserves of human skill can be deployed into making something out of bad wool. Spotting a garment on a market stall, or for sale from the barrow of a barrow boy, it may not be immediately apparent whether the wool is good wool or bad wool. It may not even become evident when you put it on, pulling it over your head and inserting your arms and tucking it about yourself. But if it is made from bad wool it will contaminate you, as surely as night follows day. That is the thing about garb knitted from bad wool. The knitting was bad and the garb is bad, because of the bad wool. And, disporting it upon your frame, sashaying along the boulevards of your faubourg, it will make you bad too. It is a wonder that bad wool has not been made illegal. Perhaps there are happy lands where that is the case. Is that not a pleasing thought, a happy land where all the wool is good, and none of it bad? Alas, it is an impossible dream. For there will always be bad sheep, and bad shearers, and unscrupulous merchants, and ne'er-do-well traders and barrow boys. Hence, if you are wearing good wool, I repeat, count your blessings, count them until kingdom come, and then count them over again. And if you are wearing bad wool, reflect upon the circumstance, ask what you have done to deserve bad wool. It is likely that you have brought the bad wool upon yourself, through your own contamination, for bad attracts bad, in persons and wool as in other phenomena of the boundless universe. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-1428:45fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-07Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Q 11:21 S 15:06 U 20:02 Insufficiently Pointy 20:48 V Q Few experiences are as alarming as sinking up to your waist in a quagmire. Having blundered into a quagmire, because you were not looking where you were going, your immediate reaction will probably be to shout your head off, calling for help, and to flail your arms in a haphazard manner, hoping perhaps to summon rescue by visual as well as auditory means. Unfortunately, it so happens that the overwhelming majority of quagmires are to be found in rustic settings, with low population density, rather than in the hurly burly of our crowded cities, where you could confidently expect at least one passer-by in the teeming urban throng to notice your pickle and dash to your assistance, perhaps with a winch. Out in the countryside, depending upon how remote from human habitation it is, hours or days or even weeks might elapse before some wayfarer comes striding past the quagmire to witness your plight. That is not to say that urban quagmires do not exist, but they tend to be spiritual ones, quags of moral turpitude, and they need not concern us here. If it was shortly after dawn that you sank into your quagmire, bleary-eyed on a morning hike, you at least know that you have many hours of light ahead, and this knowledge should help you to keep your pecker up. After all, statistically, the longer the daylight, the more chance there is of a peasant passing by. I have not studied statistics, and of course there are all sorts of variables to take into account, but I think I can safely say that you have more reason for optimism if you have sunk into a quagmire early in the morning rather than at dusk, as the sun sinks in the west and the sky turns black. You can adjust the intensity of your hope or hopelessness based on what o' clock it is when you sink, for of course it may be neither dawn nor dusk but two-thirty in the afternoon or one minute past midnight. If the latter, should you survive your ordeal, you would be well-advised to review your decision to go marching about the bleak countryside in the middle of the night, and resolve not to do so in future, if it can at all be avoided. For the purposes of our blathering, let us assume it is mid-morning, and summer, and thus many hours of daylight lie ahead. You have spent, I would guess, about ten minutes bellowing and waving, to no avail, before you apprehend the futility of doing so. The effort you have expended has served to exhaust you. You are tempted to weep. Around you, the countryside is still and silent, save for a breeze rustling the leaves of the trees, the chirrup and tweet and caw and boom of birds, the scurrying in the undergrowth of busy moles and other habitues of field and mud and duff. For the countryside is never truly still, nor truly silent. And the pong! I have not yet mentioned that. One of the salient features of the average quagmire is that foul mephitic fumes rise from it. You would naturally want to cover your nose with the embroidered linen handkerchief you keep in your trouser pocket, but of course both pocket and handkerchief, and indeed trousers, are submerged in the quagmire. You have no choice but to snuff up the noisome stench. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Q 11:21 S 15:06 U 20:02 Insufficiently Pointy 20:48 V Q Few experiences are as alarming as sinking up to your waist in a quagmire. Having blundered into a quagmire, because you were not looking where you were going, your immediate reaction will probably be to shout your head off, calling for help, and to flail your arms in a haphazard manner, hoping perhaps to summon rescue by visual as well as auditory means. Unfortunately, it so happens that the overwhelming majority of quagmires are to be found in rustic settings, with low population density, rather than in the hurly burly of our crowded cities, where you could confidently expect at least one passer-by in the teeming urban throng to notice your pickle and dash to your assistance, perhaps with a winch. Out in the countryside, depending upon how remote from human habitation it is, hours or days or even weeks might elapse before some wayfarer comes striding past the quagmire to witness your plight. That is not to say that urban quagmires do not exist, but they tend to be spiritual ones, quags of moral turpitude, and they need not concern us here. If it was shortly after dawn that you sank into your quagmire, bleary-eyed on a morning hike, you at least know that you have many hours of light ahead, and this knowledge should help you to keep your pecker up. After all, statistically, the longer the daylight, the more chance there is of a peasant passing by. I have not studied statistics, and of course there are all sorts of variables to take into account, but I think I can safely say that you have more reason for optimism if you have sunk into a quagmire early in the morning rather than at dusk, as the sun sinks in the west and the sky turns black. You can adjust the intensity of your hope or hopelessness based on what o' clock it is when you sink, for of course it may be neither dawn nor dusk but two-thirty in the afternoon or one minute past midnight. If the latter, should you survive your ordeal, you would be well-advised to review your decision to go marching about the bleak countryside in the middle of the night, and resolve not to do so in future, if it can at all be avoided. For the purposes of our blathering, let us assume it is mid-morning, and summer, and thus many hours of daylight lie ahead. You have spent, I would guess, about ten minutes bellowing and waving, to no avail, before you apprehend the futility of doing so. The effort you have expended has served to exhaust you. You are tempted to weep. Around you, the countryside is still and silent, save for a breeze rustling the leaves of the trees, the chirrup and tweet and caw and boom of birds, the scurrying in the undergrowth of busy moles and other habitues of field and mud and duff. For the countryside is never truly still, nor truly silent. And the pong! I have not yet mentioned that. One of the salient features of the average quagmire is that foul mephitic fumes rise from it. You would naturally want to cover your nose with the embroidered linen handkerchief you keep in your trouser pocket, but of course both pocket and handkerchief, and indeed trousers, are submerged in the quagmire. You have no choice but to snuff up the noisome stench. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-10-0729:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-30Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 H 07:50 J 16:34 K 18:09 M 23:13 O H H is for Hybrids "Indeed, many people... think that the aliens, having subjected abductees to breeding experiments in parked spaceships or secret underground laboratories, have already produced a race of hybrids who will someday rule or even replace us. The hybrids may in fact be shopping and commuting all around us as I write. And even if they aren't, their mixed parentage could help to explain the familiar images found in abduction memories like the following... "He's got on a, a multistriped t-shirt... And some, like, little blue shorts... They had sophisticated-looking toys... They have a yo-yo... It looks like an Etch-a-Sketch screen, except it's filled with all sorts of stuff. "They were dressed like 1920s thugs, and came into the bedroom with old-fashioned Tommy Guns, aiming at me and blazing away. "Beth Collings saw a naked man in an enormous white cowboy hat. "Karla Turner... mentions two people she knows who have seen aliens disguised as hillbillies. Katharina Wilson had an experience with an alien masquerading as Al Gore. "Once recollections of this kind are taken to be authentic, guesswork as to the aliens' true nature and purpose becomes irresistible. What if, for example, Katharina Wilson's visitor wasn't just masquerading as Al Gore but was Al Gore--the hybrid or body snatcher who has already replaced the man from Tennessee? And if so, the alien takeover of our executive branch surely wouldn't have stopped at the second in command. Consider this provocative observation by the renowned abduction expert David M Jacobs: "Because the late-state hybrids are mainly human, they have strong sexual drives but little conscience. It is as if they have human attributes but lack human controls. Even if they do have a conscience, they know that the human victim will immediately forget what happened to her. The hybrid might assume there is no lasting effect upon the human and he can therefore do and say anything he pleases with impunity. "Could the space creature who assumed the form of Bill Clinton have been hideously mocking us when it kept invoking 'executive privilege'?" Frederick Crews, "The Mind Snatchers" (1998) in Follies Of The Wise : Dissenting Essays (2006) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 H 07:50 J 16:34 K 18:09 M 23:13 O H H is for Hybrids "Indeed, many people... think that the aliens, having subjected abductees to breeding experiments in parked spaceships or secret underground laboratories, have already produced a race of hybrids who will someday rule or even replace us. The hybrids may in fact be shopping and commuting all around us as I write. And even if they aren't, their mixed parentage could help to explain the familiar images found in abduction memories like the following... "He's got on a, a multistriped t-shirt... And some, like, little blue shorts... They had sophisticated-looking toys... They have a yo-yo... It looks like an Etch-a-Sketch screen, except it's filled with all sorts of stuff. "They were dressed like 1920s thugs, and came into the bedroom with old-fashioned Tommy Guns, aiming at me and blazing away. "Beth Collings saw a naked man in an enormous white cowboy hat. "Karla Turner... mentions two people she knows who have seen aliens disguised as hillbillies. Katharina Wilson had an experience with an alien masquerading as Al Gore. "Once recollections of this kind are taken to be authentic, guesswork as to the aliens' true nature and purpose becomes irresistible. What if, for example, Katharina Wilson's visitor wasn't just masquerading as Al Gore but was Al Gore--the hybrid or body snatcher who has already replaced the man from Tennessee? And if so, the alien takeover of our executive branch surely wouldn't have stopped at the second in command. Consider this provocative observation by the renowned abduction expert David M Jacobs: "Because the late-state hybrids are mainly human, they have strong sexual drives but little conscience. It is as if they have human attributes but lack human controls. Even if they do have a conscience, they know that the human victim will immediately forget what happened to her. The hybrid might assume there is no lasting effect upon the human and he can therefore do and say anything he pleases with impunity. "Could the space creature who assumed the form of Bill Clinton have been hideously mocking us when it kept invoking 'executive privilege'?" Frederick Crews, "The Mind Snatchers" (1998) in Follies Of The Wise : Dissenting Essays (2006) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-3029:14fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-23Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 A 03:57 Tenth Anniversary (VIII) 13:26 E 17:11 F 20:23 G 25:40 H A Many moons ago, when the Hooting Yard website was but young--on the ninth of March 2004, to be precise--I noted the fact I had learned that Ambrose Bierce had twelve siblings, all of whose given names began, like his, with the letter A. In the brief postage where I mentioned this, I included a request for a knowledgeable reader to let me know what all those names were. Six and a half years have passed, and do you know, not a single one of you has bothered to respond. This is simply not good enough. I do not think it is too much to expect that my loyal and devoted readers should register such a request and beaver away, burning the candle at both ends, putting their own lives on hold if necessary, until they have discovered the information I am seeking. Wait a moment while I emit a sigh, an expressive sigh which somehow commingles saintly patience and inordinate mental suffering and fathomless disappointment. There. Now, because of the distinct want of diligent research on your part, I have had to find out the names of Ambrose Bierce's siblings all by myself. You see what trouble you have caused me? Anyway, let bygones be bygones. Let us move forward in a spirit of happy comity, striding purposefully towards the slightly overcast uplands, me a preening magnifico and you lot stricken by unassuageable pangs of guilt. Oh, and before I forget, here are those names, of the thirteen children of Marcus Aurelius Bierce and his wife Laura Sherwood Bierce, of Horse Cave Creek, Meigs County, Ohio. From the oldest to the youngest, they were: Abigail, Amelia, Ann Maria, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, and the twins Adelia and Aurelia. Unusually for those days, all but the youngest three survived to adulthood (which also begins with A). […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 A 03:57 Tenth Anniversary (VIII) 13:26 E 17:11 F 20:23 G 25:40 H A Many moons ago, when the Hooting Yard website was but young--on the ninth of March 2004, to be precise--I noted the fact I had learned that Ambrose Bierce had twelve siblings, all of whose given names began, like his, with the letter A. In the brief postage where I mentioned this, I included a request for a knowledgeable reader to let me know what all those names were. Six and a half years have passed, and do you know, not a single one of you has bothered to respond. This is simply not good enough. I do not think it is too much to expect that my loyal and devoted readers should register such a request and beaver away, burning the candle at both ends, putting their own lives on hold if necessary, until they have discovered the information I am seeking. Wait a moment while I emit a sigh, an expressive sigh which somehow commingles saintly patience and inordinate mental suffering and fathomless disappointment. There. Now, because of the distinct want of diligent research on your part, I have had to find out the names of Ambrose Bierce's siblings all by myself. You see what trouble you have caused me? Anyway, let bygones be bygones. Let us move forward in a spirit of happy comity, striding purposefully towards the slightly overcast uplands, me a preening magnifico and you lot stricken by unassuageable pangs of guilt. Oh, and before I forget, here are those names, of the thirteen children of Marcus Aurelius Bierce and his wife Laura Sherwood Bierce, of Horse Cave Creek, Meigs County, Ohio. From the oldest to the youngest, they were: Abigail, Amelia, Ann Maria, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, and the twins Adelia and Aurelia. Unusually for those days, all but the youngest three survived to adulthood (which also begins with A). […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-2329:26fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-16Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Sword Of Wisdom 09:43 Jars And Moss 14:45 Carry Me Down 17:05 Words And Meaning 22:07 Pointy Town Drinking Dens 26:03 Cornish Light SWORD OF WISDOM David McKie, who is always worth reading, had a piece in the Grauniad last week about the first lines of novels. He refers to a reference work I had never heard of, Novel Openers : First Sentences of 11,000 Fictional Works, Topically Arranged with Subject, Keyword, Author and Title Indexing compiled by Bruce L Weaver and published in 1995. No doubt one could spend many happy hours browsing through it seeking out one's own favourites, cursing the absence of others, and making new discoveries. It set me to thinking, by the by, that such compilations, whether fat like Weaver's or brief and idiosyncratic like any number found in books and magazines and online, seem invariably to focus on fiction. What about arresting openings of non-fiction works? How about this, from Sword Of Wisdom : MacGregor Mathers And 'The Golden Dawn' by Ithell Colquhoun (1975): I was a schoolgirl sitting on a lavatory-seat and leaning forward so as to see into the depths of an osier basket lined with newspapers. The closely-printed pages carried an article by a young woman visiting an Abbey in Sicily and described the strange goings-on there. The director of the place was someone whom she called 'The Mystic' but did not otherwise identify: and his Abbey was far from being an ordinary monastic establishment. I stayed put until I had read through the two or three large pages, in spite of imperious rattling at the door. That certainly did what McKie says Bruce L Weaver suggests is "the best way to capture readers"--it instantly put me somewhere else and piqued my curiosity. A page or so later I was introduced to an amusingly intriguing cast of characters: I began to pick up dark hints about the activities of certain (unspecified) members, of whom others were suspicious. The rumours centred around a third studio, situated beyond the one used as a library, and their chief disseminator was the librarian, a Miss Worthington... The members were not all of Miss Worthington's calibre, however; they included Dr Moses Gaster, the eminent Hebraist, whose youngest daughter was my contemporary at the Slade; Hugh Schonfield, whose scholarly preoccupations did not prevent his founding later The Mondcivitan Republic; Dr W B Crow, Grand Master of the Order of the Holy Wisdom and author and lecturer on Traditional themes; Margaret L Woods, the Edwardian poet; Gerard Heym, the scholar and bibliophile, and Edward Langford Garstin who was secretary of the Society, his Alchemical treatises, Theurgy and The Secret Fire, not yet published. This is a peculiarly British, or English, shabby-genteel world of the interwar years, suburban mystics scraping by on invisible means, their secret wisdom unsuspected by their neighbours, and often unintelligible even to their disciples. Later, Ithell Colquhoun is invited to a weekend in the country: The basic formula for such establishments is a simple one: get hold of a large house and garden, also a biddable and industrious wife and/or a selection of concubines with similar qualities; then collect disciples of both sexes willing not only to pay for their keep but to work for it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Sword Of Wisdom 09:43 Jars And Moss 14:45 Carry Me Down 17:05 Words And Meaning 22:07 Pointy Town Drinking Dens 26:03 Cornish Light SWORD OF WISDOM David McKie, who is always worth reading, had a piece in the Grauniad last week about the first lines of novels. He refers to a reference work I had never heard of, Novel Openers : First Sentences of 11,000 Fictional Works, Topically Arranged with Subject, Keyword, Author and Title Indexing compiled by Bruce L Weaver and published in 1995. No doubt one could spend many happy hours browsing through it seeking out one's own favourites, cursing the absence of others, and making new discoveries. It set me to thinking, by the by, that such compilations, whether fat like Weaver's or brief and idiosyncratic like any number found in books and magazines and online, seem invariably to focus on fiction. What about arresting openings of non-fiction works? How about this, from Sword Of Wisdom : MacGregor Mathers And 'The Golden Dawn' by Ithell Colquhoun (1975): I was a schoolgirl sitting on a lavatory-seat and leaning forward so as to see into the depths of an osier basket lined with newspapers. The closely-printed pages carried an article by a young woman visiting an Abbey in Sicily and described the strange goings-on there. The director of the place was someone whom she called 'The Mystic' but did not otherwise identify: and his Abbey was far from being an ordinary monastic establishment. I stayed put until I had read through the two or three large pages, in spite of imperious rattling at the door. That certainly did what McKie says Bruce L Weaver suggests is "the best way to capture readers"--it instantly put me somewhere else and piqued my curiosity. A page or so later I was introduced to an amusingly intriguing cast of characters: I began to pick up dark hints about the activities of certain (unspecified) members, of whom others were suspicious. The rumours centred around a third studio, situated beyond the one used as a library, and their chief disseminator was the librarian, a Miss Worthington... The members were not all of Miss Worthington's calibre, however; they included Dr Moses Gaster, the eminent Hebraist, whose youngest daughter was my contemporary at the Slade; Hugh Schonfield, whose scholarly preoccupations did not prevent his founding later The Mondcivitan Republic; Dr W B Crow, Grand Master of the Order of the Holy Wisdom and author and lecturer on Traditional themes; Margaret L Woods, the Edwardian poet; Gerard Heym, the scholar and bibliophile, and Edward Langford Garstin who was secretary of the Society, his Alchemical treatises, Theurgy and The Secret Fire, not yet published. This is a peculiarly British, or English, shabby-genteel world of the interwar years, suburban mystics scraping by on invisible means, their secret wisdom unsuspected by their neighbours, and often unintelligible even to their disciples. Later, Ithell Colquhoun is invited to a weekend in the country: The basic formula for such establishments is a simple one: get hold of a large house and garden, also a biddable and industrious wife and/or a selection of concubines with similar qualities; then collect disciples of both sexes willing not only to pay for their keep but to work for it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-1628:56fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-09Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Your Ogsby Packaging 04:31 With My Siphon And Funnel 07:50 Origins Of Innit 09:45 Pious Purposes In The Islands 12:36 Comprehension Test 14:18 Babinsky, Master Of Disguise 19:03 Gethsemane Picnic Time YOUR OGSBY PACKAGING When you remove your brand new Ogsby Steering Panel from its box, do remember that you can put all of the packaging materials to good use, not just the box itself but the string, the adhesive tape, the rubber bands, and the excelsior. The latter, for example, can provide comfortable bedding for your hamster, if you have a hamster, or, if you do not have a hamster, for some other small scurrying mammal you keep as a pet, such as a guinea pig or a water-vole. If you have neither a hamster nor a guinea pig nor a water-vole, what the hell is wrong with you? Sorry... sorry, I should not have let that slip. It is perfectly possible to be a fine upstanding citizen of unimpeachable moral character without lavishing your love on a small scurrying mammal. Love can be lavished elsewhere. It can be held in abeyance, awaiting the exquisite prick of Cupid's dart. Or it can not be lavished at all, smothered by yet nobler sentiments, if there are any. But even in such an extreme case, you can still make use of the excelsior! If you have no small scurrying mammal to provide bedding for, what about your own bedding? The most comfortable mattress in the universe can be made that little bit plumper with the addition of a brand new Ogsby Steering Panel's packaging-worth of excelsior. Simply slice a slit in your mattress with a sharp blade, cram the excelsior in, and then sew up the gash with a length of drapers' wool. I guarantee you will sleep twice as soundly thereafter. If at any point in the future you are waylaid by pangs of love for small scurrying mammals and decide to obtain a hamster or a guinea pig or a water-vole after all, you can always rip open the slit in the mattress by tugging savagely at the drapers' wool, remove the excelsior, and then redarn. If you want to ensure that your chosen pet is as comfortable as can be, there is nothing to stop you from seizing a few handfuls of the original mattress stuffing and adding that to the excelsior. With your mattress no longer at optimum plumpness, you may no longer sleep so soundly, but you probably wouldn't in any case, given that you will spend many hours of your future nights watching over your hamster or guinea pig or water-vole, burning with love. I have not forgotten about the box and the string and the adhesive tape and the rubber bands, or indeed the Ogsby Steering Panel itself. Untold hours of fun and frolic are to be had with each of these items, singly or in combination. I mean in combination with each other, for example the string and the box or the rubber bands and the string or the adhesive tape and the Ogsby Steering Panel and the box or the rubber bands and the adhesive tape and the string, and so on, but I can see there was some ambiguity there and you may have thought I meant in combination with the small scurrying mammal upon which you lavish your love. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Your Ogsby Packaging 04:31 With My Siphon And Funnel 07:50 Origins Of Innit 09:45 Pious Purposes In The Islands 12:36 Comprehension Test 14:18 Babinsky, Master Of Disguise 19:03 Gethsemane Picnic Time YOUR OGSBY PACKAGING When you remove your brand new Ogsby Steering Panel from its box, do remember that you can put all of the packaging materials to good use, not just the box itself but the string, the adhesive tape, the rubber bands, and the excelsior. The latter, for example, can provide comfortable bedding for your hamster, if you have a hamster, or, if you do not have a hamster, for some other small scurrying mammal you keep as a pet, such as a guinea pig or a water-vole. If you have neither a hamster nor a guinea pig nor a water-vole, what the hell is wrong with you? Sorry... sorry, I should not have let that slip. It is perfectly possible to be a fine upstanding citizen of unimpeachable moral character without lavishing your love on a small scurrying mammal. Love can be lavished elsewhere. It can be held in abeyance, awaiting the exquisite prick of Cupid's dart. Or it can not be lavished at all, smothered by yet nobler sentiments, if there are any. But even in such an extreme case, you can still make use of the excelsior! If you have no small scurrying mammal to provide bedding for, what about your own bedding? The most comfortable mattress in the universe can be made that little bit plumper with the addition of a brand new Ogsby Steering Panel's packaging-worth of excelsior. Simply slice a slit in your mattress with a sharp blade, cram the excelsior in, and then sew up the gash with a length of drapers' wool. I guarantee you will sleep twice as soundly thereafter. If at any point in the future you are waylaid by pangs of love for small scurrying mammals and decide to obtain a hamster or a guinea pig or a water-vole after all, you can always rip open the slit in the mattress by tugging savagely at the drapers' wool, remove the excelsior, and then redarn. If you want to ensure that your chosen pet is as comfortable as can be, there is nothing to stop you from seizing a few handfuls of the original mattress stuffing and adding that to the excelsior. With your mattress no longer at optimum plumpness, you may no longer sleep so soundly, but you probably wouldn't in any case, given that you will spend many hours of your future nights watching over your hamster or guinea pig or water-vole, burning with love. I have not forgotten about the box and the string and the adhesive tape and the rubber bands, or indeed the Ogsby Steering Panel itself. Untold hours of fun and frolic are to be had with each of these items, singly or in combination. I mean in combination with each other, for example the string and the box or the rubber bands and the string or the adhesive tape and the Ogsby Steering Panel and the box or the rubber bands and the adhesive tape and the string, and so on, but I can see there was some ambiguity there and you may have thought I meant in combination with the small scurrying mammal upon which you lavish your love. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-0925:38fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-02Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Lecture From Long Ago 14:16 The Hapless Bivalve! 17:10 Holmes 23:06 Dr Johnson, Duck Killer LECTURE FROM LONG AGO Here is a story from the last century, which I am posting because whimsy told me to. It first appeared in Tales Of Hoon (1987), and reappeared in Twitching And Shattered (1989), Malice Aforethought Press publications both of which are decisively out of print. It is called "A Lecture Delivered In The Big Tent At Hoon". For younger readers in the UK, I should point out that back in 1987, none of us had heard of the ludicrous ex-MP Geoff Hoon. Good evening. I find it difficult to express how pleased I am to see so many of you gathered here, squatting on rough-hewn wooden stools. And how gladdening it is that most of you have managed to bring along a fine selection of farm implements. They may well come in useful as illustrative material later on, if I manage to fit in the 'audience participation' segment of my lecture. But there may not be time--we have to be out of the tent at nine-thirty, as apparently it's needed for a big display of pencil-crushing equipment. Still, we have until then, so let me waste no more time burbling preliminaries. [Clears throat.] Seldom have criminality and wickedness been better personified than by Curpin and Flubb, the evil duo whose careers I wish to address this evening. Let me begin by outlining the panjandrums... I'm sorry, that doesn't mean anything. [Shuffles papers. Winces.] Let me begin by reading from the judge's summing-up at Curpin's trial. "Curpin has suffered tortures best left to the imagination, drawn his breath in shaking sobs, turned the animals loose, and has a power that men know not. He held the boards for seven terrible weeks. He burned fish. Approaching the startled cellists, he was seen grinding the pressure ridges, smashing great blocks of ice. He did not have time to rest. At the corral, under some sheaves of oats, and very snugly wrapped, he dropped his biscuit. Soon, he was dreaming of all sorts of extraordinary things. I saw him lift a man by the seat of government, rub down his horse, and feed him apples. He even went so far as to hire a top-rig buggy to take a little spin along the banks of foreign streams, procuring big booty and professing to be a detective. It was, indeed, a wild sabbath night. Curpin was furious with rage: one foot upon the iron rail, an enormous net of steel, and his pack-pony became visible. The time of winter dog travel was now approaching. The earth, gritty and metallic, could have bidden a gondola. Living rooms flanked the peristyle, and webs of incandescent tubular lamps shone ahead of the damp, grey relics. Curpin tracked down reports of locust swarms. He honked twice, slipped beneath the sea, went to work on a huge pile of food, and tore up lettuce, his pouch unfolding. His rattling became a sizzling. Even the nearby gravel-crushers were keenly aware of Curpin's bone finger ring, embedded in mud. Gently, in order not to raise clouds of ooze, he blocked its incredible roped sledge and ox-hoof. Caught in a fish-hook curve, or pumped into the expensive bicycle crates, he touched up the ginger facade, decked his troublesome horse, and tampered no more with the tin roof. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Lecture From Long Ago 14:16 The Hapless Bivalve! 17:10 Holmes 23:06 Dr Johnson, Duck Killer LECTURE FROM LONG AGO Here is a story from the last century, which I am posting because whimsy told me to. It first appeared in Tales Of Hoon (1987), and reappeared in Twitching And Shattered (1989), Malice Aforethought Press publications both of which are decisively out of print. It is called "A Lecture Delivered In The Big Tent At Hoon". For younger readers in the UK, I should point out that back in 1987, none of us had heard of the ludicrous ex-MP Geoff Hoon. Good evening. I find it difficult to express how pleased I am to see so many of you gathered here, squatting on rough-hewn wooden stools. And how gladdening it is that most of you have managed to bring along a fine selection of farm implements. They may well come in useful as illustrative material later on, if I manage to fit in the 'audience participation' segment of my lecture. But there may not be time--we have to be out of the tent at nine-thirty, as apparently it's needed for a big display of pencil-crushing equipment. Still, we have until then, so let me waste no more time burbling preliminaries. [Clears throat.] Seldom have criminality and wickedness been better personified than by Curpin and Flubb, the evil duo whose careers I wish to address this evening. Let me begin by outlining the panjandrums... I'm sorry, that doesn't mean anything. [Shuffles papers. Winces.] Let me begin by reading from the judge's summing-up at Curpin's trial. "Curpin has suffered tortures best left to the imagination, drawn his breath in shaking sobs, turned the animals loose, and has a power that men know not. He held the boards for seven terrible weeks. He burned fish. Approaching the startled cellists, he was seen grinding the pressure ridges, smashing great blocks of ice. He did not have time to rest. At the corral, under some sheaves of oats, and very snugly wrapped, he dropped his biscuit. Soon, he was dreaming of all sorts of extraordinary things. I saw him lift a man by the seat of government, rub down his horse, and feed him apples. He even went so far as to hire a top-rig buggy to take a little spin along the banks of foreign streams, procuring big booty and professing to be a detective. It was, indeed, a wild sabbath night. Curpin was furious with rage: one foot upon the iron rail, an enormous net of steel, and his pack-pony became visible. The time of winter dog travel was now approaching. The earth, gritty and metallic, could have bidden a gondola. Living rooms flanked the peristyle, and webs of incandescent tubular lamps shone ahead of the damp, grey relics. Curpin tracked down reports of locust swarms. He honked twice, slipped beneath the sea, went to work on a huge pile of food, and tore up lettuce, his pouch unfolding. His rattling became a sizzling. Even the nearby gravel-crushers were keenly aware of Curpin's bone finger ring, embedded in mud. Gently, in order not to raise clouds of ooze, he blocked its incredible roped sledge and ox-hoof. Caught in a fish-hook curve, or pumped into the expensive bicycle crates, he touched up the ginger facade, decked his troublesome horse, and tampered no more with the tin roof. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-09-0227:28fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-08-12Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 20:16 A Purblind Ultra-Crepidarian 27:12 Ticking Off Hitchens A PURBLIND ULTRA-CREPIDARIAN McCready's friend, Walker, was not the only purblind ultra-crepidarian cobbling plays on the theatrical stage two hundred years ago. There were others, none more energetic than producer, director, actor, playwright, stage manager, impresario, dramaturge, and scene-shifter Jarvis Greasecollar. Damn near forgotten today, for the first two decades of the nineteenth century, he had, in George Bernard Shaw's words, "the advantage of a celebrity that is not idolatry and a regard that is untainted by a secret abhorrence of the angry ape posing as a god", (although Shaw was writing about somebody else). Greasecollar made his name with the production, in a crumbling theatre in a seaside town, of The Thick Fog, a one-act play he probably wrote himself, although some claim it to be an adaptation of a jeu d'esprit by Swausage. He followed it, at another crumbling theatre in another seaside town, with The Impenetrable Mist, this time a two-act play adapted, certainly, from one of Swausage's opera bouffes. Critics from the capital city, hearing of the unprecedented enthusiasm of seaside theatregoers, flocked to the coast to see for themselves. "Seldom has so purblind an ultra-crepidarian cobbled such a play at the seaside!" crowed the (anonymous) critic of The Weekly Starling. Showered with offers to open his next production at big important theatres in the capital, Greasecollar declined, and moved further along the coast. In a theatre so crumbled that it was open to the elements, he unveiled Oh! Tenebrous Gloom, a three-act play with a cast of hundreds. It opens with the memorable lines "Cold-hearted orb that rules the night / Removes the colours from our sight / Red is grey and yellow white / But we decide which is right / And which is an illusion", a declaration that was to inspire fey long-haired airheads a century and a half later. Following this triumph, Greasecollar was given a knighthood and married his leading lady, Edith Sebag, herself no mean ultra-crepidarian, though she was never purblind. She collaborated with him on several later plays, including The Foul Blizzard, Chasm Of Death, The Little Incey-Wincey Bunny Rabbits, and Croaks From A Plague Pit. In 1821, for unfathomable reasons, Jarvis Greasecollar's star waned, and not a theatre in the land would stage, nor cobble, one of his productions. He fell out with Swausage, endured a mysterious calamity in yet another seaside town, and his wife ran off with a dapper gentleman of foreign extraction. Years later, she was to play a shadowy role as a counter-revolutionary in the revolutionary turmoil that engulfed a continent. In 1837, by now in quite a disgusting state, Greasecollar was found sprawled on a pebbly beach howling at the cold-hearted orb... sorry, at the moon. He was carted off to an asylum, where he died at the advanced age of one-hundred-and-twenty-two on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral in 1901. A purblind ultra-crepidarian to the last, he toppled from his earthly socket into the dust. He left behind an unfinished manuscript, his final play, Toppling Into The Dust. It has never been performed, nor cobbled, nor even read. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-08-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 20:16 A Purblind Ultra-Crepidarian 27:12 Ticking Off Hitchens A PURBLIND ULTRA-CREPIDARIAN McCready's friend, Walker, was not the only purblind ultra-crepidarian cobbling plays on the theatrical stage two hundred years ago. There were others, none more energetic than producer, director, actor, playwright, stage manager, impresario, dramaturge, and scene-shifter Jarvis Greasecollar. Damn near forgotten today, for the first two decades of the nineteenth century, he had, in George Bernard Shaw's words, "the advantage of a celebrity that is not idolatry and a regard that is untainted by a secret abhorrence of the angry ape posing as a god", (although Shaw was writing about somebody else). Greasecollar made his name with the production, in a crumbling theatre in a seaside town, of The Thick Fog, a one-act play he probably wrote himself, although some claim it to be an adaptation of a jeu d'esprit by Swausage. He followed it, at another crumbling theatre in another seaside town, with The Impenetrable Mist, this time a two-act play adapted, certainly, from one of Swausage's opera bouffes. Critics from the capital city, hearing of the unprecedented enthusiasm of seaside theatregoers, flocked to the coast to see for themselves. "Seldom has so purblind an ultra-crepidarian cobbled such a play at the seaside!" crowed the (anonymous) critic of The Weekly Starling. Showered with offers to open his next production at big important theatres in the capital, Greasecollar declined, and moved further along the coast. In a theatre so crumbled that it was open to the elements, he unveiled Oh! Tenebrous Gloom, a three-act play with a cast of hundreds. It opens with the memorable lines "Cold-hearted orb that rules the night / Removes the colours from our sight / Red is grey and yellow white / But we decide which is right / And which is an illusion", a declaration that was to inspire fey long-haired airheads a century and a half later. Following this triumph, Greasecollar was given a knighthood and married his leading lady, Edith Sebag, herself no mean ultra-crepidarian, though she was never purblind. She collaborated with him on several later plays, including The Foul Blizzard, Chasm Of Death, The Little Incey-Wincey Bunny Rabbits, and Croaks From A Plague Pit. In 1821, for unfathomable reasons, Jarvis Greasecollar's star waned, and not a theatre in the land would stage, nor cobble, one of his productions. He fell out with Swausage, endured a mysterious calamity in yet another seaside town, and his wife ran off with a dapper gentleman of foreign extraction. Years later, she was to play a shadowy role as a counter-revolutionary in the revolutionary turmoil that engulfed a continent. In 1837, by now in quite a disgusting state, Greasecollar was found sprawled on a pebbly beach howling at the cold-hearted orb... sorry, at the moon. He was carted off to an asylum, where he died at the advanced age of one-hundred-and-twenty-two on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral in 1901. A purblind ultra-crepidarian to the last, he toppled from his earthly socket into the dust. He left behind an unfinished manuscript, his final play, Toppling Into The Dust. It has never been performed, nor cobbled, nor even read. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-08-1229:18fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-08-05Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 On Sawdust Bridge, Harangued 09:26 Gack Versus Cashew 13:09 Hay In Nosebags 19:21 Pliny's Parrot 21:05 Tiny Enid's Unhatched God Egg ON SAWDUST BRIDGE, HARANGUED I was striding manfully across Sawdust Bridge, on my way to see a man about some snails, when I was accosted and harangued by a gobby git. His speech, if one can call it that, was indecorous and unseemly, and his head was somewhat larger than the usual head. I wondered if, in his infancy, his fontanelle had sealed properly, or if it remained ajar, as it were, allowing a surfeit of oxygen into his cranium. Were that the case, it might, just might, account for his loud haranguing. For loud it was, drawing the attention of other citizens passing along the bridge, each of whom gazed at him, and at me, before hurrying along bent upon whatever errands they were bent upon, that morning. I found it very difficult to judge whether his torso was clothed in a pullover or a cardigan. The garment seemed to resist definition. It was certainly not a sweater nor a jumper, nor could it be called a "top", but I could not pinpoint exactly what it was. Such was the nature of his harangue that it was impossible to interrupt him, so I had no opportunity to question him on the matter. The presence of buttons argued for a cardigan, yet it was not quite a cardigan, having a definite something of the pullover about it. It began to rain. Atop the git's unusually large head perched a yellow oilcloth sou'wester, suggesting to me that he was not neglectful of meteorological conditions. Given the size of his head, the sou'wester, which would have served as adequate cover for most heads, looked comically tiny. It occurred to me that he might wear it in rain or shine, as protection for his unsealed fontanelle, and that its keeping the rainfall off the top of his head was secondary, a sort of bonus. Meanwhile, with a certain brio, I unfurled my brolly. I held it aloft as if I were Liberty brandishing her flambeau, though necessarily at an angle better poised to bar raindrops from falling on my head. And just as my brolly barred the raindrops, so the gobby git barred my progress further along Sawdust Bridge towards my appointment with the snails chap. As he delivered his loud and unseemly stream of invective, he constantly shifted his position so that he was always standing directly in front of me, as I feinted this way and that in my attempts to go where I wanted to go. I ought to have lashed out at him with my brolly, but long, long ago I made a vow. Well, if I am honest, I was forced to make a vow, on pain of eternal punishment in the hereafter, and with the added spur of the threat of having my fontanelle pierced and punctured in the here and now. The important thing, for present purposes, was that the vow had been made, and I held to it. Raindrops were falling at a slight angle upon the buttons of the gobby git's cardigan or pullover, and thence dripping to his feet which, I noted, were shod in the sock-and-sandal combination associated with a certain stereotype. He did not seem at all that type, to me, there on Sawdust Bridge in the morning rain, delivering his loud harangue and accompanying it now with wild gesticulations. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-08-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 On Sawdust Bridge, Harangued 09:26 Gack Versus Cashew 13:09 Hay In Nosebags 19:21 Pliny's Parrot 21:05 Tiny Enid's Unhatched God Egg ON SAWDUST BRIDGE, HARANGUED I was striding manfully across Sawdust Bridge, on my way to see a man about some snails, when I was accosted and harangued by a gobby git. His speech, if one can call it that, was indecorous and unseemly, and his head was somewhat larger than the usual head. I wondered if, in his infancy, his fontanelle had sealed properly, or if it remained ajar, as it were, allowing a surfeit of oxygen into his cranium. Were that the case, it might, just might, account for his loud haranguing. For loud it was, drawing the attention of other citizens passing along the bridge, each of whom gazed at him, and at me, before hurrying along bent upon whatever errands they were bent upon, that morning. I found it very difficult to judge whether his torso was clothed in a pullover or a cardigan. The garment seemed to resist definition. It was certainly not a sweater nor a jumper, nor could it be called a "top", but I could not pinpoint exactly what it was. Such was the nature of his harangue that it was impossible to interrupt him, so I had no opportunity to question him on the matter. The presence of buttons argued for a cardigan, yet it was not quite a cardigan, having a definite something of the pullover about it. It began to rain. Atop the git's unusually large head perched a yellow oilcloth sou'wester, suggesting to me that he was not neglectful of meteorological conditions. Given the size of his head, the sou'wester, which would have served as adequate cover for most heads, looked comically tiny. It occurred to me that he might wear it in rain or shine, as protection for his unsealed fontanelle, and that its keeping the rainfall off the top of his head was secondary, a sort of bonus. Meanwhile, with a certain brio, I unfurled my brolly. I held it aloft as if I were Liberty brandishing her flambeau, though necessarily at an angle better poised to bar raindrops from falling on my head. And just as my brolly barred the raindrops, so the gobby git barred my progress further along Sawdust Bridge towards my appointment with the snails chap. As he delivered his loud and unseemly stream of invective, he constantly shifted his position so that he was always standing directly in front of me, as I feinted this way and that in my attempts to go where I wanted to go. I ought to have lashed out at him with my brolly, but long, long ago I made a vow. Well, if I am honest, I was forced to make a vow, on pain of eternal punishment in the hereafter, and with the added spur of the threat of having my fontanelle pierced and punctured in the here and now. The important thing, for present purposes, was that the vow had been made, and I held to it. Raindrops were falling at a slight angle upon the buttons of the gobby git's cardigan or pullover, and thence dripping to his feet which, I noted, were shod in the sock-and-sandal combination associated with a certain stereotype. He did not seem at all that type, to me, there on Sawdust Bridge in the morning rain, delivering his loud harangue and accompanying it now with wild gesticulations. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-08-0528:51fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-07-29Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Soutane-Attired Nemesis Of Sea Monsters 06:53 Lupins? 08:57 The Hermit Of The Dingly Dell 14:03 Swoons, Shudders, Convulsions & Dread 17:08 Hamstrung, Pointy, & Downcast 22:25 Pippy Bag Project 25:04 Teeth And Sparrows THE SOUTANE-ATTIRED NEMESIS OF SEA MONSTERS Father Ninian Tonguelash, the Jesuit priest and self-styled "Soutane-Attired Nemesis of Sea Monsters" who appeared in my dream yesterday, was, I would have you know, a real historical figure. He is often thought to be fictional, probably because the only reliable biography we have of him, by Pebblehead pere, was published in the form of a series of short episodes between the covers of pulp magazines such as Mildly Alarming Stories!, Yarns That Might Raise Your Blood Pressure Just A Tad, and Vaguely Disquieting Tales. That the various scattered pieces were never brought together as a proper book is one of literature's, indeed life's, great tragedies, and the blame must lie squarely with Pebblehead pere himself. For all his learning and wisdom and panache as a biographer, he was a very bewildering person. Even just walking down the street, he left a swathe of boggle-eyed bewilderment in his wake, and the captains of ships were ever reluctant to have him aboard their pleasure steamers. Bewildering, too, is his treatment of the life of Father Tonguelash, quite apart from its being broken up into bits and published in magazines designed for a readership of the semi-literate and the timid and the nerve-bejangled. Although what research has been done seems to confirm that Pebblehead pere's accounts are historically accurate, indeed devastatingly so, each episode as written is almost identical. The general schema is as follows: 1. Father Ninian Tonguelash has just finished saying Mass when an urchin sprints panting into the vestry to announce that a sea monster has been sighted. Either a ship or a boat or a coastal hamlet is imperilled. 2. Without stopping to ask any questions--even something as basic as in which direction he should speed--Father Tonguelash grabs a harpoon and a crucifix and charges out into the wild and windy shoreland. It is invariably wild and windy. 3. After a little while of harum scarum scampering, the priest stops, as Christ stopped at Eboli, and, all windswept and resolute, takes from his pocket a volume of poems by his friend and colleague Father Gerard Manley Hopkins. He opens the book at random and declaims a poem, shouting into the wind. Declaiming done, he returns the book to his pocket, makes the sign of the cross, and scampers onward. The panting urchin who brought the message of sea monster peril has now had time to catch up with the priest, and sticks close to his heels. 4. Father Ninian arrives at the scene of imperilment and confronts the sea monster. He is absolutely fearless. "I am attired in the soutane of a Jesuit, and I am your Nemesis!" he cries. At this point the sea monster usually makes a gurgling sound we are led to interpret as a plea for God's ineffable mercy. But Father Ninian shows none. He hands the crucifix to the panting urchin, telling the lad to brandish it at the sea monster. Then he launches the harpoon, with unerring accuracy, felling the sea monster instantly. 5. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-07-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Soutane-Attired Nemesis Of Sea Monsters 06:53 Lupins? 08:57 The Hermit Of The Dingly Dell 14:03 Swoons, Shudders, Convulsions & Dread 17:08 Hamstrung, Pointy, & Downcast 22:25 Pippy Bag Project 25:04 Teeth And Sparrows THE SOUTANE-ATTIRED NEMESIS OF SEA MONSTERS Father Ninian Tonguelash, the Jesuit priest and self-styled "Soutane-Attired Nemesis of Sea Monsters" who appeared in my dream yesterday, was, I would have you know, a real historical figure. He is often thought to be fictional, probably because the only reliable biography we have of him, by Pebblehead pere, was published in the form of a series of short episodes between the covers of pulp magazines such as Mildly Alarming Stories!, Yarns That Might Raise Your Blood Pressure Just A Tad, and Vaguely Disquieting Tales. That the various scattered pieces were never brought together as a proper book is one of literature's, indeed life's, great tragedies, and the blame must lie squarely with Pebblehead pere himself. For all his learning and wisdom and panache as a biographer, he was a very bewildering person. Even just walking down the street, he left a swathe of boggle-eyed bewilderment in his wake, and the captains of ships were ever reluctant to have him aboard their pleasure steamers. Bewildering, too, is his treatment of the life of Father Tonguelash, quite apart from its being broken up into bits and published in magazines designed for a readership of the semi-literate and the timid and the nerve-bejangled. Although what research has been done seems to confirm that Pebblehead pere's accounts are historically accurate, indeed devastatingly so, each episode as written is almost identical. The general schema is as follows: 1. Father Ninian Tonguelash has just finished saying Mass when an urchin sprints panting into the vestry to announce that a sea monster has been sighted. Either a ship or a boat or a coastal hamlet is imperilled. 2. Without stopping to ask any questions--even something as basic as in which direction he should speed--Father Tonguelash grabs a harpoon and a crucifix and charges out into the wild and windy shoreland. It is invariably wild and windy. 3. After a little while of harum scarum scampering, the priest stops, as Christ stopped at Eboli, and, all windswept and resolute, takes from his pocket a volume of poems by his friend and colleague Father Gerard Manley Hopkins. He opens the book at random and declaims a poem, shouting into the wind. Declaiming done, he returns the book to his pocket, makes the sign of the cross, and scampers onward. The panting urchin who brought the message of sea monster peril has now had time to catch up with the priest, and sticks close to his heels. 4. Father Ninian arrives at the scene of imperilment and confronts the sea monster. He is absolutely fearless. "I am attired in the soutane of a Jesuit, and I am your Nemesis!" he cries. At this point the sea monster usually makes a gurgling sound we are led to interpret as a plea for God's ineffable mercy. But Father Ninian shows none. He hands the crucifix to the panting urchin, telling the lad to brandish it at the sea monster. Then he launches the harpoon, with unerring accuracy, felling the sea monster instantly. 5. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-07-2928:37fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-07-22Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dobson's Abortive Pliny 16:53 Dobson In Dreamland 25:14 A Cautionary Tale 27:23 Pebble Time DOBSON'S ABORTIVE PLINY Here is the list of contents of the tenth book of Pliny The Elder's Natural History (c. 77-79 AD): "The nature of birds. (i-ii) The ostrich, the phoenix. (iii-vi) Eagles, their species; their nature; when adopted as regimental badges; self-immolation of eagle on maiden's funeral pyre. (vii) The vulture. (viii) Lammergeier, sea-eagle. (ix-xi) Hawks: the buzzard; use of hawks by fowlers where practised; the only bird that is killed by its own kind; what bird produces one egg at a time. (xii) Kites. (xiii) Classification of birds by species. (xiv-xvi) Birds of ill-omen; in what months crows are not a bad omen; ravens; the horned owl. (xvii) Extinct birds; birds no longer known. (xviii) Birds hatched tail first. (xix) Night-owls. (xx) Mars's woodpecker. (xxi) Birds with hooked talons. (xxii-v) Birds with toes: peacocks; who first killed the peacock for food; who invented fattening peacocks; poultry--mode of castrating; a talking cock. (xxvi-xxxii) The goose who first introduced goose-liver (foie gras); Commagene goose; fox-goose, love-goose, heath-cock, bustard; cranes; storks; rest of reflexed-claw genus; swans. (xxxiii-v) Foreign migrant birds: quails, tongue-birds, ortolan, horned owl; native migrant birds and their destinations--swallows, thrushes, blackbirds, starlings; birds that moult in retirement: turtle-dove, ring-dove. (xxxvi) Non-migrant birds: half-yearly and quarter-yearly visitors: witwalls, hoopoes. (xxxvii-xl) Mernnon's hens, Meleager's sisters (guinea-hens), Seleucid hens, ibis. (xli) Where particular species not known. (xlii-v) Species that change colour and voice: the divination-bird class; nightingale, black-cap, robin, red-start, chat, golden oriole. (xlvi) The breeding season. (xlvii) Kingfishers: sign of fine weather for sailing. (xlviii) Remainder of aquatic class. (xlix-li) Craftsmanship of birds in nest-making; remarkable structures of swallows; sand-martins; thistle-finch; bee-eater; partridges. (lii f.) Pigeons--remarkable structures of, and prices paid for; (liv f.) Varieties of birds' flight and walk; footless martins or swifts. (lvi) Food of birds. Goat-suckers, spoon-bill. (lvii) Intelligence of birds; gold-finch, bull-bittern, yellow wagtail. (lviii-lxl) Talking birds: parrots, acorn-pies; riot at Rome caused by talking crow. (lxi) Diomede's birds. (lxii) What animals learn nothing. (lxiii) Birds, mode of drinking; the sultana hen. (lxiv) The long-legs. (lxv f.) Food of birds. Pelicans. (lxvii f.) Foreign birds: coots, pheasants, Numidian fowl, flamingos, heath-cock, bald crow or cormorant, Ted-beaked or Alpine crow, bare-footed crow or ptarmigan. (lxix) New species: small cranes. (lxx) Fabulous birds. (lxxi) Who invented fattening of chickens, and which consuls first prohibited? who first invented aviaries? Aesop's stewpan. (lxxiii-lxxx) Reproduction of birds: oviparous creatures other than birds; kinds and properties of eggs; defective hatching and its cures; Augusta's augury from eggs; what sort of hens the best? their diseases and remedies; kinds of small heron; nature of puff-eggs, addled eggs, wind-eggs; best way of preserving eggs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-07-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dobson's Abortive Pliny 16:53 Dobson In Dreamland 25:14 A Cautionary Tale 27:23 Pebble Time DOBSON'S ABORTIVE PLINY Here is the list of contents of the tenth book of Pliny The Elder's Natural History (c. 77-79 AD): "The nature of birds. (i-ii) The ostrich, the phoenix. (iii-vi) Eagles, their species; their nature; when adopted as regimental badges; self-immolation of eagle on maiden's funeral pyre. (vii) The vulture. (viii) Lammergeier, sea-eagle. (ix-xi) Hawks: the buzzard; use of hawks by fowlers where practised; the only bird that is killed by its own kind; what bird produces one egg at a time. (xii) Kites. (xiii) Classification of birds by species. (xiv-xvi) Birds of ill-omen; in what months crows are not a bad omen; ravens; the horned owl. (xvii) Extinct birds; birds no longer known. (xviii) Birds hatched tail first. (xix) Night-owls. (xx) Mars's woodpecker. (xxi) Birds with hooked talons. (xxii-v) Birds with toes: peacocks; who first killed the peacock for food; who invented fattening peacocks; poultry--mode of castrating; a talking cock. (xxvi-xxxii) The goose who first introduced goose-liver (foie gras); Commagene goose; fox-goose, love-goose, heath-cock, bustard; cranes; storks; rest of reflexed-claw genus; swans. (xxxiii-v) Foreign migrant birds: quails, tongue-birds, ortolan, horned owl; native migrant birds and their destinations--swallows, thrushes, blackbirds, starlings; birds that moult in retirement: turtle-dove, ring-dove. (xxxvi) Non-migrant birds: half-yearly and quarter-yearly visitors: witwalls, hoopoes. (xxxvii-xl) Mernnon's hens, Meleager's sisters (guinea-hens), Seleucid hens, ibis. (xli) Where particular species not known. (xlii-v) Species that change colour and voice: the divination-bird class; nightingale, black-cap, robin, red-start, chat, golden oriole. (xlvi) The breeding season. (xlvii) Kingfishers: sign of fine weather for sailing. (xlviii) Remainder of aquatic class. (xlix-li) Craftsmanship of birds in nest-making; remarkable structures of swallows; sand-martins; thistle-finch; bee-eater; partridges. (lii f.) Pigeons--remarkable structures of, and prices paid for; (liv f.) Varieties of birds' flight and walk; footless martins or swifts. (lvi) Food of birds. Goat-suckers, spoon-bill. (lvii) Intelligence of birds; gold-finch, bull-bittern, yellow wagtail. (lviii-lxl) Talking birds: parrots, acorn-pies; riot at Rome caused by talking crow. (lxi) Diomede's birds. (lxii) What animals learn nothing. (lxiii) Birds, mode of drinking; the sultana hen. (lxiv) The long-legs. (lxv f.) Food of birds. Pelicans. (lxvii f.) Foreign birds: coots, pheasants, Numidian fowl, flamingos, heath-cock, bald crow or cormorant, Ted-beaked or Alpine crow, bare-footed crow or ptarmigan. (lxix) New species: small cranes. (lxx) Fabulous birds. (lxxi) Who invented fattening of chickens, and which consuls first prohibited? who first invented aviaries? Aesop's stewpan. (lxxiii-lxxx) Reproduction of birds: oviparous creatures other than birds; kinds and properties of eggs; defective hatching and its cures; Augusta's augury from eggs; what sort of hens the best? their diseases and remedies; kinds of small heron; nature of puff-eggs, addled eggs, wind-eggs; best way of preserving eggs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-07-2227:48fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-07-15Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Eggs, Stick 15:50 Concerning The Recent Excavations In The North Transept Of St Bibblybibdib's Church 18:44 The Eighth Dwarf 23:56 A Wilderness Of Rubbish EGGS, STICK It is quite some time since I have heard from Dr Ruth Pastry, but at last she has broken her silence. Here is her letter: Dear Mr Key : Last week I read your postage Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes and, though I was not impressed, I could not help but be intrigued by your reference to a breakfast recipe which involves, and I quote, "more eggs than you can shake a stick at". How many eggs is that?, I wondered. The only indication you give, and I quote again, is "a goodly number of eggs". This is less than helpful. "A goodly number", in and of itself, is not a measurable quantity. A writer with more concern for his or her readers would be precise in these matters, and tell us plainly how many eggs we would have to assemble before we were no longer able to shake a stick at them. Because of your laxity, I was put in the position of having to find out for myself. I went for a walk in the woods and came back carrying a stout and sturdy stick. I think it was a branch from a hornbeam. It was a very shakeable stick, as I ascertained by shaking it experimentally a few times while still in the woods. Squirrels scattered as I shook it, and there was movement in shrubbery as if a small woodland creature had been startled. Had I had with me my net, I would have used it to entrap the creature, whatever it was, and then rained blows upon it with the stick until 'twere dead, and taken it home with me to boil for a snack, garnished perhaps with a tomato and some basil. As it was, I was netless, so I returned home with just the stick. I then set to preparing my test area. You know, I think, how thorough I am. I shoved the kitchen table back against the kitchen wall, thus creating sufficient space for me to be able to shake the stick without risking damage to my many and various kitchen appurtenances. Next, I opened my refrigerator, and removed from it every single egg currently in my possession, placing them, in their carton, on my countertop. I was somewhat dismayed to note that I had only five eggs, from the carton's original complement of six. My instinctive thought was that five was unlikely to be the "goodly number of eggs" you prescribed. However, instinct is one thing, and empirical evidence is another thing entirely. It was clear to me that the absolute minimum possible indicated by "a goodly number of eggs" was a simple plurality, in other words, two eggs. Before continuing, I fetched from a cubby a fresh ledger, dozens of pages of creamy paper divided by faint blue lines into squares. In this, I would tabulate my results, using several different coloured pencils, which I duly sharpened with a pencil sharpener. I then removed two eggs from the carton and placed them on the table, taking care to position them in such a way that they would not roll off the tabletop and smash to squelchy ruin upon the floor linoleum. I had already made certain the tabletop was level, using a Van Der Hoddle Levelometer, a splendid device which I find far more effective than the common spirit level, and which uses no spirits whatsoever. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-07-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Eggs, Stick 15:50 Concerning The Recent Excavations In The North Transept Of St Bibblybibdib's Church 18:44 The Eighth Dwarf 23:56 A Wilderness Of Rubbish EGGS, STICK It is quite some time since I have heard from Dr Ruth Pastry, but at last she has broken her silence. Here is her letter: Dear Mr Key : Last week I read your postage Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes and, though I was not impressed, I could not help but be intrigued by your reference to a breakfast recipe which involves, and I quote, "more eggs than you can shake a stick at". How many eggs is that?, I wondered. The only indication you give, and I quote again, is "a goodly number of eggs". This is less than helpful. "A goodly number", in and of itself, is not a measurable quantity. A writer with more concern for his or her readers would be precise in these matters, and tell us plainly how many eggs we would have to assemble before we were no longer able to shake a stick at them. Because of your laxity, I was put in the position of having to find out for myself. I went for a walk in the woods and came back carrying a stout and sturdy stick. I think it was a branch from a hornbeam. It was a very shakeable stick, as I ascertained by shaking it experimentally a few times while still in the woods. Squirrels scattered as I shook it, and there was movement in shrubbery as if a small woodland creature had been startled. Had I had with me my net, I would have used it to entrap the creature, whatever it was, and then rained blows upon it with the stick until 'twere dead, and taken it home with me to boil for a snack, garnished perhaps with a tomato and some basil. As it was, I was netless, so I returned home with just the stick. I then set to preparing my test area. You know, I think, how thorough I am. I shoved the kitchen table back against the kitchen wall, thus creating sufficient space for me to be able to shake the stick without risking damage to my many and various kitchen appurtenances. Next, I opened my refrigerator, and removed from it every single egg currently in my possession, placing them, in their carton, on my countertop. I was somewhat dismayed to note that I had only five eggs, from the carton's original complement of six. My instinctive thought was that five was unlikely to be the "goodly number of eggs" you prescribed. However, instinct is one thing, and empirical evidence is another thing entirely. It was clear to me that the absolute minimum possible indicated by "a goodly number of eggs" was a simple plurality, in other words, two eggs. Before continuing, I fetched from a cubby a fresh ledger, dozens of pages of creamy paper divided by faint blue lines into squares. In this, I would tabulate my results, using several different coloured pencils, which I duly sharpened with a pencil sharpener. I then removed two eggs from the carton and placed them on the table, taking care to position them in such a way that they would not roll off the tabletop and smash to squelchy ruin upon the floor linoleum. I had already made certain the tabletop was level, using a Van Der Hoddle Levelometer, a splendid device which I find far more effective than the common spirit level, and which uses no spirits whatsoever. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-07-1529:04fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-17Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Alignment Of Tree Clumps In The East Kent Area 08:26 The Song Of The Borts Of Pray 12:41 Film Studies 16:08 Chalet O' Prose 19:23 Fair Stood The Wind For Frank 21:53 The Manufacture Of Tinplate THE ALIGNMENT OF TREE CLUMPS IN THE EAST KENT AREA While the alignment of tree clumps in the West Kent area has rightly attracted the attention of some our most sensible investigators, the alignment of tree clumps in the East Kent area has been criminally neglected--until now. One of the most startling findings of the recent Blotzmann study, published in Tree Clump Alignment News, is that the alignment of the tree clumps in the eastern part of the county is significantly more intriguing than the alignment of tree clumps in the western part of the county. Studied from one angle, for example, a particular set of eastern tree clumps is identical to the alignment of Abraham Zapruder, Badge Man, Umbrella Man, Marymoon Man, JFK, and the sixth floor window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository at the precise moment the first shot was fired on that fateful November day in 1963 in Dallas. Viewed from a different angle, the very same tree clumps are aligned in a pattern one can only call chaotic. A second set of tree clumps, more easterly in Kent than the so called "Assassination Clumps", reproduces exactly the disposition of the players on the pitch at the moment when South Africa scored the opening goal in the 2010 World Cup, a goal described calmly by the television commentator as "one of the most important moments in the entire history of sport". Yet, again, seen from another angle these very same tree clumps form merely a random pattern. The various angles to which I refer are those obtaining between the tree clumps on the ground and the position of the Blotzmann Tree Clump Project airship in the sky. Obviously, the position of the tree clumps on the ground is fixed, while the position of the airship in the sky is variable. I probably do not need to explain this, but am doing so in case you are extremely stupid. Those of you who believe that tree clumps on the ground are not stationary may have been malignly influenced by great works of literature, such as Macbeth, or infantile pieces of tosh, like all that Tolkien twaddle. If you happen to live in the East Kent area you may have seen the Blotzmann dirigible hovering at varying points in the sky. It looks not unlike the ill-fated Hindenburg (without the inferno of flames, obviously) although it is clearly identifiable from the word BLOTZMANN in big bold block capital letters emblazoned across its side. It does not identify itself specifically as the Tree Clump Project airship, for it is used in many another of Blotzmann's exciting activities, at least in those which require an airship for their completion and hoped-for success. From the above it should be clear that proper perception of the alignment of the East Kent tree clumps depends to a large extent on the altitude and position of the airship. At ground level, it is almost impossible to appreciate the significant patterns created by the tree clumps. One can trudge about in one's rambling gear among the "Assassination Clumps" or the "History Of Sport Clumps", or indeed among the other tree clumps I have not mentioned, and be none the wiser. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Alignment Of Tree Clumps In The East Kent Area 08:26 The Song Of The Borts Of Pray 12:41 Film Studies 16:08 Chalet O' Prose 19:23 Fair Stood The Wind For Frank 21:53 The Manufacture Of Tinplate THE ALIGNMENT OF TREE CLUMPS IN THE EAST KENT AREA While the alignment of tree clumps in the West Kent area has rightly attracted the attention of some our most sensible investigators, the alignment of tree clumps in the East Kent area has been criminally neglected--until now. One of the most startling findings of the recent Blotzmann study, published in Tree Clump Alignment News, is that the alignment of the tree clumps in the eastern part of the county is significantly more intriguing than the alignment of tree clumps in the western part of the county. Studied from one angle, for example, a particular set of eastern tree clumps is identical to the alignment of Abraham Zapruder, Badge Man, Umbrella Man, Marymoon Man, JFK, and the sixth floor window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository at the precise moment the first shot was fired on that fateful November day in 1963 in Dallas. Viewed from a different angle, the very same tree clumps are aligned in a pattern one can only call chaotic. A second set of tree clumps, more easterly in Kent than the so called "Assassination Clumps", reproduces exactly the disposition of the players on the pitch at the moment when South Africa scored the opening goal in the 2010 World Cup, a goal described calmly by the television commentator as "one of the most important moments in the entire history of sport". Yet, again, seen from another angle these very same tree clumps form merely a random pattern. The various angles to which I refer are those obtaining between the tree clumps on the ground and the position of the Blotzmann Tree Clump Project airship in the sky. Obviously, the position of the tree clumps on the ground is fixed, while the position of the airship in the sky is variable. I probably do not need to explain this, but am doing so in case you are extremely stupid. Those of you who believe that tree clumps on the ground are not stationary may have been malignly influenced by great works of literature, such as Macbeth, or infantile pieces of tosh, like all that Tolkien twaddle. If you happen to live in the East Kent area you may have seen the Blotzmann dirigible hovering at varying points in the sky. It looks not unlike the ill-fated Hindenburg (without the inferno of flames, obviously) although it is clearly identifiable from the word BLOTZMANN in big bold block capital letters emblazoned across its side. It does not identify itself specifically as the Tree Clump Project airship, for it is used in many another of Blotzmann's exciting activities, at least in those which require an airship for their completion and hoped-for success. From the above it should be clear that proper perception of the alignment of the East Kent tree clumps depends to a large extent on the altitude and position of the airship. At ground level, it is almost impossible to appreciate the significant patterns created by the tree clumps. One can trudge about in one's rambling gear among the "Assassination Clumps" or the "History Of Sport Clumps", or indeed among the other tree clumps I have not mentioned, and be none the wiser. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-1727:42fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-10Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Abominable Example Of Little Beggar Boys 03:55 Kaka, Dunga 07:45 Organised Fern Hunt 11:04 Pang Hill, Potatoes, And Grunting 15:35 Vase As Hat 21:26 Blodgett And His Inner Concrete Lining THE ABOMINABLE EXAMPLE OF LITTLE BEGGAR BOYS 1. A very poor child, of the parish of Newington-Butts... was a very monster of wickedness, and a thousand times more miserable and vile by his sin than by his poverty. He was running to hell as fast as he could go, and was old in vice when he was but young in years: we scarcely hear of one so like the devil in his infancy as was this poor child. What sin was there that his age was capable of, which he did not commit? What by the corruption of his nature, and the abominable example of little beggar boys, he was indeed arrived at a great pitch of impiety. He would call names, take God's name in vain, curse, swear, and do all kinds of mischief; and as to any thing of God, he was worse than a heathen... 6. He was in grievous agonies of spirit; his former sins stared him in the face, and made him tremble. The poison of God's arrows did even drink up his spirits; the sense of sin and of wrath were so great that he knew not what to do. The weight of God's displeasure, and the thought of lying under it to all eternity, broke him even to pieces, and he bitterly cried out, "What shall I do! I am a miserable sinner, and I fear that I shall go to hell." His sins had been so great and so many, that there was no hope for him... 14. The Wednesday before he died, he lay in a trance for about half an hour, in which time he thought he saw a vision of angels... 16 ...he gave a kind of leap in his bed, and snapped his finger and thumb together with abundance of joy. And from that time forward, in full joy and assurance of God's love, he continued earnestly praising God, desiring to die, and to be with Christ. John Wesley, Stories Of Boys And Girls Who Loved The Saviour (date uncertain) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Abominable Example Of Little Beggar Boys 03:55 Kaka, Dunga 07:45 Organised Fern Hunt 11:04 Pang Hill, Potatoes, And Grunting 15:35 Vase As Hat 21:26 Blodgett And His Inner Concrete Lining THE ABOMINABLE EXAMPLE OF LITTLE BEGGAR BOYS 1. A very poor child, of the parish of Newington-Butts... was a very monster of wickedness, and a thousand times more miserable and vile by his sin than by his poverty. He was running to hell as fast as he could go, and was old in vice when he was but young in years: we scarcely hear of one so like the devil in his infancy as was this poor child. What sin was there that his age was capable of, which he did not commit? What by the corruption of his nature, and the abominable example of little beggar boys, he was indeed arrived at a great pitch of impiety. He would call names, take God's name in vain, curse, swear, and do all kinds of mischief; and as to any thing of God, he was worse than a heathen... 6. He was in grievous agonies of spirit; his former sins stared him in the face, and made him tremble. The poison of God's arrows did even drink up his spirits; the sense of sin and of wrath were so great that he knew not what to do. The weight of God's displeasure, and the thought of lying under it to all eternity, broke him even to pieces, and he bitterly cried out, "What shall I do! I am a miserable sinner, and I fear that I shall go to hell." His sins had been so great and so many, that there was no hope for him... 14. The Wednesday before he died, he lay in a trance for about half an hour, in which time he thought he saw a vision of angels... 16 ...he gave a kind of leap in his bed, and snapped his finger and thumb together with abundance of joy. And from that time forward, in full joy and assurance of God's love, he continued earnestly praising God, desiring to die, and to be with Christ. John Wesley, Stories Of Boys And Girls Who Loved The Saviour (date uncertain) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-1027:08fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-08Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Thieving Beerpint 03:17 Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes 17:06 Poetry Masterclass 18:21 EggPal 18:31 Poetry Masterclass 23:02 All Over The Palace 23:25 Pontiff Mnemonic 23:29 Poetry Masterclass 23:57 Glad Tidings From Pointy Town 27:36 Idiots Of The Marshes THIEVING BEERPINT It saddens me to report that weedy poet Dennis Beerpint has been caught red-handed in an act of plagiarism. His verse "The Fountainhead : Homage a Ayn Rand" from his well-received recent collection A Series Of Homages To Female Right-Wing Russo-American Postage Stamp Collectors was, it seems, lifted word for word from this paragraph in Compound Words : A Study Of The Principles Of Compounding, The Components Of Compounds, And The Use Of The Hyphen by Frederick W. Hamilton, LL. D., published in 1918 by the Committee on Education of the United Typothetae Of America: "41. Following is a list of words of everyday occurrence which should be hyphenated, and which do not fall under any of the above classifications. after-years food-stuff sea-level bas-relief guinea-pig sense-perception birth-rate horse-power son-in-law blood-relations loan-word subject-matter common-sense man-of-war thought-process cross-examine object-lesson title-page cross-reference page-proof wave-length cross-section pay-roll well-being death-rate poor-law well-nigh folk-song post-office will-power fountain-head These rules are the consensus of opinion of a considerable number of good authorities from DeVinne (1901) to Manly and Powell (1913)." The only change Dennis Beerpint makes is to add an exclamation mark after "fountain-head", presumably to remind himself to shout the word, triumphantly, at recitals. POULTRY YARDS OF THE GRAND ARCHDUKES Within minutes of beginning my research into the poultry yards of archdukes, I struck gold. I suppose I should not have been surprised to learn that it was a topic to which Dobson had turned his attention, in his pamphlet The Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes (out of print). Alackaday!, as Hadrian Beverland would put it, I then struck base metal, for it turns out that this is one of the rarest of the rare of Dobson pamphlets, and I could not get my hands on a copy try as I might, not that I tried very hard, having other things on my mind, such as Pantsil's performance in the World Cup, guff, pomposity, and potato crisps. Of which, more later, if it please your Lordship. Now the unobtainability of a pamphlet would deal a knockout blow to a weedy, milksop researcher, but I am made of sterner stuff. I gulped down a beaker of Squelcho! and, at dead of night, I stole out to the weird woods of Woohoohoodiwoo and sought out the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman. I found her crouching in a patch of nettles, moving her withered arms in some incomprehensible but no doubt eldritch fashion, and muttering gibberish. Good old Woohoohoodiwoo Woman!, I thought, she never lets you down. Not, at least, if you remember to bring her a gift, as I did. I greeted her and handed over a rather smudged back number of the Reader's Digest. I had no idea to what weird and spooky use she would put it, but it is better not to ask. She gave the magazine a couple of gummy bites to make sure it was genuine, and then asked me, in her weird woohoohoodiwoo voice, what I wanted. I cleared my throat. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Thieving Beerpint 03:17 Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes 17:06 Poetry Masterclass 18:21 EggPal 18:31 Poetry Masterclass 23:02 All Over The Palace 23:25 Pontiff Mnemonic 23:29 Poetry Masterclass 23:57 Glad Tidings From Pointy Town 27:36 Idiots Of The Marshes THIEVING BEERPINT It saddens me to report that weedy poet Dennis Beerpint has been caught red-handed in an act of plagiarism. His verse "The Fountainhead : Homage a Ayn Rand" from his well-received recent collection A Series Of Homages To Female Right-Wing Russo-American Postage Stamp Collectors was, it seems, lifted word for word from this paragraph in Compound Words : A Study Of The Principles Of Compounding, The Components Of Compounds, And The Use Of The Hyphen by Frederick W. Hamilton, LL. D., published in 1918 by the Committee on Education of the United Typothetae Of America: "41. Following is a list of words of everyday occurrence which should be hyphenated, and which do not fall under any of the above classifications. after-years food-stuff sea-level bas-relief guinea-pig sense-perception birth-rate horse-power son-in-law blood-relations loan-word subject-matter common-sense man-of-war thought-process cross-examine object-lesson title-page cross-reference page-proof wave-length cross-section pay-roll well-being death-rate poor-law well-nigh folk-song post-office will-power fountain-head These rules are the consensus of opinion of a considerable number of good authorities from DeVinne (1901) to Manly and Powell (1913)." The only change Dennis Beerpint makes is to add an exclamation mark after "fountain-head", presumably to remind himself to shout the word, triumphantly, at recitals. POULTRY YARDS OF THE GRAND ARCHDUKES Within minutes of beginning my research into the poultry yards of archdukes, I struck gold. I suppose I should not have been surprised to learn that it was a topic to which Dobson had turned his attention, in his pamphlet The Poultry Yards Of The Grand Archdukes (out of print). Alackaday!, as Hadrian Beverland would put it, I then struck base metal, for it turns out that this is one of the rarest of the rare of Dobson pamphlets, and I could not get my hands on a copy try as I might, not that I tried very hard, having other things on my mind, such as Pantsil's performance in the World Cup, guff, pomposity, and potato crisps. Of which, more later, if it please your Lordship. Now the unobtainability of a pamphlet would deal a knockout blow to a weedy, milksop researcher, but I am made of sterner stuff. I gulped down a beaker of Squelcho! and, at dead of night, I stole out to the weird woods of Woohoohoodiwoo and sought out the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman. I found her crouching in a patch of nettles, moving her withered arms in some incomprehensible but no doubt eldritch fashion, and muttering gibberish. Good old Woohoohoodiwoo Woman!, I thought, she never lets you down. Not, at least, if you remember to bring her a gift, as I did. I greeted her and handed over a rather smudged back number of the Reader's Digest. I had no idea to what weird and spooky use she would put it, but it is better not to ask. She gave the magazine a couple of gummy bites to make sure it was genuine, and then asked me, in her weird woohoohoodiwoo voice, what I wanted. I cleared my throat. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-0829:37fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-03Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 O! To Be In Pepinstow! 13:09 Flight Patterns Of The Common Shrike O! TO BE IN PEPINSTOW! O! To be in Pepinstow, among the Tundist Adepts! We shall stand in a ring around the bonfire, breathing in the fumes and snorting like bears! On the other hand, might it not be safer to be barricaded indoors, behind shutters, with a pile of rags ready to set afire and fling from the rooftop? Whenever I find myself in such a quandary, I seek counsel from my pal Aesop, who lives in a tin hut at the end of a long and bosky lane. I set off to see him, taking with me two loaves of bread, and on the way I sold one of the loaves and bought a hyacinth, an aesthetic touch I learned from Sweetie Appleyard. Aesop would, I knew, happily wolf down the bread while I contemplated the flower which he would plop into a vase on his windowsill or mantelpiece. Perhaps I should point out that Aesop was not named after the Ancient Greek fabulist, though people invariably assumed that to be the case. After all, one meets with very very few Aesops these days, and I cannot think of anyone else of my acquaintance who goes by that moniker. As far as my pal was concerned, it was simply that his pa and ma liked the name. His sister was called Atossa for the same reason, and not because the parents had a "thing" about the daughter of Cyrus the Great and mother of Xerxes I. In fact they were an ignorant pair who knew nothing of the Ancient Greeks, nor of Ancient Rome nor Sparta nor Carthage nor Ur of the Chaldees. And it must be said that Aesop himself was pretty thick, quite the dimwit. One of the reasons I bought the hyacinth was to give me something to concentrate on while he gobbled down the loaf. His table manners were absolutely awful, like Kafka's. The miraculous thing about Aesop was that in spite of his stupidity he always dispensed judicious advice, at least on matters related to Tundism. He had, you see, once been an Adept himself, unlikely as that may seem. Though beetle-browed and inarticulate and insanitary, he had been privy to the mysteries. It was never clear to me whether they drummed him out or if he had to escape their Tundist clutches, but either way he now had to remain in hiding in his tin hut at the end of the lane sheltered in clumps of larch, laburnum, hornbeam and pine, those being the four kinds of tree which grow in and around Pepinstow by dint of the soil conditions. I am tempted to sally off on a digression regarding the many Tundist proclamations about soil, those dealing with dry crumbly soil, the winnowing of it through sieves, the transformation of soil into mud through the agency of rain or ditchwater, the commingling of soil with blood on battlefields scarred by war, the distribution of pebbles within expanses of soil, soil the home of worms as of untold creeping things, the cloddy nature of impacted soil and the engine of impaction whether organic or machine, circumstances of soil pulverisation, thoughts agricultural, horticultural and botanical, and the related yet separate issues, important to Tundists, of day soil and night soil and the employment of night soil men, their wages and duties and equipage, but all this can be studied more profitably at source, for example in one of the many Tundist soil journals publicly available. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 O! To Be In Pepinstow! 13:09 Flight Patterns Of The Common Shrike O! TO BE IN PEPINSTOW! O! To be in Pepinstow, among the Tundist Adepts! We shall stand in a ring around the bonfire, breathing in the fumes and snorting like bears! On the other hand, might it not be safer to be barricaded indoors, behind shutters, with a pile of rags ready to set afire and fling from the rooftop? Whenever I find myself in such a quandary, I seek counsel from my pal Aesop, who lives in a tin hut at the end of a long and bosky lane. I set off to see him, taking with me two loaves of bread, and on the way I sold one of the loaves and bought a hyacinth, an aesthetic touch I learned from Sweetie Appleyard. Aesop would, I knew, happily wolf down the bread while I contemplated the flower which he would plop into a vase on his windowsill or mantelpiece. Perhaps I should point out that Aesop was not named after the Ancient Greek fabulist, though people invariably assumed that to be the case. After all, one meets with very very few Aesops these days, and I cannot think of anyone else of my acquaintance who goes by that moniker. As far as my pal was concerned, it was simply that his pa and ma liked the name. His sister was called Atossa for the same reason, and not because the parents had a "thing" about the daughter of Cyrus the Great and mother of Xerxes I. In fact they were an ignorant pair who knew nothing of the Ancient Greeks, nor of Ancient Rome nor Sparta nor Carthage nor Ur of the Chaldees. And it must be said that Aesop himself was pretty thick, quite the dimwit. One of the reasons I bought the hyacinth was to give me something to concentrate on while he gobbled down the loaf. His table manners were absolutely awful, like Kafka's. The miraculous thing about Aesop was that in spite of his stupidity he always dispensed judicious advice, at least on matters related to Tundism. He had, you see, once been an Adept himself, unlikely as that may seem. Though beetle-browed and inarticulate and insanitary, he had been privy to the mysteries. It was never clear to me whether they drummed him out or if he had to escape their Tundist clutches, but either way he now had to remain in hiding in his tin hut at the end of the lane sheltered in clumps of larch, laburnum, hornbeam and pine, those being the four kinds of tree which grow in and around Pepinstow by dint of the soil conditions. I am tempted to sally off on a digression regarding the many Tundist proclamations about soil, those dealing with dry crumbly soil, the winnowing of it through sieves, the transformation of soil into mud through the agency of rain or ditchwater, the commingling of soil with blood on battlefields scarred by war, the distribution of pebbles within expanses of soil, soil the home of worms as of untold creeping things, the cloddy nature of impacted soil and the engine of impaction whether organic or machine, circumstances of soil pulverisation, thoughts agricultural, horticultural and botanical, and the related yet separate issues, important to Tundists, of day soil and night soil and the employment of night soil men, their wages and duties and equipage, but all this can be studied more profitably at source, for example in one of the many Tundist soil journals publicly available. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-06-0328:12fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-27Thu, 27 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Bats Of Remorse 03:31 The Bodger's Spinney Variety Theatre 12:39 Monkey Divertisements 25:30 Tales From The Riverbank THE BATS OF REMORSE "The Bats of Remorse hang upside down in the Cave of Grief." Discuss. Model Answer : It is a fact of nature that bats, sometimes many hundreds of them, hang upside down in caves. The author is making use of this image to comment upon human frailty, specifically the emotionally disruptive lacerations of remorse and grief. Bats are linked with remorse, the cave with grief. As we read and digest the phrase, tears well up in our eyes, and we begin to sob. Our past griefs may come tumbling back inside our heads, the inside of the head very much like a cave, if we think of the skull as stone, with crags and dents. The flutterings we feel inside it, synapses snapping as we are racked by remorse, can be thought of as bats swooping in to the cave to take up their perches. Once in place, they hang there twitching occasionally, just as the lashings of remorse twitch within the porale of grief. Crucially, the writer is implying that when we stop blubbing like girlies, and dry our eyes, and grasp our Alpenstock in readiness for a healthy hike in the mountains to wash all this mawkish drivel out of our heads, the bats remain hanging there, upside down within. They do not go away. The lesson is self-evident, and is imprinted upon our consciousness, even when we are atop the mountain, panting, buffeted by a high freezing wind. Note : Extra points will be awarded to those who correctly identify the text as a line from Dennis Beerpint's magisterial piece Versified Outpourings From The Batcave, recently reissued by Twee Threnodies Ltd. THE BODGER'S SPINNEY VARIETY THEATRE Walk with me down memory lane as we recall some of the enticing acts who appeared at the Bodger's Spinney Variety Theatre during its golden age: Nobby Puck : The Human Windsock.Bells clanged whenever Nobby Puck appeared on stage. For ten awful days in the summer of 1907 he was held incommunicado by a gang of Papist fanatics. He escaped by means of a clever poison-gas device which he kept tucked inside his vest, and made his way back to Hooting Yard just in time to do his windsock act at the annual jamboree. Minnie Crunlop And Her Trailing Bandage.Over the years, many scholars have attempted to estimate the true length of Minnie Crunlop's bandage. Brewgit, the infamous Prussian quack entomologist, devoted over forty scientific papers to the question, leading his arch rival Buttonglue to accuse him of trifling, simplemindedness, and trafficking in poltrooneries. Brewgit was livid, and challenged his tormentor to a duel. They met in a desolate spinney at dawn. For weapons, they had magnetic cast-iron bradawls, sharpened to the point of implausibility. Before their scrimscrum could begin, however, Brewgit tripped over an abandoned churn, while Buttonglue developed a nosebleed. The affaire was never satisfactorily resolved, more's the pity. Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet.Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet was the brainchild of one Horst Preen, a dishevelled tugboat captain from Tantarabim. On a birthday frolic in a disused bun factory, he quite by chance discovered a matchless talent for disguise and physical agility. Apart from the famous Magnet Boy! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Bats Of Remorse 03:31 The Bodger's Spinney Variety Theatre 12:39 Monkey Divertisements 25:30 Tales From The Riverbank THE BATS OF REMORSE "The Bats of Remorse hang upside down in the Cave of Grief." Discuss. Model Answer : It is a fact of nature that bats, sometimes many hundreds of them, hang upside down in caves. The author is making use of this image to comment upon human frailty, specifically the emotionally disruptive lacerations of remorse and grief. Bats are linked with remorse, the cave with grief. As we read and digest the phrase, tears well up in our eyes, and we begin to sob. Our past griefs may come tumbling back inside our heads, the inside of the head very much like a cave, if we think of the skull as stone, with crags and dents. The flutterings we feel inside it, synapses snapping as we are racked by remorse, can be thought of as bats swooping in to the cave to take up their perches. Once in place, they hang there twitching occasionally, just as the lashings of remorse twitch within the porale of grief. Crucially, the writer is implying that when we stop blubbing like girlies, and dry our eyes, and grasp our Alpenstock in readiness for a healthy hike in the mountains to wash all this mawkish drivel out of our heads, the bats remain hanging there, upside down within. They do not go away. The lesson is self-evident, and is imprinted upon our consciousness, even when we are atop the mountain, panting, buffeted by a high freezing wind. Note : Extra points will be awarded to those who correctly identify the text as a line from Dennis Beerpint's magisterial piece Versified Outpourings From The Batcave, recently reissued by Twee Threnodies Ltd. THE BODGER'S SPINNEY VARIETY THEATRE Walk with me down memory lane as we recall some of the enticing acts who appeared at the Bodger's Spinney Variety Theatre during its golden age: Nobby Puck : The Human Windsock.Bells clanged whenever Nobby Puck appeared on stage. For ten awful days in the summer of 1907 he was held incommunicado by a gang of Papist fanatics. He escaped by means of a clever poison-gas device which he kept tucked inside his vest, and made his way back to Hooting Yard just in time to do his windsock act at the annual jamboree. Minnie Crunlop And Her Trailing Bandage.Over the years, many scholars have attempted to estimate the true length of Minnie Crunlop's bandage. Brewgit, the infamous Prussian quack entomologist, devoted over forty scientific papers to the question, leading his arch rival Buttonglue to accuse him of trifling, simplemindedness, and trafficking in poltrooneries. Brewgit was livid, and challenged his tormentor to a duel. They met in a desolate spinney at dawn. For weapons, they had magnetic cast-iron bradawls, sharpened to the point of implausibility. Before their scrimscrum could begin, however, Brewgit tripped over an abandoned churn, while Buttonglue developed a nosebleed. The affaire was never satisfactorily resolved, more's the pity. Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet.Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet was the brainchild of one Horst Preen, a dishevelled tugboat captain from Tantarabim. On a birthday frolic in a disused bun factory, he quite by chance discovered a matchless talent for disguise and physical agility. Apart from the famous Magnet Boy! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-2729:31fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-20Thu, 20 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Bobnit Tivol : The Lost Interview 07:23 The Hen House 17:15 Rhubarb 19:15 A Wispe, A Wispe, Rippe, Rippe 20:52 The Man Who Ate His Own Head 23:58 Hidden Cake BOBNIT TIVOL : THE LOST INTERVIEW Poking about in a clogged flue with a wire brush, the noted historian of athletic pursuits Alonzo Potentate was intrigued to find a reel of magnetic tape. Caked as it was with the gunk of ages, he had it cleaned by professionals. And boy oh boy were they professional! Operating from a cabin on a perilously steep incline, the bods at Ancient Reels Of Magnetic Tape Cleaned Up Good And Proper With Swarfega And Jets Of Steam R Us took seven years to restore the tape to "good and proper" condition, by which time Potentate had grown a dashing moustache, bitten his nails to the quick, and sat in many stadia watching many sporting events. The day came, at last, when he could collect his find from the cabin on the incline, and he hurried home to listen to it. To his delight, through hiss and crackle, he heard the only interview ever to have been conducted with fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol. Here is a transcript of that historic exchange. Sadly, we have no idea of the identity of the interviewer. Interviewer : I am so pleased you have agreed to be interviewed for my radio programme Magnetic Tape Recordings Of Athletes, Fictional And Otherwise, Mr Tivol. May I call you Bobnit? Bobnit Tivol : Puff puff puff. Interviewer : You seem a bit out of breath. Bobnit Tivol : Pant. Interviewer : I expect your training session sprinting round and round this running track for hours upon end has winded you somewhat. Bobnit Tivol : Gack. [At this point the interview is interrupted by guttural shouting. Alonzo Potentate suggests this is the sound of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's all too real coach and mentor Old Halob, demanding that the spindly sprinter essay another fifty laps of the running track. The long stretch of hiss and crackle which follows indicates that he does so, leaving the interviewer presumably waiting trackside, looking on in awe.] Interviewer : So tell me, Mr Tivol, or Bobnit, would you say that your fictional status has been a benefit to your career, or a drawback? Bobnit Tivol : [Groaning sounds, interspersed with retching.] Interviewer : I have heard it parlayed about that the tension between your wholly fictive existence and the undeniable flesh and blood presence of Old Halob is what has spurred you on to such achievement unparalleled in the field of provincial amateur athletics. Would you agree? Bobnit Tivol : [Gasping and spluttering.] [Again the interview is interrupted by the catarrh-wracked bellowing of Old Halob, who this time thrusts a polevaulting pole into his charge's hands, and commands him to vault over a dizzyingly high bar, over and over again. There is a further half hour of hiss.] Interviewer : You knocked the bar down a few times there, failing to clear the jump. How did that make you feel, if indeed you are capable of feeling, being a fictional athlete? Bobnit Tivol : Pant pant pant. Interviewer : Some say your coach Old Halob, over there in his trenchcoat and Homburg, is quite a hard taskmaster, particularly given his background as a secret policeman in one of the more rigorous East European Communist regimes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Bobnit Tivol : The Lost Interview 07:23 The Hen House 17:15 Rhubarb 19:15 A Wispe, A Wispe, Rippe, Rippe 20:52 The Man Who Ate His Own Head 23:58 Hidden Cake BOBNIT TIVOL : THE LOST INTERVIEW Poking about in a clogged flue with a wire brush, the noted historian of athletic pursuits Alonzo Potentate was intrigued to find a reel of magnetic tape. Caked as it was with the gunk of ages, he had it cleaned by professionals. And boy oh boy were they professional! Operating from a cabin on a perilously steep incline, the bods at Ancient Reels Of Magnetic Tape Cleaned Up Good And Proper With Swarfega And Jets Of Steam R Us took seven years to restore the tape to "good and proper" condition, by which time Potentate had grown a dashing moustache, bitten his nails to the quick, and sat in many stadia watching many sporting events. The day came, at last, when he could collect his find from the cabin on the incline, and he hurried home to listen to it. To his delight, through hiss and crackle, he heard the only interview ever to have been conducted with fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol. Here is a transcript of that historic exchange. Sadly, we have no idea of the identity of the interviewer. Interviewer : I am so pleased you have agreed to be interviewed for my radio programme Magnetic Tape Recordings Of Athletes, Fictional And Otherwise, Mr Tivol. May I call you Bobnit? Bobnit Tivol : Puff puff puff. Interviewer : You seem a bit out of breath. Bobnit Tivol : Pant. Interviewer : I expect your training session sprinting round and round this running track for hours upon end has winded you somewhat. Bobnit Tivol : Gack. [At this point the interview is interrupted by guttural shouting. Alonzo Potentate suggests this is the sound of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's all too real coach and mentor Old Halob, demanding that the spindly sprinter essay another fifty laps of the running track. The long stretch of hiss and crackle which follows indicates that he does so, leaving the interviewer presumably waiting trackside, looking on in awe.] Interviewer : So tell me, Mr Tivol, or Bobnit, would you say that your fictional status has been a benefit to your career, or a drawback? Bobnit Tivol : [Groaning sounds, interspersed with retching.] Interviewer : I have heard it parlayed about that the tension between your wholly fictive existence and the undeniable flesh and blood presence of Old Halob is what has spurred you on to such achievement unparalleled in the field of provincial amateur athletics. Would you agree? Bobnit Tivol : [Gasping and spluttering.] [Again the interview is interrupted by the catarrh-wracked bellowing of Old Halob, who this time thrusts a polevaulting pole into his charge's hands, and commands him to vault over a dizzyingly high bar, over and over again. There is a further half hour of hiss.] Interviewer : You knocked the bar down a few times there, failing to clear the jump. How did that make you feel, if indeed you are capable of feeling, being a fictional athlete? Bobnit Tivol : Pant pant pant. Interviewer : Some say your coach Old Halob, over there in his trenchcoat and Homburg, is quite a hard taskmaster, particularly given his background as a secret policeman in one of the more rigorous East European Communist regimes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-2028:37fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-13Thu, 13 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Tiny, Lethal 15:26 Government Canoe 22:02 Dim Tyrant (Revisited) TINY, LETHAL Reading an item in yesterday's Guardian about tiny lethal phantasmal poison frogs, I was reminded of Dobson's pamphlet My Terrifying Encounter With A Tiny Lethal Phantasmal Poison Frog (out of print). It is by any measure one of his most exciting works, guaranteed to have one panting for breath and to cause beads of sweat to break out upon the brow. This is due to the pamphleteer deploying, as he so rarely did, his remarkable ability for building suspense. Alerted by the title, we are in a state of heightened expectation for the appearance of the minuscule killer, so tiny yet so toxic. But Dobson is in no hurry to come face to face with the lethal frog. He begins by recounting, in exasperating detail, how, in preparing for a morning trudge along the towpath of the old canal, he discovered that the aglets on his Batavian Crimebusters' boots had become rusted and brittle, the bootlaces fraying as a result. Reluctant to don a different pair of boots--for reasons he enumerates over five pages--Dobson describes his search, in drawers and cupboards and hideyholes, for a replacement pair of bootlaces. Throughout this "desperate fossicking", as he calls it, Marigold Chew is staring out of the window at the incessant rainfall, picking out a tune on her celeste, composing in her head the words of the song that would later be known as The Ballad Of Incessant Rainfall. In his monograph on Dobson's various items of footwear, Aloysius Nestingbird asks why the pamphleteer did not simply remove the laces from one of his other pairs of boots and reuse them when it became obvious that he had no pristine bootlaces to hand. He answers his own question by delving into Dobson's infamous pamphlet Every Lace Has Its Own Boot (out of print), the work which plumbed in excruciating detail the unfathomable depth of the pamphleteer's neurosis in these matters. Those of us who have read our Nestingbird will have his commentary in the back of our minds as we follow Dobson crashing about the house on his futile search. Twenty pages in, we are no closer to our own encounter with the tiny lethal phantasmal poison frog, but the tension is becoming unbearable. At the point where Dobson describes tipping out onto the floor the contents of a battered cardboard box kept under the kitchen sink, we are ready to put the pamphlet aside and to put the kettle on for a calming cup of tea. Next, we take a nap, and when we return to the pamphlet we find that is what Dobson did too. Giving up hope of finding new bootlaces for his Batavian Crimebusters' boots, and leaving Marigold Chew plinking and musing and staring out of the window, the pamphleteer retires to his nap-hub. Now he cranks up the suspense by treating the reader to a detailed account of his period of unconsciousness, accompanied by masterly, if somewhat florid, descriptions of his pillows, his coverlet, and his mattress. Nestingbird has remarked that "no one has ever written about the nap as brilliantly as Dobson. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Tiny, Lethal 15:26 Government Canoe 22:02 Dim Tyrant (Revisited) TINY, LETHAL Reading an item in yesterday's Guardian about tiny lethal phantasmal poison frogs, I was reminded of Dobson's pamphlet My Terrifying Encounter With A Tiny Lethal Phantasmal Poison Frog (out of print). It is by any measure one of his most exciting works, guaranteed to have one panting for breath and to cause beads of sweat to break out upon the brow. This is due to the pamphleteer deploying, as he so rarely did, his remarkable ability for building suspense. Alerted by the title, we are in a state of heightened expectation for the appearance of the minuscule killer, so tiny yet so toxic. But Dobson is in no hurry to come face to face with the lethal frog. He begins by recounting, in exasperating detail, how, in preparing for a morning trudge along the towpath of the old canal, he discovered that the aglets on his Batavian Crimebusters' boots had become rusted and brittle, the bootlaces fraying as a result. Reluctant to don a different pair of boots--for reasons he enumerates over five pages--Dobson describes his search, in drawers and cupboards and hideyholes, for a replacement pair of bootlaces. Throughout this "desperate fossicking", as he calls it, Marigold Chew is staring out of the window at the incessant rainfall, picking out a tune on her celeste, composing in her head the words of the song that would later be known as The Ballad Of Incessant Rainfall. In his monograph on Dobson's various items of footwear, Aloysius Nestingbird asks why the pamphleteer did not simply remove the laces from one of his other pairs of boots and reuse them when it became obvious that he had no pristine bootlaces to hand. He answers his own question by delving into Dobson's infamous pamphlet Every Lace Has Its Own Boot (out of print), the work which plumbed in excruciating detail the unfathomable depth of the pamphleteer's neurosis in these matters. Those of us who have read our Nestingbird will have his commentary in the back of our minds as we follow Dobson crashing about the house on his futile search. Twenty pages in, we are no closer to our own encounter with the tiny lethal phantasmal poison frog, but the tension is becoming unbearable. At the point where Dobson describes tipping out onto the floor the contents of a battered cardboard box kept under the kitchen sink, we are ready to put the pamphlet aside and to put the kettle on for a calming cup of tea. Next, we take a nap, and when we return to the pamphlet we find that is what Dobson did too. Giving up hope of finding new bootlaces for his Batavian Crimebusters' boots, and leaving Marigold Chew plinking and musing and staring out of the window, the pamphleteer retires to his nap-hub. Now he cranks up the suspense by treating the reader to a detailed account of his period of unconsciousness, accompanied by masterly, if somewhat florid, descriptions of his pillows, his coverlet, and his mattress. Nestingbird has remarked that "no one has ever written about the nap as brilliantly as Dobson. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-1329:44fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-06Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Werewolf Tax 05:17 The Mythical Island 12:58 Letter From A Werewolf 20:27 Tiny, Lethal WEREWOLF TAX It is a wonder that, in all the talk of the nation's parlous financial state and of the need to reduce the deficit, none of the main--or indeed minor--political parties has suggested one particular way of raising revenue. It has been left to economics guru Bingley Swelling to call for a werewolf tax. In a paper presented to the Pointy Town Pointyhead think-tank last week, Professor Swelling outlined, with bullet points, some of the benefits of such a tax. There were three bullet points in total, of gold and silver and bronze, and it should be said that they were not made, literally, by firing bullets from a Mannlicher-Carcano sniper's rifle a la Oswald, but represented by puncturing three holes in the Professor's cardboard worksheet using a heavy duty hole-punch from Hubermann's stationery department. The rim of each hole was then coloured accordingly with lead-based gold and silver and bronze paints applied with a long-handled Pastewick brush, of weaselhair. Beside the holes, or points, upon his cardboard, Swelling inked some text, with a biro, before propping the worksheet on a tubular metal display stand, for easy viewing by the think-tankists gathered to hear his... I was going to say "lecture", but that does not quite give the flavour of the Swelling approach. Not actually a werewolf himself, the Professor nonetheless had the appearance of one. If his yellow, bloodshot eyes, lumbering gait, and shocking hairiness were not enough, his speaking voice was akin to a lupine howl, whether the moon was full or otherwise. This made it hard to grasp what he was saying, hence the pedagogical aid of the cardboard worksheet with its bullet points. Thereagain, it would take a mind of infinite subtlety to interpret the hacking and stabbing marks made by the Swelling biro. His handwriting was atrocious, though in fairness, given the size and shape of his appendages, perhaps one should prefer the term paw-writing. Thus the paramount importance of the holes themselves, and the colours of their painted rims. Here are some notes I took on the occasion. I hasten to add that I am not a paid-up Pointy Town Pointyhead, but I know how to worm my way into such meetings through bluffery and mesmerism. "Gold. Werewolves often have enormous reserves of wealth in the form of precious stones hidden in caves. Sometimes these jewels are embedded in the heads of toads, the toads being kept in cages hung from the roofs of the caves. Source : The Hidden Wealth Of Werewolves by Dobson (out of print). "Silver. Impossible to understand the first thing about this bullet point, other than the assertion that at least twenty billion could be raised "at a stroke". But twenty billion what? "Bronze. Swelling's clincher. A one-off levy, set at a swingeing rate, on all werewolves waylaid when attempting to embark on ships sailing across the mighty oceans bound for the mythical "island o' werewolves". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Werewolf Tax 05:17 The Mythical Island 12:58 Letter From A Werewolf 20:27 Tiny, Lethal WEREWOLF TAX It is a wonder that, in all the talk of the nation's parlous financial state and of the need to reduce the deficit, none of the main--or indeed minor--political parties has suggested one particular way of raising revenue. It has been left to economics guru Bingley Swelling to call for a werewolf tax. In a paper presented to the Pointy Town Pointyhead think-tank last week, Professor Swelling outlined, with bullet points, some of the benefits of such a tax. There were three bullet points in total, of gold and silver and bronze, and it should be said that they were not made, literally, by firing bullets from a Mannlicher-Carcano sniper's rifle a la Oswald, but represented by puncturing three holes in the Professor's cardboard worksheet using a heavy duty hole-punch from Hubermann's stationery department. The rim of each hole was then coloured accordingly with lead-based gold and silver and bronze paints applied with a long-handled Pastewick brush, of weaselhair. Beside the holes, or points, upon his cardboard, Swelling inked some text, with a biro, before propping the worksheet on a tubular metal display stand, for easy viewing by the think-tankists gathered to hear his... I was going to say "lecture", but that does not quite give the flavour of the Swelling approach. Not actually a werewolf himself, the Professor nonetheless had the appearance of one. If his yellow, bloodshot eyes, lumbering gait, and shocking hairiness were not enough, his speaking voice was akin to a lupine howl, whether the moon was full or otherwise. This made it hard to grasp what he was saying, hence the pedagogical aid of the cardboard worksheet with its bullet points. Thereagain, it would take a mind of infinite subtlety to interpret the hacking and stabbing marks made by the Swelling biro. His handwriting was atrocious, though in fairness, given the size and shape of his appendages, perhaps one should prefer the term paw-writing. Thus the paramount importance of the holes themselves, and the colours of their painted rims. Here are some notes I took on the occasion. I hasten to add that I am not a paid-up Pointy Town Pointyhead, but I know how to worm my way into such meetings through bluffery and mesmerism. "Gold. Werewolves often have enormous reserves of wealth in the form of precious stones hidden in caves. Sometimes these jewels are embedded in the heads of toads, the toads being kept in cages hung from the roofs of the caves. Source : The Hidden Wealth Of Werewolves by Dobson (out of print). "Silver. Impossible to understand the first thing about this bullet point, other than the assertion that at least twenty billion could be raised "at a stroke". But twenty billion what? "Bronze. Swelling's clincher. A one-off levy, set at a swingeing rate, on all werewolves waylaid when attempting to embark on ships sailing across the mighty oceans bound for the mythical "island o' werewolves". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-05-0629:13fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-29Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Belshazzar's Feast 03:02 What Is Wrong With Grooving? 10:17 Monday Music 13:09 Quite Extraordinary 16:44 "Here is a list of tools and..." 16:59 Ghosts 22:42 After Belshazzar's Feast BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST "Will you come with me to Belshazzar's feast?" asked Agnetha. "I didn't know you'd been invited. I'll have to ask Bjorn," said Benny. Benny strode off into the mountains to find Bjorn. Agnetha stayed at the hotel, sipping her alcohol-free absinthe. Wild winds were howling and storm clouds gathered. Benny found Bjorn sheltering in a declivity. He was burning charcoal. "Agnetha wants me to go with her to Belshazzar's feast," said Benny, after tipping his hat to Bjorn in greeting, "What do you think?" "The gods may throw a dice," said Bjorn, "Their minds as cold as ice." He stared off into the mist-enshrouded distance, towards the fireworks factory and the abandoned tennis courts. "I shall reflect on what you have said and come to a decision, then," said Benny, "Thank you." On the way back to the hotel, Benny was accosted on the mountain path by Anni-Frid. She was dressed like a gaucho and looked as if she had been weeping. "Anni-Frid, whatever is the matter?" asked Benny. Anni-Frid dabbed at her tears with a paper napkin from the hotel. Her upper lip curled in a sneer. Discomfited by her silence, Benny began to gabble. "Agnetha asked me to accompany her to Belshazzar's feast," he said, "And I asked Bjorn for his advice. He is up there in a declivity burning charcoal." "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," said Anni-Frid, and she pranced away into the mist. WHAT IS WRONG WITH GROOVING? It's been a while since we paid a visit to the groovelab, high in the Swiss Alps, where tireless boffins attempt to isolate the essential core of Hooting Yard's grooviness. But we may have to pack our pippy bags and hike over there again, for it appears that objections have been raised to the very practice of grooving itself. Our dulcet-voiced South African correspondent Letta Mbulu has found herself leaping to the defence of all things groovy by asking, in the form of song, the cogent question What is wrong with grooving? Actually, Ms Mbulu asks what is wrong with groovin', but I fear we ought not encourage her use of apocopation, otherwise we start getting into Hootin' Yard territory, at which point civilisation begins to crumble. I pause here briefly to note that Ms Mbulu's name is an anagram of Umlaut Belt (or Belt), which is, as we know, the name given to a far, far distant string of glittering stars and planets somewhere in this or another galaxy, dubbed as such by a fearsome Teutonic astronomer great of beard and brain alike. His own name, alas, I cannot quite recall. It is not even on the tip of my tongue. It is as if it has been utterly expunged from my memory, possibly by a bash on the bonce received when negotiating an Alp in Germany, on my way to Switzerland, there to visit the groovelab boffins. I had my pippy bag and my hiking apparel, and I had a handful of feed for any goats that might cross my path as I wended my way. The sky was blue, and I thought of Ruskin. Well, in truth I thought of both Ruskin and Letta Mbulu. I wondered, as I often have, if Ruskin would have got down with the Hooting Yard groove, had he been born in a different era. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Belshazzar's Feast 03:02 What Is Wrong With Grooving? 10:17 Monday Music 13:09 Quite Extraordinary 16:44 "Here is a list of tools and..." 16:59 Ghosts 22:42 After Belshazzar's Feast BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST "Will you come with me to Belshazzar's feast?" asked Agnetha. "I didn't know you'd been invited. I'll have to ask Bjorn," said Benny. Benny strode off into the mountains to find Bjorn. Agnetha stayed at the hotel, sipping her alcohol-free absinthe. Wild winds were howling and storm clouds gathered. Benny found Bjorn sheltering in a declivity. He was burning charcoal. "Agnetha wants me to go with her to Belshazzar's feast," said Benny, after tipping his hat to Bjorn in greeting, "What do you think?" "The gods may throw a dice," said Bjorn, "Their minds as cold as ice." He stared off into the mist-enshrouded distance, towards the fireworks factory and the abandoned tennis courts. "I shall reflect on what you have said and come to a decision, then," said Benny, "Thank you." On the way back to the hotel, Benny was accosted on the mountain path by Anni-Frid. She was dressed like a gaucho and looked as if she had been weeping. "Anni-Frid, whatever is the matter?" asked Benny. Anni-Frid dabbed at her tears with a paper napkin from the hotel. Her upper lip curled in a sneer. Discomfited by her silence, Benny began to gabble. "Agnetha asked me to accompany her to Belshazzar's feast," he said, "And I asked Bjorn for his advice. He is up there in a declivity burning charcoal." "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," said Anni-Frid, and she pranced away into the mist. WHAT IS WRONG WITH GROOVING? It's been a while since we paid a visit to the groovelab, high in the Swiss Alps, where tireless boffins attempt to isolate the essential core of Hooting Yard's grooviness. But we may have to pack our pippy bags and hike over there again, for it appears that objections have been raised to the very practice of grooving itself. Our dulcet-voiced South African correspondent Letta Mbulu has found herself leaping to the defence of all things groovy by asking, in the form of song, the cogent question What is wrong with grooving? Actually, Ms Mbulu asks what is wrong with groovin', but I fear we ought not encourage her use of apocopation, otherwise we start getting into Hootin' Yard territory, at which point civilisation begins to crumble. I pause here briefly to note that Ms Mbulu's name is an anagram of Umlaut Belt (or Belt), which is, as we know, the name given to a far, far distant string of glittering stars and planets somewhere in this or another galaxy, dubbed as such by a fearsome Teutonic astronomer great of beard and brain alike. His own name, alas, I cannot quite recall. It is not even on the tip of my tongue. It is as if it has been utterly expunged from my memory, possibly by a bash on the bonce received when negotiating an Alp in Germany, on my way to Switzerland, there to visit the groovelab boffins. I had my pippy bag and my hiking apparel, and I had a handful of feed for any goats that might cross my path as I wended my way. The sky was blue, and I thought of Ruskin. Well, in truth I thought of both Ruskin and Letta Mbulu. I wondered, as I often have, if Ruskin would have got down with the Hooting Yard groove, had he been born in a different era. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-2929:06fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-22Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 06:53 Oubliette Of Fops 17:10 The Sinus Chambers 24:34 On Crevasse Wankers OUBLIETTE OF FOPS The harebells are in bloom, and there is a man prancing along, waving a stick. There is phlox and flax, campions, pinks, hollyhocks and bee borage, chrysanthemums and vetch, dahlias, hyacinths and delphiniums, and all the colours seem reflected in the man's cravat. It is silken, and embroidered with fantastic skill. One admires the casual yet stylish way he has knotted it about his neck. His hat, too, with its elegant angles, is pleasing to the eye. He rounds a pond, still waving his stick. The pond is home to mergansers, teal, and some ferocious swans. The sun emerges from behind an impossibly fluffy cloud, and bathes the scene in light so bright it bleaches the colour from things. The man makes a pause and dips his hand into a pocket of his blazer, from whence he plucks a pair of sunglasses and in one easy movement slides them behind his ears and onto his nose, while still managing that rhythmic wave of the stick with his other hand. A flock of swallows swoops across the sky. The man continues walking, now past a large stone edifice, quite a wonder of masonry. It looks as if it has been plumped down here in this field at random, long ago, for in parts it is crumbling, and it is tilted where the ground has subsided slightly beneath it. Much writing is carved upon one face of it, and the man stops, and stops waving his stick, and reads the words. HERE LIE THE MORTAL BONES OF THE MIGHTY KING AND CHAMPION VUGLOP THRUST BY SWORD AND FIRE INTO THE ETHEREAL GREY MIST BEYOND WHO IN HIS TIME SMASHED ALL ON EARTH THAT HAD TO BE SMASHED AND IN HIS REIGN SPOKE WITH BIRDS AND IN HIS KINGDOM DID LET GROW TOWERING HOLLYHOCKS AND TREES OF QUINCE HE UNDID HIS FOES AND SPIES AND SCUM HIS HEAD WAS HUGE HIS CRANIUM SOLID AS THE ROCK OF BEDSOE FROM WHICH THIS TOMB HAS BEEN HEWN TO MARK THE SPOT WHERE HE FELL ON THAT AWFUL DAY WHEN PUNY WANKERS THROUGH LEGERDEMAIN AND CONJURING TRICKED HIS MAJESTIC PERSON AND BROUGHT HIS REALM TO RUIN HIS BONES ROT AND HIS FLESH BE EATEN BY WORMS HIS MEMORY HELD IN THE BEAKS OF THE BIRDS AND THE PIPS AND BUDS AND PETALS OF THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS O MIGHTY VUGLOP LET THINE ENEMIES SHRIVEL UP IN TERROR AT YOUR MAGNIFICENCE THIS DAY AND ALL DAYS HENCE UNTIL YOUR KINGDOM IS BUILT AGAIN WITH STONE AND SWEAT THEN BALLOONS AND BIG FLYING MACHINES WILL SOAR ACROSS THE SKY PROCLAIMING ON BANNERS TO ALL ON EARTH YOUR GLORY IT SHALL BE All of this is in Latin, or possibly Goat Latin, but we are given subtitles. Having read it, the man spits upon the masonry, and strolls on, again waving his stick. Suddenly, in the harsh sunlight, from nowhere, comes a trio of grunting toughs, who maul and manhandle him to the ground and drag him into a pit. The light grows brighter until the screen is completely white, and then appear, in a lovely font, bold and black, the words: "I Profaned A King's Tomb"--Peter De Vries, The Mackerel Plaza, MCMLVIII Thus the opening of Horst Gack's new film Oubliette Of Fops, the follow-up to his award-winning Het Ontbijt. Where that earlier masterpiece limited itself to a small group of Belgians eating breakfast in a cafeteria, this latest work operates on a much broader canvas, at least in terms of ambition. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 06:53 Oubliette Of Fops 17:10 The Sinus Chambers 24:34 On Crevasse Wankers OUBLIETTE OF FOPS The harebells are in bloom, and there is a man prancing along, waving a stick. There is phlox and flax, campions, pinks, hollyhocks and bee borage, chrysanthemums and vetch, dahlias, hyacinths and delphiniums, and all the colours seem reflected in the man's cravat. It is silken, and embroidered with fantastic skill. One admires the casual yet stylish way he has knotted it about his neck. His hat, too, with its elegant angles, is pleasing to the eye. He rounds a pond, still waving his stick. The pond is home to mergansers, teal, and some ferocious swans. The sun emerges from behind an impossibly fluffy cloud, and bathes the scene in light so bright it bleaches the colour from things. The man makes a pause and dips his hand into a pocket of his blazer, from whence he plucks a pair of sunglasses and in one easy movement slides them behind his ears and onto his nose, while still managing that rhythmic wave of the stick with his other hand. A flock of swallows swoops across the sky. The man continues walking, now past a large stone edifice, quite a wonder of masonry. It looks as if it has been plumped down here in this field at random, long ago, for in parts it is crumbling, and it is tilted where the ground has subsided slightly beneath it. Much writing is carved upon one face of it, and the man stops, and stops waving his stick, and reads the words. HERE LIE THE MORTAL BONES OF THE MIGHTY KING AND CHAMPION VUGLOP THRUST BY SWORD AND FIRE INTO THE ETHEREAL GREY MIST BEYOND WHO IN HIS TIME SMASHED ALL ON EARTH THAT HAD TO BE SMASHED AND IN HIS REIGN SPOKE WITH BIRDS AND IN HIS KINGDOM DID LET GROW TOWERING HOLLYHOCKS AND TREES OF QUINCE HE UNDID HIS FOES AND SPIES AND SCUM HIS HEAD WAS HUGE HIS CRANIUM SOLID AS THE ROCK OF BEDSOE FROM WHICH THIS TOMB HAS BEEN HEWN TO MARK THE SPOT WHERE HE FELL ON THAT AWFUL DAY WHEN PUNY WANKERS THROUGH LEGERDEMAIN AND CONJURING TRICKED HIS MAJESTIC PERSON AND BROUGHT HIS REALM TO RUIN HIS BONES ROT AND HIS FLESH BE EATEN BY WORMS HIS MEMORY HELD IN THE BEAKS OF THE BIRDS AND THE PIPS AND BUDS AND PETALS OF THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS O MIGHTY VUGLOP LET THINE ENEMIES SHRIVEL UP IN TERROR AT YOUR MAGNIFICENCE THIS DAY AND ALL DAYS HENCE UNTIL YOUR KINGDOM IS BUILT AGAIN WITH STONE AND SWEAT THEN BALLOONS AND BIG FLYING MACHINES WILL SOAR ACROSS THE SKY PROCLAIMING ON BANNERS TO ALL ON EARTH YOUR GLORY IT SHALL BE All of this is in Latin, or possibly Goat Latin, but we are given subtitles. Having read it, the man spits upon the masonry, and strolls on, again waving his stick. Suddenly, in the harsh sunlight, from nowhere, comes a trio of grunting toughs, who maul and manhandle him to the ground and drag him into a pit. The light grows brighter until the screen is completely white, and then appear, in a lovely font, bold and black, the words: "I Profaned A King's Tomb"--Peter De Vries, The Mackerel Plaza, MCMLVIII Thus the opening of Horst Gack's new film Oubliette Of Fops, the follow-up to his award-winning Het Ontbijt. Where that earlier masterpiece limited itself to a small group of Belgians eating breakfast in a cafeteria, this latest work operates on a much broader canvas, at least in terms of ambition. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-2226:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-15Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Private Memoirs & Confessions of an Ignorant Ornithologist 03:31 Ringer Sedgeweg Again, Again 05:59 Blodgett's Mucky Proclivities 12:26 The Modern Pig 15:55 Victorian Magic 18:21 The Clappers 22:49 Excerpt 26:24 Map Tip THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS & CONFESSIONS OF AN IGNORANT ORNITHOLOGIST Hooting Yard Blog, day one, and one's thoughts turn, of course, to ornithology. How better to spend one's time than to read an extract from The Private Memoirs & Confessions of an Ignorant Ornithologist? Tuesday. Saw something sitting in a tree. It had a head, two legs, and seemed to be covered in feathers. I only saw the back of the head, so could not tell if it had a beak. I suspect it may have been a linnet. Wednesday. Trained my powerful binoculars on a speck up in the sky in the far distance. It was moving quite fast. Perhaps a wren? Thursday. Saw a worm being dragged from the soil by something much bigger than it, possibly with wings. Rang Dennis to tell him about it. He said he'd come and check, but by the time he arrived, puffed out, ten minutes later, the thing was gone, and there was no sign of the worm. Dennis said it was probably a cassowary. Friday. Overheard a couple of people in the park talking about sedge warblers. Later, I discovered these are a life-form which all authorities agree is a type of bird. Ticked off a box in my notepad. Saturday. Went to the church fair. When I said how nice all the flags and bunting looked, Dennis said, "That's also the name of a bird!" "Flags and bunting?" I asked. "No, you nitwit," he said, "Just bunting. Also known as the ortolan." I was very, very impressed with the breadth of his knowledge. Sunday. Woke to find an owl sitting on my head. Marvellous stuff. And here's a crumpled map, followed by a resurrectionist plea. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Private Memoirs & Confessions of an Ignorant Ornithologist 03:31 Ringer Sedgeweg Again, Again 05:59 Blodgett's Mucky Proclivities 12:26 The Modern Pig 15:55 Victorian Magic 18:21 The Clappers 22:49 Excerpt 26:24 Map Tip THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS & CONFESSIONS OF AN IGNORANT ORNITHOLOGIST Hooting Yard Blog, day one, and one's thoughts turn, of course, to ornithology. How better to spend one's time than to read an extract from The Private Memoirs & Confessions of an Ignorant Ornithologist? Tuesday. Saw something sitting in a tree. It had a head, two legs, and seemed to be covered in feathers. I only saw the back of the head, so could not tell if it had a beak. I suspect it may have been a linnet. Wednesday. Trained my powerful binoculars on a speck up in the sky in the far distance. It was moving quite fast. Perhaps a wren? Thursday. Saw a worm being dragged from the soil by something much bigger than it, possibly with wings. Rang Dennis to tell him about it. He said he'd come and check, but by the time he arrived, puffed out, ten minutes later, the thing was gone, and there was no sign of the worm. Dennis said it was probably a cassowary. Friday. Overheard a couple of people in the park talking about sedge warblers. Later, I discovered these are a life-form which all authorities agree is a type of bird. Ticked off a box in my notepad. Saturday. Went to the church fair. When I said how nice all the flags and bunting looked, Dennis said, "That's also the name of a bird!" "Flags and bunting?" I asked. "No, you nitwit," he said, "Just bunting. Also known as the ortolan." I was very, very impressed with the breadth of his knowledge. Sunday. Woke to find an owl sitting on my head. Marvellous stuff. And here's a crumpled map, followed by a resurrectionist plea. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-1529:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-08Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Poptarts Redux 03:14 Slobbering Dauphin 17:51 Old Halob, Ant God 22:22 Celebrity Hoofprint Patterns POPTARTS REDUX Here is the piece I wrote for BlackberryJuniper And Sherbet a couple of weeks ago, reposted here for the sake of The Complete And Utter Mr Key Prose Experience. It is an exciting time in the world of breakfast. I learned as much last week, when I had the good fortune to be invited to a new product launch. The do took place in a swish and sophisticated hotel, and as I am neither swish nor sophisticated I was a bit worried that I would be thrown out on my ear, if indeed I was allowed in at all. I decided that I would cut something of a dash by wearing spats. Unfortunately, my footwear adviser misconstrued what I said, and I arrived at the swish and sophisticated hotel wearing galoshes. But I need not have fretted. Such was the atmosphere of new-breakfast-product excitement and hubbub that I made my way into the throng without incident. And what a throng! The hotel ballroom was packed to the rafters with the great and the good, the movers and shakers, the glitterati, and Krishnan Guru-Murthy from Channel 4 News. I grabbed a glass of aerated lettucewater from a tray held by a minion, and leaned against a mantelpiece in what I hoped was an insouciant manner. After a series of speeches from big names in the breakfast world, the new product was eventually revealed--smokers' poptarts! After we had oohed and aahed at the gorgeous packaging, we were treated to a demonstration of how best to prepare this toothsome breakfast-related snack item. Apparently, you remove the smokers' poptart from its greaseproof-paper wrapping, pop it into a toaster, and wait. It was rather unfortunate that the toaster used at the launch was a 1972 model from the former Soviet Union, for it malfunctioned, with a lot of buzzing and hissing noises, before a billow of black smoke rose from it and choked several celebrities standing nearby, one of whom I think may have been Yoko Ono. The smokers' poptart itself was burned to ashes, of course. By this time we were all growing very peckish, and had been looking forward to munching this delicious new breakfast product. Instead, the hotel chef rustled up a vast quantity of bubble and squeak. It was rather like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes (Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15), except with bubble and squeak rather than bread and fish. By the time an oompah band started up, we were all stuffed to the gills, albeit not with smokers' poptarts. But we accepted our brochures, information sheets, and balloons with good grace, and it was a reasonably happy crowd that spilled out into the hotel carpark. Interestingly, the carpark was pitted with puddles, oh! puddles innumerable, and all the great and the good and the movers and shakers and glitterati got their shoes and socks soaked through. I thanked the Lord for my galoshes, and Krishnan Guru-Murthy thanked the Lord for his galoshes, thoughtfully provided by an unpaid intern from Channel 4 News. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Poptarts Redux 03:14 Slobbering Dauphin 17:51 Old Halob, Ant God 22:22 Celebrity Hoofprint Patterns POPTARTS REDUX Here is the piece I wrote for BlackberryJuniper And Sherbet a couple of weeks ago, reposted here for the sake of The Complete And Utter Mr Key Prose Experience. It is an exciting time in the world of breakfast. I learned as much last week, when I had the good fortune to be invited to a new product launch. The do took place in a swish and sophisticated hotel, and as I am neither swish nor sophisticated I was a bit worried that I would be thrown out on my ear, if indeed I was allowed in at all. I decided that I would cut something of a dash by wearing spats. Unfortunately, my footwear adviser misconstrued what I said, and I arrived at the swish and sophisticated hotel wearing galoshes. But I need not have fretted. Such was the atmosphere of new-breakfast-product excitement and hubbub that I made my way into the throng without incident. And what a throng! The hotel ballroom was packed to the rafters with the great and the good, the movers and shakers, the glitterati, and Krishnan Guru-Murthy from Channel 4 News. I grabbed a glass of aerated lettucewater from a tray held by a minion, and leaned against a mantelpiece in what I hoped was an insouciant manner. After a series of speeches from big names in the breakfast world, the new product was eventually revealed--smokers' poptarts! After we had oohed and aahed at the gorgeous packaging, we were treated to a demonstration of how best to prepare this toothsome breakfast-related snack item. Apparently, you remove the smokers' poptart from its greaseproof-paper wrapping, pop it into a toaster, and wait. It was rather unfortunate that the toaster used at the launch was a 1972 model from the former Soviet Union, for it malfunctioned, with a lot of buzzing and hissing noises, before a billow of black smoke rose from it and choked several celebrities standing nearby, one of whom I think may have been Yoko Ono. The smokers' poptart itself was burned to ashes, of course. By this time we were all growing very peckish, and had been looking forward to munching this delicious new breakfast product. Instead, the hotel chef rustled up a vast quantity of bubble and squeak. It was rather like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes (Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15), except with bubble and squeak rather than bread and fish. By the time an oompah band started up, we were all stuffed to the gills, albeit not with smokers' poptarts. But we accepted our brochures, information sheets, and balloons with good grace, and it was a reasonably happy crowd that spilled out into the hotel carpark. Interestingly, the carpark was pitted with puddles, oh! puddles innumerable, and all the great and the good and the movers and shakers and glitterati got their shoes and socks soaked through. I thanked the Lord for my galoshes, and Krishnan Guru-Murthy thanked the Lord for his galoshes, thoughtfully provided by an unpaid intern from Channel 4 News. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-0829:42fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-01Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Zoist Spasms 03:15 Bird Challenge Rebuke 24:15 Fantastic Architecture Of The Burning Cities 26:24 On Replacement Bus Services ZOIST SPASMS "Spasms (kraempfe) are an affection to which almost all sensitives are especially inclined. Many, especially those of a higher degree, suffer from them severely. They form the last term of the series--stomach-ache, head-ache, fainting, spasm. They may be occasioned by magnets, by terrestrial magnetism, by poles of crystals, by amorphous, unipolar, bodies, either odo-positive or odo-negative, by human odic poles, by the prismatic rays of either the solar or lunar spectrum, particularly the green rays, by down passes, but oftener by up passes, by charging and conduction, whether immediate or approximative, by the mere odic atmosphere, by the psychical action of insult, grief, anxiety, fear, annoyance, jealousy, quarrels, mental exertion, joy, or even dreams. They are most conspicuous in the extremities, solar plexus, and head. They can be artificially excited and calmed, or depart naturally. They often follow a tolerably similar course from the toes through the abdomen to the brain, and thence down the spinal cord, like a pass. In most cases they can be more or less easily calmed by down passes. Hence as they are essentially related to sensitiveness, and immediately dependent on odic motions, they undoubtedly belong to the domain of od." From Reichenbach and his Researches : the principal "Laws of Sensitiveness" abstracted from Reichenbach's work DER SENSITIVE MENSCH, by ALEXANDER J ELLIS, B.A., Trin. Coll., Camb. in The Zoist : A Journal Of Cerebral Physiology And Mesmerism, And Their Applications To Human Welfare, No. LI., October 1855. BIRD CHALLENGE REBUKE Oi, FK!, writes Tim Thurn in his usual artless manner, I am appalled at the latest evidence of your slipshod treatment of your loyal readers. I very much welcomed the Daily Bird Challenge instituted here on Monday, and I was even preparing to acknowledge that perhaps you do know a little bit about ornithological matters and are not a hopeless avian dumbkopf, as I have always suspected. I threw myself heart and soul into the first of your challenges, removing my binoculars from the satchel wherein they have been gathering dust since the last century and stalking up and down and around my bailiwick hoping to spot a bluebird and a robin and a starling and a grackle. I took a bag of reconstituted meat paste sandwiches and a flask of piping hot tea, because I was in this for the long haul, and could see myself being stranded on a hillside come dusk. I even had a picnic blanket thrown over my shoulder, just in case. I spent the whole bloody day in the open air, in spite of the weather, though I would have liked nothing better than to be curled up on a rug in front of a roaring fire, like a well-kept dog. Now, perhaps it is my own fault that I failed to check the noticeboard outside the civic hall, and thus was unaware that Monday had been designated And No Birds Sing Day by the authorities, in honour of some ailing palely loitering knight-at-arms of yesteryear. Clearly, the birds, their tweeting and chirruping forbad, voted with their wings and scarpered to a different neighbourhood for the day. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Zoist Spasms 03:15 Bird Challenge Rebuke 24:15 Fantastic Architecture Of The Burning Cities 26:24 On Replacement Bus Services ZOIST SPASMS "Spasms (kraempfe) are an affection to which almost all sensitives are especially inclined. Many, especially those of a higher degree, suffer from them severely. They form the last term of the series--stomach-ache, head-ache, fainting, spasm. They may be occasioned by magnets, by terrestrial magnetism, by poles of crystals, by amorphous, unipolar, bodies, either odo-positive or odo-negative, by human odic poles, by the prismatic rays of either the solar or lunar spectrum, particularly the green rays, by down passes, but oftener by up passes, by charging and conduction, whether immediate or approximative, by the mere odic atmosphere, by the psychical action of insult, grief, anxiety, fear, annoyance, jealousy, quarrels, mental exertion, joy, or even dreams. They are most conspicuous in the extremities, solar plexus, and head. They can be artificially excited and calmed, or depart naturally. They often follow a tolerably similar course from the toes through the abdomen to the brain, and thence down the spinal cord, like a pass. In most cases they can be more or less easily calmed by down passes. Hence as they are essentially related to sensitiveness, and immediately dependent on odic motions, they undoubtedly belong to the domain of od." From Reichenbach and his Researches : the principal "Laws of Sensitiveness" abstracted from Reichenbach's work DER SENSITIVE MENSCH, by ALEXANDER J ELLIS, B.A., Trin. Coll., Camb. in The Zoist : A Journal Of Cerebral Physiology And Mesmerism, And Their Applications To Human Welfare, No. LI., October 1855. BIRD CHALLENGE REBUKE Oi, FK!, writes Tim Thurn in his usual artless manner, I am appalled at the latest evidence of your slipshod treatment of your loyal readers. I very much welcomed the Daily Bird Challenge instituted here on Monday, and I was even preparing to acknowledge that perhaps you do know a little bit about ornithological matters and are not a hopeless avian dumbkopf, as I have always suspected. I threw myself heart and soul into the first of your challenges, removing my binoculars from the satchel wherein they have been gathering dust since the last century and stalking up and down and around my bailiwick hoping to spot a bluebird and a robin and a starling and a grackle. I took a bag of reconstituted meat paste sandwiches and a flask of piping hot tea, because I was in this for the long haul, and could see myself being stranded on a hillside come dusk. I even had a picnic blanket thrown over my shoulder, just in case. I spent the whole bloody day in the open air, in spite of the weather, though I would have liked nothing better than to be curled up on a rug in front of a roaring fire, like a well-kept dog. Now, perhaps it is my own fault that I failed to check the noticeboard outside the civic hall, and thus was unaware that Monday had been designated And No Birds Sing Day by the authorities, in honour of some ailing palely loitering knight-at-arms of yesteryear. Clearly, the birds, their tweeting and chirruping forbad, voted with their wings and scarpered to a different neighbourhood for the day. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-04-0128:34fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-03-25Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:59 About Ivan Clank 07:00 Puff 12:51 Dr Lamp's Atlas 15:59 More From Chalmers 20:11 The Grubby Man 26:20 Those Cursed Scotch Pebbles ABOUT IVAN CLANK Is it not curious, the manner in which the most disparate things interconnect? The way in which we find linkages, some flimsy, some as sturdy as iron chains, between persons and places and objects and events? If Mr Raven, the club-footed inquiry agent in The Strange Affair Of Adelaide Harris by Leon Garfield, could continue devising his spidery diagram beyond the bounds of that book's plot, would he not eventually encompass the whole world within its web of foul intrigue? These idle thoughts, bubbling gently in my brain while I stared out of the window hoping to see a heron, or a cow, were prompted by the recollection that Ivan Clank, the bailiff whose grisly demise was mentioned in passing in Variation On A Theme Of Scott Walker, was, albeit briefly, a member of the Pointy Town chapter of the Tuesday Weld Fan Club. He had left, or rather been booted out, before the picnic excursion described here yesterday. In fact, if the membership records are to be believed--and why should they not be?--Ivan Clank's time in the club lasted but twenty minutes. At 4.25 on the afternoon of a gorgeous summer's day, he paid his sub, signed his name in the ledger, and received his badge and card and list of rules and regulations and passport-sized photograph of Tuesday Weld and a celebratory slice of flan. A note appended at 4.45 on the same afternoon declares that "Ivan Clank, Membership No. 835, bailiff, has left, or rather been booted out of, the club". No explanation is given. The handwriting appears to be that of the secretary, Mr Thubb. In itself, this would be of minuscule interest, but hark! What is that we hear? It is the pencil of the pamphleteer Dobson, scratching across a page of one of his writing tablets! In a further interconnection to warm the cold, cold heart of Mr Raven, we learn that Dobson actually wrote a pamphlet about Ivan Clank and his fugitive Tuesday Weld Fan Club-related activities. The pamphleteer seems first to have become aware of Ivan Clank when he read an account of the bailiff's gruesome destruction at the hands of brigands in The Daily Bailiff & Brigand Herald. He liked to keep up to speed with these things, did Dobson. The paper's legendary "Recommendations For Further Reading For Those Whose Curiosity Has Been Piqued" column pointed the pamphleteer in several directions, most of which he failed to follow up. But he did learn, somehow, about Ivan Clank's membership of the Tuesday Weld Fan Club, and its abrupt termination, and he even seems to have gained access to the membership records, which is a wonder, all things considered, what with one thing and another, from whichever angle you look at it, all in all, shambeko, shambeko, hal-an-tow. The resulting pamphlet is not one of Dobson's best. Ivan Clank, The Bailiff, O Is He Dead Then? is a curdled and bickering text, unleavened by any of the pamphleteer's usual majestic sweeping paragraphs. It purports to be a potted biography of the bailiff in which the Tuesday Weld Fan Club hoo-hah is seen as pivotal, but Dobson does not say what it is that pivots upon it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-03-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:59 About Ivan Clank 07:00 Puff 12:51 Dr Lamp's Atlas 15:59 More From Chalmers 20:11 The Grubby Man 26:20 Those Cursed Scotch Pebbles ABOUT IVAN CLANK Is it not curious, the manner in which the most disparate things interconnect? The way in which we find linkages, some flimsy, some as sturdy as iron chains, between persons and places and objects and events? If Mr Raven, the club-footed inquiry agent in The Strange Affair Of Adelaide Harris by Leon Garfield, could continue devising his spidery diagram beyond the bounds of that book's plot, would he not eventually encompass the whole world within its web of foul intrigue? These idle thoughts, bubbling gently in my brain while I stared out of the window hoping to see a heron, or a cow, were prompted by the recollection that Ivan Clank, the bailiff whose grisly demise was mentioned in passing in Variation On A Theme Of Scott Walker, was, albeit briefly, a member of the Pointy Town chapter of the Tuesday Weld Fan Club. He had left, or rather been booted out, before the picnic excursion described here yesterday. In fact, if the membership records are to be believed--and why should they not be?--Ivan Clank's time in the club lasted but twenty minutes. At 4.25 on the afternoon of a gorgeous summer's day, he paid his sub, signed his name in the ledger, and received his badge and card and list of rules and regulations and passport-sized photograph of Tuesday Weld and a celebratory slice of flan. A note appended at 4.45 on the same afternoon declares that "Ivan Clank, Membership No. 835, bailiff, has left, or rather been booted out of, the club". No explanation is given. The handwriting appears to be that of the secretary, Mr Thubb. In itself, this would be of minuscule interest, but hark! What is that we hear? It is the pencil of the pamphleteer Dobson, scratching across a page of one of his writing tablets! In a further interconnection to warm the cold, cold heart of Mr Raven, we learn that Dobson actually wrote a pamphlet about Ivan Clank and his fugitive Tuesday Weld Fan Club-related activities. The pamphleteer seems first to have become aware of Ivan Clank when he read an account of the bailiff's gruesome destruction at the hands of brigands in The Daily Bailiff & Brigand Herald. He liked to keep up to speed with these things, did Dobson. The paper's legendary "Recommendations For Further Reading For Those Whose Curiosity Has Been Piqued" column pointed the pamphleteer in several directions, most of which he failed to follow up. But he did learn, somehow, about Ivan Clank's membership of the Tuesday Weld Fan Club, and its abrupt termination, and he even seems to have gained access to the membership records, which is a wonder, all things considered, what with one thing and another, from whichever angle you look at it, all in all, shambeko, shambeko, hal-an-tow. The resulting pamphlet is not one of Dobson's best. Ivan Clank, The Bailiff, O Is He Dead Then? is a curdled and bickering text, unleavened by any of the pamphleteer's usual majestic sweeping paragraphs. It purports to be a potted biography of the bailiff in which the Tuesday Weld Fan Club hoo-hah is seen as pivotal, but Dobson does not say what it is that pivots upon it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-03-2529:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-03-18Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Duck In A Pond 05:06 Chambers And Hiss At The River Basin 20:45 Boosters 24:59 Boogie Woogie A DUCK IN A POND A duck in a pond, a pond near a swamp. Sometimes, the duck walks across the mud from the pond to the swamp and, standing on the edge, looks into the stagnant filth, like a duck Narcissus. On the horizon there are trees--larch, beech, sycamore, pine. Having gazed, unblinking, at its reflection, blurry, blurry, the duck turns about and walks back to the pond, into which it plashes, and often times upends itself, so to a passer-by only its fundament and feet are visible, its head and upper body submerged in the water. When a breeze gusts, as it usually does, the leaves on trees on the horizon rustle. If the breeze becomes a gale, the trees sway. Once the wind grew so strong one of them, a beech, crashed to the ground, its topmost twigs and branches falling into the swamp at the swamp's edge. Fortunately for the duck, it was in the pond when this happened. The sky was black, for the wind was howling in the night, and there were no stars to be seen, because of clouds. The duck was terrified. If ever you pass by that pond, chuck some stale breadcrusts to the duck. If you are on your way to the trees, to take measurements, or to carve your initials and those of your sweetheart into the bark on a trunk, be sure to skirt the swamp. Even the stoutest and most voluminous wading boots will not save you from sinking into the murk and slime, glubb glubb glubb. If you take the proper route to the trees, you will pass the memorial garden where stones and piles of pebbles and rugged wooden crosses mark those whose souls the swamp has claimed. The duck has seen some of them, from the safety of its pond, as they sank, flailing and helpless and screaming. It is a traumatised duck. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-03-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Duck In A Pond 05:06 Chambers And Hiss At The River Basin 20:45 Boosters 24:59 Boogie Woogie A DUCK IN A POND A duck in a pond, a pond near a swamp. Sometimes, the duck walks across the mud from the pond to the swamp and, standing on the edge, looks into the stagnant filth, like a duck Narcissus. On the horizon there are trees--larch, beech, sycamore, pine. Having gazed, unblinking, at its reflection, blurry, blurry, the duck turns about and walks back to the pond, into which it plashes, and often times upends itself, so to a passer-by only its fundament and feet are visible, its head and upper body submerged in the water. When a breeze gusts, as it usually does, the leaves on trees on the horizon rustle. If the breeze becomes a gale, the trees sway. Once the wind grew so strong one of them, a beech, crashed to the ground, its topmost twigs and branches falling into the swamp at the swamp's edge. Fortunately for the duck, it was in the pond when this happened. The sky was black, for the wind was howling in the night, and there were no stars to be seen, because of clouds. The duck was terrified. If ever you pass by that pond, chuck some stale breadcrusts to the duck. If you are on your way to the trees, to take measurements, or to carve your initials and those of your sweetheart into the bark on a trunk, be sure to skirt the swamp. Even the stoutest and most voluminous wading boots will not save you from sinking into the murk and slime, glubb glubb glubb. If you take the proper route to the trees, you will pass the memorial garden where stones and piles of pebbles and rugged wooden crosses mark those whose souls the swamp has claimed. The duck has seen some of them, from the safety of its pond, as they sank, flailing and helpless and screaming. It is a traumatised duck. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-03-1829:16fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-03-04Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Hark! 06:28 Variation On A Theme Of Scott Walker 13:06 Being A True Account Of The Discovery Of The Tomb Of Anaxagrotax 24:04 God's Grandeur 26:10 Boorde On Naps HARK! Hark! I hear barking! The sound of dogs! It is an unclean sound, for dogs are unclean, as are such beasts as pigs and lobsters, according to my well-thought-out worldview. I was taught early to shun dogs and pigs and lobsters, to flee from their presence if they did not first flee from mine. Without the fleeing, theirs or mine, I would become contaminated by their uncleanness, and need to wash and wash and wash with water and soap and borax and purifiers until my flesh was raw and all trace of dog, pig, lobster was wholly eradicated, even down to the tiniest speck of filth. For filth it is, so I know, for it is written. I first fled from a dog, or it may have been a pig, or a lobster, when I was so tiny I barely remember, and have pieced together the events as best I can by repeated and indefatigable questioning of Bog Horvath, the family wizard. I fled and plunged into a pond, screaming, and soap and borax and purifiers were tossed in to me by the Cleansing Monkey from its booth anent the pond. I trod water and rubbed and scrubbed and eventually clambered out of the pond and ran home, there to burn a corn dolly and make a paste of the ash and to smear the paste upon my forehead and remain so marked until the setting of the sun, as it is written. That was so long, long ago, and in the years since there have been many other ponds and Cleansing Monkey booths and corn dollies burned to ash, for the world is filled to bursting with dogs and pigs and lobsters. They cannot always be avoided, in the run of a day. Bog Horvath, the family wizard, explained to me that the unclean must coexist with the clean, to teach us. If dogs and pigs and lobsters were obliterated from the face of the planet, or even, laughably, deemed to be clean, as they are by some among the damned, then the litanies we learn would lose all sense, and that surely cannot be. I know, when I see the stain upon my forehead in a looking glass, that I am righteous, at least until nightfall, and that any further dog or pig or lobster come roaming into my Zone Of Cleanth that day will be repelled, as if by great force, for so it is written. Bog Horvath, the family wizard, has been most helpful in clarifying the status of apes and monkeys. Some are clean, as obviously are the Cleansing Monkeys in their booths by ponds and meres and lakes, but others are unclean, creatures of filth to be shunned. When I was still a child, my ma and pa had not properly grasped what Bog Horvath, the family wizard, was teaching, and they brought into the house, as a pet, an unclean ape, I cannot remember what kind exactly. It was not sufficient, then, just to burn a corn dolly. The house itself had to burn, with the ape and my ma and pa inside it, while Bog Horvath, the family wizard, and I stood outside on the path, beside the clump of vetch and the lupins, watching the purifying flames roar. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-03-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Hark! 06:28 Variation On A Theme Of Scott Walker 13:06 Being A True Account Of The Discovery Of The Tomb Of Anaxagrotax 24:04 God's Grandeur 26:10 Boorde On Naps HARK! Hark! I hear barking! The sound of dogs! It is an unclean sound, for dogs are unclean, as are such beasts as pigs and lobsters, according to my well-thought-out worldview. I was taught early to shun dogs and pigs and lobsters, to flee from their presence if they did not first flee from mine. Without the fleeing, theirs or mine, I would become contaminated by their uncleanness, and need to wash and wash and wash with water and soap and borax and purifiers until my flesh was raw and all trace of dog, pig, lobster was wholly eradicated, even down to the tiniest speck of filth. For filth it is, so I know, for it is written. I first fled from a dog, or it may have been a pig, or a lobster, when I was so tiny I barely remember, and have pieced together the events as best I can by repeated and indefatigable questioning of Bog Horvath, the family wizard. I fled and plunged into a pond, screaming, and soap and borax and purifiers were tossed in to me by the Cleansing Monkey from its booth anent the pond. I trod water and rubbed and scrubbed and eventually clambered out of the pond and ran home, there to burn a corn dolly and make a paste of the ash and to smear the paste upon my forehead and remain so marked until the setting of the sun, as it is written. That was so long, long ago, and in the years since there have been many other ponds and Cleansing Monkey booths and corn dollies burned to ash, for the world is filled to bursting with dogs and pigs and lobsters. They cannot always be avoided, in the run of a day. Bog Horvath, the family wizard, explained to me that the unclean must coexist with the clean, to teach us. If dogs and pigs and lobsters were obliterated from the face of the planet, or even, laughably, deemed to be clean, as they are by some among the damned, then the litanies we learn would lose all sense, and that surely cannot be. I know, when I see the stain upon my forehead in a looking glass, that I am righteous, at least until nightfall, and that any further dog or pig or lobster come roaming into my Zone Of Cleanth that day will be repelled, as if by great force, for so it is written. Bog Horvath, the family wizard, has been most helpful in clarifying the status of apes and monkeys. Some are clean, as obviously are the Cleansing Monkeys in their booths by ponds and meres and lakes, but others are unclean, creatures of filth to be shunned. When I was still a child, my ma and pa had not properly grasped what Bog Horvath, the family wizard, was teaching, and they brought into the house, as a pet, an unclean ape, I cannot remember what kind exactly. It was not sufficient, then, just to burn a corn dolly. The house itself had to burn, with the ape and my ma and pa inside it, while Bog Horvath, the family wizard, and I stood outside on the path, beside the clump of vetch and the lupins, watching the purifying flames roar. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-03-0429:10fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-02-25Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Shade Of Smart 03:43 Bonkers Maisie 05:37 A Short Essay Upon Cardboard Breakfast Cereal Packets 10:32 A Tip From A Shaman 13:59 Tiny Enid's Bathtub Gin 18:38 Odd Dots 20:57 What I Like About A Farm 22:59 Tugboat Tales, Number Two 24:41 Incey-Wincey Quartet SHADE OF SMART Could it be that the shade of Christopher Smart is haunting the corridors of a large and important municipal building in far away Oregon? This unlikely question is prompted by a discovery made by Brit over at Think Of England. In the course of his valuable research into the Official State Crustaceans of the USA, Brit unearthed House Joint Resolution 37 from the Oregon Legislative Assembly, adopted in 2009. There is nobody called Smart among the Representatives and Senators who passed the Resolution, but it is clear to me that the mad poet's spirit hovered over whomsoever drafted it. Granted, it uses "Whereas" rather than Christopher Smart's favoured "Let"s and "For"s in Jubilate Agno, but otherwise this could be a lost fragment of that great poem: Whereas the Dungeness crab fishery is the most valuable single-species fishery in Oregon, making Dungeness crab an important part of Oregon's economy; and Whereas the Dungeness crab is an iconic Oregon symbol; and Whereas the Dungeness crab is the most delicious of the crab species; and Whereas the Dungeness crab annual harvest begins each year on December 1, when Dungeness crabs are hard-shelled, full of meat and in their prime; and Whereas the Dungeness crab harvest ends on August 14 to minimize handling, so that post-molt, soft-shelled crabs can fill out undisturbed; and Whereas this management method has served the resource well for decades and ensures that the Dungeness crab fishery is truly sustainable; now, therefore, Be It Resolved by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon: That the Dungeness crab is the official crustacean of the State of Oregon. BONKERS MAISIE Bonkers Maisie in her cart, trundling past the madhouse wall. Has she read The Intellectual Part by author Rayner Heppenstall? Yes she has, a hundred times, it is the only book she owns. She can act it out in mimes while juggling several traffic cones. She trundles 'long the rutted lane, heading for the distant sea. Sprites cavort within her brain, a brain no bigger than a bee. Dainty is her air and mien, though her cap is set askew. She is in love with Lothar Preen, the maestro. He is bonkers too. By the sea they shall be wed, then sail away in a barquentine. Hearts of tin, hearts of lead, they shall yearn and they shall pine for the land o' pomposity they have quit, where Mrs Gubbins'll sit and knit commemorative tea cosies by the score, for Preen and Maisie, on the shore, like King Canute upon the beach. In the squall huge seabirds screech. The cart's abandoned. It will rot. There's a moral lesson there, is there not? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-02-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Shade Of Smart 03:43 Bonkers Maisie 05:37 A Short Essay Upon Cardboard Breakfast Cereal Packets 10:32 A Tip From A Shaman 13:59 Tiny Enid's Bathtub Gin 18:38 Odd Dots 20:57 What I Like About A Farm 22:59 Tugboat Tales, Number Two 24:41 Incey-Wincey Quartet SHADE OF SMART Could it be that the shade of Christopher Smart is haunting the corridors of a large and important municipal building in far away Oregon? This unlikely question is prompted by a discovery made by Brit over at Think Of England. In the course of his valuable research into the Official State Crustaceans of the USA, Brit unearthed House Joint Resolution 37 from the Oregon Legislative Assembly, adopted in 2009. There is nobody called Smart among the Representatives and Senators who passed the Resolution, but it is clear to me that the mad poet's spirit hovered over whomsoever drafted it. Granted, it uses "Whereas" rather than Christopher Smart's favoured "Let"s and "For"s in Jubilate Agno, but otherwise this could be a lost fragment of that great poem: Whereas the Dungeness crab fishery is the most valuable single-species fishery in Oregon, making Dungeness crab an important part of Oregon's economy; and Whereas the Dungeness crab is an iconic Oregon symbol; and Whereas the Dungeness crab is the most delicious of the crab species; and Whereas the Dungeness crab annual harvest begins each year on December 1, when Dungeness crabs are hard-shelled, full of meat and in their prime; and Whereas the Dungeness crab harvest ends on August 14 to minimize handling, so that post-molt, soft-shelled crabs can fill out undisturbed; and Whereas this management method has served the resource well for decades and ensures that the Dungeness crab fishery is truly sustainable; now, therefore, Be It Resolved by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon: That the Dungeness crab is the official crustacean of the State of Oregon. BONKERS MAISIE Bonkers Maisie in her cart, trundling past the madhouse wall. Has she read The Intellectual Part by author Rayner Heppenstall? Yes she has, a hundred times, it is the only book she owns. She can act it out in mimes while juggling several traffic cones. She trundles 'long the rutted lane, heading for the distant sea. Sprites cavort within her brain, a brain no bigger than a bee. Dainty is her air and mien, though her cap is set askew. She is in love with Lothar Preen, the maestro. He is bonkers too. By the sea they shall be wed, then sail away in a barquentine. Hearts of tin, hearts of lead, they shall yearn and they shall pine for the land o' pomposity they have quit, where Mrs Gubbins'll sit and knit commemorative tea cosies by the score, for Preen and Maisie, on the shore, like King Canute upon the beach. In the squall huge seabirds screech. The cart's abandoned. It will rot. There's a moral lesson there, is there not? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-02-2528:51fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-02-18Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Statement Of William Tell 04:37 William Tell : Second Statement Of Particulars 09:47 A Man Of Letters 21:11 Pancake Day 26:22 Eggs Soaked In Tea THE STATEMENT OF WILLIAM TELL My name is William Tell, and I am an archer of repute. Like Caspar Badrutt, the hotelier who pioneered winter sports, I am a man of Switzerland, country of chocolate swiss roll and neutrality. My son Walter has a large head, and as he lolloped along the mountain paths, it tilted upon his neck and swung from side to side. He had become an object of ridicule among the goatherds. My wife, Coco, delved into ancient books to see if she could discover a spell to shrink Walter's head. I was fully supportive of this strategy, and entered many crossbow tournaments, the idea being to win prize monies so Coco could afford to buy more and more ancient books. Though I won contests in every canton of Switzerland, and even abroad, in Italy, where they called me Guglielmo, and our chalet was piled high with ancient books, Coco failed to discover an effective spell. Walter became low-spirited and unusually cantankerous. I feared for my coop of hens, towards which my son began to mutter animadversions. He was projecting his inner turmoil against harmless poultry, a psychological commonplace. Goatherds are larger, and violent when threatened. Desperate, I sought advice from the Swiss Institute Of Deportment. I was told that the muscles in Walter's neck could be strengthened rather than his head shrunk. The way to do this was to make him carry pieces of fruit balanced atop his crown. That goes some way to explaining why Walter had an apple on his head when Hermann Gessler, Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, came riding by on his horse. By every Alp in Switzerland, how I hated the Vogt! I shot the apple off Walter's head with my crossbow to show Gessler that I was not a man he should mess with. I had a pomegranate in my pocket, and was about to balance it on Gessler's head when I was apprehended by his henchmen. To his credit, my quick-thinking son unlatched the hens from the coop and set the fear of god into them. He pointed at the henchmen, and yelled "Kill!" They immediately unhanded me, and fled alongside their Vogt of Altdorf. Inside the chalet, Coco had brewed a potion from a recipe in one of the ancient books. Walter took a sip and spat it out, but I drank an entire gobletful. Shortly afterwards I lost touch with reality. My name is William Tell, and that is my statement. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, as the potion is still coursing through my veins. I must now go and tell everything I know about Switzerland to a man named Ruskin, who says he is writing a book about this fair country. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-02-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Statement Of William Tell 04:37 William Tell : Second Statement Of Particulars 09:47 A Man Of Letters 21:11 Pancake Day 26:22 Eggs Soaked In Tea THE STATEMENT OF WILLIAM TELL My name is William Tell, and I am an archer of repute. Like Caspar Badrutt, the hotelier who pioneered winter sports, I am a man of Switzerland, country of chocolate swiss roll and neutrality. My son Walter has a large head, and as he lolloped along the mountain paths, it tilted upon his neck and swung from side to side. He had become an object of ridicule among the goatherds. My wife, Coco, delved into ancient books to see if she could discover a spell to shrink Walter's head. I was fully supportive of this strategy, and entered many crossbow tournaments, the idea being to win prize monies so Coco could afford to buy more and more ancient books. Though I won contests in every canton of Switzerland, and even abroad, in Italy, where they called me Guglielmo, and our chalet was piled high with ancient books, Coco failed to discover an effective spell. Walter became low-spirited and unusually cantankerous. I feared for my coop of hens, towards which my son began to mutter animadversions. He was projecting his inner turmoil against harmless poultry, a psychological commonplace. Goatherds are larger, and violent when threatened. Desperate, I sought advice from the Swiss Institute Of Deportment. I was told that the muscles in Walter's neck could be strengthened rather than his head shrunk. The way to do this was to make him carry pieces of fruit balanced atop his crown. That goes some way to explaining why Walter had an apple on his head when Hermann Gessler, Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, came riding by on his horse. By every Alp in Switzerland, how I hated the Vogt! I shot the apple off Walter's head with my crossbow to show Gessler that I was not a man he should mess with. I had a pomegranate in my pocket, and was about to balance it on Gessler's head when I was apprehended by his henchmen. To his credit, my quick-thinking son unlatched the hens from the coop and set the fear of god into them. He pointed at the henchmen, and yelled "Kill!" They immediately unhanded me, and fled alongside their Vogt of Altdorf. Inside the chalet, Coco had brewed a potion from a recipe in one of the ancient books. Walter took a sip and spat it out, but I drank an entire gobletful. Shortly afterwards I lost touch with reality. My name is William Tell, and that is my statement. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, as the potion is still coursing through my veins. I must now go and tell everything I know about Switzerland to a man named Ruskin, who says he is writing a book about this fair country. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-02-1828:49fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-02-12Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 One Thousand 15:57 The Blind Man As Poultry Inspector ONE THOUSAND Today there is cause for celebration. No, not the Muggletonian Great Holiday, that was last week. The reason for unbridled cheer is that what you are reading is the one thousandth postage at Hooting Yard since the site was rejigged at the beginning of 2007. (I cannot recall precisely how many postages appeared in the old format, to be found in the 2003-2006 Archive, but if memory serves it is something in the region of 950.) A milestone to be celebrated, then--but how? Ideally, you lot would cancel all other engagements, put your feet up, and spend the rest of the day rereading all one thousand postages, in chronological order, making notes in your jotter, pausing occasionally to stare out of the window as you mull over a particularly arresting item, and generally wallowing in the sheer Hooting Yardiness of it all. Always remember that a day devoted to Mr Key is never a wasted day. However, I am sensible enough to realise that most of you will have other things calling on your attention, such as feeding the hamster, waiting at the bus stop, smoking, genuflecting, pootling about, milking the cows, rummaging in the attic, taking your pills, repairing the fence down by the drainage ditch, tallying up the entries in your ledger, doing the dishes, spreading jam on bread, clutching at straws, embarking on a perilous journey downstream by kayak, grovelling in filth, putting the spuds on, intoning spells against the pestilence, mucking about, boiling your shirts, describing an arc parallel to the surface, dusting the mantelpiece, rekindling that lost love, chopping celery, going for gold, doing the odd bit of trepanning, squeezing out sponges, cutting up rough, vomiting, preening, polishing your shoon, checking the gutters, making hay while the sun shines, piling Ossa upon Pelion, folding your towels, voting with your feet, remembering a childhood idyll, splitting an atom, clocking in, lurking in the shrubbery, gathering your wits, burning an effigy, being Ringo Starr, toiling to no purpose, making whoopee, burgling the Watergate building, casting the runes, mesmerising a duck, emptying the bins, licking some stamps, darning a hole in your pippy bag, crunching numbers, thwacking a bluebottle, going rogue, distributing alms to paupers, looking shifty, holding out a glimmer of hope, pole-vaulting, caterwauling, playing pin-the-paper-to-the-cardboard, rinsing lettuce, closing the barn door, glorying in crime, sticking to the point, feeling off colour, pondering the ineffable, gargling, straining, wheedling, pining, flailing, and lying crumpled and woebegone and exhausted and hot-in-the-brain. You may have to do all of these or none, but in either case the chances are that you will be unable to devote your every waking hour to Hooting Yard, even though you yearn to do so. We shall have to come up with some other form of celebration. It is at times like these a person's thoughts turn to cake. It will have to be an enormous cake, to fit a thousand candles on to it. Think of all that burning wax! I shall leave you with that thought, and press on. One could, of course, throw a party. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-02-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 One Thousand 15:57 The Blind Man As Poultry Inspector ONE THOUSAND Today there is cause for celebration. No, not the Muggletonian Great Holiday, that was last week. The reason for unbridled cheer is that what you are reading is the one thousandth postage at Hooting Yard since the site was rejigged at the beginning of 2007. (I cannot recall precisely how many postages appeared in the old format, to be found in the 2003-2006 Archive, but if memory serves it is something in the region of 950.) A milestone to be celebrated, then--but how? Ideally, you lot would cancel all other engagements, put your feet up, and spend the rest of the day rereading all one thousand postages, in chronological order, making notes in your jotter, pausing occasionally to stare out of the window as you mull over a particularly arresting item, and generally wallowing in the sheer Hooting Yardiness of it all. Always remember that a day devoted to Mr Key is never a wasted day. However, I am sensible enough to realise that most of you will have other things calling on your attention, such as feeding the hamster, waiting at the bus stop, smoking, genuflecting, pootling about, milking the cows, rummaging in the attic, taking your pills, repairing the fence down by the drainage ditch, tallying up the entries in your ledger, doing the dishes, spreading jam on bread, clutching at straws, embarking on a perilous journey downstream by kayak, grovelling in filth, putting the spuds on, intoning spells against the pestilence, mucking about, boiling your shirts, describing an arc parallel to the surface, dusting the mantelpiece, rekindling that lost love, chopping celery, going for gold, doing the odd bit of trepanning, squeezing out sponges, cutting up rough, vomiting, preening, polishing your shoon, checking the gutters, making hay while the sun shines, piling Ossa upon Pelion, folding your towels, voting with your feet, remembering a childhood idyll, splitting an atom, clocking in, lurking in the shrubbery, gathering your wits, burning an effigy, being Ringo Starr, toiling to no purpose, making whoopee, burgling the Watergate building, casting the runes, mesmerising a duck, emptying the bins, licking some stamps, darning a hole in your pippy bag, crunching numbers, thwacking a bluebottle, going rogue, distributing alms to paupers, looking shifty, holding out a glimmer of hope, pole-vaulting, caterwauling, playing pin-the-paper-to-the-cardboard, rinsing lettuce, closing the barn door, glorying in crime, sticking to the point, feeling off colour, pondering the ineffable, gargling, straining, wheedling, pining, flailing, and lying crumpled and woebegone and exhausted and hot-in-the-brain. You may have to do all of these or none, but in either case the chances are that you will be unable to devote your every waking hour to Hooting Yard, even though you yearn to do so. We shall have to come up with some other form of celebration. It is at times like these a person's thoughts turn to cake. It will have to be an enormous cake, to fit a thousand candles on to it. Think of all that burning wax! I shall leave you with that thought, and press on. One could, of course, throw a party. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-02-1229:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-01-21Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 104 Pamphlets (Out Of Print) 15:35 To Vange! 24:40 Blodwyn & Fulgenceac 104 PAMPHLETS (OUT OF PRINT) I am indebted to reader Mike Jennings who, despite being banished to a pompous land, has, in his own words, been "compiling these tentative notes toward a Dobson bibliography". This seems to me to be a work of magnificent scholarship. Indeed, I cannot begin to imagine how we have all been coping without it. Mr Jennings adds "Much work is to be done of course with regard to details such as binding, font, illustration etc but I know my limitations. Such scrutiny I will leave to more qualified Dobsonists with the requisite anoraks and little grease-proof bags of egg sandwiches." The bibliography is ordered according to an arcane system of Mr Jennings' own devising, one the intrinsic beauty of which I hope we can all appreciate. I have taken the liberty of applying a set of Blotzmann Numbers to the pamphlet titles. Though broadly similar to ordinary numbers, they of course harbour a terrifying underlying significance. To paraphrase H P Lovecraft, "the most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to understand the Blotzmann Numbers". Unless otherwise stated--and it isn't--all titles are out of print. TO VANGE! To Vange! We set out, the champ, the widow, and me, at break of dawn, hoping to make Vange before nightfall. I knew little about my travelling companions. I had no idea, for example, of what the champ was a champion, nor did I know whose relict the widow was, nor for how long she had been wearing her widow's weeds. They, in their turn, must have known almost nothing about me, save perhaps that I was a fanatical devotee of Trebizondo Culpeper, whose glorious image shot forth rays of golden light from the badge I wore upon my tunic. Our donkeys we had abducted, with great daring, in broad daylight, from the beach where they were employed to give rides to holidaying urchins. They were sturdy beasts, with a surprising elegance in their carriage. I was well aware, as were the champ and the widow, that laws exist to regulate the number of hours a donkey may be worked, but I spat in the face of the laws, and my companions did too. We were determined to get to Vange in a single day, and if in so doing we were to exhaust our donkeys, then so be it. Trebizondo Culpeper's recorded pronouncements on donkeys are gnomic, to say the least, and though I could not claim to have a full understanding of them, I felt sure we were following the right path. By "path", I mean of course the Way of Trebizondo Culpeper, not the path to Vange. Accustomed as they were to the golden strands of their seaside resort, our abducted donkeys would have been utterly discombobulated had we led them along the main arterial trunk road to Vange, with its thundering traffic of container lorries and speed-phrenzied vanborne riffraff. We chose instead to make our way across fields and greensward, taking the occasional quiet country lane or abandoned railway line where the opportunity arose. We had no map. Instead, we relied on the widow's profound, and in many ways unnerving knowledge of the lie of the land. In less enlightened times they would have burned her for a witch. Of the three of us, only the champ had previously been to Vange. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-01-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 104 Pamphlets (Out Of Print) 15:35 To Vange! 24:40 Blodwyn & Fulgenceac 104 PAMPHLETS (OUT OF PRINT) I am indebted to reader Mike Jennings who, despite being banished to a pompous land, has, in his own words, been "compiling these tentative notes toward a Dobson bibliography". This seems to me to be a work of magnificent scholarship. Indeed, I cannot begin to imagine how we have all been coping without it. Mr Jennings adds "Much work is to be done of course with regard to details such as binding, font, illustration etc but I know my limitations. Such scrutiny I will leave to more qualified Dobsonists with the requisite anoraks and little grease-proof bags of egg sandwiches." The bibliography is ordered according to an arcane system of Mr Jennings' own devising, one the intrinsic beauty of which I hope we can all appreciate. I have taken the liberty of applying a set of Blotzmann Numbers to the pamphlet titles. Though broadly similar to ordinary numbers, they of course harbour a terrifying underlying significance. To paraphrase H P Lovecraft, "the most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to understand the Blotzmann Numbers". Unless otherwise stated--and it isn't--all titles are out of print. TO VANGE! To Vange! We set out, the champ, the widow, and me, at break of dawn, hoping to make Vange before nightfall. I knew little about my travelling companions. I had no idea, for example, of what the champ was a champion, nor did I know whose relict the widow was, nor for how long she had been wearing her widow's weeds. They, in their turn, must have known almost nothing about me, save perhaps that I was a fanatical devotee of Trebizondo Culpeper, whose glorious image shot forth rays of golden light from the badge I wore upon my tunic. Our donkeys we had abducted, with great daring, in broad daylight, from the beach where they were employed to give rides to holidaying urchins. They were sturdy beasts, with a surprising elegance in their carriage. I was well aware, as were the champ and the widow, that laws exist to regulate the number of hours a donkey may be worked, but I spat in the face of the laws, and my companions did too. We were determined to get to Vange in a single day, and if in so doing we were to exhaust our donkeys, then so be it. Trebizondo Culpeper's recorded pronouncements on donkeys are gnomic, to say the least, and though I could not claim to have a full understanding of them, I felt sure we were following the right path. By "path", I mean of course the Way of Trebizondo Culpeper, not the path to Vange. Accustomed as they were to the golden strands of their seaside resort, our abducted donkeys would have been utterly discombobulated had we led them along the main arterial trunk road to Vange, with its thundering traffic of container lorries and speed-phrenzied vanborne riffraff. We chose instead to make our way across fields and greensward, taking the occasional quiet country lane or abandoned railway line where the opportunity arose. We had no map. Instead, we relied on the widow's profound, and in many ways unnerving knowledge of the lie of the land. In less enlightened times they would have burned her for a witch. Of the three of us, only the champ had previously been to Vange. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-01-2128:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-01-14Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Phologiston Varations THE PHOLOGISTON VARATIONS Good afternoon. Welcome to hooting yard on the air. My name is Frank key. This week I'm going to read you a record review, a review of a CD, a fairly lengthy review which appeared in the in the weekly shackle that wonderful family newspaper. And it's a review of the phlogiston variations by Winslow and a CD set mid price. unwrapping the cellophane from this handsome box set took me the best part of an hour, such as my excitement that the word butter fingers might have been invented for me. And it was only by dint of a pair of extremely sharp scissors that I eventually succeeded. That was not the end of my troubles, for I had the devil of a job to discard the shredded wrapper into my wastepaper basket. gleaming strands of cellophane stuck resolutely to my fingers. However desperately I flapped my arms around, like a conjurer, casting a peculiarly inept spell. is this relevant? Well, yes, I think it is. The tactile struggle to extricate the box from its packaging was nothing compared to the auditory struggle I then underwent, listening at one sitting to the nine hours and 47 minutes of the quite majestic phlogiston variations. Younger listeners may be unfamiliar with the work of the Alaskan Flemish composer chlorine and Dinah Winslow 1882 to 1941. operates operetta the paving slabs was recently revived by a troupe of Finnish amateurs. And the jazz spin ethicist Dennis Jarrett included a version of the retention of milk on his 1991 solo album. But otherwise, this towering figure of 20th century music has fallen victim to almost criminal neglect. So this reissue of the phlogiston variations, recorded by the hooting yard ensemble in 1959 is more than welcome. And well I hope go some way towards the rehabilitation of Winslow. I've never understood why she's been all but forgotten. At the peak of her success in the 1920s. Her works were regularly performed in concert hall throughout the world, and critical plaudits were bestowed on her even by such cantankerous misanthropes as Wrigley, who described her memorably as the greatest Alaskan composer of the last and probably the next 500 years. Winslow had in fact left Alaska at the age of four. Her mother, a weasel breeder of Flemish extraction, fled the country after her husband Winslow's father was shot dead in one of the sporadic outbreaks of gang warfare which blighted a fog neck island in the Gulf of Alaska during the 1880s. Mother and daughter moved first to Sumatra, then traipse through various seaside resorts in the north of England. before settling in Danzig in 1896. Winslow had shown a precocious talent as a bassoonist and her mother enrolled her in some sort of cut price music school in the city, run by Professor ignatz milkbone. A wisdom an old get of questionable morals, whose police record filled at least two hole filing cabinets in the basement storeroom of the Danzig, Western District criminal justice headquarters. He was a foul foul man, and a teacher of genius. Winslow studied under him for 11 years in all in that time, she developed from a promising teenage bassoonist into an all round musical talent of frightening proficiency. Her first composition proper. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-01-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Phologiston Varations THE PHOLOGISTON VARATIONS Good afternoon. Welcome to hooting yard on the air. My name is Frank key. This week I'm going to read you a record review, a review of a CD, a fairly lengthy review which appeared in the in the weekly shackle that wonderful family newspaper. And it's a review of the phlogiston variations by Winslow and a CD set mid price. unwrapping the cellophane from this handsome box set took me the best part of an hour, such as my excitement that the word butter fingers might have been invented for me. And it was only by dint of a pair of extremely sharp scissors that I eventually succeeded. That was not the end of my troubles, for I had the devil of a job to discard the shredded wrapper into my wastepaper basket. gleaming strands of cellophane stuck resolutely to my fingers. However desperately I flapped my arms around, like a conjurer, casting a peculiarly inept spell. is this relevant? Well, yes, I think it is. The tactile struggle to extricate the box from its packaging was nothing compared to the auditory struggle I then underwent, listening at one sitting to the nine hours and 47 minutes of the quite majestic phlogiston variations. Younger listeners may be unfamiliar with the work of the Alaskan Flemish composer chlorine and Dinah Winslow 1882 to 1941. operates operetta the paving slabs was recently revived by a troupe of Finnish amateurs. And the jazz spin ethicist Dennis Jarrett included a version of the retention of milk on his 1991 solo album. But otherwise, this towering figure of 20th century music has fallen victim to almost criminal neglect. So this reissue of the phlogiston variations, recorded by the hooting yard ensemble in 1959 is more than welcome. And well I hope go some way towards the rehabilitation of Winslow. I've never understood why she's been all but forgotten. At the peak of her success in the 1920s. Her works were regularly performed in concert hall throughout the world, and critical plaudits were bestowed on her even by such cantankerous misanthropes as Wrigley, who described her memorably as the greatest Alaskan composer of the last and probably the next 500 years. Winslow had in fact left Alaska at the age of four. Her mother, a weasel breeder of Flemish extraction, fled the country after her husband Winslow's father was shot dead in one of the sporadic outbreaks of gang warfare which blighted a fog neck island in the Gulf of Alaska during the 1880s. Mother and daughter moved first to Sumatra, then traipse through various seaside resorts in the north of England. before settling in Danzig in 1896. Winslow had shown a precocious talent as a bassoonist and her mother enrolled her in some sort of cut price music school in the city, run by Professor ignatz milkbone. A wisdom an old get of questionable morals, whose police record filled at least two hole filing cabinets in the basement storeroom of the Danzig, Western District criminal justice headquarters. He was a foul foul man, and a teacher of genius. Winslow studied under him for 11 years in all in that time, she developed from a promising teenage bassoonist into an all round musical talent of frightening proficiency. Her first composition proper. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-01-1429:23fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2010-01-07Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Tear-Stained Letters 04:41 Tolls And Jingles 08:45 New Year 13:08 Rosh Sal Ber Yon 16:11 Animal Magnetism 19:07 Poets Of Porridge 21:51 Fig Pot Scamp 26:22 The White Technique TEAR-STAINED LETTERS During the past few days, postie has been struggling along the lane towards Haemoglobin Towers heaving a sack filled, not, I am afraid to say, with seasonal greetings cards, but with tear-stained letters from listeners to the Hooting Yard radio show on Resonance 104.4 FM. Lazy writers, and those of a hackneyed bent, are fond of describing tears as "copious". I thought I had the full measure of that word until postie tipped out the daily sack of correspondence. By god, every single envelope was drenched, drenched with the salty sobbings of ungovernable anguish. I had to make use of a sponge and a mop before I could open them and read the scribbled lamentations therein. The cause of all this misery is that this year I failed to record a Hooting Yard Christmas Special. A twelvemonth ago, if you recall, Resonance broadcast my reading of Sylvia Townsend Warner's selection from The Natural History Of Selborne by Gilbert White detailing the activities of Timothy the Tortoise, and the year before that I was given a whopping three hours of airtime to recite, with Germander Speedwell, Christopher Smart's poem Jubilate Agno, a reading which proved to be an historic piece of radio. Alas, come this year's festive season I simply could not alight upon a suitable text. I pondered reading bits from A Withered Garland Of Mawkish Pap by Prudence Foxglove, but somehow it seemed too withered and mawkish. I was tempted by the idea of broadcasting two of Richard Nixon's Six Crises, but was unable to choose among them. For a while I even considered devoting a programme to the latest sorry outpourings of beatnik poet Dennis Beerpint, but neither I nor the radio station could face the prospect of the inevitable legal proceedings. So, with some regret, I threw in the towel, which was a pity, because I could have used it to more effectively soak up the tears contained in postie's sacks. The sponge and the mop only did half the job. Anyway, all I can do is to apologise, and to suggest to the bereft that they hie on over to the Wikipedia page for Jubilate Agno. Scroll down, and there at the foot of the page, you will find a link to my and Ms Speedwell's reading, preserved forever on the interweb. May I recommend listening to it in its entirety, at top volume, every day? Oh, and I have exciting news! After untold years in preparation, Jubilate Agno : The Motion Picture is due to be screened at your local multiplex early in the new year. Directed by Mel Gibson, starring Christopher Plummer and using old footage of Valentine Dyall and Basil Rathbone, this epic production has already won plaudits from my favourite film critic, the grunting and snaggle-toothed peasant with a rusty spade who stands, mysteriously, under an elm tree at the edge of the cemetery, spitting at crows. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-01-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Tear-Stained Letters 04:41 Tolls And Jingles 08:45 New Year 13:08 Rosh Sal Ber Yon 16:11 Animal Magnetism 19:07 Poets Of Porridge 21:51 Fig Pot Scamp 26:22 The White Technique TEAR-STAINED LETTERS During the past few days, postie has been struggling along the lane towards Haemoglobin Towers heaving a sack filled, not, I am afraid to say, with seasonal greetings cards, but with tear-stained letters from listeners to the Hooting Yard radio show on Resonance 104.4 FM. Lazy writers, and those of a hackneyed bent, are fond of describing tears as "copious". I thought I had the full measure of that word until postie tipped out the daily sack of correspondence. By god, every single envelope was drenched, drenched with the salty sobbings of ungovernable anguish. I had to make use of a sponge and a mop before I could open them and read the scribbled lamentations therein. The cause of all this misery is that this year I failed to record a Hooting Yard Christmas Special. A twelvemonth ago, if you recall, Resonance broadcast my reading of Sylvia Townsend Warner's selection from The Natural History Of Selborne by Gilbert White detailing the activities of Timothy the Tortoise, and the year before that I was given a whopping three hours of airtime to recite, with Germander Speedwell, Christopher Smart's poem Jubilate Agno, a reading which proved to be an historic piece of radio. Alas, come this year's festive season I simply could not alight upon a suitable text. I pondered reading bits from A Withered Garland Of Mawkish Pap by Prudence Foxglove, but somehow it seemed too withered and mawkish. I was tempted by the idea of broadcasting two of Richard Nixon's Six Crises, but was unable to choose among them. For a while I even considered devoting a programme to the latest sorry outpourings of beatnik poet Dennis Beerpint, but neither I nor the radio station could face the prospect of the inevitable legal proceedings. So, with some regret, I threw in the towel, which was a pity, because I could have used it to more effectively soak up the tears contained in postie's sacks. The sponge and the mop only did half the job. Anyway, all I can do is to apologise, and to suggest to the bereft that they hie on over to the Wikipedia page for Jubilate Agno. Scroll down, and there at the foot of the page, you will find a link to my and Ms Speedwell's reading, preserved forever on the interweb. May I recommend listening to it in its entirety, at top volume, every day? Oh, and I have exciting news! After untold years in preparation, Jubilate Agno : The Motion Picture is due to be screened at your local multiplex early in the new year. Directed by Mel Gibson, starring Christopher Plummer and using old footage of Valentine Dyall and Basil Rathbone, this epic production has already won plaudits from my favourite film critic, the grunting and snaggle-toothed peasant with a rusty spade who stands, mysteriously, under an elm tree at the edge of the cemetery, spitting at crows. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2010-01-0729:24fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-12-17Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 That Awful Mess At Sludge Hall Farm 07:36 Eerie Marshes 10:19 Let's Buy Blunkett's Brain! 12:46 The World Trend 16:22 Piling Ossa Upon Pelion 21:33 Replica Eden 24:23 Insolent Unlearned Sots 27:42 In A Cardboard Box THAT AWFUL MESS AT SLUDGE HALL FARM Legal Notice : The Sludge Hall Farm in this piece ought not be confused with the Sludge Hall Farm mentioned on Wednesday. They are two distinctly different farms, and halls. The sludge itself is, in most respects, broadly similar. It is a meteorological peculiarity that the sky over Sludge Hall Farm is always leaden, the air thick and oppressive, as if a storm is imminent, but a storm never comes. Equally anomalous is the fact that, over at Sludge Hall itself, the storminess never ceases, the semidilapidated building forever assailed by thunder and wrack and downpour. One does not often meet with a trio of stylishly dressed Italian police investigators tramping up the path to Sludge Hall Farm. In their Giuseppe Fonseca suits and Boffo Splendido shoes, they cut the sort of dash not seen in this landscape for a century, since the heyday of the so-called "peasantry moderne" movement. They have come from Sludge Hall, where they were received in the cubby by the monopod major domo, who served them with cream crackers and iron tonic. Thus fortified, the detectives announced their intention to visit the farm. The major domo shuddered, but swiftly dissembled, creaking on his crutch over to the dresser upon which rested Sludge Hall's only metal tapping machine, a vintage wonder. "I shall let the farmer know to expect you," said the major domo. The detectives preened their mustachios and glanced at each other, and then at their host, and then out of the smudged cubby window, its frame rattling as the tempest roared outside. Having tapped out his communique, the major domo made arrangements for Lars, the factotum, to take the Italians on his covered cart half way towards the farm, to the point where the storm weirdly ceased and the leaden pall sapped all vigour from the air. And it is some yards beyond where Lars dropped them off that we find the detectives now, each walking with insouciance and swish. If Sludge Hall Farm harboured a comely milkmaid, no doubt she would swoon at the sight of such unimpeachable foreign elegance. Alas, it is many a long year since comeliness in any form has blessed the farm. As the policemen are about to learn, it is now a grim and godawful place. No one knows the name of the farmer of Sludge Hall Farm. He is a hermit and a mystic and a polevaulting champion. Though aged and wizened, and though his many, many medals are now rusted and the velvet cushions upon which they sat are eaten away by worms, the farmer still polevaults every day, morning and evening, under the leaden sky at Sludge Hall Farm. He is puffing from a polevault as the Italian detectives push open the gate and greet him. One wonders what will happen. Will the farmer of Sludge Hall Farm speak for the first time in twenty years? Will he use his mystic powers to crack asunder the close-knit and almost telepathic team spirit of the detective trio, until they are snarling at each other like mad dogs and fighting with pitchforks? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-12-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 That Awful Mess At Sludge Hall Farm 07:36 Eerie Marshes 10:19 Let's Buy Blunkett's Brain! 12:46 The World Trend 16:22 Piling Ossa Upon Pelion 21:33 Replica Eden 24:23 Insolent Unlearned Sots 27:42 In A Cardboard Box THAT AWFUL MESS AT SLUDGE HALL FARM Legal Notice : The Sludge Hall Farm in this piece ought not be confused with the Sludge Hall Farm mentioned on Wednesday. They are two distinctly different farms, and halls. The sludge itself is, in most respects, broadly similar. It is a meteorological peculiarity that the sky over Sludge Hall Farm is always leaden, the air thick and oppressive, as if a storm is imminent, but a storm never comes. Equally anomalous is the fact that, over at Sludge Hall itself, the storminess never ceases, the semidilapidated building forever assailed by thunder and wrack and downpour. One does not often meet with a trio of stylishly dressed Italian police investigators tramping up the path to Sludge Hall Farm. In their Giuseppe Fonseca suits and Boffo Splendido shoes, they cut the sort of dash not seen in this landscape for a century, since the heyday of the so-called "peasantry moderne" movement. They have come from Sludge Hall, where they were received in the cubby by the monopod major domo, who served them with cream crackers and iron tonic. Thus fortified, the detectives announced their intention to visit the farm. The major domo shuddered, but swiftly dissembled, creaking on his crutch over to the dresser upon which rested Sludge Hall's only metal tapping machine, a vintage wonder. "I shall let the farmer know to expect you," said the major domo. The detectives preened their mustachios and glanced at each other, and then at their host, and then out of the smudged cubby window, its frame rattling as the tempest roared outside. Having tapped out his communique, the major domo made arrangements for Lars, the factotum, to take the Italians on his covered cart half way towards the farm, to the point where the storm weirdly ceased and the leaden pall sapped all vigour from the air. And it is some yards beyond where Lars dropped them off that we find the detectives now, each walking with insouciance and swish. If Sludge Hall Farm harboured a comely milkmaid, no doubt she would swoon at the sight of such unimpeachable foreign elegance. Alas, it is many a long year since comeliness in any form has blessed the farm. As the policemen are about to learn, it is now a grim and godawful place. No one knows the name of the farmer of Sludge Hall Farm. He is a hermit and a mystic and a polevaulting champion. Though aged and wizened, and though his many, many medals are now rusted and the velvet cushions upon which they sat are eaten away by worms, the farmer still polevaults every day, morning and evening, under the leaden sky at Sludge Hall Farm. He is puffing from a polevault as the Italian detectives push open the gate and greet him. One wonders what will happen. Will the farmer of Sludge Hall Farm speak for the first time in twenty years? Will he use his mystic powers to crack asunder the close-knit and almost telepathic team spirit of the detective trio, until they are snarling at each other like mad dogs and fighting with pitchforks? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-12-1729:49fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-12-10Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:36 Cadmium-Electroplated Bird Table 06:44 Woolworth's Is No More 11:26 In The Slimy Feculence 16:20 Battles Against Foes 22:56 Thrills & Spills With Zig Et Puce CADMIUM-ELECTROPLATED BIRD TABLE Cadmium! So soft, so ductile, so bluish-white, so bivalent, so high in fatigue resistance! And yet so toxic! Is there a better metal with which to electroplate your bird table? Not according to Hooting Yard's bird table electroplating expert Sogennantes Chumpot, who has this to say: "Whether you spell starling the usual way or get it confused with Stalin, one thing is for sure. All starlings love to alight on a bird table to peck millet and bread-crusts put out for them by ornithologically-minded citizens. And not just starlings, but other birds too, such as robins and goshawks and linnets. But in a climate where it seems always to be raining, where wild winds howl, where eerie mists descend and the air grows thick and muggy before great cataclysmic storms wreak ruination, even the best-made bird table will rot away and topple sooner or later. By Christ, I have seen numberless collapsed bird tables in my time, never without shedding tears as I then look up into the bleak expansive skies to see flocks of starlings, and other birds, kittiwakes and swifts and crows, skirling and swooping but with no sturdy untoppled bird table upon which to land and take sustenance from the provender there freely scattered by their human pals. It is a tragedy as old as time, best evoked, I think, in that terribly sad opera by Bouff, The Collapsed Bird Tables Of Verona." Chumpot has more to say, much more, but as a scion of the great soap-making family she has a tendency to prattle on, and I think we can safely interrupt. The point is that she has gathered a vast trove of information on cadmium-electroplated bird tables, and plans to make it available via a new web hub portal, with listings, prices, and specifications, plus a bulletin board, chatroom, Witter feed, wiki, forum, blog, stump, and rivets, all powered by Ubuntu! (I am not sure what that all means, but I am copying from scribbled notes which may not be entirely accurate. Chumpot was making her announcement on a lawn, on a common, and had to contend with the racket made by a petrol-powered mowing machine, a brass band, and a very noisy swarm of hornets.) Further details will follow once Sogennantes Chumpot actually sets up the website, which she plans to do as soon as it is safe to release her from the remote isolation clinic where she is being held following a severe bout of cadmium poisoning. I am not sure why she felt it necessary to--in her words--"become a bird table, complete with cadmium electroplating, in order to really get with the programme", but that is what she did, and now she is paying the price. Hats off to her, say I. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-12-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:36 Cadmium-Electroplated Bird Table 06:44 Woolworth's Is No More 11:26 In The Slimy Feculence 16:20 Battles Against Foes 22:56 Thrills & Spills With Zig Et Puce CADMIUM-ELECTROPLATED BIRD TABLE Cadmium! So soft, so ductile, so bluish-white, so bivalent, so high in fatigue resistance! And yet so toxic! Is there a better metal with which to electroplate your bird table? Not according to Hooting Yard's bird table electroplating expert Sogennantes Chumpot, who has this to say: "Whether you spell starling the usual way or get it confused with Stalin, one thing is for sure. All starlings love to alight on a bird table to peck millet and bread-crusts put out for them by ornithologically-minded citizens. And not just starlings, but other birds too, such as robins and goshawks and linnets. But in a climate where it seems always to be raining, where wild winds howl, where eerie mists descend and the air grows thick and muggy before great cataclysmic storms wreak ruination, even the best-made bird table will rot away and topple sooner or later. By Christ, I have seen numberless collapsed bird tables in my time, never without shedding tears as I then look up into the bleak expansive skies to see flocks of starlings, and other birds, kittiwakes and swifts and crows, skirling and swooping but with no sturdy untoppled bird table upon which to land and take sustenance from the provender there freely scattered by their human pals. It is a tragedy as old as time, best evoked, I think, in that terribly sad opera by Bouff, The Collapsed Bird Tables Of Verona." Chumpot has more to say, much more, but as a scion of the great soap-making family she has a tendency to prattle on, and I think we can safely interrupt. The point is that she has gathered a vast trove of information on cadmium-electroplated bird tables, and plans to make it available via a new web hub portal, with listings, prices, and specifications, plus a bulletin board, chatroom, Witter feed, wiki, forum, blog, stump, and rivets, all powered by Ubuntu! (I am not sure what that all means, but I am copying from scribbled notes which may not be entirely accurate. Chumpot was making her announcement on a lawn, on a common, and had to contend with the racket made by a petrol-powered mowing machine, a brass band, and a very noisy swarm of hornets.) Further details will follow once Sogennantes Chumpot actually sets up the website, which she plans to do as soon as it is safe to release her from the remote isolation clinic where she is being held following a severe bout of cadmium poisoning. I am not sure why she felt it necessary to--in her words--"become a bird table, complete with cadmium electroplating, in order to really get with the programme", but that is what she did, and now she is paying the price. Hats off to her, say I. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-12-1029:06fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-12-03Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 The Cow & Pins 06:15 If Only The Rev. James McCosh Were Here! 10:42 John Ruskin On The Train 24:19 Hospital Barge THE COW & PINS Every so often I receive letters from readers asking for background information on particular features of Hooting Yard. My usual practice is to ignore such enquiries and stuff them into a cardboard box, and to shove the cardboard box into a dark cranny. But sometimes I feel impelled to shine a torch into the cranny, to rummage in the cardboard box, to take out one among the mouldering scraps of paper, and to give it due attention. There is no particular method in my choosing, though a letter written neatly and grammatically on scented notepaper headed with a heraldic device, however spurious, is likely to win out over a scribble on a torn bit of breakfast cereal carton stained with grease. You may wish to make a note of that in your pocketbook for future reference. Elsewhere I will provide some tips on drawing spurious yet strangely compelling heraldic devices for your letterhead, but there is no time for that now. The letter I have just retrieved from the cranny is pithy, even curt. Oi Mr Key, it says, How did the Cow & Pins get its name? And that's it. It is not even signed! But the handwriting is exquisite, and done in mauve ink on lime-green tissue paper, scented with bergamot, or what smells like bergamot to my untrained nostrils, and there is a simply fabulous hand-drawn heraldic device, now somewhat faded, for god knows how long the letter has been squirreled away, in which I can make out a cassowary rampant, a snow shovel, and six buttons gules. Readers will recall, I hope, that the Cow & Pins is the finest tavern in existence, albeit something of a hellhole and a sink of vice. It is many long years since I sat in its snug, but if I shut my eyes and concentrate, I can imagine myself there, in the gloom, with that telltale sense of befuddlement at the way in which, yet again, a scattering of sawdust from the floor is floating atop the froth of my pint. Ah, such dejection in the fug! One of the reasons this letter would have been consigned to the cranny is, I am embarrassed to say, that I have absolutely no idea why the Cow & Pins is called the Cow & Pins. The best I can do, now, is to repeat the story I heard from an old bloated barnyard behemoth with whom I used to sit, sometimes, of an evening, at the bench outside the tavern, tossing breadcrumbs to crows, under a thunderous sky. He told me that the Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo once took a dislike to a certain cow that chewed the foxgloves or lupins she grew in flowerpots outside her cave. How or why this cow wandered away from its fellows was not explained. It may even have been different cows on different days. The Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo was celebrated, and feared, for her spooky eldritch powers, but no one ever claimed that she had great expertise in farmyard animal identification skills. Be that as it may, she satisfied herself that a single cow was causing the depredation of her foxgloves, or possibly lupins, and reacted in a tiresomely predictable way. That's right, she cast a spell on the cow. What else would you expect of the Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-12-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 The Cow & Pins 06:15 If Only The Rev. James McCosh Were Here! 10:42 John Ruskin On The Train 24:19 Hospital Barge THE COW & PINS Every so often I receive letters from readers asking for background information on particular features of Hooting Yard. My usual practice is to ignore such enquiries and stuff them into a cardboard box, and to shove the cardboard box into a dark cranny. But sometimes I feel impelled to shine a torch into the cranny, to rummage in the cardboard box, to take out one among the mouldering scraps of paper, and to give it due attention. There is no particular method in my choosing, though a letter written neatly and grammatically on scented notepaper headed with a heraldic device, however spurious, is likely to win out over a scribble on a torn bit of breakfast cereal carton stained with grease. You may wish to make a note of that in your pocketbook for future reference. Elsewhere I will provide some tips on drawing spurious yet strangely compelling heraldic devices for your letterhead, but there is no time for that now. The letter I have just retrieved from the cranny is pithy, even curt. Oi Mr Key, it says, How did the Cow & Pins get its name? And that's it. It is not even signed! But the handwriting is exquisite, and done in mauve ink on lime-green tissue paper, scented with bergamot, or what smells like bergamot to my untrained nostrils, and there is a simply fabulous hand-drawn heraldic device, now somewhat faded, for god knows how long the letter has been squirreled away, in which I can make out a cassowary rampant, a snow shovel, and six buttons gules. Readers will recall, I hope, that the Cow & Pins is the finest tavern in existence, albeit something of a hellhole and a sink of vice. It is many long years since I sat in its snug, but if I shut my eyes and concentrate, I can imagine myself there, in the gloom, with that telltale sense of befuddlement at the way in which, yet again, a scattering of sawdust from the floor is floating atop the froth of my pint. Ah, such dejection in the fug! One of the reasons this letter would have been consigned to the cranny is, I am embarrassed to say, that I have absolutely no idea why the Cow & Pins is called the Cow & Pins. The best I can do, now, is to repeat the story I heard from an old bloated barnyard behemoth with whom I used to sit, sometimes, of an evening, at the bench outside the tavern, tossing breadcrumbs to crows, under a thunderous sky. He told me that the Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo once took a dislike to a certain cow that chewed the foxgloves or lupins she grew in flowerpots outside her cave. How or why this cow wandered away from its fellows was not explained. It may even have been different cows on different days. The Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo was celebrated, and feared, for her spooky eldritch powers, but no one ever claimed that she had great expertise in farmyard animal identification skills. Be that as it may, she satisfied herself that a single cow was causing the depredation of her foxgloves, or possibly lupins, and reacted in a tiresomely predictable way. That's right, she cast a spell on the cow. What else would you expect of the Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-12-0329:24fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-11-26Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Trip From Throm To Bosis 06:10 New Beerpint Book 15:32 The Snivellers 19:49 Tin Vase 25:39 The Pudding Question A TRIP FROM THROM TO BOSIS The town of Throm is perhaps best known for its gorgeous sewers, with their chandeliers, Rococo ironwork railings, and jewel-encrusted access ladders. In spite of the magnificence of their sewers, the Thrompersons fought hard to win that official designation as a town. It is, after all, the size of a village, with the atmosphere of a hamlet, and the public morals of a cluster of shabby huts. But town it now is, at least on paper, and bursting with civic pride. The mayor's chain of office hangs around his neck, and trails along the ground into the gutter, where it drops through a brightly polished grating down, down, deep down into the most subterranean of the sewers, where it is bolted to an adamantine slab of rock, and bolted fast. It is a long chain, a chain the mayor is proud to wear. At the end of his term, the soldering person will come and unfasten it from around his neck, and it is at this time, his ten-years' duty done, unloosed from his chain, that the ex-mayor might make a trip to Bosis. Some have mistakenly dubbed Bosis the twin-town of Throm. It is no such thing. It is neither town nor village nor hamlet, nor even a cluster of huts. It certainly has no sewers to rival Throm. It has no sewers at all, for it is the kind of place that, though rained upon incessantly, has always been shunned by drainage engineers. So to the untrained eye Bosis can look like a mere midden of mud and filth and muck, roosted upon by the occasional disoriented scavenger gull or vulture. This unseemly prospect conceals, however, the great attraction of Bosis, which draws Thrompersons to it week in, week out, through the winter months. Bosis is registered as a site of historical significance, for it was here, at the dawn of time, that the Lord appeared, carrying an enormous burlap sack. There are many versions of the story, but the essential details are covered by Abbie Farwell Brown in The Curious Book Of Birds (1903): One day the Lord gathered together all the insects in the world, all the beetles, bugs, bees, mosquitoes, ants, locusts, grasshoppers, and other creatures who fly or hop or crawl, and shut them up in a huge sack well tied at the end. What a queer, squirming, muffled-buzzing bundle it made, to be sure! Then the Lord called the woman to him and said, "Woman, I would have you take this sack and throw it into the sea!" This Lord has been erroneously identified as the God of the Christians, but recent scholarship carried out at the Bosis Institute Of Insect History has put a pretty firm kibosh on that idea. It now seems certain that the Lord referred to was actually a native of Throm, or what passed for Throm in those distant days, and may have been the same Lord who dug the very first shaft of what was to become the fantastic sewage system. We know much more about the woman who was entrusted with the sack. She was a Bosisite, of the higher peasantry, in raiment of turquoise, with bells on her fingers and bells on her toes, a maiden of baffles and puffers and woad. Her name, we think, was Clothgard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-11-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Trip From Throm To Bosis 06:10 New Beerpint Book 15:32 The Snivellers 19:49 Tin Vase 25:39 The Pudding Question A TRIP FROM THROM TO BOSIS The town of Throm is perhaps best known for its gorgeous sewers, with their chandeliers, Rococo ironwork railings, and jewel-encrusted access ladders. In spite of the magnificence of their sewers, the Thrompersons fought hard to win that official designation as a town. It is, after all, the size of a village, with the atmosphere of a hamlet, and the public morals of a cluster of shabby huts. But town it now is, at least on paper, and bursting with civic pride. The mayor's chain of office hangs around his neck, and trails along the ground into the gutter, where it drops through a brightly polished grating down, down, deep down into the most subterranean of the sewers, where it is bolted to an adamantine slab of rock, and bolted fast. It is a long chain, a chain the mayor is proud to wear. At the end of his term, the soldering person will come and unfasten it from around his neck, and it is at this time, his ten-years' duty done, unloosed from his chain, that the ex-mayor might make a trip to Bosis. Some have mistakenly dubbed Bosis the twin-town of Throm. It is no such thing. It is neither town nor village nor hamlet, nor even a cluster of huts. It certainly has no sewers to rival Throm. It has no sewers at all, for it is the kind of place that, though rained upon incessantly, has always been shunned by drainage engineers. So to the untrained eye Bosis can look like a mere midden of mud and filth and muck, roosted upon by the occasional disoriented scavenger gull or vulture. This unseemly prospect conceals, however, the great attraction of Bosis, which draws Thrompersons to it week in, week out, through the winter months. Bosis is registered as a site of historical significance, for it was here, at the dawn of time, that the Lord appeared, carrying an enormous burlap sack. There are many versions of the story, but the essential details are covered by Abbie Farwell Brown in The Curious Book Of Birds (1903): One day the Lord gathered together all the insects in the world, all the beetles, bugs, bees, mosquitoes, ants, locusts, grasshoppers, and other creatures who fly or hop or crawl, and shut them up in a huge sack well tied at the end. What a queer, squirming, muffled-buzzing bundle it made, to be sure! Then the Lord called the woman to him and said, "Woman, I would have you take this sack and throw it into the sea!" This Lord has been erroneously identified as the God of the Christians, but recent scholarship carried out at the Bosis Institute Of Insect History has put a pretty firm kibosh on that idea. It now seems certain that the Lord referred to was actually a native of Throm, or what passed for Throm in those distant days, and may have been the same Lord who dug the very first shaft of what was to become the fantastic sewage system. We know much more about the woman who was entrusted with the sack. She was a Bosisite, of the higher peasantry, in raiment of turquoise, with bells on her fingers and bells on her toes, a maiden of baffles and puffers and woad. Her name, we think, was Clothgard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-11-2629:28fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-11-12Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Trip From Throm To Bosis 06:10 New Beerpint Book 15:32 The Snivellers 19:49 Tin Vase 25:39 The Pudding Question A TRIP FROM THROM TO BOSIS The town of Throm is perhaps best known for its gorgeous sewers, with their chandeliers, Rococo ironwork railings, and jewel-encrusted access ladders. In spite of the magnificence of their sewers, the Thrompersons fought hard to win that official designation as a town. It is, after all, the size of a village, with the atmosphere of a hamlet, and the public morals of a cluster of shabby huts. But town it now is, at least on paper, and bursting with civic pride. The mayor's chain of office hangs around his neck, and trails along the ground into the gutter, where it drops through a brightly polished grating down, down, deep down into the most subterranean of the sewers, where it is bolted to an adamantine slab of rock, and bolted fast. It is a long chain, a chain the mayor is proud to wear. At the end of his term, the soldering person will come and unfasten it from around his neck, and it is at this time, his ten-years' duty done, unloosed from his chain, that the ex-mayor might make a trip to Bosis. Some have mistakenly dubbed Bosis the twin-town of Throm. It is no such thing. It is neither town nor village nor hamlet, nor even a cluster of huts. It certainly has no sewers to rival Throm. It has no sewers at all, for it is the kind of place that, though rained upon incessantly, has always been shunned by drainage engineers. So to the untrained eye Bosis can look like a mere midden of mud and filth and muck, roosted upon by the occasional disoriented scavenger gull or vulture. This unseemly prospect conceals, however, the great attraction of Bosis, which draws Thrompersons to it week in, week out, through the winter months. Bosis is registered as a site of historical significance, for it was here, at the dawn of time, that the Lord appeared, carrying an enormous burlap sack. There are many versions of the story, but the essential details are covered by Abbie Farwell Brown in The Curious Book Of Birds (1903): One day the Lord gathered together all the insects in the world, all the beetles, bugs, bees, mosquitoes, ants, locusts, grasshoppers, and other creatures who fly or hop or crawl, and shut them up in a huge sack well tied at the end. What a queer, squirming, muffled-buzzing bundle it made, to be sure! Then the Lord called the woman to him and said, "Woman, I would have you take this sack and throw it into the sea!" This Lord has been erroneously identified as the God of the Christians, but recent scholarship carried out at the Bosis Institute Of Insect History has put a pretty firm kibosh on that idea. It now seems certain that the Lord referred to was actually a native of Throm, or what passed for Throm in those distant days, and may have been the same Lord who dug the very first shaft of what was to become the fantastic sewage system. We know much more about the woman who was entrusted with the sack. She was a Bosisite, of the higher peasantry, in raiment of turquoise, with bells on her fingers and bells on her toes, a maiden of baffles and puffers and woad. Her name, we think, was Clothgard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-11-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Trip From Throm To Bosis 06:10 New Beerpint Book 15:32 The Snivellers 19:49 Tin Vase 25:39 The Pudding Question A TRIP FROM THROM TO BOSIS The town of Throm is perhaps best known for its gorgeous sewers, with their chandeliers, Rococo ironwork railings, and jewel-encrusted access ladders. In spite of the magnificence of their sewers, the Thrompersons fought hard to win that official designation as a town. It is, after all, the size of a village, with the atmosphere of a hamlet, and the public morals of a cluster of shabby huts. But town it now is, at least on paper, and bursting with civic pride. The mayor's chain of office hangs around his neck, and trails along the ground into the gutter, where it drops through a brightly polished grating down, down, deep down into the most subterranean of the sewers, where it is bolted to an adamantine slab of rock, and bolted fast. It is a long chain, a chain the mayor is proud to wear. At the end of his term, the soldering person will come and unfasten it from around his neck, and it is at this time, his ten-years' duty done, unloosed from his chain, that the ex-mayor might make a trip to Bosis. Some have mistakenly dubbed Bosis the twin-town of Throm. It is no such thing. It is neither town nor village nor hamlet, nor even a cluster of huts. It certainly has no sewers to rival Throm. It has no sewers at all, for it is the kind of place that, though rained upon incessantly, has always been shunned by drainage engineers. So to the untrained eye Bosis can look like a mere midden of mud and filth and muck, roosted upon by the occasional disoriented scavenger gull or vulture. This unseemly prospect conceals, however, the great attraction of Bosis, which draws Thrompersons to it week in, week out, through the winter months. Bosis is registered as a site of historical significance, for it was here, at the dawn of time, that the Lord appeared, carrying an enormous burlap sack. There are many versions of the story, but the essential details are covered by Abbie Farwell Brown in The Curious Book Of Birds (1903): One day the Lord gathered together all the insects in the world, all the beetles, bugs, bees, mosquitoes, ants, locusts, grasshoppers, and other creatures who fly or hop or crawl, and shut them up in a huge sack well tied at the end. What a queer, squirming, muffled-buzzing bundle it made, to be sure! Then the Lord called the woman to him and said, "Woman, I would have you take this sack and throw it into the sea!" This Lord has been erroneously identified as the God of the Christians, but recent scholarship carried out at the Bosis Institute Of Insect History has put a pretty firm kibosh on that idea. It now seems certain that the Lord referred to was actually a native of Throm, or what passed for Throm in those distant days, and may have been the same Lord who dug the very first shaft of what was to become the fantastic sewage system. We know much more about the woman who was entrusted with the sack. She was a Bosisite, of the higher peasantry, in raiment of turquoise, with bells on her fingers and bells on her toes, a maiden of baffles and puffers and woad. Her name, we think, was Clothgard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-11-1229:50fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-11-05Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Five Years Ago 01:58 Dobson's Cacodaemon 09:51 Whither The Bint Of Shelmerdox? 17:42 Blenkinsopiana 24:09 Annals Of Forensic Science FIVE YEARS AGO Exactly five years ago today, these words were posted in Hooting Yard: "Remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. Remember, too, the case of the distressed pig, solved by Special Agent Blot. The distressed pig was found in a rowing boat crossing Tantarabim Lake. Agent Blot swam out to it and fed it with nutritious cake. As the pig grew becalmed Agent Blot took the oars and he rowed to the mud-splattered shore. He hoisted the pig right out of the boat and bedded it down in some straw. Then he plodded his way in his wellington boots to the pig farmer's hut down the lane, and he felled the brute with a thwack of his fist and bound him up with a chain. Agent Blot dragged the pig farmer off to the prison, bang in the centre of town. And that is why, on November the fifth, the distressed pig did not drown." I am pleased to report that the tale so briefly told has been expanded, by bestselling paperbackist Pebblehead no less, into a thumping great airport bookstall paperback potboiler entitled Special Agent Blot And The Distressed Pig! : How A Distressed Pig Was Rescued By Special Agent Blot! It seems Pebblehead is still managing to avoid the attentions of a copy editor. Those exclamation marks in the title are wholly uncalled-for. Obviously he is trying to drum up excitement in the casual airport bookstall browser, but surely he realises that the name "Pebblehead" alone, emblazoned in glittery glittering glitz upon the cover, is enough to cause perilous palpitations in the hardest of hearts? Hooting Yard Rating : Sweeping & Magisterial […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-11-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Five Years Ago 01:58 Dobson's Cacodaemon 09:51 Whither The Bint Of Shelmerdox? 17:42 Blenkinsopiana 24:09 Annals Of Forensic Science FIVE YEARS AGO Exactly five years ago today, these words were posted in Hooting Yard: "Remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. Remember, too, the case of the distressed pig, solved by Special Agent Blot. The distressed pig was found in a rowing boat crossing Tantarabim Lake. Agent Blot swam out to it and fed it with nutritious cake. As the pig grew becalmed Agent Blot took the oars and he rowed to the mud-splattered shore. He hoisted the pig right out of the boat and bedded it down in some straw. Then he plodded his way in his wellington boots to the pig farmer's hut down the lane, and he felled the brute with a thwack of his fist and bound him up with a chain. Agent Blot dragged the pig farmer off to the prison, bang in the centre of town. And that is why, on November the fifth, the distressed pig did not drown." I am pleased to report that the tale so briefly told has been expanded, by bestselling paperbackist Pebblehead no less, into a thumping great airport bookstall paperback potboiler entitled Special Agent Blot And The Distressed Pig! : How A Distressed Pig Was Rescued By Special Agent Blot! It seems Pebblehead is still managing to avoid the attentions of a copy editor. Those exclamation marks in the title are wholly uncalled-for. Obviously he is trying to drum up excitement in the casual airport bookstall browser, but surely he realises that the name "Pebblehead" alone, emblazoned in glittery glittering glitz upon the cover, is enough to cause perilous palpitations in the hardest of hearts? Hooting Yard Rating : Sweeping & Magisterial […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-11-0529:09fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-29Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 In Memoriam Pete Seeger 03:33 Municipal Monkey Vampires 18:37 Soup From The Carpathians 20:37 All Around Somebody Else's Hat 24:48 Prints 26:52 Pongs At A Ball In Bath IN MEMORIAM PETE SEEGER News reaches Mr Key's waxy ears of the death of Pete Seeger (1919--2014), so it seems appropriate to repost this piece from five years ago. I had a hammer. I hammered in the morning. I hammered in the evening all over this land. I hammered out danger. I hammered out a warning. I hammered out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land. They should have seen that coming. As I said, before I hammered the love out of them, I hammered out a warning. It was hardly my fault if they thought I was just larking about. Personally, if I had seen one of my siblings roaring towards me at dusk, armed with a hammer, I'd have made a run for it, particularly when it was clear I had been hammering things all day all over this land. Anyway, I had a good night's sleep, and the next day I continued hammering. There was not much left to hammer in this land, so I crossed the border. I hammered the fence and the border guards, and then I had a happy day hammering everything that lay in my path in this new country. Bang bang bang, that was me, with the occasional dull thump if I hammered something soft and squishy. I didn't discriminate. If I saw it, I hammered it, it really was as simple as that. But then I was fortunate to have such a good hammer. When my hammering was still in the planning stages, it was suggested to me that I should obtain a silver hammer from Maxwell's. "Pshaw!" I said. I actually said "Pshaw!", like a character in a bad play from the interwar years. But I was right to do so. Maxwell's silver hammer was fashionable enough, in its time, but the kind of hammering I intended to do required something sturdier, a real thumper. So I got my hammer from Hubermann's. I was so pleased with it that I hammered my way out of the shop, and didn't stop hammering until I got home. It was the following day that I started to hammer all over this land. Then, the day after that, I hammered my way half way across the neighbouring land. It was much bigger, and much more densely packed with people and things, so I had a lot more hammering to do than in my own land. But eventually I got to the frontier, having hammered pretty much everything in sight. As I nestled down for the night in a border chalet, I inspected my hammer, and was pleased to see that it was almost as good as new. There were a couple of scuff-marks, and quite a lot of blood, but otherwise it looked as if it would serve me well for as long as I continued hammering, all over as many lands as I descended upon, like an angel of death, with my hammer. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 In Memoriam Pete Seeger 03:33 Municipal Monkey Vampires 18:37 Soup From The Carpathians 20:37 All Around Somebody Else's Hat 24:48 Prints 26:52 Pongs At A Ball In Bath IN MEMORIAM PETE SEEGER News reaches Mr Key's waxy ears of the death of Pete Seeger (1919--2014), so it seems appropriate to repost this piece from five years ago. I had a hammer. I hammered in the morning. I hammered in the evening all over this land. I hammered out danger. I hammered out a warning. I hammered out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land. They should have seen that coming. As I said, before I hammered the love out of them, I hammered out a warning. It was hardly my fault if they thought I was just larking about. Personally, if I had seen one of my siblings roaring towards me at dusk, armed with a hammer, I'd have made a run for it, particularly when it was clear I had been hammering things all day all over this land. Anyway, I had a good night's sleep, and the next day I continued hammering. There was not much left to hammer in this land, so I crossed the border. I hammered the fence and the border guards, and then I had a happy day hammering everything that lay in my path in this new country. Bang bang bang, that was me, with the occasional dull thump if I hammered something soft and squishy. I didn't discriminate. If I saw it, I hammered it, it really was as simple as that. But then I was fortunate to have such a good hammer. When my hammering was still in the planning stages, it was suggested to me that I should obtain a silver hammer from Maxwell's. "Pshaw!" I said. I actually said "Pshaw!", like a character in a bad play from the interwar years. But I was right to do so. Maxwell's silver hammer was fashionable enough, in its time, but the kind of hammering I intended to do required something sturdier, a real thumper. So I got my hammer from Hubermann's. I was so pleased with it that I hammered my way out of the shop, and didn't stop hammering until I got home. It was the following day that I started to hammer all over this land. Then, the day after that, I hammered my way half way across the neighbouring land. It was much bigger, and much more densely packed with people and things, so I had a lot more hammering to do than in my own land. But eventually I got to the frontier, having hammered pretty much everything in sight. As I nestled down for the night in a border chalet, I inspected my hammer, and was pleased to see that it was almost as good as new. There were a couple of scuff-marks, and quite a lot of blood, but otherwise it looked as if it would serve me well for as long as I continued hammering, all over as many lands as I descended upon, like an angel of death, with my hammer. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-2928:18fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-22Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 From The Diary Of Heliogabalus 05:45 Sandbank Sleuths 11:00 Picnic for Detectives 19:21 Fogwives 24:14 Binder's Fogwife FROM THE DIARY OF HELIOGABALUS Monday. I celebrated the rite of the taurobolium, tossing my head to and fro among the castrated devotees of the Great Mother Goddess. I infibulated myself, and did all that the eunuch-priests are wont to do. Also decided to celebrate the rite of Salambo, with all the wailing and frenzy of the Syrian cult. Tuesday. I set aside a room in the palace and there committed my indecencies, always standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do, and shaking the curtain which hung from gold rings, while in a soft and melting voice I solicited the passers-by. Wednesday. I made a public bath in the imperial palace and at the same time threw open the bath of Plautinus to the populace, that by this means I might get a supply of men with unusually large organs. I also took care to have the whole city and the wharves searched for onobeli, as those are called who seemed particularly lusty. Thursday. Had a banquet. I used silver urns and casseroles, and vessels of chased silver, one hundred pounds in weight, some of them decorated with the lewdest designs. I concocted wine seasoned with mastich and with pennyroyal and I had rose-wine made more fragrant by adding pulverized pine-cone. I made force-meat of fish, and of oysters of various kinds or similar shell-fish, and of lobsters, crayfish and squills. I strewed roses and all manner of flowers, such as lilies, violets, hyacinths, and narcissus, over my banqueting-rooms, couches and porticoes, and then strolled about in them. I refused to swim in a pool that was not perfumed with saffron or some other well-known essence. And I could not rest easily on cushions that were not stuffed with rabbit-fur or feathers from under the wings of partridges, and I changed the pillows frequently. In imitation of Apicius I ate camels-heels and also cocks-combs taken from the living birds, and the tongues of peacocks and nightingales, because I was told that one who ate them was immune from the plague. I served to the palace-attendants huge platters heaped up with the viscera of mullets, and flamingo-brains, partridge-eggs, thrush-brains, and the heads of parrots, pheasants, and peacocks. And the beards of the mullets that I ordered to be served were so large that they were brought on, in place of cress or parsley or pickled beans or fenugreek, in well-filled bowls and disk-shaped platters--a particularly amazing performance, I thought. Friday. I finished building the reversible ceiling-panels. Once I have packed sufficient violets and rose-petals into the space above, I will invite my rivals and parasites to another banquet, and then have a factotum pull a lever to release the panels, and thus will I smother to death my guests under the cascade of violets and rose-petals. Saturday. I drove a chariot drawn by four elephants on the Vatican Hill, destroying the tombs which obstructed the way, and I harnessed four camels to a chariot at a private spectacle in the Circus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 From The Diary Of Heliogabalus 05:45 Sandbank Sleuths 11:00 Picnic for Detectives 19:21 Fogwives 24:14 Binder's Fogwife FROM THE DIARY OF HELIOGABALUS Monday. I celebrated the rite of the taurobolium, tossing my head to and fro among the castrated devotees of the Great Mother Goddess. I infibulated myself, and did all that the eunuch-priests are wont to do. Also decided to celebrate the rite of Salambo, with all the wailing and frenzy of the Syrian cult. Tuesday. I set aside a room in the palace and there committed my indecencies, always standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do, and shaking the curtain which hung from gold rings, while in a soft and melting voice I solicited the passers-by. Wednesday. I made a public bath in the imperial palace and at the same time threw open the bath of Plautinus to the populace, that by this means I might get a supply of men with unusually large organs. I also took care to have the whole city and the wharves searched for onobeli, as those are called who seemed particularly lusty. Thursday. Had a banquet. I used silver urns and casseroles, and vessels of chased silver, one hundred pounds in weight, some of them decorated with the lewdest designs. I concocted wine seasoned with mastich and with pennyroyal and I had rose-wine made more fragrant by adding pulverized pine-cone. I made force-meat of fish, and of oysters of various kinds or similar shell-fish, and of lobsters, crayfish and squills. I strewed roses and all manner of flowers, such as lilies, violets, hyacinths, and narcissus, over my banqueting-rooms, couches and porticoes, and then strolled about in them. I refused to swim in a pool that was not perfumed with saffron or some other well-known essence. And I could not rest easily on cushions that were not stuffed with rabbit-fur or feathers from under the wings of partridges, and I changed the pillows frequently. In imitation of Apicius I ate camels-heels and also cocks-combs taken from the living birds, and the tongues of peacocks and nightingales, because I was told that one who ate them was immune from the plague. I served to the palace-attendants huge platters heaped up with the viscera of mullets, and flamingo-brains, partridge-eggs, thrush-brains, and the heads of parrots, pheasants, and peacocks. And the beards of the mullets that I ordered to be served were so large that they were brought on, in place of cress or parsley or pickled beans or fenugreek, in well-filled bowls and disk-shaped platters--a particularly amazing performance, I thought. Friday. I finished building the reversible ceiling-panels. Once I have packed sufficient violets and rose-petals into the space above, I will invite my rivals and parasites to another banquet, and then have a factotum pull a lever to release the panels, and thus will I smother to death my guests under the cascade of violets and rose-petals. Saturday. I drove a chariot drawn by four elephants on the Vatican Hill, destroying the tombs which obstructed the way, and I harnessed four camels to a chariot at a private spectacle in the Circus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-2228:56fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-19Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Ballad Of Sopwith Tim 02:25 Songs My Mother Taught Me 12:30 The Greatest Letter Ever Written 15:02 Important Sausage Information 20:54 The King On His Crag 23:51 Ask The Artificial Brain! THE BALLAD OF SOPWITH TIM He came in a Sopwith, his goggles were tight. He landed among us in dawn's early light. O say can you see him in the airfield canteen, telling us of all the places he's been? Widnes and Wivenhoe, a village called Splat--the latter's in Cornwall but I'm sure you know that--Totnes and Topsham and Snodland and Looe, places without proper airfields too. His goggles are still fastened tight round his head as we hang on to every word he has said. We wonder how long he is going to stay in our pitiful village, so out of the way. He is chomping his breakfast with gusto and vim. He tells us that his name is Tim. Whatever became of Sopwith Tim? Not a trace remains of him. Tragically, his fate was sealed when he came down in that airfield. How could he have known of the villagers' lust for burying under soil and muck and dust the corpses of strangers who ate their fill in the sinister canteen on top of the hill? He landed in the airfield and walked up the tor, in his goggles he passed through the canteen door. He told them his tales of venturesome flights, until the poisonous breakfast put out his lights. They chopped him to pieces and buried his bones and covered his grave with mysterious cones. Then they smashed up the Sopwith and sold it for scrap. You won't find that village on any known map. SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME My mother had a tin ear and a voice like a corncrake. In spite of these shortcomings, she saw it as her maternal duty to teach me a number of songs. I do not think she hoped that one day I might have bouquets thrown at me as I took a bow upon the opera house stage, it was merely that she felt the ability to sing songs was a necessary social accomplishment, like having good table manners or making small talk with riffraff. It was on the day after my sixth birthday that Ma announced her intention. I was happily sprawled on the floor playing with a stick and a lump of coal when she swished into my nursery through the butchers' drapes, grabbed me by the wrist, and hauled me off to what she henceforth called "the music room". This was actually one of the pantries in which she had cleared space for her spinet. She began, inappropriately, by teaching me the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss. These were quite a challenge for a six-year-old who spoke no German and was accompanied, not by an orchestra, but by a cack-handedly tinkled spinet, and much aggression. "For Christ's sake, Arpad!", Ma would shout, "Try harder or I will set the Grunty Man on you!" The precise nature of the Grunty Man had never been explained to me, but, like all six-year-olds, I was terrified of him. Ma did let slip that his awful rages could be soothed by song, and I believed her. Indeed, I still do, so many years later. Ma has long been in her grave, and her little Arpad has grown old and frail, but I never crawl into my bed at night without putting out a saucer of suet and marzipan to placate the Grunty Man should he smash his way into my chalet as midnight strikes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Ballad Of Sopwith Tim 02:25 Songs My Mother Taught Me 12:30 The Greatest Letter Ever Written 15:02 Important Sausage Information 20:54 The King On His Crag 23:51 Ask The Artificial Brain! THE BALLAD OF SOPWITH TIM He came in a Sopwith, his goggles were tight. He landed among us in dawn's early light. O say can you see him in the airfield canteen, telling us of all the places he's been? Widnes and Wivenhoe, a village called Splat--the latter's in Cornwall but I'm sure you know that--Totnes and Topsham and Snodland and Looe, places without proper airfields too. His goggles are still fastened tight round his head as we hang on to every word he has said. We wonder how long he is going to stay in our pitiful village, so out of the way. He is chomping his breakfast with gusto and vim. He tells us that his name is Tim. Whatever became of Sopwith Tim? Not a trace remains of him. Tragically, his fate was sealed when he came down in that airfield. How could he have known of the villagers' lust for burying under soil and muck and dust the corpses of strangers who ate their fill in the sinister canteen on top of the hill? He landed in the airfield and walked up the tor, in his goggles he passed through the canteen door. He told them his tales of venturesome flights, until the poisonous breakfast put out his lights. They chopped him to pieces and buried his bones and covered his grave with mysterious cones. Then they smashed up the Sopwith and sold it for scrap. You won't find that village on any known map. SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME My mother had a tin ear and a voice like a corncrake. In spite of these shortcomings, she saw it as her maternal duty to teach me a number of songs. I do not think she hoped that one day I might have bouquets thrown at me as I took a bow upon the opera house stage, it was merely that she felt the ability to sing songs was a necessary social accomplishment, like having good table manners or making small talk with riffraff. It was on the day after my sixth birthday that Ma announced her intention. I was happily sprawled on the floor playing with a stick and a lump of coal when she swished into my nursery through the butchers' drapes, grabbed me by the wrist, and hauled me off to what she henceforth called "the music room". This was actually one of the pantries in which she had cleared space for her spinet. She began, inappropriately, by teaching me the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss. These were quite a challenge for a six-year-old who spoke no German and was accompanied, not by an orchestra, but by a cack-handedly tinkled spinet, and much aggression. "For Christ's sake, Arpad!", Ma would shout, "Try harder or I will set the Grunty Man on you!" The precise nature of the Grunty Man had never been explained to me, but, like all six-year-olds, I was terrified of him. Ma did let slip that his awful rages could be soothed by song, and I believed her. Indeed, I still do, so many years later. Ma has long been in her grave, and her little Arpad has grown old and frail, but I never crawl into my bed at night without putting out a saucer of suet and marzipan to placate the Grunty Man should he smash his way into my chalet as midnight strikes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-1928:51fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-12Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Trip From Throm To Bosis 06:10 New Beerpint Book 15:32 The Snivellers 19:49 Tin Vase 25:39 The Pudding Question A TRIP FROM THROM TO BOSIS The town of Throm is perhaps best known for its gorgeous sewers, with their chandeliers, Rococo ironwork railings, and jewel-encrusted access ladders. In spite of the magnificence of their sewers, the Thrompersons fought hard to win that official designation as a town. It is, after all, the size of a village, with the atmosphere of a hamlet, and the public morals of a cluster of shabby huts. But town it now is, at least on paper, and bursting with civic pride. The mayor's chain of office hangs around his neck, and trails along the ground into the gutter, where it drops through a brightly polished grating down, down, deep down into the most subterranean of the sewers, where it is bolted to an adamantine slab of rock, and bolted fast. It is a long chain, a chain the mayor is proud to wear. At the end of his term, the soldering person will come and unfasten it from around his neck, and it is at this time, his ten-years' duty done, unloosed from his chain, that the ex-mayor might make a trip to Bosis. Some have mistakenly dubbed Bosis the twin-town of Throm. It is no such thing. It is neither town nor village nor hamlet, nor even a cluster of huts. It certainly has no sewers to rival Throm. It has no sewers at all, for it is the kind of place that, though rained upon incessantly, has always been shunned by drainage engineers. So to the untrained eye Bosis can look like a mere midden of mud and filth and muck, roosted upon by the occasional disoriented scavenger gull or vulture. This unseemly prospect conceals, however, the great attraction of Bosis, which draws Thrompersons to it week in, week out, through the winter months. Bosis is registered as a site of historical significance, for it was here, at the dawn of time, that the Lord appeared, carrying an enormous burlap sack. There are many versions of the story, but the essential details are covered by Abbie Farwell Brown in The Curious Book Of Birds (1903): One day the Lord gathered together all the insects in the world, all the beetles, bugs, bees, mosquitoes, ants, locusts, grasshoppers, and other creatures who fly or hop or crawl, and shut them up in a huge sack well tied at the end. What a queer, squirming, muffled-buzzing bundle it made, to be sure! Then the Lord called the woman to him and said, "Woman, I would have you take this sack and throw it into the sea!" This Lord has been erroneously identified as the God of the Christians, but recent scholarship carried out at the Bosis Institute Of Insect History has put a pretty firm kibosh on that idea. It now seems certain that the Lord referred to was actually a native of Throm, or what passed for Throm in those distant days, and may have been the same Lord who dug the very first shaft of what was to become the fantastic sewage system. We know much more about the woman who was entrusted with the sack. She was a Bosisite, of the higher peasantry, in raiment of turquoise, with bells on her fingers and bells on her toes, a maiden of baffles and puffers and woad. Her name, we think, was Clothgard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Trip From Throm To Bosis 06:10 New Beerpint Book 15:32 The Snivellers 19:49 Tin Vase 25:39 The Pudding Question A TRIP FROM THROM TO BOSIS The town of Throm is perhaps best known for its gorgeous sewers, with their chandeliers, Rococo ironwork railings, and jewel-encrusted access ladders. In spite of the magnificence of their sewers, the Thrompersons fought hard to win that official designation as a town. It is, after all, the size of a village, with the atmosphere of a hamlet, and the public morals of a cluster of shabby huts. But town it now is, at least on paper, and bursting with civic pride. The mayor's chain of office hangs around his neck, and trails along the ground into the gutter, where it drops through a brightly polished grating down, down, deep down into the most subterranean of the sewers, where it is bolted to an adamantine slab of rock, and bolted fast. It is a long chain, a chain the mayor is proud to wear. At the end of his term, the soldering person will come and unfasten it from around his neck, and it is at this time, his ten-years' duty done, unloosed from his chain, that the ex-mayor might make a trip to Bosis. Some have mistakenly dubbed Bosis the twin-town of Throm. It is no such thing. It is neither town nor village nor hamlet, nor even a cluster of huts. It certainly has no sewers to rival Throm. It has no sewers at all, for it is the kind of place that, though rained upon incessantly, has always been shunned by drainage engineers. So to the untrained eye Bosis can look like a mere midden of mud and filth and muck, roosted upon by the occasional disoriented scavenger gull or vulture. This unseemly prospect conceals, however, the great attraction of Bosis, which draws Thrompersons to it week in, week out, through the winter months. Bosis is registered as a site of historical significance, for it was here, at the dawn of time, that the Lord appeared, carrying an enormous burlap sack. There are many versions of the story, but the essential details are covered by Abbie Farwell Brown in The Curious Book Of Birds (1903): One day the Lord gathered together all the insects in the world, all the beetles, bugs, bees, mosquitoes, ants, locusts, grasshoppers, and other creatures who fly or hop or crawl, and shut them up in a huge sack well tied at the end. What a queer, squirming, muffled-buzzing bundle it made, to be sure! Then the Lord called the woman to him and said, "Woman, I would have you take this sack and throw it into the sea!" This Lord has been erroneously identified as the God of the Christians, but recent scholarship carried out at the Bosis Institute Of Insect History has put a pretty firm kibosh on that idea. It now seems certain that the Lord referred to was actually a native of Throm, or what passed for Throm in those distant days, and may have been the same Lord who dug the very first shaft of what was to become the fantastic sewage system. We know much more about the woman who was entrusted with the sack. She was a Bosisite, of the higher peasantry, in raiment of turquoise, with bells on her fingers and bells on her toes, a maiden of baffles and puffers and woad. Her name, we think, was Clothgard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-1229:50fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-08Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Disfigured Nuncio 19:27 Atoll Via Asbo 21:18 The Hen House 26:52 Onions, Vulgarity, And Crime DISFIGURED NUNCIO It is likely that most, if not all, of the nuncios you have ever come across have been Papal nuncios. Certainly that was the case with me, until a few weeks ago. I am not a practising Catholic, you understand, but my business activities put me in contact with many envoys from the Vatican, for reasons I may go into later. So when, on that blistering Thursday at the dog-end of August, my factotae announced that a nuncio had come to see me, I naturally assumed him to be of the Papal sort. Before I go on, I ought to explain why it took more than one factotum to make the announcement. By nature I am, and have always been, a highly suspicious man. I trust nobody, not even those who seem to all outward appearance the most saintly. Modern psychotwaddle would ascribe this to some traumatic incident in my infancy, but apart from the time my Pa emptied my post office savings account and fled to Uruguay with his floozie, and the other time when my Ma sold me to a travelling brute, mine was a blissful childhood. No, my lack of trust in humanity--and, I should add, in the animal kingdom--is simply a character trait, like having a sweet tooth, or a penchant for fighting bears. That being so, I employ three factotae, the first to make an announcement, the second to corroborate it, and the third to deploy the coup de grace, which, in the present case, was to usher the nuncio into my presence, to make the provisional visible. It is a happy arrangement, and I make it happier still by rotating the duties of the three factotae, Ned, Ned, and Ned, so none has the opportunity to relax into his role and thus have the opportunity for maleficent scheming against me. Dismissing the Neds with my usual lordly, if somewhat effeminate, wave of the hand, I cast an eye over my visitor. He was horribly disfigured. Indeed, for a moment I thought he must have come into my chamber straight from one of Mr Lovecraft's purpler passages. But then I recalled that Lovecraft's works are fictions, and that his characters have no reality independent of the page. I dabbed at my lips with a napkin and asked the nuncio to state his business. Such was his disfigurement that he was unable to speak coherently. His mouth was all twisted and scrunched, and, though I could tell he was a man of high breeding and delicate sensibilities, the noises he made were incomprehensible. They were also deafeningly loud, and I had to tear my napkin in two and stuff each half into my ears. The sudden contact of recently-deposited spittle, fabric, and earwax set off a chemical reaction, and the resulting compound seeped into the inside of my head, wormed its way towards my brain, and was eventually to fell me on the spot. But it would take some time to do so, and I was oblivious of my fate, so I continued my interrogation of the nuncio. I explained to him that I could not understand a word he was saying, or rather grunting. My own voice is a mellifluous instrument, by the way, and one which often has the ladies swooning. It surprised me that it had the same effect on the nuncio, who suddenly crumpled to the floor and lay, seemingly lifeless, upon the linoleum. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Disfigured Nuncio 19:27 Atoll Via Asbo 21:18 The Hen House 26:52 Onions, Vulgarity, And Crime DISFIGURED NUNCIO It is likely that most, if not all, of the nuncios you have ever come across have been Papal nuncios. Certainly that was the case with me, until a few weeks ago. I am not a practising Catholic, you understand, but my business activities put me in contact with many envoys from the Vatican, for reasons I may go into later. So when, on that blistering Thursday at the dog-end of August, my factotae announced that a nuncio had come to see me, I naturally assumed him to be of the Papal sort. Before I go on, I ought to explain why it took more than one factotum to make the announcement. By nature I am, and have always been, a highly suspicious man. I trust nobody, not even those who seem to all outward appearance the most saintly. Modern psychotwaddle would ascribe this to some traumatic incident in my infancy, but apart from the time my Pa emptied my post office savings account and fled to Uruguay with his floozie, and the other time when my Ma sold me to a travelling brute, mine was a blissful childhood. No, my lack of trust in humanity--and, I should add, in the animal kingdom--is simply a character trait, like having a sweet tooth, or a penchant for fighting bears. That being so, I employ three factotae, the first to make an announcement, the second to corroborate it, and the third to deploy the coup de grace, which, in the present case, was to usher the nuncio into my presence, to make the provisional visible. It is a happy arrangement, and I make it happier still by rotating the duties of the three factotae, Ned, Ned, and Ned, so none has the opportunity to relax into his role and thus have the opportunity for maleficent scheming against me. Dismissing the Neds with my usual lordly, if somewhat effeminate, wave of the hand, I cast an eye over my visitor. He was horribly disfigured. Indeed, for a moment I thought he must have come into my chamber straight from one of Mr Lovecraft's purpler passages. But then I recalled that Lovecraft's works are fictions, and that his characters have no reality independent of the page. I dabbed at my lips with a napkin and asked the nuncio to state his business. Such was his disfigurement that he was unable to speak coherently. His mouth was all twisted and scrunched, and, though I could tell he was a man of high breeding and delicate sensibilities, the noises he made were incomprehensible. They were also deafeningly loud, and I had to tear my napkin in two and stuff each half into my ears. The sudden contact of recently-deposited spittle, fabric, and earwax set off a chemical reaction, and the resulting compound seeped into the inside of my head, wormed its way towards my brain, and was eventually to fell me on the spot. But it would take some time to do so, and I was oblivious of my fate, so I continued my interrogation of the nuncio. I explained to him that I could not understand a word he was saying, or rather grunting. My own voice is a mellifluous instrument, by the way, and one which often has the ladies swooning. It surprised me that it had the same effect on the nuncio, who suddenly crumpled to the floor and lay, seemingly lifeless, upon the linoleum. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-0829:10fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-01Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Groovy 05:07 Instances Of Inanity In Blodgett 17:12 Big Damp Castle 20:30 I Am John's Head 25:00 In The Lab At Midnight GROOVY Dear Frank, writes Tim Thurn, It has long been apparent to me that Hooting Yard is by far the grooviest website on the planet. But how do I actually get down with its groove? Any tips would be most welcome. Tim is not the only person to ask this, or a similar, question. Boffins in a groovelab high in the Swiss mountains have spent years--or is it mere days?--trying to isolate the Hooting Yard Groove, for the betterment of humanity, while Mrs Gubbins has been indefatigable in her attempts to express the essence of the groove in the form of knitted tea-cosies. Every single time she picks up her needles she fails, fails better, but she goes on, she must go on, she can't go on, she goes on. We will soon have to build a new depot for all those groovy tea-cosies, unless we can find a charitable foundation prepared to accept them. But are Tim Thurn and Mrs Gubbins and those Swiss boffins asking the wrong questions? Is there, in fact, a groove to be found? For the true horror may be that the grooviness is entirely superficial, and there is nothing behind it. Some would have it that such absence of groove is unthinkable. The boffins, for example, having invested a huge amount of Swiss currency in retorts and alembics and bunsen burners and rubber tubing and bakelite knick-knacks and Coddington lenses, not to speak of elbow grease and sweat and pipe tobacco, would be unmoored, cast adrift upon a sea of cognitive anguish, were they to entertain the idea of there not being a groove. I am less fretful on behalf of Tim and Mrs Gubbins, for I know that both of them have other resources, the one a button fetish and the other a predilection for criminal mayhem. If they could but accept they will never get with the putative groove, Tim would be happy as a pig in muck with his buttons, and Mrs Gubbins could round up the old gang and embark upon a series of armed robberies. Conversely, of course, there is a Hooting Yard Groove, a groove so groovy it outgrooves every other groove ever dreamed up by the grooviest of groovers. Surely I would know about it?, you ask. Well, not necessarily. Take as an example Dennis Beerpint. Ever since the incorrigibly twee versifier transformed himself into a beatnik, he has been, unarguably, the grooviest poet who ever lived. I say "unarguably" because there is not a soul who doubts this, not even Michael Horovitz. And yet Beerpint prances about the streets and coffee bars and milk bars and jazz clubs and happenings of his adopted world blithely unaware of his own irrefrangible grooviness. It is true that he makes much of his goatee beard, polo neck sweater, and hornrims, and that his trousers of choice are of the drainpipe variety, yet he remains free of affectation, almost childishly innocent, and reassuringly inept. But if anybody is down with the groove, daddy-o, it is Dennis Beerpint. If it is the case that a Hooting Yard Groove truly exists, it is of a different order of grooviness to the Beerpint Groove. The two do not quite cancel each other out, but they cannot happily coexist in the same grooveosphere. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Groovy 05:07 Instances Of Inanity In Blodgett 17:12 Big Damp Castle 20:30 I Am John's Head 25:00 In The Lab At Midnight GROOVY Dear Frank, writes Tim Thurn, It has long been apparent to me that Hooting Yard is by far the grooviest website on the planet. But how do I actually get down with its groove? Any tips would be most welcome. Tim is not the only person to ask this, or a similar, question. Boffins in a groovelab high in the Swiss mountains have spent years--or is it mere days?--trying to isolate the Hooting Yard Groove, for the betterment of humanity, while Mrs Gubbins has been indefatigable in her attempts to express the essence of the groove in the form of knitted tea-cosies. Every single time she picks up her needles she fails, fails better, but she goes on, she must go on, she can't go on, she goes on. We will soon have to build a new depot for all those groovy tea-cosies, unless we can find a charitable foundation prepared to accept them. But are Tim Thurn and Mrs Gubbins and those Swiss boffins asking the wrong questions? Is there, in fact, a groove to be found? For the true horror may be that the grooviness is entirely superficial, and there is nothing behind it. Some would have it that such absence of groove is unthinkable. The boffins, for example, having invested a huge amount of Swiss currency in retorts and alembics and bunsen burners and rubber tubing and bakelite knick-knacks and Coddington lenses, not to speak of elbow grease and sweat and pipe tobacco, would be unmoored, cast adrift upon a sea of cognitive anguish, were they to entertain the idea of there not being a groove. I am less fretful on behalf of Tim and Mrs Gubbins, for I know that both of them have other resources, the one a button fetish and the other a predilection for criminal mayhem. If they could but accept they will never get with the putative groove, Tim would be happy as a pig in muck with his buttons, and Mrs Gubbins could round up the old gang and embark upon a series of armed robberies. Conversely, of course, there is a Hooting Yard Groove, a groove so groovy it outgrooves every other groove ever dreamed up by the grooviest of groovers. Surely I would know about it?, you ask. Well, not necessarily. Take as an example Dennis Beerpint. Ever since the incorrigibly twee versifier transformed himself into a beatnik, he has been, unarguably, the grooviest poet who ever lived. I say "unarguably" because there is not a soul who doubts this, not even Michael Horovitz. And yet Beerpint prances about the streets and coffee bars and milk bars and jazz clubs and happenings of his adopted world blithely unaware of his own irrefrangible grooviness. It is true that he makes much of his goatee beard, polo neck sweater, and hornrims, and that his trousers of choice are of the drainpipe variety, yet he remains free of affectation, almost childishly innocent, and reassuringly inept. But if anybody is down with the groove, daddy-o, it is Dennis Beerpint. If it is the case that a Hooting Yard Groove truly exists, it is of a different order of grooviness to the Beerpint Groove. The two do not quite cancel each other out, but they cannot happily coexist in the same grooveosphere. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-10-0129:13fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-09-17Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Gish 'n' Wasps 05:14 Character Flaw Of Mediaeval Peasant 11:35 Papist Mountain Apothecary 13:58 Sick Amid The Blossoms 23:21 Amateur Dramatics At Sludge Hall Farm GISH 'N' WASPS In a comment on Googie 'n' Bee, R. writes: I think there could be some useful mileage in Lilian Gish + wasps, too. I am afraid to say that this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the connections between stars of the silver screen and the sorts of insects that buzz and fly and sting, the Aculeate Hymenoptera. A modicum of research reveals a plethora of anecdotal material linking Googie Withers with bees. Much of this is hearsay, and some of it is undoubtedly fictitious, merely the product of fuming brains careening pell-mell into poltroonery for want of any more useful employment. Nevertheless, bloody good anecdotage should never be discounted entirely, as Dobson once said, at a picnic. Conversely, conversely, say it again daddy-o, you will wander the world for umpteen years before you ever come upon a reliable Gish-wasp story. Now, useful mileage there may be if we are talking about Tallulah Bankhead and hornets, or Nova Pilbeam and German wasps, or even Vilma Banky and bees. In the latter case we even have a story involving ectoplasmic bee goo, though it has been suppressed by Vilma Banky's estate, for understandable reasons. I hope that makes things clear. CHARACTER FLAW OF MEDIAEVAL PEASANT This piece was written specifically to placate the person who arrived at Hooting Yard yesterday, having typed "character flaw of mediaeval peasant" into a search engine. Hello. My name is Cleothgard and I am a mediaeval peasant. I am calling to you across the centuries because I want to tell you about my character flaw. It is not, I am afraid to say, a character flaw that would elevate me into the realm of the tragic. That would be a splendid flaw to have, but I am a mere peasant, and as I look about me in this vale of tears it has not escaped my attention that tragic, and indeed heroic, character flaws tend to be displayed by princelings and such. Mine is more what you might call a mundane flaw. One of the reasons I decided to bellow so hectically that time itself is bedizened and shrunk is that I know with a fair degree of certainty that no poet nor playwright is ever likely to consider my character flaw a fit subject for their pen, or I should say quill, or scratchy stick. I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. I don't even know who Prince Hamlet is, or was, or will be, and I was always meant to be a peasant. 'Twas writ upon the stars. My character flaw is a tendency to overdo the grovelling when confronted by a baron. When I see one approach, upon his horse, in all his finery, glittering and clanking, accompanied by his retinue, I immediately start to snivel and slobber and I pitch myself forward face down into the muck. Mediaeval muck is much, much filthier than your modern muck. It oozes and stinks and harbours all sorts of minuscule disgusting life-forms, things you have eradicated through science and hygiene. While thus prostrate, I begin to groan incoherently. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-09-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Gish 'n' Wasps 05:14 Character Flaw Of Mediaeval Peasant 11:35 Papist Mountain Apothecary 13:58 Sick Amid The Blossoms 23:21 Amateur Dramatics At Sludge Hall Farm GISH 'N' WASPS In a comment on Googie 'n' Bee, R. writes: I think there could be some useful mileage in Lilian Gish + wasps, too. I am afraid to say that this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the connections between stars of the silver screen and the sorts of insects that buzz and fly and sting, the Aculeate Hymenoptera. A modicum of research reveals a plethora of anecdotal material linking Googie Withers with bees. Much of this is hearsay, and some of it is undoubtedly fictitious, merely the product of fuming brains careening pell-mell into poltroonery for want of any more useful employment. Nevertheless, bloody good anecdotage should never be discounted entirely, as Dobson once said, at a picnic. Conversely, conversely, say it again daddy-o, you will wander the world for umpteen years before you ever come upon a reliable Gish-wasp story. Now, useful mileage there may be if we are talking about Tallulah Bankhead and hornets, or Nova Pilbeam and German wasps, or even Vilma Banky and bees. In the latter case we even have a story involving ectoplasmic bee goo, though it has been suppressed by Vilma Banky's estate, for understandable reasons. I hope that makes things clear. CHARACTER FLAW OF MEDIAEVAL PEASANT This piece was written specifically to placate the person who arrived at Hooting Yard yesterday, having typed "character flaw of mediaeval peasant" into a search engine. Hello. My name is Cleothgard and I am a mediaeval peasant. I am calling to you across the centuries because I want to tell you about my character flaw. It is not, I am afraid to say, a character flaw that would elevate me into the realm of the tragic. That would be a splendid flaw to have, but I am a mere peasant, and as I look about me in this vale of tears it has not escaped my attention that tragic, and indeed heroic, character flaws tend to be displayed by princelings and such. Mine is more what you might call a mundane flaw. One of the reasons I decided to bellow so hectically that time itself is bedizened and shrunk is that I know with a fair degree of certainty that no poet nor playwright is ever likely to consider my character flaw a fit subject for their pen, or I should say quill, or scratchy stick. I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. I don't even know who Prince Hamlet is, or was, or will be, and I was always meant to be a peasant. 'Twas writ upon the stars. My character flaw is a tendency to overdo the grovelling when confronted by a baron. When I see one approach, upon his horse, in all his finery, glittering and clanking, accompanied by his retinue, I immediately start to snivel and slobber and I pitch myself forward face down into the muck. Mediaeval muck is much, much filthier than your modern muck. It oozes and stinks and harbours all sorts of minuscule disgusting life-forms, things you have eradicated through science and hygiene. While thus prostrate, I begin to groan incoherently. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-09-1730:35fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-09-10Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Erk Gah 16:08 Impugned By A Peasant 22:54 Potter's Arch Or Potter's Crank? 26:48 Library Clown Traumas ERK GAH It is hard to think of an esoteric sect more hidden, more obscure, than the Erk Gah. We know virtually nothing of its membership, its ceremonies and rituals, its raiment and vestments, its perfumes, its symbols, its armaments cache, its hierarchy, its headgear, its idiosyncratic buttoning methods, its potions, its nostrums, its pomposity, its colour schemes, its texts, its insignia, its dietary stringencies, its bucket and spade seaside outings, or its ultimate purpose. Some have suggested that the Erk Gah does not even exist. One wonders, then, what to make of Evaporated Milk & Ducks' Blood, the latest bestselling paperback by Pebblehead, with its audacious subtitle The Truth About Erk Gah Revealed! As ever with his ventures into non-fiction, Pebblehead's prose is breathless and slapdash and at times laughable, but he makes grand claims, and they deserve to be treated seriously. After all, we are unlikely to get a better guide to this mysterious sect, even if it is wholly spurious. One thing Pebblehead refuses to tell us is from what sources he cobbled his 300-plus pages together. Indeed, one reviewer has already insisted that the book ought to be shelved alongside Fantasy Fiction, that Pebblehead has made the whole thing up. But how would anybody know one way or the other, unless they were a member of the Erk Gah? It may be pertinent that the reviewer in question disguised his identity behind a terrifically-wrought anagram. But let us look at some of Pebblehead's claims. Membership. The Erk Gah has a finite number of members. When one dies--of which, more in a moment--they are replaced by a new recruit. How this newcomer is chosen is an ineffable mystery. It is possible that there are as few as twelve members at any one time, although other estimates give a figure of several thousand. Erk Gah members do not die in the sense that you or I would understand the term. Instead, they are "begusted into flimflam". Pebblehead does not expand upon this. Ceremonies And Rituals. The major Erk Gah ceremony is the so-called "knocking about of the ball with the puck", which as far as one can gather may look to the innocent eye like hockey practice. "Thus," intones Pebblehead, ominously, "does the sect conceal its existence by creating a facsimile of a well-loved sport which is part of the fabric of our everyday lives, if we are sporty persons of course". There is another ritual, involving binoculars, promontories, and seabirds, which can be equally misconstrued by the ignorant. Raiment And Vestments. Unutterably gorgeous, according to Pebblehead, and so stylish that Erk Gah members can be mistaken for dazzling stars of the Riviera set. Apparently, there is something called the cufflink code, but the details of that, too, are an ineffable mystery. Perfumes. The Erk Gah can be sniffed out, we are told, if one is sensitive to certain vaporous effusions. Pebblehead gets rather tied up in knots trying to explain what on earth he is babbling on about here, and the passage is dense with footnotes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-09-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Erk Gah 16:08 Impugned By A Peasant 22:54 Potter's Arch Or Potter's Crank? 26:48 Library Clown Traumas ERK GAH It is hard to think of an esoteric sect more hidden, more obscure, than the Erk Gah. We know virtually nothing of its membership, its ceremonies and rituals, its raiment and vestments, its perfumes, its symbols, its armaments cache, its hierarchy, its headgear, its idiosyncratic buttoning methods, its potions, its nostrums, its pomposity, its colour schemes, its texts, its insignia, its dietary stringencies, its bucket and spade seaside outings, or its ultimate purpose. Some have suggested that the Erk Gah does not even exist. One wonders, then, what to make of Evaporated Milk & Ducks' Blood, the latest bestselling paperback by Pebblehead, with its audacious subtitle The Truth About Erk Gah Revealed! As ever with his ventures into non-fiction, Pebblehead's prose is breathless and slapdash and at times laughable, but he makes grand claims, and they deserve to be treated seriously. After all, we are unlikely to get a better guide to this mysterious sect, even if it is wholly spurious. One thing Pebblehead refuses to tell us is from what sources he cobbled his 300-plus pages together. Indeed, one reviewer has already insisted that the book ought to be shelved alongside Fantasy Fiction, that Pebblehead has made the whole thing up. But how would anybody know one way or the other, unless they were a member of the Erk Gah? It may be pertinent that the reviewer in question disguised his identity behind a terrifically-wrought anagram. But let us look at some of Pebblehead's claims. Membership. The Erk Gah has a finite number of members. When one dies--of which, more in a moment--they are replaced by a new recruit. How this newcomer is chosen is an ineffable mystery. It is possible that there are as few as twelve members at any one time, although other estimates give a figure of several thousand. Erk Gah members do not die in the sense that you or I would understand the term. Instead, they are "begusted into flimflam". Pebblehead does not expand upon this. Ceremonies And Rituals. The major Erk Gah ceremony is the so-called "knocking about of the ball with the puck", which as far as one can gather may look to the innocent eye like hockey practice. "Thus," intones Pebblehead, ominously, "does the sect conceal its existence by creating a facsimile of a well-loved sport which is part of the fabric of our everyday lives, if we are sporty persons of course". There is another ritual, involving binoculars, promontories, and seabirds, which can be equally misconstrued by the ignorant. Raiment And Vestments. Unutterably gorgeous, according to Pebblehead, and so stylish that Erk Gah members can be mistaken for dazzling stars of the Riviera set. Apparently, there is something called the cufflink code, but the details of that, too, are an ineffable mystery. Perfumes. The Erk Gah can be sniffed out, we are told, if one is sensitive to certain vaporous effusions. Pebblehead gets rather tied up in knots trying to explain what on earth he is babbling on about here, and the passage is dense with footnotes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-09-1028:39fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-08-06Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Black 02:09 Plums 14:10 Seed Studies 18:47 Other Swans In Other Thunderstorms BLACK Perusing the shelves of my local branch of Periodicals & Other Ephemera R Us the other day, I noted the existence of a glossy magazine called Black Hair. On the cover was a photograph of a woman with black hair. Leafing through it, I saw it was stuffed full of other similar photographs, and although I did not read any of the articles, all of them seemed to focus exclusively on the particular, narrow topic of women with black hair. Being a man with almost entirely grey hair, I replaced the magazine on the shelf. Plainly, I was not the kind of reader it was aimed at. But then neither were some of the adjacent titles, which included Black Shirts, a magazine for the fascist community, Black Narcissus, for sexually frustrated nuns, and Black Pudding, which seemed to be devoted wholly to celebrating the coagulated and sausagised blood of pigs. I looked in vain for the publication I was seeking--Tiny Enid's favourite comic, Boo Boo's Hooba Nooba--turned on my heel, and headed on up the hill towards a clump of aspens, where I sat down and lit a cigarette and looked at aspens, in a clump. PLUMS One windy morning in the late 1950s, Dobson became fixated with the desire to have a type of plum named after him. "Imagine the thrill," he said to Marigold Chew, over breakfast, "going to the fruiterer's and asking for a half pound bag of Dobsons!" Marigold Chew said nothing in reply, merely casting her eye over Dobson in precisely the way a compositor might look at a pamphleteer. Dobson had a very flimsy grasp of matters botanical, and had never grown any fruit in his life. He was ready to acknowledge that these were distinct disadvantages. If the world was ever to be enhanced by a plum called Dobson, drastic activity was required. After breakfast, putting on a pair of secondhand winklepickers, he pranced off to the kiosk by the pylon on the patch of waste ground by the sewage plant, over which loomed the immensity of Pilgarlic Tor and, above it, a sky blue and clear and without any sign of an imminent hailstorm. Unaccountably, the kiosk was shut, and not simply shut but boarded up, covered over with large rectangular panels of reinforced hardboard hammered into place with dozens of big fat nails. No signage had been pasted on to any of the panels to explain this startling state of affairs. Whenever anything changed within his familiar bailiwick, however slightly, Dobson was avid to be told about it, greedy for details, and ever on the lookout for signs and announcements and bulletins, in the absence of which he was liable to have a neurasthenic attack, and emit little cries, just like Edgar Allan Poe when he got the jitters, or the Wild Boy of Aveyron when deprived of potatoes. On this day, however, so consumed was the out of print pamphleteer with his plum plan that he sailed on past the boarded-up kiosk, fleet in his winklepickers, and carried on along the lane abutting the sewage plant annexe, past the clown hospital and the vinegar distillery and the bottomless viper-pit, until, crossing Sawdust Bridge, he approached a tobacconist's. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-08-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Black 02:09 Plums 14:10 Seed Studies 18:47 Other Swans In Other Thunderstorms BLACK Perusing the shelves of my local branch of Periodicals & Other Ephemera R Us the other day, I noted the existence of a glossy magazine called Black Hair. On the cover was a photograph of a woman with black hair. Leafing through it, I saw it was stuffed full of other similar photographs, and although I did not read any of the articles, all of them seemed to focus exclusively on the particular, narrow topic of women with black hair. Being a man with almost entirely grey hair, I replaced the magazine on the shelf. Plainly, I was not the kind of reader it was aimed at. But then neither were some of the adjacent titles, which included Black Shirts, a magazine for the fascist community, Black Narcissus, for sexually frustrated nuns, and Black Pudding, which seemed to be devoted wholly to celebrating the coagulated and sausagised blood of pigs. I looked in vain for the publication I was seeking--Tiny Enid's favourite comic, Boo Boo's Hooba Nooba--turned on my heel, and headed on up the hill towards a clump of aspens, where I sat down and lit a cigarette and looked at aspens, in a clump. PLUMS One windy morning in the late 1950s, Dobson became fixated with the desire to have a type of plum named after him. "Imagine the thrill," he said to Marigold Chew, over breakfast, "going to the fruiterer's and asking for a half pound bag of Dobsons!" Marigold Chew said nothing in reply, merely casting her eye over Dobson in precisely the way a compositor might look at a pamphleteer. Dobson had a very flimsy grasp of matters botanical, and had never grown any fruit in his life. He was ready to acknowledge that these were distinct disadvantages. If the world was ever to be enhanced by a plum called Dobson, drastic activity was required. After breakfast, putting on a pair of secondhand winklepickers, he pranced off to the kiosk by the pylon on the patch of waste ground by the sewage plant, over which loomed the immensity of Pilgarlic Tor and, above it, a sky blue and clear and without any sign of an imminent hailstorm. Unaccountably, the kiosk was shut, and not simply shut but boarded up, covered over with large rectangular panels of reinforced hardboard hammered into place with dozens of big fat nails. No signage had been pasted on to any of the panels to explain this startling state of affairs. Whenever anything changed within his familiar bailiwick, however slightly, Dobson was avid to be told about it, greedy for details, and ever on the lookout for signs and announcements and bulletins, in the absence of which he was liable to have a neurasthenic attack, and emit little cries, just like Edgar Allan Poe when he got the jitters, or the Wild Boy of Aveyron when deprived of potatoes. On this day, however, so consumed was the out of print pamphleteer with his plum plan that he sailed on past the boarded-up kiosk, fleet in his winklepickers, and carried on along the lane abutting the sewage plant annexe, past the clown hospital and the vinegar distillery and the bottomless viper-pit, until, crossing Sawdust Bridge, he approached a tobacconist's. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-08-0628:54fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-23Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Memoir Of Stick Insect Island 11:56 Gurgles From Hid Grot 16:08 Unconscious Squirrel! 23:32 I Can Hear The Mermaids Singing 25:30 Health Tip A MEMOIR OF STICK INSECT ISLAND I had several reasons to sail across the Sound to Stick Insect Island. There were rumours of murder and mayhem and pagan sacrifice. My brother had made the crossing a fortnight before, and no word had come from him. My own homecoming was long overdue. And I wondered if the tiny post office still sold those amusing wax dolls of Captain Tod and Cadet Jarvis. The poking of them with pins was a delightful memory of my childhood, and I wanted my own nippers to share the experience, even though it would never be quite the same on the mainland. I had been too long gone, I realised, as the skipper brought the boat into harbour. The stone walls were greatly weathered, the fishermen's huts were dilapidated, the ice cream kiosk was a burned-out shell. Gulls swooped and rampaged. "You're quite sure you want me to leave you here?" asked the skipper, as I disembarked. I nodded, slipping some coins into his hairy hand. They were counterfeit, of course, but he would be dead before he could spend them. I walked up the slope, past the notary's office and the chapel, and sat on the old familiar bench by the fountain. There was nobody about at this hour. In the square, the stone statue of Cadet Jarvis, much becrumbled, gazed sightlessly towards the woods, as it had done for a century or more. I hoped my business would not take me into the woods. It was in the woods we found my brother. I was six years old, out with my father for a moonlit walk. Usually, when he went out at night to lay poisoned bait for wolves, he went alone, but on this occasion, apparently, I had been fractious and keening all day, and he thought the moonlight might becalm me. My brother was wrapped in a filthy blanket and wedged in the branches of a tree, a sycamore I think, at about my father's head height. He was about six months old, and fast asleep. My father placed him gently in the poison bag and carried him home. We never did discover who had abandoned him there. When his hair grew, it was lank and straight and tarry black. The town, if you could call it a town, began to stir. The butcher came marching up the street, bearing his bloody meat cleaver proudly, like a soldier on parade. The beadle poked his head out of the bailey and sniffed the air. The lantern extinguisher rolled along in his wheelchair, extinguishing the lanterns one by one. Shutters were raised and bells clanged. When the duckman approached the fountain with his ducks in tow, it was time for me to move. I could not help glancing back at the woods as I made my way, as inconspicuously as possible, towards the stationery shop. The flat above it was where my brother told me he was going to stay. When we parted, on the quayside, two weeks ago, I did not tell him of the knot in the pit of my stomach, wrenched so tight I thought I might die. I did not warn him about the flat over the stationery shop. I did not warn him at all. The shop was not yet open. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Memoir Of Stick Insect Island 11:56 Gurgles From Hid Grot 16:08 Unconscious Squirrel! 23:32 I Can Hear The Mermaids Singing 25:30 Health Tip A MEMOIR OF STICK INSECT ISLAND I had several reasons to sail across the Sound to Stick Insect Island. There were rumours of murder and mayhem and pagan sacrifice. My brother had made the crossing a fortnight before, and no word had come from him. My own homecoming was long overdue. And I wondered if the tiny post office still sold those amusing wax dolls of Captain Tod and Cadet Jarvis. The poking of them with pins was a delightful memory of my childhood, and I wanted my own nippers to share the experience, even though it would never be quite the same on the mainland. I had been too long gone, I realised, as the skipper brought the boat into harbour. The stone walls were greatly weathered, the fishermen's huts were dilapidated, the ice cream kiosk was a burned-out shell. Gulls swooped and rampaged. "You're quite sure you want me to leave you here?" asked the skipper, as I disembarked. I nodded, slipping some coins into his hairy hand. They were counterfeit, of course, but he would be dead before he could spend them. I walked up the slope, past the notary's office and the chapel, and sat on the old familiar bench by the fountain. There was nobody about at this hour. In the square, the stone statue of Cadet Jarvis, much becrumbled, gazed sightlessly towards the woods, as it had done for a century or more. I hoped my business would not take me into the woods. It was in the woods we found my brother. I was six years old, out with my father for a moonlit walk. Usually, when he went out at night to lay poisoned bait for wolves, he went alone, but on this occasion, apparently, I had been fractious and keening all day, and he thought the moonlight might becalm me. My brother was wrapped in a filthy blanket and wedged in the branches of a tree, a sycamore I think, at about my father's head height. He was about six months old, and fast asleep. My father placed him gently in the poison bag and carried him home. We never did discover who had abandoned him there. When his hair grew, it was lank and straight and tarry black. The town, if you could call it a town, began to stir. The butcher came marching up the street, bearing his bloody meat cleaver proudly, like a soldier on parade. The beadle poked his head out of the bailey and sniffed the air. The lantern extinguisher rolled along in his wheelchair, extinguishing the lanterns one by one. Shutters were raised and bells clanged. When the duckman approached the fountain with his ducks in tow, it was time for me to move. I could not help glancing back at the woods as I made my way, as inconspicuously as possible, towards the stationery shop. The flat above it was where my brother told me he was going to stay. When we parted, on the quayside, two weeks ago, I did not tell him of the knot in the pit of my stomach, wrenched so tight I thought I might die. I did not warn him about the flat over the stationery shop. I did not warn him at all. The shop was not yet open. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-2329:37fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-16Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:56 Those Wednesday Potato Nights 07:19 Goat God Catechism 10:46 Ambrose And Ploppo 10:48 Goat God Catechism 12:16 Gilliblat Recipe Time 14:48 Brand New Goo 18:05 In Search Of Plunkett THOSE WEDNESDAY POTATO NIGHTS Dobson adored Wednesday potato nights. It would be no exaggeration to say he was besotted with them. He would fairly skip along the twilit lanes to the appointed field, where he would join his many, many equally potatotastic pals as they Hang on. I was always under the impression that Dobson was a solitary sort, even a recluse, sitting alone at his escritoire, with only Marigold Chew for company, and she in a different room. This is the first I've heard of "many, many pals". Ah. Well, Dobson was indeed an immensely popular figure, with friends of all shapes and sizes scattered in bailiwicks near and far. What one has to remember is that most of the time he shunned them. But they were a forgiving lot, entranced, perhaps, by the honour of being counted among the so-called "pals of the pamphleteer". And so, at twilight on Wednesday potato nights, they gathered in a field, a happy band, and This all seems a bit dubious to me. One minute Dobson is shunning his friends, as we might expect of him, and now he is skipping along a lane with them, presumably with an idiot grin on his face and flowers in his hair. Your presumptions are wrong, whoever you are. A man--even a pamphleteer--can be happy without sporting an "idiot grin". And flowers in the hair is your own invention. There is nothing to suggest Dobson adopted such a hippy head decoration. As for shuttling back and forth between the enshunment and the unshunment of his pals, how could it be otherwise if we regard Dobson as fully human, with all the flaws and inconsistencies and non-hippy headgear choices of an everyman? Now, gathering in the field, armed with their potatoes and camping-gaz stoves and flasks of water, the enthusiasts watched the last glimmers of sunlight vanish below the horizon, and ignited their torches of petrol-soaked rags tied to the ends of sticks. Over yonder, sprites disported themselves in the fug above the eerie marsh. What? Over yonder, sprites disported themselves in the Yes, I heard what you said. Surely a fug is something you get in a confined space, like the fug of smoke in the saloon bar of the Cow & Pins in the days before the smoking ban. You wouldn't get a fug over a marsh, however eerie, unless of course these are cigar-smoking sprites you're talking about. Pipe-smoking sprites, actually. And because there is no wind on Wednesday potato nights, not even the hint of a breeze, the air above the eerie marsh is still, and the smoke from the sprites' pipes hangs there, eerily, in a fug. And Dobson and all his many pals stand in their field, torches lit, peering at the marsh-fug, as if transfixed, before setting about their potato business. They pour water from their flasks into pots, and they light the camping-gaz You didn't mention anything about pots before, when you listed what they brought with them. Potatoes and camping-gaz stoves and flasks, you said. In fact, you didn't say anything about the torches of petrol-soaked rags tied to the ends of sticks, until they lit them. And you haven't explained what they lit them with. Matches? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:56 Those Wednesday Potato Nights 07:19 Goat God Catechism 10:46 Ambrose And Ploppo 10:48 Goat God Catechism 12:16 Gilliblat Recipe Time 14:48 Brand New Goo 18:05 In Search Of Plunkett THOSE WEDNESDAY POTATO NIGHTS Dobson adored Wednesday potato nights. It would be no exaggeration to say he was besotted with them. He would fairly skip along the twilit lanes to the appointed field, where he would join his many, many equally potatotastic pals as they Hang on. I was always under the impression that Dobson was a solitary sort, even a recluse, sitting alone at his escritoire, with only Marigold Chew for company, and she in a different room. This is the first I've heard of "many, many pals". Ah. Well, Dobson was indeed an immensely popular figure, with friends of all shapes and sizes scattered in bailiwicks near and far. What one has to remember is that most of the time he shunned them. But they were a forgiving lot, entranced, perhaps, by the honour of being counted among the so-called "pals of the pamphleteer". And so, at twilight on Wednesday potato nights, they gathered in a field, a happy band, and This all seems a bit dubious to me. One minute Dobson is shunning his friends, as we might expect of him, and now he is skipping along a lane with them, presumably with an idiot grin on his face and flowers in his hair. Your presumptions are wrong, whoever you are. A man--even a pamphleteer--can be happy without sporting an "idiot grin". And flowers in the hair is your own invention. There is nothing to suggest Dobson adopted such a hippy head decoration. As for shuttling back and forth between the enshunment and the unshunment of his pals, how could it be otherwise if we regard Dobson as fully human, with all the flaws and inconsistencies and non-hippy headgear choices of an everyman? Now, gathering in the field, armed with their potatoes and camping-gaz stoves and flasks of water, the enthusiasts watched the last glimmers of sunlight vanish below the horizon, and ignited their torches of petrol-soaked rags tied to the ends of sticks. Over yonder, sprites disported themselves in the fug above the eerie marsh. What? Over yonder, sprites disported themselves in the Yes, I heard what you said. Surely a fug is something you get in a confined space, like the fug of smoke in the saloon bar of the Cow & Pins in the days before the smoking ban. You wouldn't get a fug over a marsh, however eerie, unless of course these are cigar-smoking sprites you're talking about. Pipe-smoking sprites, actually. And because there is no wind on Wednesday potato nights, not even the hint of a breeze, the air above the eerie marsh is still, and the smoke from the sprites' pipes hangs there, eerily, in a fug. And Dobson and all his many pals stand in their field, torches lit, peering at the marsh-fug, as if transfixed, before setting about their potato business. They pour water from their flasks into pots, and they light the camping-gaz You didn't mention anything about pots before, when you listed what they brought with them. Potatoes and camping-gaz stoves and flasks, you said. In fact, you didn't say anything about the torches of petrol-soaked rags tied to the ends of sticks, until they lit them. And you haven't explained what they lit them with. Matches? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-1628:47fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-09Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Wordsworth, Dobson, Prescott 04:06 Slops-In-The-Pot 13:46 Pallid Ada, The Crippled Heiress 22:11 Lost Names 26:06 The Spirit World 27:36 Revenge Of The Pig WORDSWORTH, DOBSON, PRESCOTT Yesterday, V I Foxglove mentioned a ruffian from Klosterheim, or The Masque, and I notice that the day before, over at Laudator Temporis Acti, Michael Gilleland posted a marvellous bit of De Quincey: "To begin with his figure:-- Wordsworth was, upon the whole, not a well-made man. His legs were pointedly condemned by all the female connoisseurs in legs that ever I heard lecture upon that topic; not that they were bad in any way which would force itself upon your notice -- there was no absolute deformity about them; and undoubtedly they had been serviceable legs beyond the average standard of human requisition; for I calculate, upon good data, that with these identical legs Wordsworth must have traversed a distance of 175 to 180,000 English miles -- a mode of exertion which, to him, stood in the stead of wine, spirits, and all other stimulants whatsoever to the animal spirits; to which he has been indebted for a life of unclouded happiness, and we for much of what is most excellent in his writings. But, useful as they have proved themselves, the Wordsworthian legs were certainly not ornamental; and it was really a pity, as I agreed with a lady in thinking, that he had not another pair for evening dress parties -- when no boots lend their friendly aid to masque our imperfections from the eyes of female rigorists -- the elegantes formarum spectatrices. A sculptor would certainly have disapproved of their contour." From Literary Reminiscences, chapter X (William Wordsworth) De Quincey seems to think that the wearing of boots can pull the wool over the eyes of female rigorists, but this was certainly not the case with Marigold Chew. Indeed, it was the boots Dobson trudged around in that often caused her acute, even physical, disgust. The out of print pamphleteer had a huge and unlikely collection of boots, including those of the Austrian Postal Service and the Nova Scotian Seabird Tagging Patrol. Unlike John Prescott, he usually managed to pair them up correctly.* * NOTE : In his forthcoming mem-wa A View From The Foothills, Chris Mullin MP writes: "[Prescott's] black mood is compounded by the fact that he has come to work this morning wearing unmatching shoes. We are permitted a brief giggle at this. Towards the end of the meeting a minion appears with a plastic bag containing an assortment of shoes." […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Wordsworth, Dobson, Prescott 04:06 Slops-In-The-Pot 13:46 Pallid Ada, The Crippled Heiress 22:11 Lost Names 26:06 The Spirit World 27:36 Revenge Of The Pig WORDSWORTH, DOBSON, PRESCOTT Yesterday, V I Foxglove mentioned a ruffian from Klosterheim, or The Masque, and I notice that the day before, over at Laudator Temporis Acti, Michael Gilleland posted a marvellous bit of De Quincey: "To begin with his figure:-- Wordsworth was, upon the whole, not a well-made man. His legs were pointedly condemned by all the female connoisseurs in legs that ever I heard lecture upon that topic; not that they were bad in any way which would force itself upon your notice -- there was no absolute deformity about them; and undoubtedly they had been serviceable legs beyond the average standard of human requisition; for I calculate, upon good data, that with these identical legs Wordsworth must have traversed a distance of 175 to 180,000 English miles -- a mode of exertion which, to him, stood in the stead of wine, spirits, and all other stimulants whatsoever to the animal spirits; to which he has been indebted for a life of unclouded happiness, and we for much of what is most excellent in his writings. But, useful as they have proved themselves, the Wordsworthian legs were certainly not ornamental; and it was really a pity, as I agreed with a lady in thinking, that he had not another pair for evening dress parties -- when no boots lend their friendly aid to masque our imperfections from the eyes of female rigorists -- the elegantes formarum spectatrices. A sculptor would certainly have disapproved of their contour." From Literary Reminiscences, chapter X (William Wordsworth) De Quincey seems to think that the wearing of boots can pull the wool over the eyes of female rigorists, but this was certainly not the case with Marigold Chew. Indeed, it was the boots Dobson trudged around in that often caused her acute, even physical, disgust. The out of print pamphleteer had a huge and unlikely collection of boots, including those of the Austrian Postal Service and the Nova Scotian Seabird Tagging Patrol. Unlike John Prescott, he usually managed to pair them up correctly.* * NOTE : In his forthcoming mem-wa A View From The Foothills, Chris Mullin MP writes: "[Prescott's] black mood is compounded by the fact that he has come to work this morning wearing unmatching shoes. We are permitted a brief giggle at this. Towards the end of the meeting a minion appears with a plastic bag containing an assortment of shoes." […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-0930:03fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-02Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Buy The Record, Please 07:13 Before Lunchtime 12:06 The Joke Pamphlet 18:46 In The Vestibule 24:27 The Last Ditch BUY THE RECORD, PLEASE "Let the joy be unconfined!" says Chris Cutler, with good reason. For his ReR Megacorp has just released the second album by Vril, entitled The Fatal Duckpond. Before we go any further, follow this link to buy your copy, immediately. When you come back, read on. The original trio of Cutler (drums), Lukas Simonis (guitars), and Bob Drake (bass & guitars) is augmented this time by Pierre Omer (guitars). Very sensibly, the puckish combo asked Mr Key to come up with the album and track titles, and to contribute liner notes and illustrations. Here, as a special treat for Hooting Yard readers, are those liner notes. It should be noted that the emboldenment and italicisation of certain words were inserted by Mr Cutler, or one of his minions, to excellent effect. These notes are reproduced with permission from Beekeepers Write About Compact Discs magazine (a weekly periodical). As far as I can ascertain, the second album by the band VRIL has been made without any bee involvement whatsoever. These eighteen new waxings by the group--now a quartet--form the soundtrack to the European arthouse film classic The Fatal Duckpond.. Seven hours long, black and white, and silent for large s t r e t c h e s apart from these musical numbers and sparse patches of dialogue mumbled in an incoherent and invented language, the film is a visionary reworking of the 1956 Hollywood western The Bloodsoaked Revenge Of Escobar Beppo, itself an adaptation of a rare and little-performed Jacobean drama whose author was stabbed to death in a brawl and whose corpse was flung into the then stinking Thames. Importantly, VRIL have based their "groovy sounds"--I think that is the appropriate term--on all three sources. This does make it rather difficult to pinpoint exactly which bit of the plot, or plots, is being evoked in each piece. To take just one example, the fourth track, Baffling Calcium Lantern Light, could refer equally well to the barnyard scene in the new film, the "Casa Incognita" episode in the western, or indeed the bit in the Jacobean drama where the audience always shuddered. Much as it would be helpful to summarise the plot, of one or all of the sources, it has to be said that it is a hopeless task. The original Jacobean tragedy is a skein of untangleable knots, the western is dense and brooding, and the latest film is frankly incoherent, in the best sense of the word. How the director managed to pull the whole thing together without any bees or beekeepers is a triumph, albeit a strange one. Ah yes, the director. Rumour has it that behind the person who appears in the (interminable) credits lurks the eerie figure of Horst Gack. It was he who was really pulling the strings, he who took the play and the western and decided to transform them into something quite unprecedented. It is said that he pored over all known texts of the drama for over a decade, and sat through thousands of screenings of the western, sometimes alone, and sometimes accompanied by his mysterious wife and collaborator Primrose Dent. It may even be that the whole thing is the brainchild of Primrose herself. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Buy The Record, Please 07:13 Before Lunchtime 12:06 The Joke Pamphlet 18:46 In The Vestibule 24:27 The Last Ditch BUY THE RECORD, PLEASE "Let the joy be unconfined!" says Chris Cutler, with good reason. For his ReR Megacorp has just released the second album by Vril, entitled The Fatal Duckpond. Before we go any further, follow this link to buy your copy, immediately. When you come back, read on. The original trio of Cutler (drums), Lukas Simonis (guitars), and Bob Drake (bass & guitars) is augmented this time by Pierre Omer (guitars). Very sensibly, the puckish combo asked Mr Key to come up with the album and track titles, and to contribute liner notes and illustrations. Here, as a special treat for Hooting Yard readers, are those liner notes. It should be noted that the emboldenment and italicisation of certain words were inserted by Mr Cutler, or one of his minions, to excellent effect. These notes are reproduced with permission from Beekeepers Write About Compact Discs magazine (a weekly periodical). As far as I can ascertain, the second album by the band VRIL has been made without any bee involvement whatsoever. These eighteen new waxings by the group--now a quartet--form the soundtrack to the European arthouse film classic The Fatal Duckpond.. Seven hours long, black and white, and silent for large s t r e t c h e s apart from these musical numbers and sparse patches of dialogue mumbled in an incoherent and invented language, the film is a visionary reworking of the 1956 Hollywood western The Bloodsoaked Revenge Of Escobar Beppo, itself an adaptation of a rare and little-performed Jacobean drama whose author was stabbed to death in a brawl and whose corpse was flung into the then stinking Thames. Importantly, VRIL have based their "groovy sounds"--I think that is the appropriate term--on all three sources. This does make it rather difficult to pinpoint exactly which bit of the plot, or plots, is being evoked in each piece. To take just one example, the fourth track, Baffling Calcium Lantern Light, could refer equally well to the barnyard scene in the new film, the "Casa Incognita" episode in the western, or indeed the bit in the Jacobean drama where the audience always shuddered. Much as it would be helpful to summarise the plot, of one or all of the sources, it has to be said that it is a hopeless task. The original Jacobean tragedy is a skein of untangleable knots, the western is dense and brooding, and the latest film is frankly incoherent, in the best sense of the word. How the director managed to pull the whole thing together without any bees or beekeepers is a triumph, albeit a strange one. Ah yes, the director. Rumour has it that behind the person who appears in the (interminable) credits lurks the eerie figure of Horst Gack. It was he who was really pulling the strings, he who took the play and the western and decided to transform them into something quite unprecedented. It is said that he pored over all known texts of the drama for over a decade, and sat through thousands of screenings of the western, sometimes alone, and sometimes accompanied by his mysterious wife and collaborator Primrose Dent. It may even be that the whole thing is the brainchild of Primrose herself. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-07-0229:03fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-06-11Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 From The Archives 06:05 Shenanigans 12:20 Early Wireless Broadcast 19:10 Other Glubbs 26:36 Dribbling For Fun And Profit FROM THE ARCHIVES This piece first appeared on Thursday 19 March 2009. Dixon went to Dock Green. It was a small patch of grass, hardly a lawn, at the edge of the dock. The dock itself was one where huge steamers came into port from faraway lands, carrying all sorts of exotic cargo. The cargo was mostly packed into wooden crates, which were winched from ship to dock by dockhands. When it was lunchtime, the dockhands sprawled on the green, the small patch of grass, and prised the lids off their Tupperwares and unscrewed the lids from their flasks. They ate their bloater paste sandwiches and drank their tea and while they chewed and swilled they talked to each other about the cargo they had winched ashore that morning. The wooden crates usually had lettering stencilled on their sides and tops describing what the crates contained. One might read FRUIT GUMS, another GIRAFFE BRAINS. Leaning on a fence, smoking his pipe, Dixon listened carefully to the chitchat of the dockhands. He used to be a policeman. Now he was a spy. His mission was to find out what cargo had been winched ashore that morning and report back to his spymasters. His spymasters were shadowy figures who sat behind a big desk in an unlit room in a skyscraper in town. The room was unlit so that Dixon was unable to see them with any clarity and thus recognise them and thus be able to identify them at a later date if ever questioned. Dixon could have just blundered around the dock and read the stencilled lettering on all the crates but he preferred to listen to the chitchat of the dockhands because he could not read. He used to be able to, when he was a policeman, but he had lost the ability. One day, one September day to be precise, he had been chasing a miscreant and lost his footing in a gutter and banged his head, and after banging his head he forgot everything he had ever known, even his own name, and where he lived, and how old he was, and what he did for a living, and how to read. In short, he was an amnesiac. One of the spymasters came to the clinic where Dixon had been put. To disguise his identity, the spymaster wore a mask and modified his voice with an electronic device. He offered Dixon a job at Dock Green. This day I am telling you about was Dixon's first day. While he was leaning against the fence smoking his pipe and listening to the dockhands, he forgot all about the unlit room in the skyscraper and the shadowy spymasters who had sent him on his mission. He became very interested in the fruit gums and giraffe brains and the winching mechanism and he walked on to the ship to take a closer look. Dixon was still on the ship when it steamed out of port on its way to a far distant land to collect more cargo. One day, out in the middle of one of those big oceans that make up so much of the planet's surface, he received a bash on the head from a violent sailor. Then Dixon remembered everything. He remembered he was a policeman, so he tried to arrest the violent sailor for bashing him on the head. But the law of the land holds no sway at sea, and the ship's captain locked him up in a cabin until they made landfall. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-06-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 From The Archives 06:05 Shenanigans 12:20 Early Wireless Broadcast 19:10 Other Glubbs 26:36 Dribbling For Fun And Profit FROM THE ARCHIVES This piece first appeared on Thursday 19 March 2009. Dixon went to Dock Green. It was a small patch of grass, hardly a lawn, at the edge of the dock. The dock itself was one where huge steamers came into port from faraway lands, carrying all sorts of exotic cargo. The cargo was mostly packed into wooden crates, which were winched from ship to dock by dockhands. When it was lunchtime, the dockhands sprawled on the green, the small patch of grass, and prised the lids off their Tupperwares and unscrewed the lids from their flasks. They ate their bloater paste sandwiches and drank their tea and while they chewed and swilled they talked to each other about the cargo they had winched ashore that morning. The wooden crates usually had lettering stencilled on their sides and tops describing what the crates contained. One might read FRUIT GUMS, another GIRAFFE BRAINS. Leaning on a fence, smoking his pipe, Dixon listened carefully to the chitchat of the dockhands. He used to be a policeman. Now he was a spy. His mission was to find out what cargo had been winched ashore that morning and report back to his spymasters. His spymasters were shadowy figures who sat behind a big desk in an unlit room in a skyscraper in town. The room was unlit so that Dixon was unable to see them with any clarity and thus recognise them and thus be able to identify them at a later date if ever questioned. Dixon could have just blundered around the dock and read the stencilled lettering on all the crates but he preferred to listen to the chitchat of the dockhands because he could not read. He used to be able to, when he was a policeman, but he had lost the ability. One day, one September day to be precise, he had been chasing a miscreant and lost his footing in a gutter and banged his head, and after banging his head he forgot everything he had ever known, even his own name, and where he lived, and how old he was, and what he did for a living, and how to read. In short, he was an amnesiac. One of the spymasters came to the clinic where Dixon had been put. To disguise his identity, the spymaster wore a mask and modified his voice with an electronic device. He offered Dixon a job at Dock Green. This day I am telling you about was Dixon's first day. While he was leaning against the fence smoking his pipe and listening to the dockhands, he forgot all about the unlit room in the skyscraper and the shadowy spymasters who had sent him on his mission. He became very interested in the fruit gums and giraffe brains and the winching mechanism and he walked on to the ship to take a closer look. Dixon was still on the ship when it steamed out of port on its way to a far distant land to collect more cargo. One day, out in the middle of one of those big oceans that make up so much of the planet's surface, he received a bash on the head from a violent sailor. Then Dixon remembered everything. He remembered he was a policeman, so he tried to arrest the violent sailor for bashing him on the head. But the law of the land holds no sway at sea, and the ship's captain locked him up in a cabin until they made landfall. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-06-1128:40fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-06-04Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Abasement In A Basement 03:56 The Steinerian Gnome : An Introduction 09:20 L'Homme Qui Grogne 17:00 Mops Held High 20:48 Tonsured Buffoon ABASEMENT IN A BASEMENT Just as a bus is the best place for abuse, you should ideally perform abasement in a basement. There is something about the subterranean nature of the location which lends itself to the embrace of personal wretchedness. Obviously the basement must first be prepared with the installation of a shrine or altar to an enraged and merciless deity, for example the hideous bat-god Fatso, or Allah. Adherents of the latter usually claim he is all-merciful, but come on, we all know that is twaddle. Allah does as much smiting as Jehovah, and has an extremely lengthy list of harmless deeds he construes as wrongdoing. His sin-catalogue is almost as bulky as Fatso's. Whether you choose Jehovah or Allah or Fatso is entirely up to you. The important thing is to have a focus for your grovelling in your basement. Once you have installed your shrine or altar or whatsit, never again bother to sweep the floor of your basement with a broom. By allowing dust and debris to settle and moulder, you create an apt surface upon which to prostrate yourself, flat on your belly, while bewailing your utter worthlessness. If you have picked for your deity one of the ones that allows itself to be depicted by human hand, make sure the picture or icon is terrifying in its intensity and shows the god in a particularly bad temper. Actually, you can do this for one of the image-forbidding gods too, because by having wrought a picture of them you will just make them more enraged, and the angrier they are the better, as far as your abasement is concerned. I hope it is clear why you should avoid a woolly liberal deity like gentle Jesus, in a chunky Church of England cardigan, whose reaction to your begrovelment would as likely as not be a compassionate smile and a helping hand to lift you from the grubby floor. If you are going to get the hang of this abasement business, you want to provoke wrath and scourges and plagues of locusts and thunderbolts. There is no minimum time to spend face down in the muck in the dark of your basement. A properly vengeful and psychotic deity will not be assuaged with a mere ten or fifteen minutes here or there. Best to plan for the day, and night, and the following day, and the night again, at least. And no sneaking up to the kitchen for a snack. Unless, of course, it is a diet of worms. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-06-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Abasement In A Basement 03:56 The Steinerian Gnome : An Introduction 09:20 L'Homme Qui Grogne 17:00 Mops Held High 20:48 Tonsured Buffoon ABASEMENT IN A BASEMENT Just as a bus is the best place for abuse, you should ideally perform abasement in a basement. There is something about the subterranean nature of the location which lends itself to the embrace of personal wretchedness. Obviously the basement must first be prepared with the installation of a shrine or altar to an enraged and merciless deity, for example the hideous bat-god Fatso, or Allah. Adherents of the latter usually claim he is all-merciful, but come on, we all know that is twaddle. Allah does as much smiting as Jehovah, and has an extremely lengthy list of harmless deeds he construes as wrongdoing. His sin-catalogue is almost as bulky as Fatso's. Whether you choose Jehovah or Allah or Fatso is entirely up to you. The important thing is to have a focus for your grovelling in your basement. Once you have installed your shrine or altar or whatsit, never again bother to sweep the floor of your basement with a broom. By allowing dust and debris to settle and moulder, you create an apt surface upon which to prostrate yourself, flat on your belly, while bewailing your utter worthlessness. If you have picked for your deity one of the ones that allows itself to be depicted by human hand, make sure the picture or icon is terrifying in its intensity and shows the god in a particularly bad temper. Actually, you can do this for one of the image-forbidding gods too, because by having wrought a picture of them you will just make them more enraged, and the angrier they are the better, as far as your abasement is concerned. I hope it is clear why you should avoid a woolly liberal deity like gentle Jesus, in a chunky Church of England cardigan, whose reaction to your begrovelment would as likely as not be a compassionate smile and a helping hand to lift you from the grubby floor. If you are going to get the hang of this abasement business, you want to provoke wrath and scourges and plagues of locusts and thunderbolts. There is no minimum time to spend face down in the muck in the dark of your basement. A properly vengeful and psychotic deity will not be assuaged with a mere ten or fifteen minutes here or there. Best to plan for the day, and night, and the following day, and the night again, at least. And no sneaking up to the kitchen for a snack. Unless, of course, it is a diet of worms. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-06-0428:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-28Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 The Cow & Pins 06:15 If Only The Rev. James McCosh Were Here! 10:41 John Ruskin On The Train 24:19 Hospital Barge THE COW & PINS Every so often I receive letters from readers asking for background information on particular features of Hooting Yard. My usual practice is to ignore such enquiries and stuff them into a cardboard box, and to shove the cardboard box into a dark cranny. But sometimes I feel impelled to shine a torch into the cranny, to rummage in the cardboard box, to take out one among the mouldering scraps of paper, and to give it due attention. There is no particular method in my choosing, though a letter written neatly and grammatically on scented notepaper headed with a heraldic device, however spurious, is likely to win out over a scribble on a torn bit of breakfast cereal carton stained with grease. You may wish to make a note of that in your pocketbook for future reference. Elsewhere I will provide some tips on drawing spurious yet strangely compelling heraldic devices for your letterhead, but there is no time for that now. The letter I have just retrieved from the cranny is pithy, even curt. Oi Mr Key, it says, How did the Cow & Pins get its name? And that's it. It is not even signed! But the handwriting is exquisite, and done in mauve ink on lime-green tissue paper, scented with bergamot, or what smells like bergamot to my untrained nostrils, and there is a simply fabulous hand-drawn heraldic device, now somewhat faded, for god knows how long the letter has been squirreled away, in which I can make out a cassowary rampant, a snow shovel, and six buttons gules. Readers will recall, I hope, that the Cow & Pins is the finest tavern in existence, albeit something of a hellhole and a sink of vice. It is many long years since I sat in its snug, but if I shut my eyes and concentrate, I can imagine myself there, in the gloom, with that telltale sense of befuddlement at the way in which, yet again, a scattering of sawdust from the floor is floating atop the froth of my pint. Ah, such dejection in the fug! One of the reasons this letter would have been consigned to the cranny is, I am embarrassed to say, that I have absolutely no idea why the Cow & Pins is called the Cow & Pins. The best I can do, now, is to repeat the story I heard from an old bloated barnyard behemoth with whom I used to sit, sometimes, of an evening, at the bench outside the tavern, tossing breadcrumbs to crows, under a thunderous sky. He told me that the Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo once took a dislike to a certain cow that chewed the foxgloves or lupins she grew in flowerpots outside her cave. How or why this cow wandered away from its fellows was not explained. It may even have been different cows on different days. The Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo was celebrated, and feared, for her spooky eldritch powers, but no one ever claimed that she had great expertise in farmyard animal identification skills. Be that as it may, she satisfied herself that a single cow was causing the depredation of her foxgloves, or possibly lupins, and reacted in a tiresomely predictable way. That's right, she cast a spell on the cow. What else would you expect of the Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 The Cow & Pins 06:15 If Only The Rev. James McCosh Were Here! 10:41 John Ruskin On The Train 24:19 Hospital Barge THE COW & PINS Every so often I receive letters from readers asking for background information on particular features of Hooting Yard. My usual practice is to ignore such enquiries and stuff them into a cardboard box, and to shove the cardboard box into a dark cranny. But sometimes I feel impelled to shine a torch into the cranny, to rummage in the cardboard box, to take out one among the mouldering scraps of paper, and to give it due attention. There is no particular method in my choosing, though a letter written neatly and grammatically on scented notepaper headed with a heraldic device, however spurious, is likely to win out over a scribble on a torn bit of breakfast cereal carton stained with grease. You may wish to make a note of that in your pocketbook for future reference. Elsewhere I will provide some tips on drawing spurious yet strangely compelling heraldic devices for your letterhead, but there is no time for that now. The letter I have just retrieved from the cranny is pithy, even curt. Oi Mr Key, it says, How did the Cow & Pins get its name? And that's it. It is not even signed! But the handwriting is exquisite, and done in mauve ink on lime-green tissue paper, scented with bergamot, or what smells like bergamot to my untrained nostrils, and there is a simply fabulous hand-drawn heraldic device, now somewhat faded, for god knows how long the letter has been squirreled away, in which I can make out a cassowary rampant, a snow shovel, and six buttons gules. Readers will recall, I hope, that the Cow & Pins is the finest tavern in existence, albeit something of a hellhole and a sink of vice. It is many long years since I sat in its snug, but if I shut my eyes and concentrate, I can imagine myself there, in the gloom, with that telltale sense of befuddlement at the way in which, yet again, a scattering of sawdust from the floor is floating atop the froth of my pint. Ah, such dejection in the fug! One of the reasons this letter would have been consigned to the cranny is, I am embarrassed to say, that I have absolutely no idea why the Cow & Pins is called the Cow & Pins. The best I can do, now, is to repeat the story I heard from an old bloated barnyard behemoth with whom I used to sit, sometimes, of an evening, at the bench outside the tavern, tossing breadcrumbs to crows, under a thunderous sky. He told me that the Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo once took a dislike to a certain cow that chewed the foxgloves or lupins she grew in flowerpots outside her cave. How or why this cow wandered away from its fellows was not explained. It may even have been different cows on different days. The Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo was celebrated, and feared, for her spooky eldritch powers, but no one ever claimed that she had great expertise in farmyard animal identification skills. Be that as it may, she satisfied herself that a single cow was causing the depredation of her foxgloves, or possibly lupins, and reacted in a tiresomely predictable way. That's right, she cast a spell on the cow. What else would you expect of the Weird Woman of Woohoodiwoodiwoo? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-2829:26fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-21Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 Dobson's Boots 04:07 Dobson's Kitchen Groanings 13:31 Planet Of The Cloth-Eared Bears 18:52 The Bell And The Toads, Etcetera 23:56 Seven Stints DOBSON'S BOOTS Ahoy there Key!, writes Dr Ruth Pastry, possibly trying to pretend she is aboard an ocean liner, I have a few questions for you about Dobson's magnificent collection of boots. Yesterday we were told about the Austrian Postal Service ones and the Nova Scotian Seabird Tagging Patrol ones, and we can add to these the many other boots we have learned about over the years, those designed for Hungarian Flying Officers not least among them. What I want to know is, did Dobson have some sort of official connection with the many and various organisations whose boots he saw fit to wear? Are there gaps in the biography where he was, unbeknownst to us, actually employed by them? If this is the case, I really think it is time we were filled in on the details. Or, if not, it begs the question of how an out of print pamphleteer managed to obtain what I presume were pairs of boots normally made available only to those tireless servants who, for example, delivered the post in Austria or tagged seabirds in Nova Scotia. I do not want to think, even for a second, that Dobson may have gone marauding around the globe thieving boots wherever he found them. It pains me to consider the very real possibility that my favourite pamphleteer may have been wallowing in a fetid swamp of moral turpitude. I suppose it is only fair to declare an interest here. As you know, I am a woman of impeccable rectitude, and would never, ever stoop to thievery, but for many years now I have been coveting a pair of Uruguayan Butcher's Assistant's Boots and I cannot for the life of me think how in heaven's name I can get my mitts on such an item, short of becoming an assistant to a Uruguayan butcher, a position for which I am hopelessly unqualified. My final question, then, is to ask if you have any advice for me in this regard. Not that I am expecting sensible answers to any of my queries, given the Key track record, but I live in hope, and at least I have got this off my chest. I am now going to wander up on to the deck of this entirely factual ocean liner, and stare at the sea, before eating my dinner at the captain's table, jealously eyeing his Peruvian Sea Captain's Boots which have been cobblered in a fashion very similar to the boots I covet. Passionately yours, Dr Ruth Pastry. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:30 Dobson's Boots 04:07 Dobson's Kitchen Groanings 13:31 Planet Of The Cloth-Eared Bears 18:52 The Bell And The Toads, Etcetera 23:56 Seven Stints DOBSON'S BOOTS Ahoy there Key!, writes Dr Ruth Pastry, possibly trying to pretend she is aboard an ocean liner, I have a few questions for you about Dobson's magnificent collection of boots. Yesterday we were told about the Austrian Postal Service ones and the Nova Scotian Seabird Tagging Patrol ones, and we can add to these the many other boots we have learned about over the years, those designed for Hungarian Flying Officers not least among them. What I want to know is, did Dobson have some sort of official connection with the many and various organisations whose boots he saw fit to wear? Are there gaps in the biography where he was, unbeknownst to us, actually employed by them? If this is the case, I really think it is time we were filled in on the details. Or, if not, it begs the question of how an out of print pamphleteer managed to obtain what I presume were pairs of boots normally made available only to those tireless servants who, for example, delivered the post in Austria or tagged seabirds in Nova Scotia. I do not want to think, even for a second, that Dobson may have gone marauding around the globe thieving boots wherever he found them. It pains me to consider the very real possibility that my favourite pamphleteer may have been wallowing in a fetid swamp of moral turpitude. I suppose it is only fair to declare an interest here. As you know, I am a woman of impeccable rectitude, and would never, ever stoop to thievery, but for many years now I have been coveting a pair of Uruguayan Butcher's Assistant's Boots and I cannot for the life of me think how in heaven's name I can get my mitts on such an item, short of becoming an assistant to a Uruguayan butcher, a position for which I am hopelessly unqualified. My final question, then, is to ask if you have any advice for me in this regard. Not that I am expecting sensible answers to any of my queries, given the Key track record, but I live in hope, and at least I have got this off my chest. I am now going to wander up on to the deck of this entirely factual ocean liner, and stare at the sea, before eating my dinner at the captain's table, jealously eyeing his Peruvian Sea Captain's Boots which have been cobblered in a fashion very similar to the boots I covet. Passionately yours, Dr Ruth Pastry. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-2129:56fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-14Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Dismember That Heron 03:22 The Muscular Fool And The Other Fool 15:33 Unregistered Ice Cream Vans 23:22 Timetable 26:17 The Sludge-Banks DISMEMBER THAT HERON CARVING--Wynkyn de Worde printed in the year 1508 "The Book of Kervinge". Some of the words are curious, and throw light on the names of dishes which have been corrupted by process of time. Where the meaning is quite plain the spelling is modernised, but not otherwise. "The terms of a carver be as here followeth. Break that deer--lesche (leach) that brawn--rear that goose--lift that swan--sauce that capon--spoil that hen--frusche (fruss) that chicken--unbrace that mallard--unlace that coney--dismember that heron--display that crane--disfigure that peacock--unjoint that bittern--untache that curlew--alaye that felande--wing that partridge--wing that quail--mine that plover--thigh that pigeon--border that pasty--thigh that woodcock--thigh all manner small birds--timber that fire--tire that egg--chine that salmon--string that lamprey--splat that pike--sauce that plaice--sauce that tench--splay that bream--side that haddock--tusk that barbel--culpon that trout--fin that chevin--trassene that eel--tranch that sturgeon--undertranch that porpoise--tame that crab--barb that lobster. Here endeth the goodly terms of Carving." From Kettner's Book Of The Table by E S Dallas (London, 1877) THE MUSCULAR FOOL AND THE OTHER FOOL A fool dug a hole in the ground with a spade. When he had dug deep enough, the fool put aside the spade and sat down in the hole, deep enough in this instance meaning that from his sitting position his head was below ground level. The ground itself was fallow. We should remember, even if the fool did not, that "The lark's shrill fife may come / At the daybreak from the fallow". So, at least, was the assertion of Sir Walter Scott in The Lady Of The Lake. He goes on to say that "the bittern sound[s] his drum / Booming from the sedgy shallow", but there were no shallows, sedgy or otherwise, in this fallow where the fool sat in a hole he'd dug, nor any bitterns to boom. Scott brought a curse upon himself by making disparaging remarks about the Muggletonians in one of his novels*, but the fool had not been cursed. He was simply a fool. It is pointless to ask of such a person, "why have you done what you have done?" Either he will not reply, or, if he does, he will dizzy your brain with his explanation. You might understand the individual words he shouts or mutters at you, but you will be hard pressed to make any sense of them when you join them together. That is one of the things about fools, they drive a stake through the heart of reason. I used to be a fool, so I know that only too well. I was not the kind of fool to dig holes in the ground with a spade, for my foolishness led me down other pathways. I could often be found in department stores, wandering from one floor to another, via the escalators, up and down, all day long, never making a purchase, followed about by in-house detectives, chanting. I mean that I was chanting, not the detectives. The detectives had no time to chant, they were too busy keeping track of me. They would have had no trouble tracking the fool with the spade, for he had dug his hole in the ground and now he was sat in it, quite still. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Dismember That Heron 03:22 The Muscular Fool And The Other Fool 15:33 Unregistered Ice Cream Vans 23:22 Timetable 26:17 The Sludge-Banks DISMEMBER THAT HERON CARVING--Wynkyn de Worde printed in the year 1508 "The Book of Kervinge". Some of the words are curious, and throw light on the names of dishes which have been corrupted by process of time. Where the meaning is quite plain the spelling is modernised, but not otherwise. "The terms of a carver be as here followeth. Break that deer--lesche (leach) that brawn--rear that goose--lift that swan--sauce that capon--spoil that hen--frusche (fruss) that chicken--unbrace that mallard--unlace that coney--dismember that heron--display that crane--disfigure that peacock--unjoint that bittern--untache that curlew--alaye that felande--wing that partridge--wing that quail--mine that plover--thigh that pigeon--border that pasty--thigh that woodcock--thigh all manner small birds--timber that fire--tire that egg--chine that salmon--string that lamprey--splat that pike--sauce that plaice--sauce that tench--splay that bream--side that haddock--tusk that barbel--culpon that trout--fin that chevin--trassene that eel--tranch that sturgeon--undertranch that porpoise--tame that crab--barb that lobster. Here endeth the goodly terms of Carving." From Kettner's Book Of The Table by E S Dallas (London, 1877) THE MUSCULAR FOOL AND THE OTHER FOOL A fool dug a hole in the ground with a spade. When he had dug deep enough, the fool put aside the spade and sat down in the hole, deep enough in this instance meaning that from his sitting position his head was below ground level. The ground itself was fallow. We should remember, even if the fool did not, that "The lark's shrill fife may come / At the daybreak from the fallow". So, at least, was the assertion of Sir Walter Scott in The Lady Of The Lake. He goes on to say that "the bittern sound[s] his drum / Booming from the sedgy shallow", but there were no shallows, sedgy or otherwise, in this fallow where the fool sat in a hole he'd dug, nor any bitterns to boom. Scott brought a curse upon himself by making disparaging remarks about the Muggletonians in one of his novels*, but the fool had not been cursed. He was simply a fool. It is pointless to ask of such a person, "why have you done what you have done?" Either he will not reply, or, if he does, he will dizzy your brain with his explanation. You might understand the individual words he shouts or mutters at you, but you will be hard pressed to make any sense of them when you join them together. That is one of the things about fools, they drive a stake through the heart of reason. I used to be a fool, so I know that only too well. I was not the kind of fool to dig holes in the ground with a spade, for my foolishness led me down other pathways. I could often be found in department stores, wandering from one floor to another, via the escalators, up and down, all day long, never making a purchase, followed about by in-house detectives, chanting. I mean that I was chanting, not the detectives. The detectives had no time to chant, they were too busy keeping track of me. They would have had no trouble tracking the fool with the spade, for he had dug his hole in the ground and now he was sat in it, quite still. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-1428:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-07Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Trip To Margate 03:34 With My Fife And My Drum 09:15 Putty Putti 13:06 Bongos For Babinsky 18:34 Dax Pod Clad In Umber 21:27 Shipwreck Is Everywhere 25:29 Upriver 28:38 Pantry Thoughts A TRIP TO MARGATE A letter to The Times, from "C.L.S.", 16th August 1871: Sir,--On Monday last I had the misfortune of taking a trip per steamer to Margate. The sea was rough, the ship crowded, and therefore most of the Cockney excursionists prostrate with sea-sickness. On landing on Margate pier I must confess I thought that, instead of landing in an English seaport, I had been transported by magic to a land inhabited by savages and lunatics. The scene that ensued when the unhappy passengers had to pass between the double line of a Margate mob on the pier must be seen to be believed possible in a civilized country. Shouts, yells, howls of delight greeted every pale-looking passenger, as he or she got on the pier, accompanied by a running comment of the lowest, foulest language imaginable. But the most insulted victims were a young lady, who, having had a fit of hysterics on board, had to be assisted up the steps, and a venerable-looking old gentleman with a long grey beard, who, by-the-by, was not sick at all, but being crippled and very old, feebly tottered up the slippery steps leaning on two sticks. "Here's a guy!" "Hallo! You old thief, you won't get drowned, because you know that you are to be hung," etc., and worse than that, were the greetings of that poor old man. All this while a very much silver-bestriped policeman stood calmly by, without interfering by word or deed; and myself, having several ladies to take care of, could do nothing except telling the ruffianly mob some hard words, with, of course, no other effect than to draw all the abuse on myself. This is not an exceptional exhibition of Margate ruffianism, but, as I have been told, is of daily occurrence, only varying in intensity with the roughness of the sea. Public exposure is the only likely thing to put a stop to such ruffianism ; and now it is no longer a wonder to me why so many people are ashamed of confessing that they have been to Margate. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Trip To Margate 03:34 With My Fife And My Drum 09:15 Putty Putti 13:06 Bongos For Babinsky 18:34 Dax Pod Clad In Umber 21:27 Shipwreck Is Everywhere 25:29 Upriver 28:38 Pantry Thoughts A TRIP TO MARGATE A letter to The Times, from "C.L.S.", 16th August 1871: Sir,--On Monday last I had the misfortune of taking a trip per steamer to Margate. The sea was rough, the ship crowded, and therefore most of the Cockney excursionists prostrate with sea-sickness. On landing on Margate pier I must confess I thought that, instead of landing in an English seaport, I had been transported by magic to a land inhabited by savages and lunatics. The scene that ensued when the unhappy passengers had to pass between the double line of a Margate mob on the pier must be seen to be believed possible in a civilized country. Shouts, yells, howls of delight greeted every pale-looking passenger, as he or she got on the pier, accompanied by a running comment of the lowest, foulest language imaginable. But the most insulted victims were a young lady, who, having had a fit of hysterics on board, had to be assisted up the steps, and a venerable-looking old gentleman with a long grey beard, who, by-the-by, was not sick at all, but being crippled and very old, feebly tottered up the slippery steps leaning on two sticks. "Here's a guy!" "Hallo! You old thief, you won't get drowned, because you know that you are to be hung," etc., and worse than that, were the greetings of that poor old man. All this while a very much silver-bestriped policeman stood calmly by, without interfering by word or deed; and myself, having several ladies to take care of, could do nothing except telling the ruffianly mob some hard words, with, of course, no other effect than to draw all the abuse on myself. This is not an exceptional exhibition of Margate ruffianism, but, as I have been told, is of daily occurrence, only varying in intensity with the roughness of the sea. Public exposure is the only likely thing to put a stop to such ruffianism ; and now it is no longer a wonder to me why so many people are ashamed of confessing that they have been to Margate. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-05-0729:36fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-23Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Doh-Si-Doh 05:05 The Sunday Just Gone 10:46 Notes On Skippy 21:56 Old Farmer Frack's Haircut 26:13 Beatnik Beerpint DOH-SI-DOH "Strangle a pig and burn down the barn and doh-si-doh your partners!" It was a rallying cry, and in its wake pigs were strangled, barns were burned, and doh-si-dohs were essayed. How sweet the memory of those dances of my grandparents' youth. I was not alive then of course, so I have no direct memory, but I recall, as an infant, sitting in a basket slung over one of grandpa's bison, and he goading the beast along the lane, and telling me tales of his childhood in the Wenkenblatt, the strangled pigs and the burning barns and the doh-si-dohs. He told me how he and my grandma met at such a rally, the one with a bale of straw and the other with a can of paraffin, and how they kissed as they set a barn ablaze, and clambered to safety over the corpses of pigs, and doh-si-dohed in the light of the flames. It is another world. Now, pig protection teams stand guard over the sties, and barns are built from fireproof panels, and the doh-si-doh is classed as a criminal act, the penalty terrible. It is perhaps a more civilised world, even here in the Wenkenblatt, but though I know it only from my grandparents' stories, still I miss that rustic mayhem. There is a hole where my soul should be. I wander past the pig sty and beat my fists upon the side of the barn, and very very quietly, so I will not be overheard, I put my lips together and whistle a tune from the old pneumatic hoedownolator, a mad and giddy tune. THE SUNDAY JUST GONE On Sunday, for the first time since the fifteenth of December last year, there was no postage at Hooting Yard. So yesterday, when I leapt out of bed at 5.15, and went to the ablutions pod to submerge my head in icy water, I wondered if I should proffer an apology to my readers for this dereliction. But when I reflected--head still submerged--on the unexpectedly trying day I'd had, it seemed clear to me that far from apologising, it would be more appropriate to whimper in a bid for sympathy. What promised to be an average April Sunday became a nightmare of mishaps, catastrophes, and disasters which left me with no opportunity whatsoever to tap gubbins into this blog. First of all, before I lifted my head out of the bucket, I was reaching blindly for my towel and inadvertently knocked over a jar of grease, the lid of which had not been fastened properly, with the result that some of the grease spilled on to the floor and formed a small puddle, in which Skippy slipped as he came bounding and barking into the ablutions pod, as he usually does when he senses that I am up and about, ravenous as he is for his bowl of reconstituted meat chunks in jelly, and in slipping, Skippy, huge of bulk, bashed right into my bucket, which clonked me on the side of my head, and more specifically on my ear, before falling over so that the icy water it held sploshed all over the floor, some of it dripping through slits in the planks on to the wiring beneath, causing a short circuit which knocked out all the electrical power not only in my hub but in the entire building. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Doh-Si-Doh 05:05 The Sunday Just Gone 10:46 Notes On Skippy 21:56 Old Farmer Frack's Haircut 26:13 Beatnik Beerpint DOH-SI-DOH "Strangle a pig and burn down the barn and doh-si-doh your partners!" It was a rallying cry, and in its wake pigs were strangled, barns were burned, and doh-si-dohs were essayed. How sweet the memory of those dances of my grandparents' youth. I was not alive then of course, so I have no direct memory, but I recall, as an infant, sitting in a basket slung over one of grandpa's bison, and he goading the beast along the lane, and telling me tales of his childhood in the Wenkenblatt, the strangled pigs and the burning barns and the doh-si-dohs. He told me how he and my grandma met at such a rally, the one with a bale of straw and the other with a can of paraffin, and how they kissed as they set a barn ablaze, and clambered to safety over the corpses of pigs, and doh-si-dohed in the light of the flames. It is another world. Now, pig protection teams stand guard over the sties, and barns are built from fireproof panels, and the doh-si-doh is classed as a criminal act, the penalty terrible. It is perhaps a more civilised world, even here in the Wenkenblatt, but though I know it only from my grandparents' stories, still I miss that rustic mayhem. There is a hole where my soul should be. I wander past the pig sty and beat my fists upon the side of the barn, and very very quietly, so I will not be overheard, I put my lips together and whistle a tune from the old pneumatic hoedownolator, a mad and giddy tune. THE SUNDAY JUST GONE On Sunday, for the first time since the fifteenth of December last year, there was no postage at Hooting Yard. So yesterday, when I leapt out of bed at 5.15, and went to the ablutions pod to submerge my head in icy water, I wondered if I should proffer an apology to my readers for this dereliction. But when I reflected--head still submerged--on the unexpectedly trying day I'd had, it seemed clear to me that far from apologising, it would be more appropriate to whimper in a bid for sympathy. What promised to be an average April Sunday became a nightmare of mishaps, catastrophes, and disasters which left me with no opportunity whatsoever to tap gubbins into this blog. First of all, before I lifted my head out of the bucket, I was reaching blindly for my towel and inadvertently knocked over a jar of grease, the lid of which had not been fastened properly, with the result that some of the grease spilled on to the floor and formed a small puddle, in which Skippy slipped as he came bounding and barking into the ablutions pod, as he usually does when he senses that I am up and about, ravenous as he is for his bowl of reconstituted meat chunks in jelly, and in slipping, Skippy, huge of bulk, bashed right into my bucket, which clonked me on the side of my head, and more specifically on my ear, before falling over so that the icy water it held sploshed all over the floor, some of it dripping through slits in the planks on to the wiring beneath, causing a short circuit which knocked out all the electrical power not only in my hub but in the entire building. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-2328:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-16Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Dobson's Card Index 11:54 A Magic Trick 22:44 The Boring Dog DOBSON'S CARD INDEX "Along the path, glued to the window panes or hung on the bushes or dangling from the ceiling, so that all free space was put to maximum use, hundreds of little placards were displayed. Each one carried a drawing, a photograph, or an inscription, and the whole constituted a veritable encyclopaedia of what we call 'human knowledge'. A diagram of a plant cell, Mendeleieff's periodic table of the elements, the keys to Chinese writing, a cross-section of the human heart, Lorentz's transformation formulae, each planet and its characteristics, fossil remains of the horse species in series, Mayan hieroglyphics, economic and demographic statistics, musical phrases, samples of the principal plant and animal families, crystal specimens, the ground plan of the Great Pyramid, brain diagrams, logistic equations, phonetic charts of the sounds employed in all languages, maps, genealogies--everything in short which would fill the brain of a twentieth century Pico della Mirandola."--RenA(c) Daumal, Mount Analogue : A Novel Of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures In Mountain Climbing, translated by Roger Shattuck (1952; 1959). The astonishing thing about the "little placards" displayed by Father Sogol, the Professor of Mountaineering in Daumal's novel, is how similar they are to the immense card index maintained by Dobson, upon which he relied when writing his out of print pamphlets. Dobson would have approved, too, the Professor's method of displaying the cards--at least, sometimes. One of the pamphleteer's more irritating characteristics was his inability to settle on the keeping of his cards. At times, like Sogol, he pinned them up on every available surface. Then a frenzy would take him and he would tear them all down and shove them into one of his innumerable cardboard boxes. Marigold Chew reports that Dobson spent hours upon hours arranging the cards when they were in their boxes, ordering and reordering them according to various abstruse cataloguing systems. No sooner was he done than he would once again tip them out of their boxes and pin them up on walls and screens and pinboards and what have you. And of course, all the time he was adding new cards to the collection. Much of Dobson's card collection perished in the Potato Building fire, and ever since researchers have been attempting to reconstruct it. This is probably an impossible task, but that doesn't stop them trying. The reward would be to create a sort of cardboard model of the innards of Dobson's pulsating brain--not to be confused with the cardboard model of the carapace of Dobson's brain which is currently being carted around the globe by a devotee. According to the timetable posted on the Cardboard Brain Of Dobson World Tour website, the cart with its precious contents is en route to one of the -nesses at the moment, either Skeg- or Dunge- or Foul-. There was a flap of controversy some months ago when a previously unheard-of Dobsonist, one Bunko Chongue, claimed to have recreated an accurate cardboard box's worth of index cards. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Dobson's Card Index 11:54 A Magic Trick 22:44 The Boring Dog DOBSON'S CARD INDEX "Along the path, glued to the window panes or hung on the bushes or dangling from the ceiling, so that all free space was put to maximum use, hundreds of little placards were displayed. Each one carried a drawing, a photograph, or an inscription, and the whole constituted a veritable encyclopaedia of what we call 'human knowledge'. A diagram of a plant cell, Mendeleieff's periodic table of the elements, the keys to Chinese writing, a cross-section of the human heart, Lorentz's transformation formulae, each planet and its characteristics, fossil remains of the horse species in series, Mayan hieroglyphics, economic and demographic statistics, musical phrases, samples of the principal plant and animal families, crystal specimens, the ground plan of the Great Pyramid, brain diagrams, logistic equations, phonetic charts of the sounds employed in all languages, maps, genealogies--everything in short which would fill the brain of a twentieth century Pico della Mirandola."--RenA(c) Daumal, Mount Analogue : A Novel Of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures In Mountain Climbing, translated by Roger Shattuck (1952; 1959). The astonishing thing about the "little placards" displayed by Father Sogol, the Professor of Mountaineering in Daumal's novel, is how similar they are to the immense card index maintained by Dobson, upon which he relied when writing his out of print pamphlets. Dobson would have approved, too, the Professor's method of displaying the cards--at least, sometimes. One of the pamphleteer's more irritating characteristics was his inability to settle on the keeping of his cards. At times, like Sogol, he pinned them up on every available surface. Then a frenzy would take him and he would tear them all down and shove them into one of his innumerable cardboard boxes. Marigold Chew reports that Dobson spent hours upon hours arranging the cards when they were in their boxes, ordering and reordering them according to various abstruse cataloguing systems. No sooner was he done than he would once again tip them out of their boxes and pin them up on walls and screens and pinboards and what have you. And of course, all the time he was adding new cards to the collection. Much of Dobson's card collection perished in the Potato Building fire, and ever since researchers have been attempting to reconstruct it. This is probably an impossible task, but that doesn't stop them trying. The reward would be to create a sort of cardboard model of the innards of Dobson's pulsating brain--not to be confused with the cardboard model of the carapace of Dobson's brain which is currently being carted around the globe by a devotee. According to the timetable posted on the Cardboard Brain Of Dobson World Tour website, the cart with its precious contents is en route to one of the -nesses at the moment, either Skeg- or Dunge- or Foul-. There was a flap of controversy some months ago when a previously unheard-of Dobsonist, one Bunko Chongue, claimed to have recreated an accurate cardboard box's worth of index cards. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-1630:52fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-13Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Plutarch Versus Petrarch 06:33 O, Cuxhaven! 13:35 Curtains For Blavelpang, Episode One 17:02 I Told You It Was Unmissable 19:04 Swans On A Towpath PLUTARCH VERSUS PETRARCH The chief reason Plutarch and Petrarch never met in a he-man wrestling bout is a matter of simple chronology. Consider their dates of birth and death, Plutarch (46-120) and Petrarch (1304-1374). More than a thousand years separates their days on our little planet, and none of the fantastic time-travel contraptions dreamed up by sci-fi writers and visionaries has ever been built, at least not in any working form. Had one been made, then Plutarch could have been whizzed into the future, or Petrarch into the past, and, suitably attired, or possibly naked and greased like the wrestlers of certain ancient civilisations, the pair could have entertained the crowds, displaying all sorts of he-man wrestling holds, and grunting, and throwing each other around the ring. If their bout was fought according to a brutal set of rules, someone may have needed to stand by with a pail and a mop, to clean up any shed blood, and someone else, preferably a chirurgeon, would be needed to place splints on any broken bones. It is unlikely that either Plutarch or Petrarch would agree to fight to more genteel wrestling rules, for they would not wish to appear namby-pamby to their thousands upon thousands of supporters. Whose side you come down on depends to a large extent upon your own cranial blips. If you have spent much of your adult life poring over the Parallel Lives and the Moralia, scribbling a lot of notes in the margins, or in a pad, then you will probably cheer on Plutarch and hope that sickening crunching noise you heard is not one of his bones being shattered. On the other hand, if you like nothing better than to curl up in a hammock with a copy of De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae or the Secretum, then you will be backing Petrarch, and wanting to see that pail filled with the blood of Plutarch. Or, if you have wasted your life and never read a word by either of these titans, you may be swayed by, say, Plutarch's beard or by Petrarch's hat. The position you will not want to be in is one of neutrality, for you will see how the adherents of both the "Big P-Archs" are violently partisan, with a lust for gore, kept apart by a fence of iron stakes. Not to join one mob or the other is to miss out on the frenzy of the day, and in any case, you will have to choose to sit in one section of the ringside. And in spite of their screaming and gesticulating and spitting, the mobs do sit, quite neatly even, on their benches or their bucket seats. No one wants to spoil the view of the ring, wherein Plutarch and Petrarch land forearm smashes and trip each other up and stamp about in a great show of he-man grappling. Once you have plumped for your champion, you will want to take out a bet with one of the ringside bookies. Gambling at time-travel wrestling bouts is big, and sometimes ugly, business. Punters' scuffles tend to break out, and rampant bookie-hounds are unleashed. These are fearsome dogs, each one individually cloned from the DNA of Cerberus, or whatever Cerberus' equivalent of DNA is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Plutarch Versus Petrarch 06:33 O, Cuxhaven! 13:35 Curtains For Blavelpang, Episode One 17:02 I Told You It Was Unmissable 19:04 Swans On A Towpath PLUTARCH VERSUS PETRARCH The chief reason Plutarch and Petrarch never met in a he-man wrestling bout is a matter of simple chronology. Consider their dates of birth and death, Plutarch (46-120) and Petrarch (1304-1374). More than a thousand years separates their days on our little planet, and none of the fantastic time-travel contraptions dreamed up by sci-fi writers and visionaries has ever been built, at least not in any working form. Had one been made, then Plutarch could have been whizzed into the future, or Petrarch into the past, and, suitably attired, or possibly naked and greased like the wrestlers of certain ancient civilisations, the pair could have entertained the crowds, displaying all sorts of he-man wrestling holds, and grunting, and throwing each other around the ring. If their bout was fought according to a brutal set of rules, someone may have needed to stand by with a pail and a mop, to clean up any shed blood, and someone else, preferably a chirurgeon, would be needed to place splints on any broken bones. It is unlikely that either Plutarch or Petrarch would agree to fight to more genteel wrestling rules, for they would not wish to appear namby-pamby to their thousands upon thousands of supporters. Whose side you come down on depends to a large extent upon your own cranial blips. If you have spent much of your adult life poring over the Parallel Lives and the Moralia, scribbling a lot of notes in the margins, or in a pad, then you will probably cheer on Plutarch and hope that sickening crunching noise you heard is not one of his bones being shattered. On the other hand, if you like nothing better than to curl up in a hammock with a copy of De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae or the Secretum, then you will be backing Petrarch, and wanting to see that pail filled with the blood of Plutarch. Or, if you have wasted your life and never read a word by either of these titans, you may be swayed by, say, Plutarch's beard or by Petrarch's hat. The position you will not want to be in is one of neutrality, for you will see how the adherents of both the "Big P-Archs" are violently partisan, with a lust for gore, kept apart by a fence of iron stakes. Not to join one mob or the other is to miss out on the frenzy of the day, and in any case, you will have to choose to sit in one section of the ringside. And in spite of their screaming and gesticulating and spitting, the mobs do sit, quite neatly even, on their benches or their bucket seats. No one wants to spoil the view of the ring, wherein Plutarch and Petrarch land forearm smashes and trip each other up and stamp about in a great show of he-man grappling. Once you have plumped for your champion, you will want to take out a bet with one of the ringside bookies. Gambling at time-travel wrestling bouts is big, and sometimes ugly, business. Punters' scuffles tend to break out, and rampant bookie-hounds are unleashed. These are fearsome dogs, each one individually cloned from the DNA of Cerberus, or whatever Cerberus' equivalent of DNA is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-1330:20fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-02Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Confessions Of A Door-To-Door Monkey Salesman 16:13 Sieve Project 23:35 Flamboyance And Palsy CONFESSIONS OF A DOOR-TO-DOOR MONKEY SALESMAN Given its title, one could be forgiven for thinking that Confessions Of A Door-To-Door Monkey Salesman is a 1970s British sex comedy film starring Robin Askwith. In fact, it is a Bildungsroman of fierce intensity. Annoyingly, its author has chosen to remain anonymous. The book begins thus: I was born in a cornfield. The first sound I heard was the shrieking of crows. My mother put me in a burlap sack and dropped me down a well and went on with her rustic drudgery. At the bottom of the well ran an underground stream. I was carried along for miles until the stream surfaced alongside a dilapidated pig farm. The pig farmer's wife was washing potatoes in the stream as I came by in my sack. Never one to waste a good piece of burlap, she plucked the sack from the stream and found me inside it. I was gurgling. We might think this far-fetched, were it not that there are many true tales of babies, and hamsters, surviving journeys fraught with much more peril. The note about the crows is intriguing, reminding us of the old saying, I think from Filthshire, "a child born to the cawing of crows will have too few fingers and too many toes". And what do we learn on page 26? I remember quite clearly the night my adoptive pig farming mother read to me, as a bedtime story, passages from a book describing freakish human anomalies. There was a two-headed boy and a girl with eight kidneys, a giant with yellow lips and a woman with upside-down ears. As she closed the book, at the end of a chapter on people with lobster claws, and I was falling into sleep, she whispered "and you, my cherished tiny one, are a freakish anomaly, with your two thumbs, seven fingers, and eleven toes". I sprang up, wide awake. Until then, I had not noticed my irregularity. Of course, I had counted my own fingers and toes many times, as a way of passing the time on rain-soaked pig farm afternoons. But being very short-sighted, I had never looked at other people's hands and feet with any acuity. Shortly after this realisation, the boy is bought his first pair of spectacles. The prescription is flawed, for the corrective lenses are obtained from an optic rascal, and the world remains blurry and distorted. Our hero can still not see well enough to count the toes and fingers of others unless they shove their hands or feet right in his face, and he is too diffident to ask. But he gains inner strength from his status as an anomaly. I read and reread my mother's freak book, poring over the details, and fantasising that I had more enigmatic qualities than were outwardly apparent. For example, because I was mad for eating nuts, any nuts I could get my hands on, I became convinced that I had the brain of a squirrel. I spent long hours in the woods near the pig farm talking to squirrels in a language I thought they might understand. I trained myself to quiver and tremble and dart about as if I had the high metabolic rate of a squirrel. This behaviour continued until my thirty-first birthday. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Confessions Of A Door-To-Door Monkey Salesman 16:13 Sieve Project 23:35 Flamboyance And Palsy CONFESSIONS OF A DOOR-TO-DOOR MONKEY SALESMAN Given its title, one could be forgiven for thinking that Confessions Of A Door-To-Door Monkey Salesman is a 1970s British sex comedy film starring Robin Askwith. In fact, it is a Bildungsroman of fierce intensity. Annoyingly, its author has chosen to remain anonymous. The book begins thus: I was born in a cornfield. The first sound I heard was the shrieking of crows. My mother put me in a burlap sack and dropped me down a well and went on with her rustic drudgery. At the bottom of the well ran an underground stream. I was carried along for miles until the stream surfaced alongside a dilapidated pig farm. The pig farmer's wife was washing potatoes in the stream as I came by in my sack. Never one to waste a good piece of burlap, she plucked the sack from the stream and found me inside it. I was gurgling. We might think this far-fetched, were it not that there are many true tales of babies, and hamsters, surviving journeys fraught with much more peril. The note about the crows is intriguing, reminding us of the old saying, I think from Filthshire, "a child born to the cawing of crows will have too few fingers and too many toes". And what do we learn on page 26? I remember quite clearly the night my adoptive pig farming mother read to me, as a bedtime story, passages from a book describing freakish human anomalies. There was a two-headed boy and a girl with eight kidneys, a giant with yellow lips and a woman with upside-down ears. As she closed the book, at the end of a chapter on people with lobster claws, and I was falling into sleep, she whispered "and you, my cherished tiny one, are a freakish anomaly, with your two thumbs, seven fingers, and eleven toes". I sprang up, wide awake. Until then, I had not noticed my irregularity. Of course, I had counted my own fingers and toes many times, as a way of passing the time on rain-soaked pig farm afternoons. But being very short-sighted, I had never looked at other people's hands and feet with any acuity. Shortly after this realisation, the boy is bought his first pair of spectacles. The prescription is flawed, for the corrective lenses are obtained from an optic rascal, and the world remains blurry and distorted. Our hero can still not see well enough to count the toes and fingers of others unless they shove their hands or feet right in his face, and he is too diffident to ask. But he gains inner strength from his status as an anomaly. I read and reread my mother's freak book, poring over the details, and fantasising that I had more enigmatic qualities than were outwardly apparent. For example, because I was mad for eating nuts, any nuts I could get my hands on, I became convinced that I had the brain of a squirrel. I spent long hours in the woods near the pig farm talking to squirrels in a language I thought they might understand. I trained myself to quiver and tremble and dart about as if I had the high metabolic rate of a squirrel. This behaviour continued until my thirty-first birthday. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-04-0229:57fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-26Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Pots And Potters 10:54 The Branch Line Less Travelled 19:44 Prudence Foxglove Sunday Schools POTS AND POTTERS It occurred to me the other day that I have neglected the subject of pots and potters. That is about to change, for I have been immersing myself in the study of the pots and potters of Sibodnedwab, and am so enthralled that I cannot actually think about anything else. You are more likely to have heard of Sibodnedwab in the context of blebs and pustules than potters and pots. "Sibodnedwab Pimple" is the common name for a particularly distressing dermatological condition, so called because the medico boffin who first identified it was, at the time, tackling an outbreak in and around that brickish township. It is a big and unsightly pimple, often found erupting on the forehead, where it throbs and glows, like a third eye. Many Sibodnedwab potters show the scars of past pimpledom, and thus are sometimes known as the Pimple Potters. Anglepoise refers to them as such in his magisterial but unpublished survey of their pots and fragments. That so many Sibodnedwab potters' pots survive only as shards and fragments is due to the ferocious bombardment of the township by unhinged aggressors. Every day for the past forty years, the township has been subjected to attack. Untold tons of pebbles have been catapulted from outwith its walls, and every so often a flock of trained swallows flies over, dropping other pebbles. So many Sibodnedwab pots have been smashed that the historic township glue factory cannot manufacture enough glue to gum them all back together. The pebbleers are motivated by fear of the Sibodnedwab Pimple, which they mistakenly believe is contagious. They are also said to hold that the pimple actually is a third eye, and that it makes visible rays and beams and lights of such horror that they drive men mad. This is of course a primitive superstition, but then the pebbleers are a primitive and stupid people, not one of whom has ever had the wit to fashion a pot. They cannot even knead dough with any finesse. The baps and buns they bake to peddle by the sides of major traffic routes are not of a consistency or munchiness to tempt the major traffic route user who has made the error of purchasing a bagful in the past. Anglepoise rightly laments the fragmentary state of much Sibodnedwab pottery, but that does not stop him cataloguing it, nor singing the praises of the pimpled potters. He rescues from obscurity some of the key figures, among them Bink, Bunk, Snop, Tegg, Wimshurst, Gock, Flum, Higg, Bleg, Zont, De Havilland, Shud, Muff, Tung, Cuck, Weck, Bipp, Fung, Rack, Ick, Snit, Puck, Cherrybib, Belch, Cracker, Font, Flip, Sunk, Bark, Dodd, Wope, Jamm, Pulp, Cousins and Lamonto. Not all of them were literally pimpled. Dodd, for example, was born with a head upon which pimples and pustules and other blebs never grew. But then, he was something of a medical anomaly in other ways, ways that confounded his carers at the Home for Startling Young Potters where he spent his childhood. All that remains of Dodd's work is a single shard, but what a shard it is! Anglepoise gives it due attention, over twenty pages of his unpublished manuscript, and tries heroically to extrapolate from the shard a vision of the whole pot. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Pots And Potters 10:54 The Branch Line Less Travelled 19:44 Prudence Foxglove Sunday Schools POTS AND POTTERS It occurred to me the other day that I have neglected the subject of pots and potters. That is about to change, for I have been immersing myself in the study of the pots and potters of Sibodnedwab, and am so enthralled that I cannot actually think about anything else. You are more likely to have heard of Sibodnedwab in the context of blebs and pustules than potters and pots. "Sibodnedwab Pimple" is the common name for a particularly distressing dermatological condition, so called because the medico boffin who first identified it was, at the time, tackling an outbreak in and around that brickish township. It is a big and unsightly pimple, often found erupting on the forehead, where it throbs and glows, like a third eye. Many Sibodnedwab potters show the scars of past pimpledom, and thus are sometimes known as the Pimple Potters. Anglepoise refers to them as such in his magisterial but unpublished survey of their pots and fragments. That so many Sibodnedwab potters' pots survive only as shards and fragments is due to the ferocious bombardment of the township by unhinged aggressors. Every day for the past forty years, the township has been subjected to attack. Untold tons of pebbles have been catapulted from outwith its walls, and every so often a flock of trained swallows flies over, dropping other pebbles. So many Sibodnedwab pots have been smashed that the historic township glue factory cannot manufacture enough glue to gum them all back together. The pebbleers are motivated by fear of the Sibodnedwab Pimple, which they mistakenly believe is contagious. They are also said to hold that the pimple actually is a third eye, and that it makes visible rays and beams and lights of such horror that they drive men mad. This is of course a primitive superstition, but then the pebbleers are a primitive and stupid people, not one of whom has ever had the wit to fashion a pot. They cannot even knead dough with any finesse. The baps and buns they bake to peddle by the sides of major traffic routes are not of a consistency or munchiness to tempt the major traffic route user who has made the error of purchasing a bagful in the past. Anglepoise rightly laments the fragmentary state of much Sibodnedwab pottery, but that does not stop him cataloguing it, nor singing the praises of the pimpled potters. He rescues from obscurity some of the key figures, among them Bink, Bunk, Snop, Tegg, Wimshurst, Gock, Flum, Higg, Bleg, Zont, De Havilland, Shud, Muff, Tung, Cuck, Weck, Bipp, Fung, Rack, Ick, Snit, Puck, Cherrybib, Belch, Cracker, Font, Flip, Sunk, Bark, Dodd, Wope, Jamm, Pulp, Cousins and Lamonto. Not all of them were literally pimpled. Dodd, for example, was born with a head upon which pimples and pustules and other blebs never grew. But then, he was something of a medical anomaly in other ways, ways that confounded his carers at the Home for Startling Young Potters where he spent his childhood. All that remains of Dodd's work is a single shard, but what a shard it is! Anglepoise gives it due attention, over twenty pages of his unpublished manuscript, and tries heroically to extrapolate from the shard a vision of the whole pot. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-2629:23fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-19Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Boiled Black Broth And Cornets 09:25 Boiling My Lady Kent's Pudding 13:56 Blodgett Boils My Lady Kent's Pudding 20:19 My Pellets 26:23 Elks In Snow BOILED BLACK BROTH AND CORNETS I paid a visit to my friend Becke Beiderbix in her fortress in the mountains. We had known each other since childhood, growing up on a postwar housing estate, a workaday world of compactness and convention. But Becke was always a singleminded girl who followed her own strange star, and while the rest of us went off to polytechnics and office jobs and became fodder for a peculiarly dull-witted type of English fiction, Becke decamped to the mountains and built herself a fortress with her bare hands. I had no idea where she had picked up the skills to do this, and in truth, when I visited I was astonished to find how solid and immense and impregnable her fortress appeared, a massive edifice perched upon a bluff, as forbidding in its aspect as the Schloss Adler in Where Eagles Dare, but without the Nazi connotations, for Becke was the most apolitical person I have ever known. When she greeted me at the gate, she was holding a cornet in her hand. "Hello, Dennis," she said, planting a peck on my cheek, "As you can see I have taken up the cornet, like my near-namesake Bix Beiderbecke, the original young man with a horn, and perhaps the greatest jazzman of the nineteen-twenties." "From fortress-building to cornet-playing, you never cease to amaze me, Becke," I replied, dumping my weekend luggage in a corner of the grim brickish vestibule. "As you are well aware, I follow my own strange star," she said, steering me into the canteen of the fortress where she ladled soup out of a tureen into a pair of bowls. "This is my own home-made soup," she announced, "For in addition to building the fortress and learning the cornet I have taken a correspondence course in devising original soup recipes. In your bowl you have what I dubbed Becke Beiderbix's Boiled Black Broth, in which every single ingredient begins with the letter B. As you can see, it is a black soup, of a black so black that if you stare at it, instead of spooning it into your mouth, you will become entranced, pretty much like a voodoo zombie-person, and be entirely within my power." "Then I shall shut my eyes while I drain the bowl, Becke," I said. "Yes, I was about to recommend you do just that, Dennis," she replied. The soup proved to be bland and without even a hint of taste, but it warmed my innards and stopped the gurgling in my belly. "Now that your belly has stopped gurgling, Dennis, I shall take you to see my workshop," said Becke, and I followed her into the bowels of the fortress, to a room with a thousand padlocks and reinforced walls and sputtering candles. I half-expected to see a gibbering hunchback named Mungo, but it seemed Becke worked without assistance. "Well now," I said, "You have many towering piles of metal tapping machine directories from all around the world, much thumbed through and dog-eared, as if you have been poring over them with terrific diligence, Becke". "That I have, Dennis," she replied, "It is drudgery to be sure, but necessary to the success of my project." Of course, I asked her what the project was, and her reply shocked me to the marrow. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Boiled Black Broth And Cornets 09:25 Boiling My Lady Kent's Pudding 13:56 Blodgett Boils My Lady Kent's Pudding 20:19 My Pellets 26:23 Elks In Snow BOILED BLACK BROTH AND CORNETS I paid a visit to my friend Becke Beiderbix in her fortress in the mountains. We had known each other since childhood, growing up on a postwar housing estate, a workaday world of compactness and convention. But Becke was always a singleminded girl who followed her own strange star, and while the rest of us went off to polytechnics and office jobs and became fodder for a peculiarly dull-witted type of English fiction, Becke decamped to the mountains and built herself a fortress with her bare hands. I had no idea where she had picked up the skills to do this, and in truth, when I visited I was astonished to find how solid and immense and impregnable her fortress appeared, a massive edifice perched upon a bluff, as forbidding in its aspect as the Schloss Adler in Where Eagles Dare, but without the Nazi connotations, for Becke was the most apolitical person I have ever known. When she greeted me at the gate, she was holding a cornet in her hand. "Hello, Dennis," she said, planting a peck on my cheek, "As you can see I have taken up the cornet, like my near-namesake Bix Beiderbecke, the original young man with a horn, and perhaps the greatest jazzman of the nineteen-twenties." "From fortress-building to cornet-playing, you never cease to amaze me, Becke," I replied, dumping my weekend luggage in a corner of the grim brickish vestibule. "As you are well aware, I follow my own strange star," she said, steering me into the canteen of the fortress where she ladled soup out of a tureen into a pair of bowls. "This is my own home-made soup," she announced, "For in addition to building the fortress and learning the cornet I have taken a correspondence course in devising original soup recipes. In your bowl you have what I dubbed Becke Beiderbix's Boiled Black Broth, in which every single ingredient begins with the letter B. As you can see, it is a black soup, of a black so black that if you stare at it, instead of spooning it into your mouth, you will become entranced, pretty much like a voodoo zombie-person, and be entirely within my power." "Then I shall shut my eyes while I drain the bowl, Becke," I said. "Yes, I was about to recommend you do just that, Dennis," she replied. The soup proved to be bland and without even a hint of taste, but it warmed my innards and stopped the gurgling in my belly. "Now that your belly has stopped gurgling, Dennis, I shall take you to see my workshop," said Becke, and I followed her into the bowels of the fortress, to a room with a thousand padlocks and reinforced walls and sputtering candles. I half-expected to see a gibbering hunchback named Mungo, but it seemed Becke worked without assistance. "Well now," I said, "You have many towering piles of metal tapping machine directories from all around the world, much thumbed through and dog-eared, as if you have been poring over them with terrific diligence, Becke". "That I have, Dennis," she replied, "It is drudgery to be sure, but necessary to the success of my project." Of course, I asked her what the project was, and her reply shocked me to the marrow. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-1929:45fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-12Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Pact And Retort 05:40 Banisters Of Crepe Paper And Cow Gum 07:49 A Warning To Cartographers 07:53 Banisters Of Crepe Paper And Cow Gum 09:27 By Hot Air Balloon To Hoon 11:37 A Life Dismantled Of Muffins 14:22 My Favourite Pigsty 18:53 Wilf 21:51 Detective Story PACT AND RETORT Between the Gubbinses and the Bevellings there has been, since time immemorial, a blood feud. But only just. In English law, time immemorial is defined as any date before the third of September 1189, and the incident which prompted the blood feud happened on the evening of the second of September in that tempestuous year. It was, we are told, an altercation, next to a pond, and involved a Gubbins, a Bevelling, and a cormorant, or possibly two cormorants. Blood was shed, but to this day arguments persist about whether the blood was that of the Gubbins or of the Bevelling, or both, or of the cormorant, or cormorants. Nigh on a thousand years is not a particularly long time for a properly constituted vendetta. By definition, intergenerational hatred and vengeance takes many generations to take root. By some accounts, it was only in the fourteenth century that members of both the Gubbins and Bevelling clans first spoke of their enmity in terms of a blood feud. Before then, it was seen as a bit of a spat, or whatever word people of those distant times used for a spat. By then, of course, cormorants were no longer the casus belli. It was simply that, if you were born a Gubbins, you hated the Bevellings, and vice versa. Any members of Bournemouth Council who are reading this piece, and are offended by my use of Latin in the last two sentences, can go and boil their own heads. The boiling of heads, incidentally, was a favoured tactic of both parties in the blood feud, as was the slicing off of limbs, the evisceration of infants, and the impalement upon iron spikes of any Gubbins wandering absent-mindedly into Bevelling territory, or, again, vice versa. Those were gore-splattered times to be sure. Indeed, so blood-drenched had the feud become by the sixteenth century that certain figures in both clans, of a modernist and civilizing cast of mind, decided to strike a pact. Such an initiative was unpopular with the mass of their clansfolk, for whom the feud was a mere fact of nature, like a beating heart or a hooting owl or a drooling pauper. But the modernisers dismissed their protests, as modernisers always do, from that day to this, in all walks of life, and proceeded to sneak about in the gloom, working away to seal the pact. Now at this time, the Gubbinses were, like the Parkinson family in H G Wells's 1933 novel The Bulpington Of Blup, a sandwich-inventing clan, while the Bevellings were, like Theodore Bulpington's Aunt Amanda, the life and soul of a bandage-making organisation in the Town Hall. I hasten to add that it was not Bournemouth Town Hall, which has today become a Latin-free bastion of ignorance. Actually, I am not sure which Town Hall it was, for both the Gubbinses and the Bevellings had fanned out across the land in the centuries since their vendetta began, next to a pond, on that September evening in 1189. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Pact And Retort 05:40 Banisters Of Crepe Paper And Cow Gum 07:49 A Warning To Cartographers 07:53 Banisters Of Crepe Paper And Cow Gum 09:27 By Hot Air Balloon To Hoon 11:37 A Life Dismantled Of Muffins 14:22 My Favourite Pigsty 18:53 Wilf 21:51 Detective Story PACT AND RETORT Between the Gubbinses and the Bevellings there has been, since time immemorial, a blood feud. But only just. In English law, time immemorial is defined as any date before the third of September 1189, and the incident which prompted the blood feud happened on the evening of the second of September in that tempestuous year. It was, we are told, an altercation, next to a pond, and involved a Gubbins, a Bevelling, and a cormorant, or possibly two cormorants. Blood was shed, but to this day arguments persist about whether the blood was that of the Gubbins or of the Bevelling, or both, or of the cormorant, or cormorants. Nigh on a thousand years is not a particularly long time for a properly constituted vendetta. By definition, intergenerational hatred and vengeance takes many generations to take root. By some accounts, it was only in the fourteenth century that members of both the Gubbins and Bevelling clans first spoke of their enmity in terms of a blood feud. Before then, it was seen as a bit of a spat, or whatever word people of those distant times used for a spat. By then, of course, cormorants were no longer the casus belli. It was simply that, if you were born a Gubbins, you hated the Bevellings, and vice versa. Any members of Bournemouth Council who are reading this piece, and are offended by my use of Latin in the last two sentences, can go and boil their own heads. The boiling of heads, incidentally, was a favoured tactic of both parties in the blood feud, as was the slicing off of limbs, the evisceration of infants, and the impalement upon iron spikes of any Gubbins wandering absent-mindedly into Bevelling territory, or, again, vice versa. Those were gore-splattered times to be sure. Indeed, so blood-drenched had the feud become by the sixteenth century that certain figures in both clans, of a modernist and civilizing cast of mind, decided to strike a pact. Such an initiative was unpopular with the mass of their clansfolk, for whom the feud was a mere fact of nature, like a beating heart or a hooting owl or a drooling pauper. But the modernisers dismissed their protests, as modernisers always do, from that day to this, in all walks of life, and proceeded to sneak about in the gloom, working away to seal the pact. Now at this time, the Gubbinses were, like the Parkinson family in H G Wells's 1933 novel The Bulpington Of Blup, a sandwich-inventing clan, while the Bevellings were, like Theodore Bulpington's Aunt Amanda, the life and soul of a bandage-making organisation in the Town Hall. I hasten to add that it was not Bournemouth Town Hall, which has today become a Latin-free bastion of ignorance. Actually, I am not sure which Town Hall it was, for both the Gubbinses and the Bevellings had fanned out across the land in the centuries since their vendetta began, next to a pond, on that September evening in 1189. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-1230:14fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-05Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Mr Bewg's Reference 09:49 The Lost Lozenge 18:48 Dinghy Maintenance 24:33 Blind Men And Ostriches 26:40 The Fishmongers' Prayer MR BEWG'S REFERENCE Here is a slightly revised version of a very old story, which first appeared in Twitching And Shattered two decades ago. I'm posting it here today for no reason other than mere whim. Dear Mr Corncrake, Re : MR B BEWG, 6 DISMAL TERRACE, HOON Thank you for your letter of 20th July regarding the above-named; I am happy to provide him with a reference. I have known Mr Bewg for ten years, ever since he took up the position of scrivener, dogsbody and wretch in my vast, gloomy factory perched on the hillside next to the lunatic asylum. At the time I engaged Mr Bewg I suspected that he had some connection with the latter institution, and in the decade since I have had no reason to alter my opinion. You ask me to comment on my impression of Mr Bewg's "suitability for the job". Forgive me if I find this difficult. I do not wish to do violence to our native language, but to use the word "suitability" in conjunction with Mr Bewg is to mock the Queen's English. Indeed, it is to make a mockery of sense itself. My problems with Mr Bewg began on his very first morning in my employ. To settle him in, I had instructed him to carry out a menial task, removing bits of goo from the interior walls of a vat. To facilitate his progress, he was supplied with a variety of tools, including a pencil-sharpener, a pin-cushion, and a decidedly ferocious blowtorch. No sooner had I turned my back than Mr Bewg became embroiled in a tussle with my pet panther, which--crazed with hunger--managed to slip its leash and embed its razor-sharp fangs in his left leg. For this impertinence I had no option but to dock Mr Bewg his first month's wages. It was not a good start, but I had had many a ne'er-do-well working for me in the past, and believed that I could yet mould Mr Bewg into a marginally less repellent specimen of human dregs. To this end, I assigned him to work in the filthiest, dankest wing of the factory, where he was expected to spend all day dragging sacks full of huge iron lumps backwards and forwards in infested tunnels for no apparent purpose. So ineptly did Mr Bewg execute his duties that I was forced to withhold his pay for a further year. I wrung my hands in frustration, but the man was impossible. Given a simple task, he would be utterly incapable of completing it with the requisite speed, good humour and fawning obeisance that one expects. To take just one example: Mr Bewg failed to budge one particularly heavy sack, containing a score of medium-sized anvils, a single inch, despite being given all of five minutes to drag it two hundred yards along a stinking tunnel in which small bonfires of sulphur had been ignited moments before. I set a wolfhound yapping at his heels, but to no avail. The man was purely and simply work-shy. But I am a fair employer, and I had no wish to consign him to the scrapheap of the unemployable and useless. Instead, I agreed with Mr Bewg that he could embark upon a training scheme. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Mr Bewg's Reference 09:49 The Lost Lozenge 18:48 Dinghy Maintenance 24:33 Blind Men And Ostriches 26:40 The Fishmongers' Prayer MR BEWG'S REFERENCE Here is a slightly revised version of a very old story, which first appeared in Twitching And Shattered two decades ago. I'm posting it here today for no reason other than mere whim. Dear Mr Corncrake, Re : MR B BEWG, 6 DISMAL TERRACE, HOON Thank you for your letter of 20th July regarding the above-named; I am happy to provide him with a reference. I have known Mr Bewg for ten years, ever since he took up the position of scrivener, dogsbody and wretch in my vast, gloomy factory perched on the hillside next to the lunatic asylum. At the time I engaged Mr Bewg I suspected that he had some connection with the latter institution, and in the decade since I have had no reason to alter my opinion. You ask me to comment on my impression of Mr Bewg's "suitability for the job". Forgive me if I find this difficult. I do not wish to do violence to our native language, but to use the word "suitability" in conjunction with Mr Bewg is to mock the Queen's English. Indeed, it is to make a mockery of sense itself. My problems with Mr Bewg began on his very first morning in my employ. To settle him in, I had instructed him to carry out a menial task, removing bits of goo from the interior walls of a vat. To facilitate his progress, he was supplied with a variety of tools, including a pencil-sharpener, a pin-cushion, and a decidedly ferocious blowtorch. No sooner had I turned my back than Mr Bewg became embroiled in a tussle with my pet panther, which--crazed with hunger--managed to slip its leash and embed its razor-sharp fangs in his left leg. For this impertinence I had no option but to dock Mr Bewg his first month's wages. It was not a good start, but I had had many a ne'er-do-well working for me in the past, and believed that I could yet mould Mr Bewg into a marginally less repellent specimen of human dregs. To this end, I assigned him to work in the filthiest, dankest wing of the factory, where he was expected to spend all day dragging sacks full of huge iron lumps backwards and forwards in infested tunnels for no apparent purpose. So ineptly did Mr Bewg execute his duties that I was forced to withhold his pay for a further year. I wrung my hands in frustration, but the man was impossible. Given a simple task, he would be utterly incapable of completing it with the requisite speed, good humour and fawning obeisance that one expects. To take just one example: Mr Bewg failed to budge one particularly heavy sack, containing a score of medium-sized anvils, a single inch, despite being given all of five minutes to drag it two hundred yards along a stinking tunnel in which small bonfires of sulphur had been ignited moments before. I set a wolfhound yapping at his heels, but to no avail. The man was purely and simply work-shy. But I am a fair employer, and I had no wish to consign him to the scrapheap of the unemployable and useless. Instead, I agreed with Mr Bewg that he could embark upon a training scheme. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-03-0529:32fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-02-26Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 Tiny Enid And The Dustbin Of History 05:50 Meetings With Remarkable Owls 14:57 A Country Market 17:17 Potty Baron 29:46 Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From the Stars, Chapter Twelve TINY ENID AND THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY One misty morning, Tiny Enid was reading the latest issue of her favourite comic, The Ipsy Pipsy Woo, when, in a speech bubble hovering over the head of a character called the Very Reverend Prebendary Septimus Widdecombe, she came upon the words "the dustbin of history". Specifically, she learned that every now and then there were people or institutions or events that were consigned to this dustbin. Tiny Enid thought this was a very sad state of affairs, but she was not a mawkish weepy kind of girl, so she did not sob into a napkin. A helpful footnote in the comic explained that the existence of the dustbin was first revealed by a beardy bespectacled Russian revolutionary who ended up with an ice-pick in his head. Such a gruesome fate did not bother Tiny Enid one iota, for she could herself be ruthless as occasion demanded. She was alarmed, however, to read that the dustbin might not be a dustbin but a mistranslation of ash heap. If that which was consigned to it was incinerated, she reasoned that it would be beyond salvage. For already, you see, being the impetuous infant adventuress she was, Tiny Enid had decided to find the location of the dustbin of history and to rescue its contents. This seemed exactly the kind of mission for a plucky youngster who had been twiddling her thumbs in idleness for an entire fortnight, without a single daring escapade to speak of. Casting The Ipsy Pipsy Woo aside, Tiny Enid took down an atlas from the bookcase. It was such a huge atlas that it probably weighed more than she did, but she managed to slam it down on to her lectern. The lectern was a full size one, donated to Tiny Enid by a grateful vicar whom she had rescued from the jaws of death in the jungle where he had a bit part in a Werner Herzog film, and she had to saw off part of the base to make it just the right height for her diminutive stature. Deciding not to worry overmuch about whether the dustbin was actually an ash heap, she skimmed hurriedly through the atlas looking for places where a pretty large dustbin or ash heap might be concealed. Although neither the speech bubble nor the footnote in her comic suggested that the dustbin of history was hidden away somewhere, Tiny Enid intuitively felt that must be the case, and she often relied on her intuition, which, as she explained to those who asked her, was not feminine intuition so much as heroic club-footed infant intuition, a different kind of intuition entirely, and far more accurate. It was, after all, her intuition which led the brave tot to track down the vicar on location in the jungle with Werner Herzog rather than, say, elsewhere with a director such as Jean Luc Godard or Guy Ritchie. Pinpointing a large, flat, windy and uninhabited area on one of the continents, Tiny Enid packed her pippy bag with supplies and vroomed off in her jalopy towards the aerodrome, terrifying geese and ducks and roadside mendicants as she drove pell-mell along the winding country lanes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-02-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 Tiny Enid And The Dustbin Of History 05:50 Meetings With Remarkable Owls 14:57 A Country Market 17:17 Potty Baron 29:46 Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From the Stars, Chapter Twelve TINY ENID AND THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY One misty morning, Tiny Enid was reading the latest issue of her favourite comic, The Ipsy Pipsy Woo, when, in a speech bubble hovering over the head of a character called the Very Reverend Prebendary Septimus Widdecombe, she came upon the words "the dustbin of history". Specifically, she learned that every now and then there were people or institutions or events that were consigned to this dustbin. Tiny Enid thought this was a very sad state of affairs, but she was not a mawkish weepy kind of girl, so she did not sob into a napkin. A helpful footnote in the comic explained that the existence of the dustbin was first revealed by a beardy bespectacled Russian revolutionary who ended up with an ice-pick in his head. Such a gruesome fate did not bother Tiny Enid one iota, for she could herself be ruthless as occasion demanded. She was alarmed, however, to read that the dustbin might not be a dustbin but a mistranslation of ash heap. If that which was consigned to it was incinerated, she reasoned that it would be beyond salvage. For already, you see, being the impetuous infant adventuress she was, Tiny Enid had decided to find the location of the dustbin of history and to rescue its contents. This seemed exactly the kind of mission for a plucky youngster who had been twiddling her thumbs in idleness for an entire fortnight, without a single daring escapade to speak of. Casting The Ipsy Pipsy Woo aside, Tiny Enid took down an atlas from the bookcase. It was such a huge atlas that it probably weighed more than she did, but she managed to slam it down on to her lectern. The lectern was a full size one, donated to Tiny Enid by a grateful vicar whom she had rescued from the jaws of death in the jungle where he had a bit part in a Werner Herzog film, and she had to saw off part of the base to make it just the right height for her diminutive stature. Deciding not to worry overmuch about whether the dustbin was actually an ash heap, she skimmed hurriedly through the atlas looking for places where a pretty large dustbin or ash heap might be concealed. Although neither the speech bubble nor the footnote in her comic suggested that the dustbin of history was hidden away somewhere, Tiny Enid intuitively felt that must be the case, and she often relied on her intuition, which, as she explained to those who asked her, was not feminine intuition so much as heroic club-footed infant intuition, a different kind of intuition entirely, and far more accurate. It was, after all, her intuition which led the brave tot to track down the vicar on location in the jungle with Werner Herzog rather than, say, elsewhere with a director such as Jean Luc Godard or Guy Ritchie. Pinpointing a large, flat, windy and uninhabited area on one of the continents, Tiny Enid packed her pippy bag with supplies and vroomed off in her jalopy towards the aerodrome, terrifying geese and ducks and roadside mendicants as she drove pell-mell along the winding country lanes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-02-2629:52fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-02-19Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 The Puckington Tunnels 07:34 Puckington Postscript 12:54 Pelican 16:35 Tiny Enid And The Dustbin Of History THE PUCKINGTON TUNNELS It was a big fort, with delightful crenellations, and many flags, and it had the shiniest portcullis outside of Navarre. This was Fort Hoity, sister fort of Fort Toity, and an extremely interesting fort in its own right. For underneath Fort Hoity ran the Puckington Tunnels, those tunnels you may have come across in your reading, if, that is, you have been reading about tunnelling systems as a change from your usual diet of chicklit, gitlit, and zadiesmithlit. There is a regrettable temptation to neglect the literature of tunnels and to be sidetracked by less meaty subject matter, by ephemera and winsomeness and the outpourings of knaves. I am not immune to such distractions myself, and in truth I ought to have done a lot more tunnely reading than I have, especially once I put my mind to writing about the Puckington Tunnels. There are huge chasms in my knowledge, and if I faced a quiz on the subject I suspect my score would be embarrassing. Perhaps not so bad as that of clueless David Lammy--unbelievably, the government minister for Higher Education--whose recent appearance on the television show Mastermind elicited such delights as his belief that Henry VII succeeded to the throne after Henry VIII, and that the surname of the Nobel prizewinning scientists Pierre and Marie was Antoinette. The nitwit was not asked any questions about tunnels, but we may safely assume he would have fluffed them. Speaking of fluff, there is a surprising amount of it in certain sections of the Puckington Tunnels. Layers, or perhaps clouds, of dust would be explicable, but it is difficult to account for the incredible fluffiness to be found underneath Fort Hoity. After all, there is not a speck of fluff in either Fort Hoity itself or in Fort Toity, and though both forts contain their fair share of dust and orts and scum and grease-stains, all fluffiness has been eradicated, forever and ever, yea, e'en unto the Last Trump, by the installation of modern fluff obliteration technology developed by the computer giant Macrohard(tm). Yet take the staircase down from the Fort Hoity broom cupboard and enter the Puckington Tunnels, take a left and a right and a second left, and you will be in the section of tunnel dubbed the Fluffy Zone by those in the know. There are spits and spots of fluff elsewhere in the system, but in this part it is quite simply overwhelming. Nobody knows why. Nor does anybody know why the tunnels were dug in the first place. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-02-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 The Puckington Tunnels 07:34 Puckington Postscript 12:54 Pelican 16:35 Tiny Enid And The Dustbin Of History THE PUCKINGTON TUNNELS It was a big fort, with delightful crenellations, and many flags, and it had the shiniest portcullis outside of Navarre. This was Fort Hoity, sister fort of Fort Toity, and an extremely interesting fort in its own right. For underneath Fort Hoity ran the Puckington Tunnels, those tunnels you may have come across in your reading, if, that is, you have been reading about tunnelling systems as a change from your usual diet of chicklit, gitlit, and zadiesmithlit. There is a regrettable temptation to neglect the literature of tunnels and to be sidetracked by less meaty subject matter, by ephemera and winsomeness and the outpourings of knaves. I am not immune to such distractions myself, and in truth I ought to have done a lot more tunnely reading than I have, especially once I put my mind to writing about the Puckington Tunnels. There are huge chasms in my knowledge, and if I faced a quiz on the subject I suspect my score would be embarrassing. Perhaps not so bad as that of clueless David Lammy--unbelievably, the government minister for Higher Education--whose recent appearance on the television show Mastermind elicited such delights as his belief that Henry VII succeeded to the throne after Henry VIII, and that the surname of the Nobel prizewinning scientists Pierre and Marie was Antoinette. The nitwit was not asked any questions about tunnels, but we may safely assume he would have fluffed them. Speaking of fluff, there is a surprising amount of it in certain sections of the Puckington Tunnels. Layers, or perhaps clouds, of dust would be explicable, but it is difficult to account for the incredible fluffiness to be found underneath Fort Hoity. After all, there is not a speck of fluff in either Fort Hoity itself or in Fort Toity, and though both forts contain their fair share of dust and orts and scum and grease-stains, all fluffiness has been eradicated, forever and ever, yea, e'en unto the Last Trump, by the installation of modern fluff obliteration technology developed by the computer giant Macrohard(tm). Yet take the staircase down from the Fort Hoity broom cupboard and enter the Puckington Tunnels, take a left and a right and a second left, and you will be in the section of tunnel dubbed the Fluffy Zone by those in the know. There are spits and spots of fluff elsewhere in the system, but in this part it is quite simply overwhelming. Nobody knows why. Nor does anybody know why the tunnels were dug in the first place. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-02-1929:50fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-02-12Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Inky Puck Stampings 10:46 Two Jaunts With Uncle Lars 17:28 The Cosmological Blurtings 27:26 Hooting Yard On Witter INKY PUCK STAMPINGS In his later years, Blodgett amassed a collection of inky puck stampings, kept in an album bound in the starch-stiffened fleece of a lamb. The fleece was spotted with unexplained bloodstains which Blodgett made no attempt to remove. He could have used a patent bloodstain eradication spray goo as manufactured by Don Federico's Royal And Ancient Portugese Spray And Paste Company, but he chose not to. Boffins in a lab were recently given the opportunity to scrape minuscule quantities of the blood off the binding. When they subjected it to tests, they were able positively to identify it as the blood of a fruitbat. Curious indeed, but no more curious than much else about Blodgett's later years. In his new television series The Pitiful Whimpering Of A Soul In Torment, celebrity historian Simon Sebag Stimmungbag examines in detail the final decade of Blodgett's life, and unearths some starling facts. I'm sorry, that should read startling facts, although among them are a number of Blodgett-starling collisions. If it seems unlikely that a man could collide with a starling on repeated occasions, as per being struck by lightning, Stimmungbag has at his fingertips a mass of convincing evidence, including ornithological records, accident reports, and ticket stubs from showbiz bird displays. He also gives us a remarkable account of the time Blodgett decamped to a loggia, neglected to keep a log of his stay there, and upon returning home spent some six weeks dementedly chopping logs with a very sharp axe, despite being over eighty years old. He then carted the entire supply of chopped-up logs back to the loggia, dumped them outside the door, and kept a log in his journal of their gradual depradation through theft and rot. There are other distinctively Blodgettesque glimpses: hen harrying, bricks on the brain, tormented scribblings on parchment regarding soup, starling collisions, misted glass obscuring a decisively important bus timetable, things chewed and spat out, intimations of mortality, imitations of Christ, intimacy with a mute milkmaid, delusional vampires, card games, ditch digging, reading aloud A Fiery Flying Roll by Abiezer Coppe to an audience of stunned potters, other potters encountered in hospital corridors, smashed-up lobster pots, a zest for crumpled things... the historian takes us through it all, at a pace sometimes gentle and at other times hectic, and occasionally incomprehensible unless one is already familiar with the material. That is Stimmungbag's way, as viewers have come to expect from his previous documentaries on topics such as collisions in the sky and on starlings. For most of us, though, whether or not we are students of Blodgett, it is the attention paid to the collection of inky puck stampings that is truly revelatory. Indeed, I had no idea that Blodgett maintained such a collection, nor that he kept it with such uncharacteristic care in a starch-stiffened lamb's-fleece-bound album stained with the blood of a fruitbat. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-02-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Inky Puck Stampings 10:46 Two Jaunts With Uncle Lars 17:28 The Cosmological Blurtings 27:26 Hooting Yard On Witter INKY PUCK STAMPINGS In his later years, Blodgett amassed a collection of inky puck stampings, kept in an album bound in the starch-stiffened fleece of a lamb. The fleece was spotted with unexplained bloodstains which Blodgett made no attempt to remove. He could have used a patent bloodstain eradication spray goo as manufactured by Don Federico's Royal And Ancient Portugese Spray And Paste Company, but he chose not to. Boffins in a lab were recently given the opportunity to scrape minuscule quantities of the blood off the binding. When they subjected it to tests, they were able positively to identify it as the blood of a fruitbat. Curious indeed, but no more curious than much else about Blodgett's later years. In his new television series The Pitiful Whimpering Of A Soul In Torment, celebrity historian Simon Sebag Stimmungbag examines in detail the final decade of Blodgett's life, and unearths some starling facts. I'm sorry, that should read startling facts, although among them are a number of Blodgett-starling collisions. If it seems unlikely that a man could collide with a starling on repeated occasions, as per being struck by lightning, Stimmungbag has at his fingertips a mass of convincing evidence, including ornithological records, accident reports, and ticket stubs from showbiz bird displays. He also gives us a remarkable account of the time Blodgett decamped to a loggia, neglected to keep a log of his stay there, and upon returning home spent some six weeks dementedly chopping logs with a very sharp axe, despite being over eighty years old. He then carted the entire supply of chopped-up logs back to the loggia, dumped them outside the door, and kept a log in his journal of their gradual depradation through theft and rot. There are other distinctively Blodgettesque glimpses: hen harrying, bricks on the brain, tormented scribblings on parchment regarding soup, starling collisions, misted glass obscuring a decisively important bus timetable, things chewed and spat out, intimations of mortality, imitations of Christ, intimacy with a mute milkmaid, delusional vampires, card games, ditch digging, reading aloud A Fiery Flying Roll by Abiezer Coppe to an audience of stunned potters, other potters encountered in hospital corridors, smashed-up lobster pots, a zest for crumpled things... the historian takes us through it all, at a pace sometimes gentle and at other times hectic, and occasionally incomprehensible unless one is already familiar with the material. That is Stimmungbag's way, as viewers have come to expect from his previous documentaries on topics such as collisions in the sky and on starlings. For most of us, though, whether or not we are students of Blodgett, it is the attention paid to the collection of inky puck stampings that is truly revelatory. Indeed, I had no idea that Blodgett maintained such a collection, nor that he kept it with such uncharacteristic care in a starch-stiffened lamb's-fleece-bound album stained with the blood of a fruitbat. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-02-1229:57fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-01-29Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 The Cruel Sea 07:11 Chucking-Out Time At The Cow & Pins 18:41 An Old Folk Song Commemorating Victory In The War Against The Big Magnetic Robots 20:34 Pebblehead's Christmas Annual 25:58 Feeding A Pigtape THE CRUEL SEA The cruel sea. The dismal pond. The glued vicar. The obsolete pudding. The terrible sludge. The grimy harpoonist. The Dutch pillbox. The prominent moustache. The customised hat. The awful pan. The disguised shrubbery. The pale horseman. The wicked nephew. The clueless dolt. The filthy sniper. The hot flap. The rotting twig. The crumpled swine. The village idiot. The spasmodic throbbings. The puckish stormtrooper. The flailing chump. The godforsaken peasouper. The dribbling maniac. The shabby cartographer. The unhinged wrestler. The tiny toadstool. The wielded hoe. The bloody stump. The tin bath. The crunchy plopper. The urgent message. The ticketyboo avalanche. The cupped sprain. The turquoise pip. The shoved helmet. The fantastic Moira. The governed tang. The collapsed lung. The indigestible suet. The stuck shirt. The old git. The worrisome spinster. The shambolic circus. The disgusted postman. The cheap bale. The splendid toucan. The fractious hamster. The baleful merchant. The spiffing socks. The Dungeness werewolf. The intrepid golliwog. The gaudy spats. The bewitched gubbins. The tawdry lump. The tungsten spigot. The wilful witch. The Ruritanian tyrant. The speckled toffee. The crumpled pooper. The insignificant mendicant. The woeful copse. The bad shunter. The first Adam. The globular emission. The spent fork. The other fork. The cataleptic nincompoop. The boiled dish. The sudden rink. The icy wastes. The dirty placebo. The incomprehensible gibberish. The fat fissure. The tansy klopstock. The gruesome boots. The Mexican floozie. The sordid details. The tattered tent. The vindictive biologist. The shabby phantom. The crashed pantechnicon. The odd chimp. The slimy bog. The shattered walnut. The horrible dirigible. The muddy waters. The contaminated mayonnaise. The belligerent scruff. The tidal estuary. The sodden moorhen. The avenging pig. The omnipotent Dagobert. The teeming downpour. The slapdash embroidery. The stale cake. The unbreakable jugs. The bonkers churning. The copper tricycle. The idiot savant. The charmless ragamuffin. The shredded diktat. The holy farmyard. The blistering flotsam. The deaf wonk. The gladsome cravat. The industrial stapler. The careworn widow. The lopped fig. The bulky cargo. The hepcat smoothie. The fundamentalist satrap. The oiled hair. The brusque Ostender. The lovely pie. The crushed kaboodle. The glamorous trumpet. The foul expat. The immense saucepan. The sequined tugboat. The gorgeous innards. The frail sot. The desperate genuflection. The dark peel. The grotesque kipper. The unsinkable sieve. The chumpot tawny. The albino chicken. The Germanic straw. The wiggling blob. The dug ditch. The safety pin. The fictional athlete. The abominable beaker. The popped savage. The glitzy surgeon. The extra limb. The chubby pickpocket. The pitted ointment. The wan hoop. The stricken passengers. The dotty haberdasher. The clumsy ghost. The frightful crevasse. The cloned duck. The unfortunate blot. The skindiving fatso. The drugged weasel. The jellied eel. The monstrous bag. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-01-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 The Cruel Sea 07:11 Chucking-Out Time At The Cow & Pins 18:41 An Old Folk Song Commemorating Victory In The War Against The Big Magnetic Robots 20:34 Pebblehead's Christmas Annual 25:58 Feeding A Pigtape THE CRUEL SEA The cruel sea. The dismal pond. The glued vicar. The obsolete pudding. The terrible sludge. The grimy harpoonist. The Dutch pillbox. The prominent moustache. The customised hat. The awful pan. The disguised shrubbery. The pale horseman. The wicked nephew. The clueless dolt. The filthy sniper. The hot flap. The rotting twig. The crumpled swine. The village idiot. The spasmodic throbbings. The puckish stormtrooper. The flailing chump. The godforsaken peasouper. The dribbling maniac. The shabby cartographer. The unhinged wrestler. The tiny toadstool. The wielded hoe. The bloody stump. The tin bath. The crunchy plopper. The urgent message. The ticketyboo avalanche. The cupped sprain. The turquoise pip. The shoved helmet. The fantastic Moira. The governed tang. The collapsed lung. The indigestible suet. The stuck shirt. The old git. The worrisome spinster. The shambolic circus. The disgusted postman. The cheap bale. The splendid toucan. The fractious hamster. The baleful merchant. The spiffing socks. The Dungeness werewolf. The intrepid golliwog. The gaudy spats. The bewitched gubbins. The tawdry lump. The tungsten spigot. The wilful witch. The Ruritanian tyrant. The speckled toffee. The crumpled pooper. The insignificant mendicant. The woeful copse. The bad shunter. The first Adam. The globular emission. The spent fork. The other fork. The cataleptic nincompoop. The boiled dish. The sudden rink. The icy wastes. The dirty placebo. The incomprehensible gibberish. The fat fissure. The tansy klopstock. The gruesome boots. The Mexican floozie. The sordid details. The tattered tent. The vindictive biologist. The shabby phantom. The crashed pantechnicon. The odd chimp. The slimy bog. The shattered walnut. The horrible dirigible. The muddy waters. The contaminated mayonnaise. The belligerent scruff. The tidal estuary. The sodden moorhen. The avenging pig. The omnipotent Dagobert. The teeming downpour. The slapdash embroidery. The stale cake. The unbreakable jugs. The bonkers churning. The copper tricycle. The idiot savant. The charmless ragamuffin. The shredded diktat. The holy farmyard. The blistering flotsam. The deaf wonk. The gladsome cravat. The industrial stapler. The careworn widow. The lopped fig. The bulky cargo. The hepcat smoothie. The fundamentalist satrap. The oiled hair. The brusque Ostender. The lovely pie. The crushed kaboodle. The glamorous trumpet. The foul expat. The immense saucepan. The sequined tugboat. The gorgeous innards. The frail sot. The desperate genuflection. The dark peel. The grotesque kipper. The unsinkable sieve. The chumpot tawny. The albino chicken. The Germanic straw. The wiggling blob. The dug ditch. The safety pin. The fictional athlete. The abominable beaker. The popped savage. The glitzy surgeon. The extra limb. The chubby pickpocket. The pitted ointment. The wan hoop. The stricken passengers. The dotty haberdasher. The clumsy ghost. The frightful crevasse. The cloned duck. The unfortunate blot. The skindiving fatso. The drugged weasel. The jellied eel. The monstrous bag. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-01-2929:27fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-01-22Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Judith And Holofernes 07:09 Dot's Ducks 12:19 Spillage On Cambric 17:55 Lars Porsena Of Clusium JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES "How now, Holofernes," said Judith. Holofernes put down his sack of grubbings on the floor and leaned to kiss the back of Judith's hand. "Your moustache is very bristly, Holofernes," said Judith, "I fear it has raised tiny scratches on my hand." "Plunge it into a tub of ointment and it will be as right as rain, woman!" shouted Holofernes. Holofernes always shouted, he was that kind of general. "Oh, never mind, Holofernes, I am fond of your moustache. It suits you. It is, how shall I say, decisive," said Judith. Holofernes picked up his sack of grubbings again. He was blushing slightly. "I must take this sack of grubbings to my encampment, woman!" he shouted, "It will not do for me to dilly dally with a widow woman such as yourself." "What a pity, Holofernes," said Judith, "I have just borrowed some interesting pamphlets by Dobson from the mobile library, and I thought you might like to join me in browsing through them. We could go and sit upon a municipal park bench, and take a picnic with us. I have some radishes and coleslaw and a jug of potato pulp diluted with rainwater." Holofernes was a sucker for pamphlets, particularly ones written by Dobson, and he needed little persuading to join Judith in the municipal park. The clouds were louring, however. "See here, woman!" he shouted, after swallowing a mouthful of coleslaw, "If it begins to rain these pamphlets will get soaking wet and when you return them to the library on or before the due date there may be ructions!" "I am sure you know a thing or two about ructions, Holofernes," said Judith coquettishly, "But don't worry, I have a tarpaulin here in my pippy bag and in the event of a downpour I can take it out and unfold it and place the pamphlets underneath it. Here, have another radish." Holofernes furrowed his massive forehead, as if deep in thought, but then seemed to relax and, taking the proffered radish, popped it into his mouth and crunched it. Judith caught a glimpse of his teeth. "Have you had a recent dental checkup, Holofernes?" she asked. "That, woman, is between me and my dentist! It is unseemly for a widow woman from Bethulia to pry into such matters," shouted Holofernes. "Forgive me, Holofernes," said Judith, "I was forgetting my manners there for a moment. But I was a little concerned that you may need an appointment with the hygienist, for I clearly saw scraps of raw meat and carrots and cake-crumbs stuck between your teeth. You have not been flossing, have you?" Holofernes' temper flared. He stood up, picked up his sack of grubbings, and was about to stomp off out of the municipal park when there was a cloudburst and the rain began teeming down. "Quick, Holofernes, help me to unfold the tarpaulin!" said Judith. Two minutes later the Dobson pamphlets were safely covered up but both Judith and Holofernes were sopping wet. "When the rain stops we ought to find a little boatman's hut in which to dry off and get a nice cup of tea," said Judith, "Just like Laura and Alec do in Brief Encounter after he falls into the boating lake. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-01-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Judith And Holofernes 07:09 Dot's Ducks 12:19 Spillage On Cambric 17:55 Lars Porsena Of Clusium JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES "How now, Holofernes," said Judith. Holofernes put down his sack of grubbings on the floor and leaned to kiss the back of Judith's hand. "Your moustache is very bristly, Holofernes," said Judith, "I fear it has raised tiny scratches on my hand." "Plunge it into a tub of ointment and it will be as right as rain, woman!" shouted Holofernes. Holofernes always shouted, he was that kind of general. "Oh, never mind, Holofernes, I am fond of your moustache. It suits you. It is, how shall I say, decisive," said Judith. Holofernes picked up his sack of grubbings again. He was blushing slightly. "I must take this sack of grubbings to my encampment, woman!" he shouted, "It will not do for me to dilly dally with a widow woman such as yourself." "What a pity, Holofernes," said Judith, "I have just borrowed some interesting pamphlets by Dobson from the mobile library, and I thought you might like to join me in browsing through them. We could go and sit upon a municipal park bench, and take a picnic with us. I have some radishes and coleslaw and a jug of potato pulp diluted with rainwater." Holofernes was a sucker for pamphlets, particularly ones written by Dobson, and he needed little persuading to join Judith in the municipal park. The clouds were louring, however. "See here, woman!" he shouted, after swallowing a mouthful of coleslaw, "If it begins to rain these pamphlets will get soaking wet and when you return them to the library on or before the due date there may be ructions!" "I am sure you know a thing or two about ructions, Holofernes," said Judith coquettishly, "But don't worry, I have a tarpaulin here in my pippy bag and in the event of a downpour I can take it out and unfold it and place the pamphlets underneath it. Here, have another radish." Holofernes furrowed his massive forehead, as if deep in thought, but then seemed to relax and, taking the proffered radish, popped it into his mouth and crunched it. Judith caught a glimpse of his teeth. "Have you had a recent dental checkup, Holofernes?" she asked. "That, woman, is between me and my dentist! It is unseemly for a widow woman from Bethulia to pry into such matters," shouted Holofernes. "Forgive me, Holofernes," said Judith, "I was forgetting my manners there for a moment. But I was a little concerned that you may need an appointment with the hygienist, for I clearly saw scraps of raw meat and carrots and cake-crumbs stuck between your teeth. You have not been flossing, have you?" Holofernes' temper flared. He stood up, picked up his sack of grubbings, and was about to stomp off out of the municipal park when there was a cloudburst and the rain began teeming down. "Quick, Holofernes, help me to unfold the tarpaulin!" said Judith. Two minutes later the Dobson pamphlets were safely covered up but both Judith and Holofernes were sopping wet. "When the rain stops we ought to find a little boatman's hut in which to dry off and get a nice cup of tea," said Judith, "Just like Laura and Alec do in Brief Encounter after he falls into the boating lake. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-01-2228:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2009-01-08Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Mr Bewg's Reference 09:48 The Lost Lozenge 18:46 Dinghy Maintenance 24:31 Blind Men And Ostriches 26:39 The Fishmongers' Prayer MR BEWG'S REFERENCE Here is a slightly revised version of a very old story, which first appeared in Twitching And Shattered two decades ago. I'm posting it here today for no reason other than mere whim. Dear Mr Corncrake, Re : MR B BEWG, 6 DISMAL TERRACE, HOON Thank you for your letter of 20th July regarding the above-named; I am happy to provide him with a reference. I have known Mr Bewg for ten years, ever since he took up the position of scrivener, dogsbody and wretch in my vast, gloomy factory perched on the hillside next to the lunatic asylum. At the time I engaged Mr Bewg I suspected that he had some connection with the latter institution, and in the decade since I have had no reason to alter my opinion. You ask me to comment on my impression of Mr Bewg's "suitability for the job". Forgive me if I find this difficult. I do not wish to do violence to our native language, but to use the word "suitability" in conjunction with Mr Bewg is to mock the Queen's English. Indeed, it is to make a mockery of sense itself. My problems with Mr Bewg began on his very first morning in my employ. To settle him in, I had instructed him to carry out a menial task, removing bits of goo from the interior walls of a vat. To facilitate his progress, he was supplied with a variety of tools, including a pencil-sharpener, a pin-cushion, and a decidedly ferocious blowtorch. No sooner had I turned my back than Mr Bewg became embroiled in a tussle with my pet panther, which--crazed with hunger--managed to slip its leash and embed its razor-sharp fangs in his left leg. For this impertinence I had no option but to dock Mr Bewg his first month's wages. It was not a good start, but I had had many a ne'er-do-well working for me in the past, and believed that I could yet mould Mr Bewg into a marginally less repellent specimen of human dregs. To this end, I assigned him to work in the filthiest, dankest wing of the factory, where he was expected to spend all day dragging sacks full of huge iron lumps backwards and forwards in infested tunnels for no apparent purpose. So ineptly did Mr Bewg execute his duties that I was forced to withhold his pay for a further year. I wrung my hands in frustration, but the man was impossible. Given a simple task, he would be utterly incapable of completing it with the requisite speed, good humour and fawning obeisance that one expects. To take just one example: Mr Bewg failed to budge one particularly heavy sack, containing a score of medium-sized anvils, a single inch, despite being given all of five minutes to drag it two hundred yards along a stinking tunnel in which small bonfires of sulphur had been ignited moments before. I set a wolfhound yapping at his heels, but to no avail. The man was purely and simply work-shy. But I am a fair employer, and I had no wish to consign him to the scrapheap of the unemployable and useless. Instead, I agreed with Mr Bewg that he could embark upon a training scheme. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-01-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Mr Bewg's Reference 09:48 The Lost Lozenge 18:46 Dinghy Maintenance 24:31 Blind Men And Ostriches 26:39 The Fishmongers' Prayer MR BEWG'S REFERENCE Here is a slightly revised version of a very old story, which first appeared in Twitching And Shattered two decades ago. I'm posting it here today for no reason other than mere whim. Dear Mr Corncrake, Re : MR B BEWG, 6 DISMAL TERRACE, HOON Thank you for your letter of 20th July regarding the above-named; I am happy to provide him with a reference. I have known Mr Bewg for ten years, ever since he took up the position of scrivener, dogsbody and wretch in my vast, gloomy factory perched on the hillside next to the lunatic asylum. At the time I engaged Mr Bewg I suspected that he had some connection with the latter institution, and in the decade since I have had no reason to alter my opinion. You ask me to comment on my impression of Mr Bewg's "suitability for the job". Forgive me if I find this difficult. I do not wish to do violence to our native language, but to use the word "suitability" in conjunction with Mr Bewg is to mock the Queen's English. Indeed, it is to make a mockery of sense itself. My problems with Mr Bewg began on his very first morning in my employ. To settle him in, I had instructed him to carry out a menial task, removing bits of goo from the interior walls of a vat. To facilitate his progress, he was supplied with a variety of tools, including a pencil-sharpener, a pin-cushion, and a decidedly ferocious blowtorch. No sooner had I turned my back than Mr Bewg became embroiled in a tussle with my pet panther, which--crazed with hunger--managed to slip its leash and embed its razor-sharp fangs in his left leg. For this impertinence I had no option but to dock Mr Bewg his first month's wages. It was not a good start, but I had had many a ne'er-do-well working for me in the past, and believed that I could yet mould Mr Bewg into a marginally less repellent specimen of human dregs. To this end, I assigned him to work in the filthiest, dankest wing of the factory, where he was expected to spend all day dragging sacks full of huge iron lumps backwards and forwards in infested tunnels for no apparent purpose. So ineptly did Mr Bewg execute his duties that I was forced to withhold his pay for a further year. I wrung my hands in frustration, but the man was impossible. Given a simple task, he would be utterly incapable of completing it with the requisite speed, good humour and fawning obeisance that one expects. To take just one example: Mr Bewg failed to budge one particularly heavy sack, containing a score of medium-sized anvils, a single inch, despite being given all of five minutes to drag it two hundred yards along a stinking tunnel in which small bonfires of sulphur had been ignited moments before. I set a wolfhound yapping at his heels, but to no avail. The man was purely and simply work-shy. But I am a fair employer, and I had no wish to consign him to the scrapheap of the unemployable and useless. Instead, I agreed with Mr Bewg that he could embark upon a training scheme. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2009-01-0829:28fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-26Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:02 Mrs Snook's Tortoise MRS SNOOK'S TORTOISE Unknown Speaker 00:02 This is resonance 104 point four FM. My name is Frank key and this is a special edition of hooting yard on the air. Gilbert white 1722 1793 was a country clergyman for many years the curative Selborne in Hampshire. He was also one of England's first and greatest nature writers. His book the natural history and antiquities of Selborne was published in 1789. And there's never been out of print. Incidentally, he had a great nephew who, when an infant was known as the learned pig. In 1946, Sylvia Townsend Warner published a book called the portrayal of a tortoise she extracted from Gilbert watch journals. All the references to Timothy, a tortoise belonging to whites aren't which upon her death, he brought a Selborne. I'm going to read it to you now, beginning with Sylvia Townsend Warner's brief preparatory note the portrait of a tortoise. In piecing together these extracts from the journals, I have allowed myself to include some passages which do not directly refer to Timothy. Sometimes there's a perceptible good reason for such inclusions. Whether for instance, means a great deal to a taught us. So swallows in their kind mean nothing to it taught us, they meant a great deal to the journalist, lovers of Gilbert White will allow me to swallows and such entries as that for March the 26th 1789 would show his faithful observation of nature and his power, like that of some Chinese artist of conveying a whole landscape with a few strokes. But in a few inclusions, such as the astonished bantams and the concatenation in a naturalist's mind of the fertility of the polyamorous and of the white family, I've just given way to personal liking. readers who know the journals will be astonished at my moderation. 1771 November the first this is smoothly tortoise begins to scrape an hole in the ground in order for laying up November the second, Mrs. snoops tortoise begins to dig in order to hide himself for the winter, the veil of bramber and the river enveloped in a vast fog. The downs were clear. November the 10th tortoise comes out in the sun about noon, but soon returns day's work of digging a hole to retire into. November the 15th taught us at ringmer had not finished his hibernacula being interrupted by the sunny weather which tempted him out 1772 May the 22nd tortoise eats flycatcher appears and bills. May the 23rd the ringmer tortoise came forth it's from its hibernacula them on the sixth of April, but did not appear to eat till May the fifth it does not eat but on hot days, as far as I could find it has no perceptible pulse made the 30th taught us each all day. In Mrs. snoops ponds are vast spiders, which dive and conceal themselves on the underside of plant lying on the water, perhaps RNA or aquatic ilyn or in a Toria the swallow seems to be the only bird which washes itself as it flies by dropping into the water. 1773 December the second the tortoise in Mrs. snoops garden, went underground November the 21st came out on the 30th for one day and retired to the same hole lies in a wet border in mud and mire with its back bear. December the 17th Mrs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:02 Mrs Snook's Tortoise MRS SNOOK'S TORTOISE Unknown Speaker 00:02 This is resonance 104 point four FM. My name is Frank key and this is a special edition of hooting yard on the air. Gilbert white 1722 1793 was a country clergyman for many years the curative Selborne in Hampshire. He was also one of England's first and greatest nature writers. His book the natural history and antiquities of Selborne was published in 1789. And there's never been out of print. Incidentally, he had a great nephew who, when an infant was known as the learned pig. In 1946, Sylvia Townsend Warner published a book called the portrayal of a tortoise she extracted from Gilbert watch journals. All the references to Timothy, a tortoise belonging to whites aren't which upon her death, he brought a Selborne. I'm going to read it to you now, beginning with Sylvia Townsend Warner's brief preparatory note the portrait of a tortoise. In piecing together these extracts from the journals, I have allowed myself to include some passages which do not directly refer to Timothy. Sometimes there's a perceptible good reason for such inclusions. Whether for instance, means a great deal to a taught us. So swallows in their kind mean nothing to it taught us, they meant a great deal to the journalist, lovers of Gilbert White will allow me to swallows and such entries as that for March the 26th 1789 would show his faithful observation of nature and his power, like that of some Chinese artist of conveying a whole landscape with a few strokes. But in a few inclusions, such as the astonished bantams and the concatenation in a naturalist's mind of the fertility of the polyamorous and of the white family, I've just given way to personal liking. readers who know the journals will be astonished at my moderation. 1771 November the first this is smoothly tortoise begins to scrape an hole in the ground in order for laying up November the second, Mrs. snoops tortoise begins to dig in order to hide himself for the winter, the veil of bramber and the river enveloped in a vast fog. The downs were clear. November the 10th tortoise comes out in the sun about noon, but soon returns day's work of digging a hole to retire into. November the 15th taught us at ringmer had not finished his hibernacula being interrupted by the sunny weather which tempted him out 1772 May the 22nd tortoise eats flycatcher appears and bills. May the 23rd the ringmer tortoise came forth it's from its hibernacula them on the sixth of April, but did not appear to eat till May the fifth it does not eat but on hot days, as far as I could find it has no perceptible pulse made the 30th taught us each all day. In Mrs. snoops ponds are vast spiders, which dive and conceal themselves on the underside of plant lying on the water, perhaps RNA or aquatic ilyn or in a Toria the swallow seems to be the only bird which washes itself as it flies by dropping into the water. 1773 December the second the tortoise in Mrs. snoops garden, went underground November the 21st came out on the 30th for one day and retired to the same hole lies in a wet border in mud and mire with its back bear. December the 17th Mrs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-2640:31fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-18Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Woodcutter 09:14 Plums In The Puddle 11:50 Cows And Literature 14:20 Beset By Hobgoblins 22:44 Birthday Bewolfenbuttlement WOODCUTTER There was once a woodcutter who had a burning sense of injustice. He dwelt in a cottage deep in the forest, where there was plenty of wood for him to cut. A day's walk to the west was the cottage of a charcoal burner, and a day's walk to the east was the hovel of a drink-soaked ex-Trotskyist popinjay. These were the woodcutter's neighbours, and they worried about his burning sense of injustice and sought what they could do to alleviate it, but the woodcutter was a very taciturn woodcutter and he never answered either the charcoal burner or the popinjay when they asked him to explain, as they did on Thursdays when their separate foresty routines took them both past the woodcutter's cottage where they dropped in in the hope of being offered a mug of piping hot cocoa. Sometimes they dropped in at the same time, so it could be a cosy threesome huddled in the unrelenting gloom of the woodcutter's cottage. On one such Thursday, the woodcutter was as reluctant to speak as ever, but he happily poured out cocoa for his neighbours. The charcoal burner had brought some charcoal to burn to keep him occupied, and the popinjay was reminiscing about his Trotskyist days when he spent much of his time standing at the entrances to railway stations handing out pamphlets to passers-by. The woodcutter neither watched the charcoal being burned nor listened to the slurred anecdotage of the popinjay. He sat in his chair glowering at the embers in the fireplace, nurturing his burning sense of injustice. Now, the charcoal burner and the popinjay had hatched what they thought was a very clever plan to get the woodcutter to spill the beans. They reasoned that if they each claimed to have a burning sense of something, and babbled on about it in confessional mode to the woodcutter, he might well tell them of the injustice gnawing at his soul. So the charcoal burner pretended to have a burning sense of righteousness, and the popinjay assumed a burning sense of indigestion. They were waiting in the gloom for an opportune moment to launch into an account of their counterfeit burning woes. This clever plan was not the only thing that was hatched on that Thursday. In the cellar of the woodcutter's cottage, in a crate packed with straw, there nestled a clutch of eggs that, as the charcoal burner burned charcoal and the popinjay wittered, began to crack. The beings inside the eggs were grown too large to be confined any longer. They were ready to be born. And what beings they were! Startling forest creatures, crinkly and crumpled and covered in hoar-frost. Tiny now, when full grown they would be as tall as the trees and as broad as a barn. Their fur was matted, and the feathers that sprouted from their foreheads were of colours beyond the known spectrum. Their many bulbous eyes, unlidded, stared from quivering stalks with a look of tragic reproach, the tears that dripped from them sulphurous and boiling hot. They had collapsible lungs and sharp fangs and great thumping hooves and a milky pallor and beaks and ears and elbows and pot bellies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Woodcutter 09:14 Plums In The Puddle 11:50 Cows And Literature 14:20 Beset By Hobgoblins 22:44 Birthday Bewolfenbuttlement WOODCUTTER There was once a woodcutter who had a burning sense of injustice. He dwelt in a cottage deep in the forest, where there was plenty of wood for him to cut. A day's walk to the west was the cottage of a charcoal burner, and a day's walk to the east was the hovel of a drink-soaked ex-Trotskyist popinjay. These were the woodcutter's neighbours, and they worried about his burning sense of injustice and sought what they could do to alleviate it, but the woodcutter was a very taciturn woodcutter and he never answered either the charcoal burner or the popinjay when they asked him to explain, as they did on Thursdays when their separate foresty routines took them both past the woodcutter's cottage where they dropped in in the hope of being offered a mug of piping hot cocoa. Sometimes they dropped in at the same time, so it could be a cosy threesome huddled in the unrelenting gloom of the woodcutter's cottage. On one such Thursday, the woodcutter was as reluctant to speak as ever, but he happily poured out cocoa for his neighbours. The charcoal burner had brought some charcoal to burn to keep him occupied, and the popinjay was reminiscing about his Trotskyist days when he spent much of his time standing at the entrances to railway stations handing out pamphlets to passers-by. The woodcutter neither watched the charcoal being burned nor listened to the slurred anecdotage of the popinjay. He sat in his chair glowering at the embers in the fireplace, nurturing his burning sense of injustice. Now, the charcoal burner and the popinjay had hatched what they thought was a very clever plan to get the woodcutter to spill the beans. They reasoned that if they each claimed to have a burning sense of something, and babbled on about it in confessional mode to the woodcutter, he might well tell them of the injustice gnawing at his soul. So the charcoal burner pretended to have a burning sense of righteousness, and the popinjay assumed a burning sense of indigestion. They were waiting in the gloom for an opportune moment to launch into an account of their counterfeit burning woes. This clever plan was not the only thing that was hatched on that Thursday. In the cellar of the woodcutter's cottage, in a crate packed with straw, there nestled a clutch of eggs that, as the charcoal burner burned charcoal and the popinjay wittered, began to crack. The beings inside the eggs were grown too large to be confined any longer. They were ready to be born. And what beings they were! Startling forest creatures, crinkly and crumpled and covered in hoar-frost. Tiny now, when full grown they would be as tall as the trees and as broad as a barn. Their fur was matted, and the feathers that sprouted from their foreheads were of colours beyond the known spectrum. Their many bulbous eyes, unlidded, stared from quivering stalks with a look of tragic reproach, the tears that dripped from them sulphurous and boiling hot. They had collapsible lungs and sharp fangs and great thumping hooves and a milky pallor and beaks and ears and elbows and pot bellies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-1828:45fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-11Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 How to Think of Things Other Than Juggling 13:56 Savagery In Splat HOW TO THINK OF THINGS OTHER THAN JUGGLING This is a splendid exercise first developed by brain guru Dennis Beerpint, brother of the poet Gervase Beerpint (see 3rd February). Go to a field. Attaching clamps to slats with quarter-inch gulliver bolts, smear some lattice-work with a decoction of binding-agents and thread the netting through tin clips, then dislodge the hasp on the paddle in order to provide enough purchase on the metal flanges, which should be arranged in rotation beside colour-coded pails, the white one being strapped to a clogged bracket, the red one spinning on the torque engine, the blue one held in place by rubber frets, and the black one chiming against the aluminium knob on the wicket, which is fastened to the anchorage unit by a system of winches controlled by a clay handle on the bole, against which pellets are fired at pre-arranged intervals by the steam gun just below the fourth set of nozzles, cleverly positioned at such a distance from the first three sets to provide a constant stream of gases to pass over the tarpaulin, in which punctures have been made to allow ease of passage for the andiron tubes carrying ballbearings to the spandrel and thus on to the rotating wooden platform, upon which the greased hinges chafe against the pulleys sufficiently for the sparks to ignite sulphur bombs inside the bakelite carriage, without endangering the pads, bulbs and chocks on the hooter, at the sounding of which the intricately-wired snares snap shut and entrap the oiled plasticine clumps, thus momentarily halting the recurrent biting movements of the cogs on the discus, throwing shards of todge into the motor around which you will have placed canvas bags packed with candles in order to steady the persistent rattling of the ticker on the back of the iron sledge underneath the trolley carrying the double battery-powered hammer which serves to agitate the drum containing the four-inch blades detached from the rusted bowl of the compass, held in place on the rocket by a monstrous titanium screw wedged against the plackets of the grit distributor, customised by locking its gut probes into position with no less than twenty six separate multiple-gate plugs, on each of which a scorched zinc disc swivels in response to the magnetic properties of the special basin receiving the droplets of highly acidic gum arabic spilling out of the glass globe tethered to the scalding hot clasps of the larger plate by chains which run parallel to the lengths of string tied at one end to the pirate's aureole and at the other to the shank of the casket nailed to the box of flags stolen from the same warehouse which provided the hooks for the plank balanced uneasily across the gap between the pinboard and the hodometer fitted with small beeswax parcels lashed to the crane from which dangle several springs and coils loaded with lead weights and enamelled cubes the purpose of which becomes apparent when the gleaming cork is plunged into the canister of boiling duckpond water kept at constant temperature by hastily-repaired piping fed by siphons and buttressed by giant prongs from the surfaces of which have been expunged precisely engraved instructions for the use of the […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 How to Think of Things Other Than Juggling 13:56 Savagery In Splat HOW TO THINK OF THINGS OTHER THAN JUGGLING This is a splendid exercise first developed by brain guru Dennis Beerpint, brother of the poet Gervase Beerpint (see 3rd February). Go to a field. Attaching clamps to slats with quarter-inch gulliver bolts, smear some lattice-work with a decoction of binding-agents and thread the netting through tin clips, then dislodge the hasp on the paddle in order to provide enough purchase on the metal flanges, which should be arranged in rotation beside colour-coded pails, the white one being strapped to a clogged bracket, the red one spinning on the torque engine, the blue one held in place by rubber frets, and the black one chiming against the aluminium knob on the wicket, which is fastened to the anchorage unit by a system of winches controlled by a clay handle on the bole, against which pellets are fired at pre-arranged intervals by the steam gun just below the fourth set of nozzles, cleverly positioned at such a distance from the first three sets to provide a constant stream of gases to pass over the tarpaulin, in which punctures have been made to allow ease of passage for the andiron tubes carrying ballbearings to the spandrel and thus on to the rotating wooden platform, upon which the greased hinges chafe against the pulleys sufficiently for the sparks to ignite sulphur bombs inside the bakelite carriage, without endangering the pads, bulbs and chocks on the hooter, at the sounding of which the intricately-wired snares snap shut and entrap the oiled plasticine clumps, thus momentarily halting the recurrent biting movements of the cogs on the discus, throwing shards of todge into the motor around which you will have placed canvas bags packed with candles in order to steady the persistent rattling of the ticker on the back of the iron sledge underneath the trolley carrying the double battery-powered hammer which serves to agitate the drum containing the four-inch blades detached from the rusted bowl of the compass, held in place on the rocket by a monstrous titanium screw wedged against the plackets of the grit distributor, customised by locking its gut probes into position with no less than twenty six separate multiple-gate plugs, on each of which a scorched zinc disc swivels in response to the magnetic properties of the special basin receiving the droplets of highly acidic gum arabic spilling out of the glass globe tethered to the scalding hot clasps of the larger plate by chains which run parallel to the lengths of string tied at one end to the pirate's aureole and at the other to the shank of the casket nailed to the box of flags stolen from the same warehouse which provided the hooks for the plank balanced uneasily across the gap between the pinboard and the hodometer fitted with small beeswax parcels lashed to the crane from which dangle several springs and coils loaded with lead weights and enamelled cubes the purpose of which becomes apparent when the gleaming cork is plunged into the canister of boiling duckpond water kept at constant temperature by hastily-repaired piping fed by siphons and buttressed by giant prongs from the surfaces of which have been expunged precisely engraved instructions for the use of the […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-1128:40fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-04Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Lugubrious Fool 08:07 Lord, Love A Duck 12:46 Sandals Of Fire & Boiling Brains 16:16 Conquistador 24:51 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet LUGUBRIOUS FOOL This piece first appeared in April 2006. Prince Fulgencio had a heart of stone and his palace was a palace exceeding glum. No, no, it was not a palace, it was a castle, turreted and towered, with many flags and banners flying, every one of them showing blasphemous heraldic devices. All sorts of abominations featured on those flags, from unicorns with five legs to many-headed hydra, from fiery basilisks to crows whose heads were back to front. The Prince's henchmen patrolled the castle battlements through every hour of day and night, armed with swords and daggers and blunderbusses and glue guns and pipes from which to blow poisoned darts. Woe betide any interloper who made an unauthorised landing on the helipad! They would be immediately surrounded, overpowered, and delivered to Prince Fulgencio's deepest dungeons, and their 'copter smashed to smithereens. The Prince was proud of his guards, who were the most devoted and violent in the land, as well as the fittest. They were each given regular breaks from duty to take part in bio-ching sessions. In addition, the Prince ensured they were all given a copy of his book Henchmen Are From Mars, Damsels Are From A Girly Planet, which they were expected to memorise. No one could argue that the henchmen did not have a martial bearing, clanking around in their armour, shouting their heads off, and generally being intimidating. What they lacked, however, was entertainment. Prince Fulgencio himself did not understand fun, humour, nor high jinks, for his time on earth was spent exclusively in plotting dark and terrible deeds. He was alert, however, to unrest among his myrmidons, and it was clear that something would have to be done to appease them. He had a spy, or creature, like Bosola in The Duchess Of Malfi, who mingled incognito among the henchmen to discover what secrets lurked in their foul and treacherous hearts. The spy was called George Kaplan (a name later borrowed by screenwriter Ernest Lehman for the non-existent agent in Hitchcock's North By Northwest), and he reported to the Prince as follows: Kaplan - The henchmen are becoming restive, O Prince. Fulgencio - Then I shall have each of them put to death and replaced by other henchmen. Kaplan - If I might say so, an unwise decision, O Prince, for though restive, your henchmen are fanatically loyal to you and I know not where you might find their like elsewhere. Fulgencio - From Mars, of course! Have you not read my book? Kaplan - I have indeed, O Prince, many a time, but--and I tread delicately here--though you are omnipotent and wise and princely, your helicopter is not equipped to journey through space as far as other planetoids, much as you might wish it. Fulgencio - God blast the stars! Kaplan - I am sure He will, O Prince. Meanwhile, I think that if you bring to the castle a fool or jester, an entertainer in cap and bells, the henchmen will be placated. Prince Fulgencio's face assumed a curdled cast, but he was pragmatic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Lugubrious Fool 08:07 Lord, Love A Duck 12:46 Sandals Of Fire & Boiling Brains 16:16 Conquistador 24:51 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet LUGUBRIOUS FOOL This piece first appeared in April 2006. Prince Fulgencio had a heart of stone and his palace was a palace exceeding glum. No, no, it was not a palace, it was a castle, turreted and towered, with many flags and banners flying, every one of them showing blasphemous heraldic devices. All sorts of abominations featured on those flags, from unicorns with five legs to many-headed hydra, from fiery basilisks to crows whose heads were back to front. The Prince's henchmen patrolled the castle battlements through every hour of day and night, armed with swords and daggers and blunderbusses and glue guns and pipes from which to blow poisoned darts. Woe betide any interloper who made an unauthorised landing on the helipad! They would be immediately surrounded, overpowered, and delivered to Prince Fulgencio's deepest dungeons, and their 'copter smashed to smithereens. The Prince was proud of his guards, who were the most devoted and violent in the land, as well as the fittest. They were each given regular breaks from duty to take part in bio-ching sessions. In addition, the Prince ensured they were all given a copy of his book Henchmen Are From Mars, Damsels Are From A Girly Planet, which they were expected to memorise. No one could argue that the henchmen did not have a martial bearing, clanking around in their armour, shouting their heads off, and generally being intimidating. What they lacked, however, was entertainment. Prince Fulgencio himself did not understand fun, humour, nor high jinks, for his time on earth was spent exclusively in plotting dark and terrible deeds. He was alert, however, to unrest among his myrmidons, and it was clear that something would have to be done to appease them. He had a spy, or creature, like Bosola in The Duchess Of Malfi, who mingled incognito among the henchmen to discover what secrets lurked in their foul and treacherous hearts. The spy was called George Kaplan (a name later borrowed by screenwriter Ernest Lehman for the non-existent agent in Hitchcock's North By Northwest), and he reported to the Prince as follows: Kaplan - The henchmen are becoming restive, O Prince. Fulgencio - Then I shall have each of them put to death and replaced by other henchmen. Kaplan - If I might say so, an unwise decision, O Prince, for though restive, your henchmen are fanatically loyal to you and I know not where you might find their like elsewhere. Fulgencio - From Mars, of course! Have you not read my book? Kaplan - I have indeed, O Prince, many a time, but--and I tread delicately here--though you are omnipotent and wise and princely, your helicopter is not equipped to journey through space as far as other planetoids, much as you might wish it. Fulgencio - God blast the stars! Kaplan - I am sure He will, O Prince. Meanwhile, I think that if you bring to the castle a fool or jester, an entertainer in cap and bells, the henchmen will be placated. Prince Fulgencio's face assumed a curdled cast, but he was pragmatic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-12-0429:15fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-11-13Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Wolves And Fruit 07:48 Carpentry In Liechtenstein 10:17 A Display Of Heroics 16:38 Gravediggers' Glade 25:12 Club Key WOLVES AND FRUIT In the comments on the piece entitled It Pays To Increase Your Word Power, reader Fitzmaurice Trenery makes mention of fruiterer's adhesive. This reminded me of a little-known story that is told about Tiny Enid, in which the plucky club-footed tot devised a method of placating wolves through the agency of fruit-based gas sprays. Yes, yes, I know that a gas spray is a different order of thing to a fruiterer's adhesive, but given that most fruiterer's gums and pastes are made from mashed bananas and the pulp of tangerines, and that Tiny Enid's gas spray was formed, at least in part, by a gas derived from the pulp of bananas and mashed tangerines, I think I am on pretty safe ground in forging the link. The weird woods of Woohoodiwoodiwoo, near where Tiny Enid spent some time in a boarding house, were infested with packs of fierce and dangerous wolves, packs which had savaged any number of innocent woods-hiking types who blundered foolishly into the weird woods of a weekend. The heroic infant was not herself a hiking enthusiast, but she had a curious sentimental affection for hikers, with their thick woolly socks and social ineptitude. Alarmed by reports of wolf attacks, she took it into her head to do something about them. The attacks, that is, not the reports of the attacks. She sighed and left it to someone else to take on the task of correcting the slapdash grammar, misspellings, and vile prose in which the reports written by the cub reporter on The Daily Wolf Attacks In The Woods Clarion were couched. Tiny Enid's first impulse was to slaughter the wolves, one by one, in hand-to-paw combat, or with pebbles and a catapult, or with her trusty blunderbuss. She had got as far as driving towards the weird woods in her souped-up jalopy, flying a banner emblazoned with the words "Death To The Wolves In The Woods!" daubed in blood, when she had to brake sharply and slew off bumpety-bumpety-bump into a field to answer an urgent message on her metal tapping machine. Tiny Enid was an independent sort of girl, but she had a mysterious mentor whose advice she often took. It was this mentor who suggested to her that rather than killing the wolf population she instead seek a method of placating them. "I have no particular love for wolves," came the tapped-out message, "But we must be ever mindful of biodiversity, Tiny Enid. The earth can support both wolves and hikers, just as it supports both fruit flies and fruit." The diminutive adventuress was not wholly convinced by this analogy, but on this occasion she deferred to her mysterious mentor, possibly because she had been reading up on the Gaia theories of James Lovelock, drawn to them by her interest in the primordial and chthonic deities of the Ancient Greek pantheon. Never forget that Tiny Enid was a girl of broad education, even if the only book she ever learned by heart was Atlas Shrugged by the postage stamp collector Ayn Rand. Faulty as the fruit and fruit fly analogy may have been, it obviously set Tiny Enid to thinking how fruit might help her placate the wolves of the weird woods. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-11-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Wolves And Fruit 07:48 Carpentry In Liechtenstein 10:17 A Display Of Heroics 16:38 Gravediggers' Glade 25:12 Club Key WOLVES AND FRUIT In the comments on the piece entitled It Pays To Increase Your Word Power, reader Fitzmaurice Trenery makes mention of fruiterer's adhesive. This reminded me of a little-known story that is told about Tiny Enid, in which the plucky club-footed tot devised a method of placating wolves through the agency of fruit-based gas sprays. Yes, yes, I know that a gas spray is a different order of thing to a fruiterer's adhesive, but given that most fruiterer's gums and pastes are made from mashed bananas and the pulp of tangerines, and that Tiny Enid's gas spray was formed, at least in part, by a gas derived from the pulp of bananas and mashed tangerines, I think I am on pretty safe ground in forging the link. The weird woods of Woohoodiwoodiwoo, near where Tiny Enid spent some time in a boarding house, were infested with packs of fierce and dangerous wolves, packs which had savaged any number of innocent woods-hiking types who blundered foolishly into the weird woods of a weekend. The heroic infant was not herself a hiking enthusiast, but she had a curious sentimental affection for hikers, with their thick woolly socks and social ineptitude. Alarmed by reports of wolf attacks, she took it into her head to do something about them. The attacks, that is, not the reports of the attacks. She sighed and left it to someone else to take on the task of correcting the slapdash grammar, misspellings, and vile prose in which the reports written by the cub reporter on The Daily Wolf Attacks In The Woods Clarion were couched. Tiny Enid's first impulse was to slaughter the wolves, one by one, in hand-to-paw combat, or with pebbles and a catapult, or with her trusty blunderbuss. She had got as far as driving towards the weird woods in her souped-up jalopy, flying a banner emblazoned with the words "Death To The Wolves In The Woods!" daubed in blood, when she had to brake sharply and slew off bumpety-bumpety-bump into a field to answer an urgent message on her metal tapping machine. Tiny Enid was an independent sort of girl, but she had a mysterious mentor whose advice she often took. It was this mentor who suggested to her that rather than killing the wolf population she instead seek a method of placating them. "I have no particular love for wolves," came the tapped-out message, "But we must be ever mindful of biodiversity, Tiny Enid. The earth can support both wolves and hikers, just as it supports both fruit flies and fruit." The diminutive adventuress was not wholly convinced by this analogy, but on this occasion she deferred to her mysterious mentor, possibly because she had been reading up on the Gaia theories of James Lovelock, drawn to them by her interest in the primordial and chthonic deities of the Ancient Greek pantheon. Never forget that Tiny Enid was a girl of broad education, even if the only book she ever learned by heart was Atlas Shrugged by the postage stamp collector Ayn Rand. Faulty as the fruit and fruit fly analogy may have been, it obviously set Tiny Enid to thinking how fruit might help her placate the wolves of the weird woods. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-11-1329:41fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-11-06Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dax 09:23 It Pays To Increase Your Word Power 15:33 On A Fainting Goat 22:27 Chauncey DAX Yesterday, as I was bumbling about town, I was waylaid by a wild-eyed chap who dragged me down an alleyway, trapped me between some bins and a wall, and demanded of me that I answer his question. "And what might your question be?" I asked. "Well," he replied, in a shaky and somewhat unhinged voice, "In the midst of the crunch de la credit and the Armageddon brought on by the collapse of the global banking system, is there anything--anything at all--we can grasp at, as at a straw, from the out of print outpourings of the pamphleteer Dobson?" Now this was not an unreasonable question, and it is one I had been steeling myself to answer at some point, as each day brings news of further ruination and collapse, particularly in Iceland, the least populous and second smallest of the Nordic countries, a volcanically and geologically active island on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Many fjords punctuate its extensive coastline, and there are many geysers. Its native beasts include the Icelandic sheep, Icelandic cattle, Icelandic chicken, Icelandic goat and the sturdy Icelandic horse. Polar bears occasionally visit the island, travelling on icebergs from Greenland. Birds, especially sea birds, are a very important part of Iceland's animal life. Puffins, skuas, and kittiwakes nest on its sea cliffs. Yet in spite of such interesting features, nothing, it seems, can stop the destruction of Iceland's banking system. I managed to persuade my wild-eyed assailant to unhand me, and suggested that we could talk more productively away from the noisome pong of the bins. He agreed, and we decamped to a churchyard rife with sycamore and larch and laburnum, in the shade of which we leaned against a couple of tombstones, each to his own tombstone, and I was about to begin my reply when my waylayer declared that he had a great thirst upon him and that he intended to scamper hotfoot to a nearby grocer's to obtain refreshments. He would, he said, be back in a jiffy, and off he went. I was pleased to be given an interval in which to collect my thoughts. I had been ransacking my brain for nuggets, indeed for jewels, to scatter into the plainer mulch of my reply. We can use all sorts of metaphors to help us picture the mind, and I am fond of the one that fancies it as an attic crammed with packing cases and trunks and cardboard boxes. We haul ourselves up a ladder into the attic and pick our way by torchlight among the crates, opening this one and that as we go, and sometimes we find what we are searching for and sometimes we hit upon the unexpected. Blather blather. I have, as you know, an extensive knowledge of Dobson and his works, but in order to answer the question I had been asked I would have to prise open some of the most securely nailed-down packing cases of all, in the furthest corners of my cerebral attic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-11-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dax 09:23 It Pays To Increase Your Word Power 15:33 On A Fainting Goat 22:27 Chauncey DAX Yesterday, as I was bumbling about town, I was waylaid by a wild-eyed chap who dragged me down an alleyway, trapped me between some bins and a wall, and demanded of me that I answer his question. "And what might your question be?" I asked. "Well," he replied, in a shaky and somewhat unhinged voice, "In the midst of the crunch de la credit and the Armageddon brought on by the collapse of the global banking system, is there anything--anything at all--we can grasp at, as at a straw, from the out of print outpourings of the pamphleteer Dobson?" Now this was not an unreasonable question, and it is one I had been steeling myself to answer at some point, as each day brings news of further ruination and collapse, particularly in Iceland, the least populous and second smallest of the Nordic countries, a volcanically and geologically active island on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Many fjords punctuate its extensive coastline, and there are many geysers. Its native beasts include the Icelandic sheep, Icelandic cattle, Icelandic chicken, Icelandic goat and the sturdy Icelandic horse. Polar bears occasionally visit the island, travelling on icebergs from Greenland. Birds, especially sea birds, are a very important part of Iceland's animal life. Puffins, skuas, and kittiwakes nest on its sea cliffs. Yet in spite of such interesting features, nothing, it seems, can stop the destruction of Iceland's banking system. I managed to persuade my wild-eyed assailant to unhand me, and suggested that we could talk more productively away from the noisome pong of the bins. He agreed, and we decamped to a churchyard rife with sycamore and larch and laburnum, in the shade of which we leaned against a couple of tombstones, each to his own tombstone, and I was about to begin my reply when my waylayer declared that he had a great thirst upon him and that he intended to scamper hotfoot to a nearby grocer's to obtain refreshments. He would, he said, be back in a jiffy, and off he went. I was pleased to be given an interval in which to collect my thoughts. I had been ransacking my brain for nuggets, indeed for jewels, to scatter into the plainer mulch of my reply. We can use all sorts of metaphors to help us picture the mind, and I am fond of the one that fancies it as an attic crammed with packing cases and trunks and cardboard boxes. We haul ourselves up a ladder into the attic and pick our way by torchlight among the crates, opening this one and that as we go, and sometimes we find what we are searching for and sometimes we hit upon the unexpected. Blather blather. I have, as you know, an extensive knowledge of Dobson and his works, but in order to answer the question I had been asked I would have to prise open some of the most securely nailed-down packing cases of all, in the furthest corners of my cerebral attic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-11-0629:23fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-10-30Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Pitfalls On The Path To Sainthood 09:49 An Advertisement For Chumpot's 14:14 Potsdam Windbag 20:42 Tenth Anniversary (VI) 25:31 Ringer Sedgeweg PITFALLS ON THE PATH TO SAINTHOOD Which of us does not wish to become a saint? Ask most people, and they will readily admit that the idea of being venerated after death is a very appealing prospect. The paraphernalia of shrines and icons and relics are attractive in themselves, the more so when compared to the utter oblivion into which almost all of us will fall after Death taps us on the shoulder and beckons us away. And there's the rub, of course. You have to be dead to be a proper saint, so it is not a standard career option to discuss with your lifestyle coach or your community hub outreach adviser. I am assuming here that you have such a coach or adviser, for who can be expected to make their wary way through the complexities of our contemporary paradise o' pap without one? If your coach or adviser does recommend sainthood as a viable life-skill to be added to your CV, they are delusional, and you must cut your ties with them at once. Obviously this will lead to a few days of chaotic rudderless miasmic turmoil until you get a new coach or adviser, but better that than a fruitless attempt to achieve living sanctity. That said, there are certain things you can do, while still alive, to prepare for your canonisation. Depending in large part upon your general health and vigour, and taking into account any dangerous medical conditions, the path to sainthood can be a long one, and there are many pitfalls along the way. When the time comes for your suitability to join the pantheon of enshrined ones is to be assessed, great store will be held by how you conducted yourself in various situations. It is well to be mindful of this, even when no witnesses are present to watch you comport yourself, for someone somewhere will act the tattle-tale, you can be sure of that. Some activities are altogether safe, in that you need not worry overmuch about besmirching the purity of your soul while engaged in them. Hiking to a picnic spot in an area of outstanding natural beauty, and picnicking thereupon, while watched by sullen cows, is unlikely to threaten your future sainthood. But such opportunities are surprisingly rare, and you cannot spend your entire life on hikes and picnics, much as you might want to. So it is important that you beware of those occasions when it is oh so easy to tarnish your record. Consider, for example, that you are out a-strolling by the railway sidings, sidings where it is known from time to time for enormous out-of-control locomotives to come thundering along the track, their drivers rendered incapable a couple of miles back by the sudden incursion into the engine cab of a darting hawk or crow. Your path crosses that of a baffled and woebegone orphan, come to pick primroses and peonies to brighten its dank hovel in the slums. What you must do is to resist the temptation to shove the orphan into the path of the oncoming train, cackling evilly as you do so, and thereafter twirling your mustachios like the most hackneyed of stage villains. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-10-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Pitfalls On The Path To Sainthood 09:49 An Advertisement For Chumpot's 14:14 Potsdam Windbag 20:42 Tenth Anniversary (VI) 25:31 Ringer Sedgeweg PITFALLS ON THE PATH TO SAINTHOOD Which of us does not wish to become a saint? Ask most people, and they will readily admit that the idea of being venerated after death is a very appealing prospect. The paraphernalia of shrines and icons and relics are attractive in themselves, the more so when compared to the utter oblivion into which almost all of us will fall after Death taps us on the shoulder and beckons us away. And there's the rub, of course. You have to be dead to be a proper saint, so it is not a standard career option to discuss with your lifestyle coach or your community hub outreach adviser. I am assuming here that you have such a coach or adviser, for who can be expected to make their wary way through the complexities of our contemporary paradise o' pap without one? If your coach or adviser does recommend sainthood as a viable life-skill to be added to your CV, they are delusional, and you must cut your ties with them at once. Obviously this will lead to a few days of chaotic rudderless miasmic turmoil until you get a new coach or adviser, but better that than a fruitless attempt to achieve living sanctity. That said, there are certain things you can do, while still alive, to prepare for your canonisation. Depending in large part upon your general health and vigour, and taking into account any dangerous medical conditions, the path to sainthood can be a long one, and there are many pitfalls along the way. When the time comes for your suitability to join the pantheon of enshrined ones is to be assessed, great store will be held by how you conducted yourself in various situations. It is well to be mindful of this, even when no witnesses are present to watch you comport yourself, for someone somewhere will act the tattle-tale, you can be sure of that. Some activities are altogether safe, in that you need not worry overmuch about besmirching the purity of your soul while engaged in them. Hiking to a picnic spot in an area of outstanding natural beauty, and picnicking thereupon, while watched by sullen cows, is unlikely to threaten your future sainthood. But such opportunities are surprisingly rare, and you cannot spend your entire life on hikes and picnics, much as you might want to. So it is important that you beware of those occasions when it is oh so easy to tarnish your record. Consider, for example, that you are out a-strolling by the railway sidings, sidings where it is known from time to time for enormous out-of-control locomotives to come thundering along the track, their drivers rendered incapable a couple of miles back by the sudden incursion into the engine cab of a darting hawk or crow. Your path crosses that of a baffled and woebegone orphan, come to pick primroses and peonies to brighten its dank hovel in the slums. What you must do is to resist the temptation to shove the orphan into the path of the oncoming train, cackling evilly as you do so, and thereafter twirling your mustachios like the most hackneyed of stage villains. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-10-3030:22fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-10-23Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Babinsky 07:27 Slow Botany 11:33 Uptown Top Ranking 19:02 In The Park 23:45 Chunk Theory BABINSKY I am going to tell you how I took my revenge on the monster Babinsky, but first I have to say a few words about the duckpond. Well, I don't have to, but I want to, to clear my head. It was the kind of duckpond that had clouds of gnats hovering over it, and from which the ducks had long since fled, supplanted by swans, particularly savage swans, so rightly it ought to have been called a swanpond rather than a duckpond, but these terms have a way of sticking. At least for me they do. I tend to use the same names for things as I did when I was still tiny, which was a very long time ago, so long ago that I had never even heard of Babinsky. Nor had the world heard of Babinsky then, for he was yet to commit his terrible crimes. Funny to think that I grew up in a world so innocent. This duckpond was one of the first ponds I came to in my days of eggy Wanderlust. You know how it is, when you stuff yourself full of eggs, hard and soft, and feel compelled to go a-roaming o'er the hills and the meadows until you strike upon a duckpond or two. I no longer eat eggs, and I no longer go a-wandering as I did in those days. When I had a belly full of eggs I had vim and a compulsion. Rare was the day I did not stamp across fields grinding daffodils underfoot, on my way to a pond, in the teeth of storms. The ducks are gone, and the swans make a din, but the gnats still hover, and now my head is clear and I can tell my tale. What is that Holland-Dozier-Holland song, the one about "Empty silence surrounding me / Lonely walls they stare at me"? I would sing it to you if I could sing. Not the whole song, you understand, just those lines, to give you an idea of the circumstances in which I write. Solitude and silence and gloom--just the ticket. In the past, when Babinsky still roamed the earth, I had to write when and where I could, on the deck of a packet steamer or out in the wind and the rain on a pier or bundled in the back of a cab careering along broad urban boulevards. But now I can choose, and I choose a room of gloom. There is just me and my tortoise, Destiny's Child, and we are content. I was at the duckpond when I heard Babinsky's name for the first time. Swans had already frightened away the ducks, and I was, in those days, very keen to learn as much as I could about the intricacies of swan behaviour patterns. I camped out in tentage at the edge of the pond for what I hoped would be a jolly fortnight. On the second day, reports reached me of a terrible enormity committed by Babinsky at a nearby farmyard. It was the kind of thing Truman Capote might have written about, but was certainly not a fit subject for a song by Brian and Edward Holland and Lamont Dozier. As for me, I had not become the word-drunk penman I am now, so it did not occur to me to write about it. No, I hid inside my rented tentage and blubbed like a baby. When I was done I hied over to the farmyard to see what horrors the monster had wrought. Then I vomited into a churn. I was singing Hosannahs at a service in a consecrated cabin in the foothills of some very important mountains when next Babinsky struck. Earlier I told you I cannot sing, but Hosannahs are different. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-10-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Babinsky 07:27 Slow Botany 11:33 Uptown Top Ranking 19:02 In The Park 23:45 Chunk Theory BABINSKY I am going to tell you how I took my revenge on the monster Babinsky, but first I have to say a few words about the duckpond. Well, I don't have to, but I want to, to clear my head. It was the kind of duckpond that had clouds of gnats hovering over it, and from which the ducks had long since fled, supplanted by swans, particularly savage swans, so rightly it ought to have been called a swanpond rather than a duckpond, but these terms have a way of sticking. At least for me they do. I tend to use the same names for things as I did when I was still tiny, which was a very long time ago, so long ago that I had never even heard of Babinsky. Nor had the world heard of Babinsky then, for he was yet to commit his terrible crimes. Funny to think that I grew up in a world so innocent. This duckpond was one of the first ponds I came to in my days of eggy Wanderlust. You know how it is, when you stuff yourself full of eggs, hard and soft, and feel compelled to go a-roaming o'er the hills and the meadows until you strike upon a duckpond or two. I no longer eat eggs, and I no longer go a-wandering as I did in those days. When I had a belly full of eggs I had vim and a compulsion. Rare was the day I did not stamp across fields grinding daffodils underfoot, on my way to a pond, in the teeth of storms. The ducks are gone, and the swans make a din, but the gnats still hover, and now my head is clear and I can tell my tale. What is that Holland-Dozier-Holland song, the one about "Empty silence surrounding me / Lonely walls they stare at me"? I would sing it to you if I could sing. Not the whole song, you understand, just those lines, to give you an idea of the circumstances in which I write. Solitude and silence and gloom--just the ticket. In the past, when Babinsky still roamed the earth, I had to write when and where I could, on the deck of a packet steamer or out in the wind and the rain on a pier or bundled in the back of a cab careering along broad urban boulevards. But now I can choose, and I choose a room of gloom. There is just me and my tortoise, Destiny's Child, and we are content. I was at the duckpond when I heard Babinsky's name for the first time. Swans had already frightened away the ducks, and I was, in those days, very keen to learn as much as I could about the intricacies of swan behaviour patterns. I camped out in tentage at the edge of the pond for what I hoped would be a jolly fortnight. On the second day, reports reached me of a terrible enormity committed by Babinsky at a nearby farmyard. It was the kind of thing Truman Capote might have written about, but was certainly not a fit subject for a song by Brian and Edward Holland and Lamont Dozier. As for me, I had not become the word-drunk penman I am now, so it did not occur to me to write about it. No, I hid inside my rented tentage and blubbed like a baby. When I was done I hied over to the farmyard to see what horrors the monster had wrought. Then I vomited into a churn. I was singing Hosannahs at a service in a consecrated cabin in the foothills of some very important mountains when next Babinsky struck. Earlier I told you I cannot sing, but Hosannahs are different. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-10-2329:19fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-10-09Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 How To De-fang Your Venomous Serpent 05:46 A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song 23:39 The Bleakest Link 25:00 On A Stonechat 25:45 Kitemark 27:06 Notes And Queries 27:43 A Rustic Lesson HOW TO DE-FANG YOUR VENOMOUS SERPENT Sooner or later, most owners of venomous serpents will wish to de-fang their cold-blooded pets. Neighbourhood Watch gauleiters and local busybodies often make life difficult for the venomous serpent owner, particularly when the paths and lanes in the vicinity are littered with the bodies of poisoned innocents with tell-tale puncture marks and faces frozen in a rictus of twisted horror. You have to weigh up the pleasure of having a happy serpent giving full vent to its instinctual drive to sink its fangs into the flesh of a passing greengrocer, and the opprobrium which is an almost inevitable result. Social death, and a want of invitations to elegant drawing-room soirees, are regrettably the lot of the venomous serpent owner, as if somehow it is the keeper rather than the pet who has been slithering about, dropping unexpectedly from the branches of trees, and injecting lethal toxins into everybody from the postmistress to the community hub outreach worker. It should be noted that I am referring to singularly aggressive venomous serpents, those which attack without provocation, due to their being agents of Beelzebub. Comes the time, eventually, when one tires of black looks from one's fellows in the bus queue and of always being served last in the butcher's shop. It is at this point that the venomous serpent owner concedes that the only solution is to de-fang their pet. Doing so is not without its risks, especially if the venomous serpent gets an inkling of what is afoot and decides to strike first. The obituary columns of the village newspaper are chocker with the names of rash wannabe de-fangers whose venomous serpents turned on them. Particularly quick-thinking venomous serpents have been known to plunge their fangs into the neck of their owner as a pre-emptive measure, before the owner has even resolved to go down the de-fanging route. The only guaranteed method of de-fanging your singularly aggressive agent of Beelzebub is to mesmerise it. Once it has been placed in a trance, it is a simple matter to extract its fangs with a pair of pliers, and then to dab on to its gums some sort of dual-action antiseptic anaesthetic jelly. There are plenty of proprietary brands to choose from at your local chemist, if of course you have not been barred from there following the agonising death of the pharmacist, struck down by your venomous serpent on an otherwise unremarkable village afternoon. If that is the case, which it probably is, you will have to go further afield, to a different village, and in such circumstances it is best to place your venomous serpent in a creche facility while you are away. Taking the venomous serpent along for the ride has its pitfalls, such as the novelty of a fresh set of victims unlikely to be on their guard against its sudden, lethal attacks. You will not want to be a social pariah in two separate villages, as this will only compound your problems. When you snap your de-fanged venomous serpent out of its trance, it will become fractious. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-10-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 How To De-fang Your Venomous Serpent 05:46 A Celebration Of The Bufflehead In Prose And Song 23:39 The Bleakest Link 25:00 On A Stonechat 25:45 Kitemark 27:06 Notes And Queries 27:43 A Rustic Lesson HOW TO DE-FANG YOUR VENOMOUS SERPENT Sooner or later, most owners of venomous serpents will wish to de-fang their cold-blooded pets. Neighbourhood Watch gauleiters and local busybodies often make life difficult for the venomous serpent owner, particularly when the paths and lanes in the vicinity are littered with the bodies of poisoned innocents with tell-tale puncture marks and faces frozen in a rictus of twisted horror. You have to weigh up the pleasure of having a happy serpent giving full vent to its instinctual drive to sink its fangs into the flesh of a passing greengrocer, and the opprobrium which is an almost inevitable result. Social death, and a want of invitations to elegant drawing-room soirees, are regrettably the lot of the venomous serpent owner, as if somehow it is the keeper rather than the pet who has been slithering about, dropping unexpectedly from the branches of trees, and injecting lethal toxins into everybody from the postmistress to the community hub outreach worker. It should be noted that I am referring to singularly aggressive venomous serpents, those which attack without provocation, due to their being agents of Beelzebub. Comes the time, eventually, when one tires of black looks from one's fellows in the bus queue and of always being served last in the butcher's shop. It is at this point that the venomous serpent owner concedes that the only solution is to de-fang their pet. Doing so is not without its risks, especially if the venomous serpent gets an inkling of what is afoot and decides to strike first. The obituary columns of the village newspaper are chocker with the names of rash wannabe de-fangers whose venomous serpents turned on them. Particularly quick-thinking venomous serpents have been known to plunge their fangs into the neck of their owner as a pre-emptive measure, before the owner has even resolved to go down the de-fanging route. The only guaranteed method of de-fanging your singularly aggressive agent of Beelzebub is to mesmerise it. Once it has been placed in a trance, it is a simple matter to extract its fangs with a pair of pliers, and then to dab on to its gums some sort of dual-action antiseptic anaesthetic jelly. There are plenty of proprietary brands to choose from at your local chemist, if of course you have not been barred from there following the agonising death of the pharmacist, struck down by your venomous serpent on an otherwise unremarkable village afternoon. If that is the case, which it probably is, you will have to go further afield, to a different village, and in such circumstances it is best to place your venomous serpent in a creche facility while you are away. Taking the venomous serpent along for the ride has its pitfalls, such as the novelty of a fresh set of victims unlikely to be on their guard against its sudden, lethal attacks. You will not want to be a social pariah in two separate villages, as this will only compound your problems. When you snap your de-fanged venomous serpent out of its trance, it will become fractious. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-10-0929:13fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-09-25Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Angels Of Huts 08:04 Vargas 16:55 Unsung Victorian Genius 22:00 Advice Regarding Vinegar 26:49 How To De-fang Your Venomous Serpent ANGELS OF HUTS A couple of days ago, we looked at angles of hats, and today we turn our attention to angels of huts. One of the least rewarding periods of Blodgett's life was when he had a job managing a collection of huts, each of which had its resident angel. These were battered and dilapidated rustic huts, rather than more well-appointed beach huts, or chalets, the type of hut Blodgett understood them to be when he accepted the post. Imagine his distress when the train taking him to his new office delivered him not to a sandy stretch of coastline but to a filthy countryside backwater ankle-deep in muck. This was particularly galling because at the time he was being followed about by a film crew working on a documentary called Blodgett On The Beach. The film had been commissioned by an ambitious but airheaded young git from Channel Bilge, and once it became clear that Blodgett was not going anywhere near the seaside, the airhead cancelled the project and sent his crew to cover a dramatic reconstruction of the credit crunch instead. So it was a solitary Blodgett who was deposited from the train at a deserted railway station in the middle of nowhere. He fumbled in his pocket for the hand-scrawled map his masters had given him and set off on his squelchy way to a distant barn, in a corner of which a desk with an anglepoise lamp and a pencil sharpener and a vase of spurge had been provided as his operational base. Just as the United Nations has its special rapporteurs, and Olympic teams have their chefs de mission, Blodgett's job title was French and sounded important, and he was, at least at this point in his life, naive enough to swell with pride as, approaching the barn, he paused to pin his badge on his lapel. To their credit, his employers had no truck with such execrations as the contemporary laminated name-badge, and Blodgett's badge was brass and heraldic and lively with beaked and taloned and winged beasts of myth and with Latin inscriptions. Blodgett had neither French nor Latin, so he had no idea of the meaning of either his job title or of the motto upon his badge. What he did have were unparalleled map-reading skills, and he was soon installed at his desk in the corner of the barn, having improvised a crate as a chair, and plugged the anglepoise lamp into a generator. The many huts for which Blodgett had responsibility were scattered all over the place, in no discernible pattern. This rapidly became apparent to him when he stuck pins into a map tacked up on the barn wall, each pin representing one of the huts. Blodgett did this, with much enthusiasm, as preparation for what he foresaw as regular rounds of visits to his huts and to their resident angels. So great was the distance he would have to travel that he wondered if he could afford to rent a horse or a jalopy. He was counting out his coinage on the desk, just hours after his arrival, when he was interrupted by a visitor, who brought news that blasted Blodgett's plans and left him sobbing. "How now?" shouted the newcomer as he burst into the barn, "You must be Blodgett! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-09-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Angels Of Huts 08:04 Vargas 16:55 Unsung Victorian Genius 22:00 Advice Regarding Vinegar 26:49 How To De-fang Your Venomous Serpent ANGELS OF HUTS A couple of days ago, we looked at angles of hats, and today we turn our attention to angels of huts. One of the least rewarding periods of Blodgett's life was when he had a job managing a collection of huts, each of which had its resident angel. These were battered and dilapidated rustic huts, rather than more well-appointed beach huts, or chalets, the type of hut Blodgett understood them to be when he accepted the post. Imagine his distress when the train taking him to his new office delivered him not to a sandy stretch of coastline but to a filthy countryside backwater ankle-deep in muck. This was particularly galling because at the time he was being followed about by a film crew working on a documentary called Blodgett On The Beach. The film had been commissioned by an ambitious but airheaded young git from Channel Bilge, and once it became clear that Blodgett was not going anywhere near the seaside, the airhead cancelled the project and sent his crew to cover a dramatic reconstruction of the credit crunch instead. So it was a solitary Blodgett who was deposited from the train at a deserted railway station in the middle of nowhere. He fumbled in his pocket for the hand-scrawled map his masters had given him and set off on his squelchy way to a distant barn, in a corner of which a desk with an anglepoise lamp and a pencil sharpener and a vase of spurge had been provided as his operational base. Just as the United Nations has its special rapporteurs, and Olympic teams have their chefs de mission, Blodgett's job title was French and sounded important, and he was, at least at this point in his life, naive enough to swell with pride as, approaching the barn, he paused to pin his badge on his lapel. To their credit, his employers had no truck with such execrations as the contemporary laminated name-badge, and Blodgett's badge was brass and heraldic and lively with beaked and taloned and winged beasts of myth and with Latin inscriptions. Blodgett had neither French nor Latin, so he had no idea of the meaning of either his job title or of the motto upon his badge. What he did have were unparalleled map-reading skills, and he was soon installed at his desk in the corner of the barn, having improvised a crate as a chair, and plugged the anglepoise lamp into a generator. The many huts for which Blodgett had responsibility were scattered all over the place, in no discernible pattern. This rapidly became apparent to him when he stuck pins into a map tacked up on the barn wall, each pin representing one of the huts. Blodgett did this, with much enthusiasm, as preparation for what he foresaw as regular rounds of visits to his huts and to their resident angels. So great was the distance he would have to travel that he wondered if he could afford to rent a horse or a jalopy. He was counting out his coinage on the desk, just hours after his arrival, when he was interrupted by a visitor, who brought news that blasted Blodgett's plans and left him sobbing. "How now?" shouted the newcomer as he burst into the barn, "You must be Blodgett! […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-09-2529:49fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-09-18Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 Angles Of Hats 04:56 Hoistings 11:38 The Roads To Jaywick 16:55 Dobson's Dinghy 22:16 Shrivelled ANGLES OF HATS This is a transcript of a handwritten piece read today on Hooting Yard On The Air on ResonanceFM. If you do not already keep your bakelite wireless tuned in to the station twenty four hours a day, for god's sake get a grip! It occured to me to write something on the bus on the way to the studio, to give this week's show a really contemporary feel. I know that Hooting Yard listeners rightly expect a programme that has its finger on the pulse of the times, that is truly up to the minute. Well, this week it certainly is, because what I am reading to you was written within the past hour. And I am reading it with some difficulty, actually, because a bus journey does not lend itself to the practice of exquisite copperplate handwriting. I am trying to make sense of what can only be described as a semi-legible scrawl. Buses bump and clatter and shake, and at times it is akin to being a sock or a napkin in a tumble drier. God, this is dull. Let me turn to another, non-bus-related topic. Recently I referred in passing to my Flemish cheesecloth suit, and as a result I received letters from several listeners who, showing great good sense, sought my advice on matters of style and fashion, of dash and elan. Strikingly, no fewer than four of these letters concerned the wearing of hats at a rakish angle. "Dear Frank," wrote one listener, somewhat over-familiarly, given that I have no idea who he is, "Can you tell me how best to calculate the exact angle at which I should wear my hat, or titfer, to maximise its rakishness?" Well, for that correspondent, and for the others who raised this important issue, I am preparing a small pamphlet, not yet in print, which addresses the question with more vigour and panache than I would guess have ever been attempted since people began wearing hats, caps, bonnets, Tam o' Shanters, berets, fezzes, and all sorts of other headgear, which as you are probably aware was an immensely long time ago, back in what we often call the mists of time, and certainly before you were born. By my reckoning, it took several centuries from the first wearing of a hat to the insight that to tilt said hat at a rakish angle lent the wearer a certain cachet among the other members of their tribe, or what, following Hazel Blears, we would now call their community. Of course, there were many false starts. Some angles are simply not rakish, and never will be, but they were tried and tested, often with the use of protractors and sextants and astrolabes, and we should be grateful to those tireless but flawed hat angle experimenters, for without their work we would doubtless still be going about our modern gleaming city streets wearing our hats at ludicrously unrakish angles. Some people still do, of course, including one or two of my fellow-passengers on this bus. I think it is my duty, once my pamphlet is in print, to carry a carton of them with me where'er I roam, handing out free copies to the insufficiently rakish. End of bus journey now. I shall lay down my pen, and speak to you soon. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-09-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 Angles Of Hats 04:56 Hoistings 11:38 The Roads To Jaywick 16:55 Dobson's Dinghy 22:16 Shrivelled ANGLES OF HATS This is a transcript of a handwritten piece read today on Hooting Yard On The Air on ResonanceFM. If you do not already keep your bakelite wireless tuned in to the station twenty four hours a day, for god's sake get a grip! It occured to me to write something on the bus on the way to the studio, to give this week's show a really contemporary feel. I know that Hooting Yard listeners rightly expect a programme that has its finger on the pulse of the times, that is truly up to the minute. Well, this week it certainly is, because what I am reading to you was written within the past hour. And I am reading it with some difficulty, actually, because a bus journey does not lend itself to the practice of exquisite copperplate handwriting. I am trying to make sense of what can only be described as a semi-legible scrawl. Buses bump and clatter and shake, and at times it is akin to being a sock or a napkin in a tumble drier. God, this is dull. Let me turn to another, non-bus-related topic. Recently I referred in passing to my Flemish cheesecloth suit, and as a result I received letters from several listeners who, showing great good sense, sought my advice on matters of style and fashion, of dash and elan. Strikingly, no fewer than four of these letters concerned the wearing of hats at a rakish angle. "Dear Frank," wrote one listener, somewhat over-familiarly, given that I have no idea who he is, "Can you tell me how best to calculate the exact angle at which I should wear my hat, or titfer, to maximise its rakishness?" Well, for that correspondent, and for the others who raised this important issue, I am preparing a small pamphlet, not yet in print, which addresses the question with more vigour and panache than I would guess have ever been attempted since people began wearing hats, caps, bonnets, Tam o' Shanters, berets, fezzes, and all sorts of other headgear, which as you are probably aware was an immensely long time ago, back in what we often call the mists of time, and certainly before you were born. By my reckoning, it took several centuries from the first wearing of a hat to the insight that to tilt said hat at a rakish angle lent the wearer a certain cachet among the other members of their tribe, or what, following Hazel Blears, we would now call their community. Of course, there were many false starts. Some angles are simply not rakish, and never will be, but they were tried and tested, often with the use of protractors and sextants and astrolabes, and we should be grateful to those tireless but flawed hat angle experimenters, for without their work we would doubtless still be going about our modern gleaming city streets wearing our hats at ludicrously unrakish angles. Some people still do, of course, including one or two of my fellow-passengers on this bus. I think it is my duty, once my pamphlet is in print, to carry a carton of them with me where'er I roam, handing out free copies to the insufficiently rakish. End of bus journey now. I shall lay down my pen, and speak to you soon. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-09-1830:17fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-09-11Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Diaries Of The Dead 08:26 The Nightingale Board 15:12 Correspondence Received 19:46 Off At A Tangent 21:40 Bonfire 24:19 Propulsion Tables DIARIES OF THE DEAD I would like to pin a medal on the person who first realised that the blog format was a perfect way to republish notable diaries of the dead. Now we can read Samuel Pepys, Gilbert White, and George Orwell, among many others, day by day, often with annotations. I know it is entirely possible to do this with a paper edition, but the experience is not quite the same. Somehow, reading a long ago diary as a contemporary blog gives it new life. (Incidentally, in a related move, an admirable maniac is currently posting Moby-Dick; or, The Whale line by line, hour by hour, on Twitter.) One dead diary yet to appear online is the journal of Dobson, the out of print pamphleteer who bestrode the twentieth century like a colossus. As one of the most indefatigable Dobsonists of the day, I have often been approached by people asking if I will undertake such a project. Sometimes these pleas come in the form of polite emails, sometimes as mad screeds scrivened in blood over dozens of tatty pages, and once I was set upon by men wielding cudgels as I sat upon a picnic rug at a Mendips picnic spot eating a picnic. No sooner had I popped a sausagette into my mouth than a group of Dobson-fixated fanatics hove into view from atop a Mendip hill and bore down upon me, screaming their heads off and demanding that I transcribe the Journals and post them on a dedicated website on a daily basis. In view of such continued entreaties, let me explain why I have neglected to do so. On the face of it, the pamphleteer's mostly unpublished journal would be a magnificent addition to the interweb. When you consider the seething mass of clotted twaddle that does appear online, the absence of Dobson seems somehow insane. And just how hard would it be for me, or for anybody, to type up a few lines of Dobsonia every day and to share them with the world? However, as I said to the cudgel-wielding nutcases at my Mendips picnic spot, as they rained blows upon my thankfully well-cushioned balaclava, things are not as simple as that. The great attraction of the dead-diary-as-blog is what I could dub calendrical integrity. So, what X scribbled in his diary on September 3rd 1847 is posted online on September 3rd 2008. We are always aware that we are reading a snapshot of X's life on precisely this day many years ago. There is no express requirement for it to be this way, but that is how it is, and how we want it to be. Of course, few transcribers will take account of anomalies such as the change, in Britain, from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, when September 2nd was followed immediately by September 14th. Unfortunately, the anomalies thrown up by Dobson's journal are far more complicated. Dobson, you see, used neither the Julian nor the Gregorian calendar, but one of his own devising. This in itself would not be problematic were the calendar itself not ludicrous, absurd, and senseless. Even the pointyheads at the Pointy Town School Of Dobson Studies Dobson Calendar Study Group have thus far been defeated in their exhausting efforts to elucidate it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-09-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Diaries Of The Dead 08:26 The Nightingale Board 15:12 Correspondence Received 19:46 Off At A Tangent 21:40 Bonfire 24:19 Propulsion Tables DIARIES OF THE DEAD I would like to pin a medal on the person who first realised that the blog format was a perfect way to republish notable diaries of the dead. Now we can read Samuel Pepys, Gilbert White, and George Orwell, among many others, day by day, often with annotations. I know it is entirely possible to do this with a paper edition, but the experience is not quite the same. Somehow, reading a long ago diary as a contemporary blog gives it new life. (Incidentally, in a related move, an admirable maniac is currently posting Moby-Dick; or, The Whale line by line, hour by hour, on Twitter.) One dead diary yet to appear online is the journal of Dobson, the out of print pamphleteer who bestrode the twentieth century like a colossus. As one of the most indefatigable Dobsonists of the day, I have often been approached by people asking if I will undertake such a project. Sometimes these pleas come in the form of polite emails, sometimes as mad screeds scrivened in blood over dozens of tatty pages, and once I was set upon by men wielding cudgels as I sat upon a picnic rug at a Mendips picnic spot eating a picnic. No sooner had I popped a sausagette into my mouth than a group of Dobson-fixated fanatics hove into view from atop a Mendip hill and bore down upon me, screaming their heads off and demanding that I transcribe the Journals and post them on a dedicated website on a daily basis. In view of such continued entreaties, let me explain why I have neglected to do so. On the face of it, the pamphleteer's mostly unpublished journal would be a magnificent addition to the interweb. When you consider the seething mass of clotted twaddle that does appear online, the absence of Dobson seems somehow insane. And just how hard would it be for me, or for anybody, to type up a few lines of Dobsonia every day and to share them with the world? However, as I said to the cudgel-wielding nutcases at my Mendips picnic spot, as they rained blows upon my thankfully well-cushioned balaclava, things are not as simple as that. The great attraction of the dead-diary-as-blog is what I could dub calendrical integrity. So, what X scribbled in his diary on September 3rd 1847 is posted online on September 3rd 2008. We are always aware that we are reading a snapshot of X's life on precisely this day many years ago. There is no express requirement for it to be this way, but that is how it is, and how we want it to be. Of course, few transcribers will take account of anomalies such as the change, in Britain, from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, when September 2nd was followed immediately by September 14th. Unfortunately, the anomalies thrown up by Dobson's journal are far more complicated. Dobson, you see, used neither the Julian nor the Gregorian calendar, but one of his own devising. This in itself would not be problematic were the calendar itself not ludicrous, absurd, and senseless. Even the pointyheads at the Pointy Town School Of Dobson Studies Dobson Calendar Study Group have thus far been defeated in their exhausting efforts to elucidate it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-09-1130:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-08-07Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 A Recipe for Gruel 07:33 Quayside Harpy 24:02 The Temple Of Hoon Fat Gaar A RECIPE FOR GRUEL You will need the following ingredients: oats; water. The following equipment is essential: a big pot; a big spoon; the Holy Bible. On a blustery winter's day, with a chill in the very marrow of your poor, poor bones, take the big pot & carry it, trudging through snow, to the rusty spigot on the other side of the village. Weeping, use what little strength you have to turn the spigot until a woeful driblet of brackish water appears. Make sure you place the big iron pot under the drip, so that water collects in it. With luck, & prayer, you should find that the pot is about three quarters full before twilight, when of course the village curfew comes into effect. The evil Grand Vizier proclaimed so in his ukase, to make sure that all pious people are behind their latched & bolted doors by nightfall. Place the big pot on your oven & set it on full. Remember that it can take electric cookers longer to heat up than gas ones, but do not despair. Once your oven's maximum heat is reached, the water will bubble away like nobody's business. To prevent steam escaping, it is a splendid idea to cover the pot. If, long ago, when you were feckless, you lost or mislaid the lid of your pot, or if indeed your pot never had a lid, for not all pots do, you can of course improvise a lid using all sorts of debris strewn higgledy-piggledy about your hovel. Just be sure you use flame-resistant debris, please. Now then, while you are waiting for the water to come to the boil, you can go & find the oats while I take a well-earned nap. Let's have a little musical interlude. .. I am now fully rested and in tiptop condition. Let us press on without further ado, for by now your pot of water should be boiling. Please pay attention, as the next step, if fumbled, will put paid to your dearest wish, which is to make a successful pot of gruel. With your right hand, scoop some oats from the pail. Grasp the lid of the pot, if there is one, in your left hand, & lift it free of the pot. Cast the handful of oats into the seething cauldron & replace the lid. You may repeat this step once or twice, but on no account overdo the oats, as this will spoil your gruel making it too thick, & as the only remedy for this would be to add more water, you would have to return to the spigot, breaking the village curfew, and so risk being clubbed within an inch of your life by merciless curfew-cadets, & your gruel, imperfect though it may be, would then go to waste. Sin upon sin. You are now free to allow the contents of the pot to boil merrily away, although of course from time to time you ought to brandish the big spoon in your fist & give the gruel-to-be a mighty stir. In the intervals between stirrings, you must on no account remain idle. This is the perfect time to read improving passages from the Bible. Indeed, why not throw open your door, stand upright & magnificent in your weed-choked yard, & declaim the scriptures in a booming voice for the benefit of whoe'er may be within earshot in the vast & pitiless night? Two little reminders, though. However resounding your declamation, do not allow into your tone even the most minuscule taint of vanity. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-08-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 A Recipe for Gruel 07:33 Quayside Harpy 24:02 The Temple Of Hoon Fat Gaar A RECIPE FOR GRUEL You will need the following ingredients: oats; water. The following equipment is essential: a big pot; a big spoon; the Holy Bible. On a blustery winter's day, with a chill in the very marrow of your poor, poor bones, take the big pot & carry it, trudging through snow, to the rusty spigot on the other side of the village. Weeping, use what little strength you have to turn the spigot until a woeful driblet of brackish water appears. Make sure you place the big iron pot under the drip, so that water collects in it. With luck, & prayer, you should find that the pot is about three quarters full before twilight, when of course the village curfew comes into effect. The evil Grand Vizier proclaimed so in his ukase, to make sure that all pious people are behind their latched & bolted doors by nightfall. Place the big pot on your oven & set it on full. Remember that it can take electric cookers longer to heat up than gas ones, but do not despair. Once your oven's maximum heat is reached, the water will bubble away like nobody's business. To prevent steam escaping, it is a splendid idea to cover the pot. If, long ago, when you were feckless, you lost or mislaid the lid of your pot, or if indeed your pot never had a lid, for not all pots do, you can of course improvise a lid using all sorts of debris strewn higgledy-piggledy about your hovel. Just be sure you use flame-resistant debris, please. Now then, while you are waiting for the water to come to the boil, you can go & find the oats while I take a well-earned nap. Let's have a little musical interlude. .. I am now fully rested and in tiptop condition. Let us press on without further ado, for by now your pot of water should be boiling. Please pay attention, as the next step, if fumbled, will put paid to your dearest wish, which is to make a successful pot of gruel. With your right hand, scoop some oats from the pail. Grasp the lid of the pot, if there is one, in your left hand, & lift it free of the pot. Cast the handful of oats into the seething cauldron & replace the lid. You may repeat this step once or twice, but on no account overdo the oats, as this will spoil your gruel making it too thick, & as the only remedy for this would be to add more water, you would have to return to the spigot, breaking the village curfew, and so risk being clubbed within an inch of your life by merciless curfew-cadets, & your gruel, imperfect though it may be, would then go to waste. Sin upon sin. You are now free to allow the contents of the pot to boil merrily away, although of course from time to time you ought to brandish the big spoon in your fist & give the gruel-to-be a mighty stir. In the intervals between stirrings, you must on no account remain idle. This is the perfect time to read improving passages from the Bible. Indeed, why not throw open your door, stand upright & magnificent in your weed-choked yard, & declaim the scriptures in a booming voice for the benefit of whoe'er may be within earshot in the vast & pitiless night? Two little reminders, though. However resounding your declamation, do not allow into your tone even the most minuscule taint of vanity. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-08-0730:43fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-08-04Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Off The Air 05:33 The Temple Of Hoon Fat Gaar 12:20 Food For Sport 20:43 To Knit Knots, Peradventure 26:11 Paper Pianos, Blots, & Dead Physicians OFF THE AIR Hooting Yard On The Air, the radiophonic arm of the global Hooting Yard franchise, has been off, rather than on, the air for the past three weeks, due to Resonance FM's August scheduling shenanigans. The programme returns tomorrow, but I thought it would be helpful for readers and listeners to be apprised of what I was up to between 6.30 and 7.00 PM on the past three Thursdays. First Week. It slipped my mind that I was not required to babble into a microphone for half an hour, so I turned up at the studio, as usual, of sprightly mien, as usual, stylishly engarbed in a Flemish cheesecloth suit, as usual. As usual, I rattled my tally stick on the railings of the great iron gate to announce my arrival. Now, what normally happens is that the gatekeeper emerges from his cubby hut and unlocks many many padlocks before swinging the gate open a tad to let me in. On this particular Thursday, I am afraid to say, because my presence was not required, I was not met by the gatekeeper but confronted, indeed attacked, by Skippy the Resonance Dog, who bounded over the gate and gnashed his glistening spittle-flecked fangs at me. Unfortunately, I had no bones in the pockets of my suit, neither real ones rich in marrow nor toy ones made of rubber. Either kind would have served to distract the savage hound, of course, as would any number of twizzly plastic novelties of the kind one can pick up for tuppence at funfairs. Lacking any such item that would endear me to a slavering and terrifying dog, I fled. When I got home I wrote a stiff letter to the powers that be at Resonance, the gist of which was that I had always been under the impression that Skippy was a Blunkett hound on hand to assist the blind, with a sideline in rat catching and occasional twilight howling. I have yet to receive a reply. Second Week. I spent the evening of the next Thursday in a tent pitched in a field where a combination Kibbo Kift reunion and Jethro Tull convention was taking place. People are often surprised when they realise just how many souls owe fealty to both Kift and Tull. As for me, I was camped in the field for purposes which had nothing to do with either of them, and thus was in a filthy temper, so much so that at one point I rent the sleeves of my Flemish cheesecloth suit jacket in umbrage. But that happened after 7.00 PM, so is strictly speaking outwith the purview of this jaunty little piece. Third Week. I was dusty and bedizened, strung out in eerie mist upon a bench in the grounds of an owl sanctuary, and I held in my hands the copper wires of a mechanism of which I had but little understanding. Lembit Opik, or someone very much like him, was lurking in the vicinity, equally dusty and no less bedizened, but somewhat more addled, and trading in grotesqueries with a person whose arms never ceased flapping. This person I knew not. I was glad of the cushions on my bench, for I was at the very extremity of exhaustion, having sprinted to the owl sanctuary along a rustic lane pursued by Skippy the Resonance Dog, or by his phantom. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-08-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Off The Air 05:33 The Temple Of Hoon Fat Gaar 12:20 Food For Sport 20:43 To Knit Knots, Peradventure 26:11 Paper Pianos, Blots, & Dead Physicians OFF THE AIR Hooting Yard On The Air, the radiophonic arm of the global Hooting Yard franchise, has been off, rather than on, the air for the past three weeks, due to Resonance FM's August scheduling shenanigans. The programme returns tomorrow, but I thought it would be helpful for readers and listeners to be apprised of what I was up to between 6.30 and 7.00 PM on the past three Thursdays. First Week. It slipped my mind that I was not required to babble into a microphone for half an hour, so I turned up at the studio, as usual, of sprightly mien, as usual, stylishly engarbed in a Flemish cheesecloth suit, as usual. As usual, I rattled my tally stick on the railings of the great iron gate to announce my arrival. Now, what normally happens is that the gatekeeper emerges from his cubby hut and unlocks many many padlocks before swinging the gate open a tad to let me in. On this particular Thursday, I am afraid to say, because my presence was not required, I was not met by the gatekeeper but confronted, indeed attacked, by Skippy the Resonance Dog, who bounded over the gate and gnashed his glistening spittle-flecked fangs at me. Unfortunately, I had no bones in the pockets of my suit, neither real ones rich in marrow nor toy ones made of rubber. Either kind would have served to distract the savage hound, of course, as would any number of twizzly plastic novelties of the kind one can pick up for tuppence at funfairs. Lacking any such item that would endear me to a slavering and terrifying dog, I fled. When I got home I wrote a stiff letter to the powers that be at Resonance, the gist of which was that I had always been under the impression that Skippy was a Blunkett hound on hand to assist the blind, with a sideline in rat catching and occasional twilight howling. I have yet to receive a reply. Second Week. I spent the evening of the next Thursday in a tent pitched in a field where a combination Kibbo Kift reunion and Jethro Tull convention was taking place. People are often surprised when they realise just how many souls owe fealty to both Kift and Tull. As for me, I was camped in the field for purposes which had nothing to do with either of them, and thus was in a filthy temper, so much so that at one point I rent the sleeves of my Flemish cheesecloth suit jacket in umbrage. But that happened after 7.00 PM, so is strictly speaking outwith the purview of this jaunty little piece. Third Week. I was dusty and bedizened, strung out in eerie mist upon a bench in the grounds of an owl sanctuary, and I held in my hands the copper wires of a mechanism of which I had but little understanding. Lembit Opik, or someone very much like him, was lurking in the vicinity, equally dusty and no less bedizened, but somewhat more addled, and trading in grotesqueries with a person whose arms never ceased flapping. This person I knew not. I was glad of the cushions on my bench, for I was at the very extremity of exhaustion, having sprinted to the owl sanctuary along a rustic lane pursued by Skippy the Resonance Dog, or by his phantom. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-08-0429:19fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-31Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Brains In Bags 06:19 Denktash Fugue Syndrome 11:09 Tea Cosies : Your Questions Answered 16:02 Frabbo Bilks Beppo 19:31 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--V 26:51 A Trip From Throm To Bosis BRAINS IN BAGS It is, I think, common knowledge that by eating the brains of certain animals we can boost our own mental powers. Granted, this is not a practice which has won the backing of the greatest living Maestro of the Mind, Tony Buzan, but the results can only be described as buzantastic. The difficulty, of course, has always been obtaining brains in the first place, and making them edible. Few of us are so ruthless that we would consider tearing the brains out of the heads of our domestic pets, our cats and dogs and budgerigars, and in any case, those are not the kinds of brains that will do much to supercharge our mental abilities. I know a poor soul who lived on a diet of budgerigar brains for a week, and he is now fit for little else but dribbling and writing features for the Guardian weekend magazine. Similarly, although your local zoo will provide a far greater range of animal brains, some of them particularly mind-enhancing such as the brains of giraffes and of exotic birds, zoos tend to have security guards who will Taser you without compunction should you creep towards the enclosures at dead of night armed with a jemmy, a skull-slicer, and a spoon. Being Tasered does not improve your mental prowess, despite what you may have read in the Guardian. That article was written by budgerigar-brains man. It is a very welcome development, then, that there is a new section on the delicatessen counter at Hubermann's where lucky shoppers can buy a huge variety of boil-in-the-bag animal brains at ridiculously low prices. The selection seems to have been made with human mental agility boosting as the basic criterion, for we can find the brains of weasels and pigs and crows and cows and giraffes and hoopoe birds and jellyfish and starlings and wolves and locusts and okapi and trout and flamingos and bears and monitor lizards and corncrakes and carp and badgers and hornets and lobsters and ducks and gazelles and dozens of others, all conveniently packaged and ready to boil. Faced with such a cornucopia there is an obvious temptation to go overboard and stuff your gob with particularly toothsome brains, such as those of the rooting hog. This is why the staff at Hubermann's are fully trained to advise on the government's five-a-day guidelines, and hand out free leaflets with every purchase. To maximise your brain potential, it is important to follow certain tips: Having said that, there may be occasions when, in order to boost a particular area of your mental apparatus, a judiciously limited diet can be helpful. For example, you may wish to improve your ability to interpret the scores of the more complex madrigals of Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), in which case you might want to eat a couple of boil-in-the-bag conger eel brains for breakfast and supper each day. Studies have shown that there are substances in the brains of all eels, but especially the conger, which stimulate those parts of the human mind receptive to madrigal score complexities. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Brains In Bags 06:19 Denktash Fugue Syndrome 11:09 Tea Cosies : Your Questions Answered 16:02 Frabbo Bilks Beppo 19:31 Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning--V 26:51 A Trip From Throm To Bosis BRAINS IN BAGS It is, I think, common knowledge that by eating the brains of certain animals we can boost our own mental powers. Granted, this is not a practice which has won the backing of the greatest living Maestro of the Mind, Tony Buzan, but the results can only be described as buzantastic. The difficulty, of course, has always been obtaining brains in the first place, and making them edible. Few of us are so ruthless that we would consider tearing the brains out of the heads of our domestic pets, our cats and dogs and budgerigars, and in any case, those are not the kinds of brains that will do much to supercharge our mental abilities. I know a poor soul who lived on a diet of budgerigar brains for a week, and he is now fit for little else but dribbling and writing features for the Guardian weekend magazine. Similarly, although your local zoo will provide a far greater range of animal brains, some of them particularly mind-enhancing such as the brains of giraffes and of exotic birds, zoos tend to have security guards who will Taser you without compunction should you creep towards the enclosures at dead of night armed with a jemmy, a skull-slicer, and a spoon. Being Tasered does not improve your mental prowess, despite what you may have read in the Guardian. That article was written by budgerigar-brains man. It is a very welcome development, then, that there is a new section on the delicatessen counter at Hubermann's where lucky shoppers can buy a huge variety of boil-in-the-bag animal brains at ridiculously low prices. The selection seems to have been made with human mental agility boosting as the basic criterion, for we can find the brains of weasels and pigs and crows and cows and giraffes and hoopoe birds and jellyfish and starlings and wolves and locusts and okapi and trout and flamingos and bears and monitor lizards and corncrakes and carp and badgers and hornets and lobsters and ducks and gazelles and dozens of others, all conveniently packaged and ready to boil. Faced with such a cornucopia there is an obvious temptation to go overboard and stuff your gob with particularly toothsome brains, such as those of the rooting hog. This is why the staff at Hubermann's are fully trained to advise on the government's five-a-day guidelines, and hand out free leaflets with every purchase. To maximise your brain potential, it is important to follow certain tips: Having said that, there may be occasions when, in order to boost a particular area of your mental apparatus, a judiciously limited diet can be helpful. For example, you may wish to improve your ability to interpret the scores of the more complex madrigals of Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), in which case you might want to eat a couple of boil-in-the-bag conger eel brains for breakfast and supper each day. Studies have shown that there are substances in the brains of all eels, but especially the conger, which stimulate those parts of the human mind receptive to madrigal score complexities. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-3128:35fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-24Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:48 Janitor 17:38 Beppo's Banishment 23:10 All Around My Hat 28:39 The Pious Infant JANITOR For a long time, I used to go to bed early. I was exhausted from long days working as a janitor in an evaporated milk factory. There are those who think that being a janitor is an easy life, little more than a matter of rattling a set of keys, sloshing a mop along a corridor floor, and glaring reproachfully at all who pass by. There may be janitors of that kidney, but I was not that kind of janitor, and never had been, neither in this nor in any of my earlier janitorships. It is a curious fact that the buildings in which I have been a janitor have all housed milk-related activities. Before being appointed to my post in the evaporated milk factory, I worked at a condensed milk canning plant, a milk of magnesia research laboratory, and a milk slops sloppage tank. When I was younger I lacked application and was frequently reprimanded, on a carpet, as is usually the case, by my superiors. The overseer of the sloppage tank was particularly rancorous, as I recall. But by the time I fetched up at the evaporated milk factory, I took my duties seriously, excessively so, and that was why I was exhausted at the end of the day. To be precise, I was exhausted before the end of the day, hence my going to bed early. There is a pamphlet by Dobson, entitled Tips For Janitors (out of print), which helped to mend my ways. One boiling hot summer Sunday, at a loose end, I went to visit a dying janitor in a Mercy Home. His brow was beetle and his jaw was lantern, and he was slowly perishing from a malady which had set in after an attack of the bindings and which he could not shake off due to his advanced age. It was not entirely clear just how old he was, for his birth certificate had been destroyed by worms. He certainly looked unbelievably ancient when I went to see him on that boiling day. Propped up in a sort of collapsible medical chair, surrounded by dripping foliage, like General Sternwood in The Big Sleep, he had made a vain attempt to mask his decrepitude by dyeing his hair black with boot polish and by sporting the type of tee shirt worn by young Japanese trendies. Neither ploy fooled me. I knew I was looking at a janitor who had begun his career in the age of gas mantles and steam. My visit was prompted by a plea from the Charitable Board For Janitors Close To Death, seeking volunteers to pay social calls on janitors close to death to brighten their last days. I thought myself too lugubrious to be suitable for such a good deed, but the Board's director, an ex-flapper by the name of Mimsy Henbane, said that this particular dying janitor rejoiced in the lugubrious and funereal and bleak and that my presence would lift his spirits. Like the Italian castrato opera singer Luigi Marchesi (1754-1829), who, irrespective of the part he was playing, insisted on making his stage entrances on horseback, wearing a helmet with white feathers several feet long, I liked to cut something of a dash when entering a Mercy Home. On this particular Sunday I was ensmothered in fine kingly raiment, complete with the pelt of a wolverine (Gulo gulo, the largest land-dwelling member of the weasel family), a burnished golden helmet Marchesi would have died for, and a bauble or two. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:48 Janitor 17:38 Beppo's Banishment 23:10 All Around My Hat 28:39 The Pious Infant JANITOR For a long time, I used to go to bed early. I was exhausted from long days working as a janitor in an evaporated milk factory. There are those who think that being a janitor is an easy life, little more than a matter of rattling a set of keys, sloshing a mop along a corridor floor, and glaring reproachfully at all who pass by. There may be janitors of that kidney, but I was not that kind of janitor, and never had been, neither in this nor in any of my earlier janitorships. It is a curious fact that the buildings in which I have been a janitor have all housed milk-related activities. Before being appointed to my post in the evaporated milk factory, I worked at a condensed milk canning plant, a milk of magnesia research laboratory, and a milk slops sloppage tank. When I was younger I lacked application and was frequently reprimanded, on a carpet, as is usually the case, by my superiors. The overseer of the sloppage tank was particularly rancorous, as I recall. But by the time I fetched up at the evaporated milk factory, I took my duties seriously, excessively so, and that was why I was exhausted at the end of the day. To be precise, I was exhausted before the end of the day, hence my going to bed early. There is a pamphlet by Dobson, entitled Tips For Janitors (out of print), which helped to mend my ways. One boiling hot summer Sunday, at a loose end, I went to visit a dying janitor in a Mercy Home. His brow was beetle and his jaw was lantern, and he was slowly perishing from a malady which had set in after an attack of the bindings and which he could not shake off due to his advanced age. It was not entirely clear just how old he was, for his birth certificate had been destroyed by worms. He certainly looked unbelievably ancient when I went to see him on that boiling day. Propped up in a sort of collapsible medical chair, surrounded by dripping foliage, like General Sternwood in The Big Sleep, he had made a vain attempt to mask his decrepitude by dyeing his hair black with boot polish and by sporting the type of tee shirt worn by young Japanese trendies. Neither ploy fooled me. I knew I was looking at a janitor who had begun his career in the age of gas mantles and steam. My visit was prompted by a plea from the Charitable Board For Janitors Close To Death, seeking volunteers to pay social calls on janitors close to death to brighten their last days. I thought myself too lugubrious to be suitable for such a good deed, but the Board's director, an ex-flapper by the name of Mimsy Henbane, said that this particular dying janitor rejoiced in the lugubrious and funereal and bleak and that my presence would lift his spirits. Like the Italian castrato opera singer Luigi Marchesi (1754-1829), who, irrespective of the part he was playing, insisted on making his stage entrances on horseback, wearing a helmet with white feathers several feet long, I liked to cut something of a dash when entering a Mercy Home. On this particular Sunday I was ensmothered in fine kingly raiment, complete with the pelt of a wolverine (Gulo gulo, the largest land-dwelling member of the weasel family), a burnished golden helmet Marchesi would have died for, and a bauble or two. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-2430:05fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-17Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Me And My Monkeys 08:00 A Talk On Dobson 24:20 In The Bird-Loft 28:03 For Flute Accompaniment ME AND MY MONKEYS For a long time, I used to go to bed early. Often, it was still light as I shut my bedroom door and drew the curtains and buried myself under my blankets. My home-made soundproofing, hundreds of corks glued to the bedroom walls, worked remarkably well, and I treasured the peace and quiet. In the rest of the chalet, the monkeys could do as they pleased. I was safe in my bed, and undisturbed. Ever since I could remember I had wanted to live surrounded by monkeys. As a tiny tot, I made toy monkeys out of pipe-cleaners and pin-cushions. I begged my parents to buy me a real monkey from a monkey shop, not knowing that there were no such shops in our Alpine fastness. As an evil nine-year-old, I planned to abduct a monkey or two from a zoo, but I was an inept little criminal and won myself only a fortnight in a Blunkett Camp For Miscreant Hobbledehoys. During a fractious adolescence I was diverted by brandy and floozies and high-tar Peruvian cigarettes, and it was only when I gained my majority and was installed in my own chalet courtesy of a wealthy uncle that my monkey mania reasserted itself. Uncle Arpad was himself fond of monkeys, though not, as in my case, to the point of unreason. He had made his fortune in the windmill and plankton trades, and had retired to a chalet just up the mountain from the one he bought for me. Every day, I took the funicular railway up to visit him for breakfast, and over a dish of brisket and jugged partridge he told stories of his past, and of other people's pasts, and of invented pasts, and he invariably ended these sometimes tedious monologues by encouraging me to live my dreams. He was, I think, a bitter man who regretted that he had devoted his life to windmills and plankton, and he wanted better for me. Descending the mountain after breakfast each day, tramping slowly in my snowshoes, I had time to ponder what I really wanted in life, and I knew in the very depths of my soul that my greatest desire was to live surrounded by monkeys. Sometimes I carried on down the mountain past my own chalet until I reached the village in the foothills, where I called in to the Blue Bat tavern for a chat with Popsie Von Straubenzee. Popsie was one of the floozies I had dallied with in my debauched teenage years, and now she was older and wiser and ran a stamp collecting club in one of the mountain's many sanatoria, where weaklings lay slowly perishing on balconies. These days, my tipple was aerated lettucewater, but Popsie could still knock back the brandy like a rough tough matelot, and she did so, day in day out, seemingly with no ill effects. It was to Popsie that I confided my dreams and desires, and it was Popsie who helped them come true. She, too, had a wealthy uncle, also called Arpad, and he was a monkey hunter. All I had to do, she explained, was to tell her how many monkeys I wanted, of what types, and she would arrange for Uncle Arpad to hunt them down, stun them with darts, put them into comas and into crates, and have them delivered to my door. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Me And My Monkeys 08:00 A Talk On Dobson 24:20 In The Bird-Loft 28:03 For Flute Accompaniment ME AND MY MONKEYS For a long time, I used to go to bed early. Often, it was still light as I shut my bedroom door and drew the curtains and buried myself under my blankets. My home-made soundproofing, hundreds of corks glued to the bedroom walls, worked remarkably well, and I treasured the peace and quiet. In the rest of the chalet, the monkeys could do as they pleased. I was safe in my bed, and undisturbed. Ever since I could remember I had wanted to live surrounded by monkeys. As a tiny tot, I made toy monkeys out of pipe-cleaners and pin-cushions. I begged my parents to buy me a real monkey from a monkey shop, not knowing that there were no such shops in our Alpine fastness. As an evil nine-year-old, I planned to abduct a monkey or two from a zoo, but I was an inept little criminal and won myself only a fortnight in a Blunkett Camp For Miscreant Hobbledehoys. During a fractious adolescence I was diverted by brandy and floozies and high-tar Peruvian cigarettes, and it was only when I gained my majority and was installed in my own chalet courtesy of a wealthy uncle that my monkey mania reasserted itself. Uncle Arpad was himself fond of monkeys, though not, as in my case, to the point of unreason. He had made his fortune in the windmill and plankton trades, and had retired to a chalet just up the mountain from the one he bought for me. Every day, I took the funicular railway up to visit him for breakfast, and over a dish of brisket and jugged partridge he told stories of his past, and of other people's pasts, and of invented pasts, and he invariably ended these sometimes tedious monologues by encouraging me to live my dreams. He was, I think, a bitter man who regretted that he had devoted his life to windmills and plankton, and he wanted better for me. Descending the mountain after breakfast each day, tramping slowly in my snowshoes, I had time to ponder what I really wanted in life, and I knew in the very depths of my soul that my greatest desire was to live surrounded by monkeys. Sometimes I carried on down the mountain past my own chalet until I reached the village in the foothills, where I called in to the Blue Bat tavern for a chat with Popsie Von Straubenzee. Popsie was one of the floozies I had dallied with in my debauched teenage years, and now she was older and wiser and ran a stamp collecting club in one of the mountain's many sanatoria, where weaklings lay slowly perishing on balconies. These days, my tipple was aerated lettucewater, but Popsie could still knock back the brandy like a rough tough matelot, and she did so, day in day out, seemingly with no ill effects. It was to Popsie that I confided my dreams and desires, and it was Popsie who helped them come true. She, too, had a wealthy uncle, also called Arpad, and he was a monkey hunter. All I had to do, she explained, was to tell her how many monkeys I wanted, of what types, and she would arrange for Uncle Arpad to hunt them down, stun them with darts, put them into comas and into crates, and have them delivered to my door. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-1729:10fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-10Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:31 Abominable, Sulphurous & Futile : A Footnote 08:35 A Man Of Parts 14:55 Slops TV Transcript ABOMINABLE, SULPHUROUS & FUTILE : A FOOTNOTE By coincidence, the title of an earlier post, Abominable, Sulphurous & Futile, is the exact wording used by Blodgett whenever he is asked his opinion of ducks. Blodgett hates ducks. Scoter or shoveller, merganser or teal, he loathes them all. It is important to point out that this is not a phobia, an irrational fear, but rather a conscious, reasoned hatred, though the reasoning itself is flawed, as is Blodgett's reasoning in pretty much every area of life save for matters of railway timetabling. Even then, his tendency to measure the speed of trains in nautical knots has led to all sorts of problems, but that is a topic for another time. I have already set aside this coming October for some thorough research into Blodgett and the railways. Blodgett himself has always insisted that he hates ducks because ducks hate him. The evidence for this appears to be that, as a small child, he was attacked by a massed gaggle of red-crested pochards at the edge of a pond into which he was innocently tossing pebbles. Let us examine that claim in some detail. We need, I think, to ask some hard questions. Where was this pond? Was it truly a pond, rather than, say, a puddle or a cwm or a tarn or a mere or a lake or even the edge of a mighty and unknown sea? As for the pebbles, were they indeed pebbles or were they dangerously large rocks with very sharp edges that could slice through the neck of a passing pochard or smew? By his own account, Blodgett was a mere tot when this incident took place, so how had he learned to distinguish between different types of duck? What sort of pedagogy would teach infants to identify teal before they learned to read and write and count and tell the time and tie their shoelaces? In a duck-strewn domain, of course, such methods may make sense, but from what we know of the land where Blodgett was raised we can safely say that its duck population was average and unremarkable. The same is true of its ponds and pond-like bodies of water, tallies of which were, and still are, kept by pond-counting persons employed by the local potentate. Make no mistake, pond-counting used to be an honourable profession, one to which any citizen possessed of good eyesight, sturdy limbs, and possession of a notched stick could aspire. Blodgett's own mother trained as a pond-counter, but a promising career was curtailed when she choked on a pip and came down with Van Bronckhorst's Syndrome. Getting back to those pebbles for a moment, what is the truth of Blodgett's claim that he was tossing them into the pond innocently? One does not need to believe in the doctrine of Original Sin to be aware that oftentimes tiny children carry out acts of the most grievous moral turpitude. And though we may have difficulty grasping exactly what goes on in the brains of a gaggle of pochards, it is surely not beyond our wit to consider that, for a duck, the tossing of pebbles into a pond could be seen as an act of brute destruction. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:31 Abominable, Sulphurous & Futile : A Footnote 08:35 A Man Of Parts 14:55 Slops TV Transcript ABOMINABLE, SULPHUROUS & FUTILE : A FOOTNOTE By coincidence, the title of an earlier post, Abominable, Sulphurous & Futile, is the exact wording used by Blodgett whenever he is asked his opinion of ducks. Blodgett hates ducks. Scoter or shoveller, merganser or teal, he loathes them all. It is important to point out that this is not a phobia, an irrational fear, but rather a conscious, reasoned hatred, though the reasoning itself is flawed, as is Blodgett's reasoning in pretty much every area of life save for matters of railway timetabling. Even then, his tendency to measure the speed of trains in nautical knots has led to all sorts of problems, but that is a topic for another time. I have already set aside this coming October for some thorough research into Blodgett and the railways. Blodgett himself has always insisted that he hates ducks because ducks hate him. The evidence for this appears to be that, as a small child, he was attacked by a massed gaggle of red-crested pochards at the edge of a pond into which he was innocently tossing pebbles. Let us examine that claim in some detail. We need, I think, to ask some hard questions. Where was this pond? Was it truly a pond, rather than, say, a puddle or a cwm or a tarn or a mere or a lake or even the edge of a mighty and unknown sea? As for the pebbles, were they indeed pebbles or were they dangerously large rocks with very sharp edges that could slice through the neck of a passing pochard or smew? By his own account, Blodgett was a mere tot when this incident took place, so how had he learned to distinguish between different types of duck? What sort of pedagogy would teach infants to identify teal before they learned to read and write and count and tell the time and tie their shoelaces? In a duck-strewn domain, of course, such methods may make sense, but from what we know of the land where Blodgett was raised we can safely say that its duck population was average and unremarkable. The same is true of its ponds and pond-like bodies of water, tallies of which were, and still are, kept by pond-counting persons employed by the local potentate. Make no mistake, pond-counting used to be an honourable profession, one to which any citizen possessed of good eyesight, sturdy limbs, and possession of a notched stick could aspire. Blodgett's own mother trained as a pond-counter, but a promising career was curtailed when she choked on a pip and came down with Van Bronckhorst's Syndrome. Getting back to those pebbles for a moment, what is the truth of Blodgett's claim that he was tossing them into the pond innocently? One does not need to believe in the doctrine of Original Sin to be aware that oftentimes tiny children carry out acts of the most grievous moral turpitude. And though we may have difficulty grasping exactly what goes on in the brains of a gaggle of pochards, it is surely not beyond our wit to consider that, for a duck, the tossing of pebbles into a pond could be seen as an act of brute destruction. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-1030:06fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-03Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips 05:14 The Legend Of The Golden Pig 12:52 Thicket 16:50 Crushed And Squashed 23:38 Wisps and Clumps 28:59 "In bygone days the world was a..." FRITZ : HIS HINGE AND HIS PIPS Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips is the terrific new bestseller from Pebblehead. This time, the paperbackist gives us a thriller and, gosh, it certainly makes for an exciting read. The beginning of the book, though, is deceptively slow-moving, even dull. We learn that the eponymous hero is an emotional cripple who wallows in a stew of malignant Weltschmerz. He is an unattractive character, wearing unattractive clothing, giving off an unattractive pong, and living in an unattractive chalet in an unattractive seaside resort. We do not warm to him as we learn, in chapters one and two, of his grumbling and his scruffy dog and the bits of celery and spring onion forever stuck in his beard. We are repelled by his grimy bathtub and his many stains. But then, in chapter three, Pebblehead pulls the rabbit out of the hat and we are off on a pell-mell rollercoaster ride of thrills and spills aplenty. What happens is that Fritz decides one morning to eat a piece of fruit. It is a pip-riddled fruit, and Fritz spits out the pips with such force that they lodge in the hinge of his door. The door is ajar at the time, because Fritz's scruffy dog has lolloped into the chalet garden to piss on a briar patch. When the dog comes back in, Fritz goes to close the door, but cannot. It turns out that the pips Fritz spat across the room are of adamantine hardness, and, lodged in the hinge, prevent the door from shutting. Thus begins a sequence of events that propels Fritz and his scruffy dog through a series of adventures that begins in an ironmonger's shop and rapidly moves on to a coathanger factory, a sausage maker's, the undersea headquarters of a madcap swordfish person, and a barn full of cows. All the while, the pips remain stuck in the hinge and the chalet door stays maddeningly ajar. Yet as the story progresses, Fritz's Weltschmerz becomes less malignant and his dog less scruffy. By chapter forty-nine, when we find Fritz picking bits of celery and spring onion out of his beard and disposing of them down a hygenic chute, we are ready to forgive the griminess of his bathtub. It must be said that the novel is not an unalloyed success. I could have done without the excessive use of exclamation marks, for example, and Pebblehead's pip descriptions are deplorable. I suspect he may have copied them out of a cheap botanical gazetteer without first checking its accuracy. He has committed similar sins in the past, notably in the Wet Behind The Ears trilogy, vast chunks of which were plagiarised from a mistranslated Serbian birdseed catalogue. These minor cavils aside, Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips is a tremendous addition to the Pebblehead canon. Read it with your feet up, on your balcony, if you have a balcony, with a bag of snacks at your side, the constant tweeting of chaffinches assailing your ears, freshly laundered socks on the washing line, sprites in the wainscot, and butchers' drapes billowing in the balmy spring breeze. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips 05:14 The Legend Of The Golden Pig 12:52 Thicket 16:50 Crushed And Squashed 23:38 Wisps and Clumps 28:59 "In bygone days the world was a..." FRITZ : HIS HINGE AND HIS PIPS Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips is the terrific new bestseller from Pebblehead. This time, the paperbackist gives us a thriller and, gosh, it certainly makes for an exciting read. The beginning of the book, though, is deceptively slow-moving, even dull. We learn that the eponymous hero is an emotional cripple who wallows in a stew of malignant Weltschmerz. He is an unattractive character, wearing unattractive clothing, giving off an unattractive pong, and living in an unattractive chalet in an unattractive seaside resort. We do not warm to him as we learn, in chapters one and two, of his grumbling and his scruffy dog and the bits of celery and spring onion forever stuck in his beard. We are repelled by his grimy bathtub and his many stains. But then, in chapter three, Pebblehead pulls the rabbit out of the hat and we are off on a pell-mell rollercoaster ride of thrills and spills aplenty. What happens is that Fritz decides one morning to eat a piece of fruit. It is a pip-riddled fruit, and Fritz spits out the pips with such force that they lodge in the hinge of his door. The door is ajar at the time, because Fritz's scruffy dog has lolloped into the chalet garden to piss on a briar patch. When the dog comes back in, Fritz goes to close the door, but cannot. It turns out that the pips Fritz spat across the room are of adamantine hardness, and, lodged in the hinge, prevent the door from shutting. Thus begins a sequence of events that propels Fritz and his scruffy dog through a series of adventures that begins in an ironmonger's shop and rapidly moves on to a coathanger factory, a sausage maker's, the undersea headquarters of a madcap swordfish person, and a barn full of cows. All the while, the pips remain stuck in the hinge and the chalet door stays maddeningly ajar. Yet as the story progresses, Fritz's Weltschmerz becomes less malignant and his dog less scruffy. By chapter forty-nine, when we find Fritz picking bits of celery and spring onion out of his beard and disposing of them down a hygenic chute, we are ready to forgive the griminess of his bathtub. It must be said that the novel is not an unalloyed success. I could have done without the excessive use of exclamation marks, for example, and Pebblehead's pip descriptions are deplorable. I suspect he may have copied them out of a cheap botanical gazetteer without first checking its accuracy. He has committed similar sins in the past, notably in the Wet Behind The Ears trilogy, vast chunks of which were plagiarised from a mistranslated Serbian birdseed catalogue. These minor cavils aside, Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips is a tremendous addition to the Pebblehead canon. Read it with your feet up, on your balcony, if you have a balcony, with a bag of snacks at your side, the constant tweeting of chaffinches assailing your ears, freshly laundered socks on the washing line, sprites in the wainscot, and butchers' drapes billowing in the balmy spring breeze. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-07-0329:45fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-06-26Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Hunched Among These Shimmerings... HUNCHED AMONG THESE SHIMMERINGS... More than twenty years ago, I wrote a short piece in which I described being hunched among shimmerings. Looking back, it occurs to me that I didn't really know what I was talking about. I was just blathering. I often blathered in those days, both vocally and when doing my scribblings. I think I was simply unclear about what I wanted to say. Much has changed, for now I have a clear, eagle-eyed vision, and am somewhat better able to communicate it. Oh, I still fall prey to blather, more often than I ought to, but I have learned to nip it, if not in the bud, then before too many tendrils have swarmed across the sun-dappled pathway that leads to truth and beauty and insight. You see, there really is a bright magnificent upland upon which we can prance, if we can but reach it. I know that now. So when, twenty-odd years ago, I wrote about hunching among the shimmerings, I was unable to do much more than to simply report the fact. The significance of my experience escaped me. But last week I found myself once again so hunched, among shimmerings, and now I am equal to the task of writing about it properly. It was Tuesday morning, and I was exhausted after a sleepless night. Fuelled by Vimto and boil-in-the-bag liquidised macaroni, I had been sitting up studying the flight patterns of bitterns and sanderlings to prepare myself for a bird-related Q&A session I was due to attend. There are many such calls on my attention, and I usually decline them, but this one was a fundraiser for a cause close to my heart, so I was taking part. If I could help to raise a pittance for the Tord Grip Tracksuit Museum, I was ready to immerse myself in bird flight patterns for as long as it took. And, if truth be told, I found the subject fascinating. By the time Tuesday dawned, however, my poor brainpans had turned to mush, and I needed some fresh air. Not far from where I live, beyond the pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing, there is the shack of a mystic. I am in no doubt that, like most mystics, the mystic who dwells in the shack is a fraud. Like TV psychologist Dr Raj Persaud, he is an incorrigible plagiarist, culling his mystic pronouncements from other mystics, some of whom live like him in shacks by level crossings, some of whom live in palaces, and some of whom are dead. Yet I often find it refreshing to head out at dawn and to bestir him by throwing pebbles at his shack. That, at any rate, was my plan. I filled my pockets with pebbles from my pebble pot and thudded out of the house, stamping my feet with vigour upon the green earth. I do not mean that the earth upon which I thumped was literally green. I am trying to impress upon you that I am attuned to nature, a true friend of the earth, a sort of pebble-throwing version of Jonathan Porritt. It is true that I do not care two pins about my carbon footprint, and perhaps that is why I do not get to jet around the world in gleaming aircraft to attend conferences on global warming. But I do not complain. I have my little bailiwick, and I trudge the green earth, hugging the occasional sycamore or yew tree when to do so takes my fancy. On this particular morning, though, I did not stop to commune with any trees. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-06-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Hunched Among These Shimmerings... HUNCHED AMONG THESE SHIMMERINGS... More than twenty years ago, I wrote a short piece in which I described being hunched among shimmerings. Looking back, it occurs to me that I didn't really know what I was talking about. I was just blathering. I often blathered in those days, both vocally and when doing my scribblings. I think I was simply unclear about what I wanted to say. Much has changed, for now I have a clear, eagle-eyed vision, and am somewhat better able to communicate it. Oh, I still fall prey to blather, more often than I ought to, but I have learned to nip it, if not in the bud, then before too many tendrils have swarmed across the sun-dappled pathway that leads to truth and beauty and insight. You see, there really is a bright magnificent upland upon which we can prance, if we can but reach it. I know that now. So when, twenty-odd years ago, I wrote about hunching among the shimmerings, I was unable to do much more than to simply report the fact. The significance of my experience escaped me. But last week I found myself once again so hunched, among shimmerings, and now I am equal to the task of writing about it properly. It was Tuesday morning, and I was exhausted after a sleepless night. Fuelled by Vimto and boil-in-the-bag liquidised macaroni, I had been sitting up studying the flight patterns of bitterns and sanderlings to prepare myself for a bird-related Q&A session I was due to attend. There are many such calls on my attention, and I usually decline them, but this one was a fundraiser for a cause close to my heart, so I was taking part. If I could help to raise a pittance for the Tord Grip Tracksuit Museum, I was ready to immerse myself in bird flight patterns for as long as it took. And, if truth be told, I found the subject fascinating. By the time Tuesday dawned, however, my poor brainpans had turned to mush, and I needed some fresh air. Not far from where I live, beyond the pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing, there is the shack of a mystic. I am in no doubt that, like most mystics, the mystic who dwells in the shack is a fraud. Like TV psychologist Dr Raj Persaud, he is an incorrigible plagiarist, culling his mystic pronouncements from other mystics, some of whom live like him in shacks by level crossings, some of whom live in palaces, and some of whom are dead. Yet I often find it refreshing to head out at dawn and to bestir him by throwing pebbles at his shack. That, at any rate, was my plan. I filled my pockets with pebbles from my pebble pot and thudded out of the house, stamping my feet with vigour upon the green earth. I do not mean that the earth upon which I thumped was literally green. I am trying to impress upon you that I am attuned to nature, a true friend of the earth, a sort of pebble-throwing version of Jonathan Porritt. It is true that I do not care two pins about my carbon footprint, and perhaps that is why I do not get to jet around the world in gleaming aircraft to attend conferences on global warming. But I do not complain. I have my little bailiwick, and I trudge the green earth, hugging the occasional sycamore or yew tree when to do so takes my fancy. On this particular morning, though, I did not stop to commune with any trees. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-06-2630:05fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-06-19Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 A Snapshot From The History Of Athletics 03:21 Savagery In Splat 10:20 Days O' Bootpolish 19:30 Basil And Guido's Kropotkin Fanfaronade 26:07 "I went to visit a consumptive shoemaker;..." A SNAPSHOT FROM THE HISTORY OF ATHLETICS Here is another potsage [sic] exhumed from the archive. It is from July 2005 and marks the very first appearance on these pages of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol who, I am somewhat alarmed to note, I claimed was my father. What this might mean is for a quack brain doctor to unravel. When I turn my mind to the great sprint champions of the past, I often think of Bobnit Tivol. He came from the Tyrol, and he was such a fast runner that it was said he could outrun an express train, which was a strange thing to say, for at that time there were no trains, express or otherwise, in the Tyrol. But of course Bobnit Tivol was famous throughout the world, and he often raced in foreign countries, so it is conceivable that he was tempted on one of his travels to compete against a railway train. His trainer was cranky old Halob, who himself had been a very great sprinter. Making his champion run in front of, rather than alongside, a speeding train is exactly the kind of technique Halob would have used. Once, it is said, he made Bobnit Tivol run an uphill double marathon wearing an iron vest, twice in one day. One has only to consider the records broken by Bobnit Tivol to recognise him for the superb sprinter he was. Leafing through old athletics almanacks, his name appears again and again and again, invariably in capital letters, annotated by one, two, or even three stars, at the top of every list. They say he had to rent a warehouse to store all his cups and shields and trophies. To think that he had won all the major Tyrolean sprinting events before he was twenty years old is to gasp in wonder. Could he have succeeded without old Halob? They made a striking pair, the whippet-like runner with his mop of golden hair and the wheezing, elderly man, who smoked four packets of Black Ague rolling tobacco every day, dressed always in his Stalinist cardigan, a stopwatch in each pocket, leaning on a stick he claimed to have broken off the Tree of Heaven. If I shut my eyes I see them still, my father and his mentor, Bobnit Tivol and old Halob, heroic figures from a past I have had to invent anew, for none of it is true. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-06-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 A Snapshot From The History Of Athletics 03:21 Savagery In Splat 10:20 Days O' Bootpolish 19:30 Basil And Guido's Kropotkin Fanfaronade 26:07 "I went to visit a consumptive shoemaker;..." A SNAPSHOT FROM THE HISTORY OF ATHLETICS Here is another potsage [sic] exhumed from the archive. It is from July 2005 and marks the very first appearance on these pages of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol who, I am somewhat alarmed to note, I claimed was my father. What this might mean is for a quack brain doctor to unravel. When I turn my mind to the great sprint champions of the past, I often think of Bobnit Tivol. He came from the Tyrol, and he was such a fast runner that it was said he could outrun an express train, which was a strange thing to say, for at that time there were no trains, express or otherwise, in the Tyrol. But of course Bobnit Tivol was famous throughout the world, and he often raced in foreign countries, so it is conceivable that he was tempted on one of his travels to compete against a railway train. His trainer was cranky old Halob, who himself had been a very great sprinter. Making his champion run in front of, rather than alongside, a speeding train is exactly the kind of technique Halob would have used. Once, it is said, he made Bobnit Tivol run an uphill double marathon wearing an iron vest, twice in one day. One has only to consider the records broken by Bobnit Tivol to recognise him for the superb sprinter he was. Leafing through old athletics almanacks, his name appears again and again and again, invariably in capital letters, annotated by one, two, or even three stars, at the top of every list. They say he had to rent a warehouse to store all his cups and shields and trophies. To think that he had won all the major Tyrolean sprinting events before he was twenty years old is to gasp in wonder. Could he have succeeded without old Halob? They made a striking pair, the whippet-like runner with his mop of golden hair and the wheezing, elderly man, who smoked four packets of Black Ague rolling tobacco every day, dressed always in his Stalinist cardigan, a stopwatch in each pocket, leaning on a stick he claimed to have broken off the Tree of Heaven. If I shut my eyes I see them still, my father and his mentor, Bobnit Tivol and old Halob, heroic figures from a past I have had to invent anew, for none of it is true. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-06-1930:47fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-06-05Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-06-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-06-0528:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-29Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Rules of the Game RULES OF THE GAME Little is known of the origins of football, a game which is today one of the most popular sports throughout the Northern Lands. According to De Smet [see The Punnet, Vol XVI No.9], football began when tribal elders in the hinterland around Hoon took to mucking about after the annual ritual ostrich-battering. Thumper, on the other hand, has argued in a number of persuasive essays that the sordid practices of a family living in a cave near Bodger's Spinney were the true origins of the game. Either of these theories may be true, as might thousands upon thousands of others. But let us not tarry in the past. The rules of football are stupendously complex. The rubric itself fills hundreds of huge volumes, and interpretative texts, analyses and commentaries have accumulated at such a rate that entire libraries are now devoted to the subject. That being the case, it is impractical in this essay to do more than sketch the merest outline. So let us draw breath, take stock, make a cup of tea, twang a ukulele, skip frolicsome thro' ling and heather, rap curses at hunched louts, sprinkle talc upon our scalps, whisk an egg, brush our teeth, impale a mothball, crack a biscuit, mumble a homily, tie a ship's knot in a necklace, stoke up the fire, spit on the coals, irk a butcher, crick our necks, stamp on a bee, shovel grit outside the police station, howl at the Wergo, mitigate a plea, fold a crocus, employ a grotesquerie and put a flea in its ear: come follow me as I expound the laws of football. There are two teams of thirty one players each, plus a moderator, two assistant moderators, a plinth sergeant, a brazil nut attendant, and a person holding a tape measure. The teams are dubbed "Bark" and "Sap": these terms are as arbitrary as the use of white and black to differentiate chess pieces, or the pigs and cones used in the game of lanternjaw. Each team consists of ten jack hulberts, ten cicely courtneidges, six badgers, a winch, a hurdle, a cake, a denial, and a pond. Only two badgers may be fielded at one time, unless the winch is out of play. Players may make use of bats, sticks, hooked poles, claw-hammers, lances, ballbearings, fenceposts, swords, bayonets, doorhandles, fireworks and icing sugar. At the beginning of play the moderator tosses on to the rink three balls: one is of leather, one of bladder, and one of zinc. Surprisingly, the rules say nothing about the size of the balls, and there is great variation among those commonly in use. The object of the game is for the Bark team to puncture the leather and bladder balls beyond repair and to hide the zinc ball for a period of twenty three hours, while the Sap team must try to protect all three balls by putting them in wicker containers and keeping the opposing side away from them for an identical period. The field of play is called the pitch, rink, arena, clat, ford, or basin. It is marked out with an intricate tangle of signs and symbols and is usually waterlogged. A true appreciation of football is hampered by the difficulty of understanding the subsidiary objectives--or "planks" -- of the game. Either of the assistant moderators may impose planks at the start of the game or in the intervals between fits. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Rules of the Game RULES OF THE GAME Little is known of the origins of football, a game which is today one of the most popular sports throughout the Northern Lands. According to De Smet [see The Punnet, Vol XVI No.9], football began when tribal elders in the hinterland around Hoon took to mucking about after the annual ritual ostrich-battering. Thumper, on the other hand, has argued in a number of persuasive essays that the sordid practices of a family living in a cave near Bodger's Spinney were the true origins of the game. Either of these theories may be true, as might thousands upon thousands of others. But let us not tarry in the past. The rules of football are stupendously complex. The rubric itself fills hundreds of huge volumes, and interpretative texts, analyses and commentaries have accumulated at such a rate that entire libraries are now devoted to the subject. That being the case, it is impractical in this essay to do more than sketch the merest outline. So let us draw breath, take stock, make a cup of tea, twang a ukulele, skip frolicsome thro' ling and heather, rap curses at hunched louts, sprinkle talc upon our scalps, whisk an egg, brush our teeth, impale a mothball, crack a biscuit, mumble a homily, tie a ship's knot in a necklace, stoke up the fire, spit on the coals, irk a butcher, crick our necks, stamp on a bee, shovel grit outside the police station, howl at the Wergo, mitigate a plea, fold a crocus, employ a grotesquerie and put a flea in its ear: come follow me as I expound the laws of football. There are two teams of thirty one players each, plus a moderator, two assistant moderators, a plinth sergeant, a brazil nut attendant, and a person holding a tape measure. The teams are dubbed "Bark" and "Sap": these terms are as arbitrary as the use of white and black to differentiate chess pieces, or the pigs and cones used in the game of lanternjaw. Each team consists of ten jack hulberts, ten cicely courtneidges, six badgers, a winch, a hurdle, a cake, a denial, and a pond. Only two badgers may be fielded at one time, unless the winch is out of play. Players may make use of bats, sticks, hooked poles, claw-hammers, lances, ballbearings, fenceposts, swords, bayonets, doorhandles, fireworks and icing sugar. At the beginning of play the moderator tosses on to the rink three balls: one is of leather, one of bladder, and one of zinc. Surprisingly, the rules say nothing about the size of the balls, and there is great variation among those commonly in use. The object of the game is for the Bark team to puncture the leather and bladder balls beyond repair and to hide the zinc ball for a period of twenty three hours, while the Sap team must try to protect all three balls by putting them in wicker containers and keeping the opposing side away from them for an identical period. The field of play is called the pitch, rink, arena, clat, ford, or basin. It is marked out with an intricate tangle of signs and symbols and is usually waterlogged. A true appreciation of football is hampered by the difficulty of understanding the subsidiary objectives--or "planks" -- of the game. Either of the assistant moderators may impose planks at the start of the game or in the intervals between fits. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-2929:57fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-22Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 12:06 Sixty Unassailable Facts About Birds SIXTY UNASSAILABLE FACTS ABOUT BIRDS Delving in the archives, for reasons related to Project Thrilling, I came upon this postage from 2008 which, my memory being the puny thing it is, I had completely forgotten. Well worth rereading. 1. A raven called Dot-son-paa created the world. 2. Startled blackbirds emit piercing cries because they think they are about to be attacked by demons. 3. Each legion of the Roman Army had a Pullarius, whose job it was to look after the cage of sacred chickens they carried with them. 4. If a dove flies over a coal mine, disaster is likely to follow. 5. The souls of unbaptised children take the form of nightjars. 6. Cuckoos in Herefordshire buy horses at a country fair, and sell them at another. 7. Beowulf was reincarnated as a woodpecker. 8. Every single corncrake in Siberia got there by riding on the back of a crane. 9. If you want to provoke someone to commit suicide, send them a picture of an owl. 10. A splinter of wood from a coffin will keep sparrows at bay. 11. If you drink boiled magpie broth you will go mad. 12. If a woman befriends a stork, it will bring her jewellery. 13. In an apotheosis, an eagle is hidden behind a blazing waxen image of a dead emperor, and released when it has melted away. 14. Epileptics can transfer their illness to a chicken by carrying it three times around a well and then spending the night with it asleep under a church altar. 15. It is a good idea to place a wooden diver atop a tall post at the corner of a grave. 16. Robins can speak Latin. 17. Jesus turned a woman into a lapwing after she baked him a cake. 18. On every beach there is a magic stone that cures blindness, but only swallows know how to find it. 19. One way to find gold is to carry with you a stone vomited up by a crane. 20. If you hear a cuckoo before eating your breakfast, ill fortune will follow, possibly to include a loss of feeling in your arms and legs. 21. Nightingales used to be one-eyed, but borrowed the eye from a blindworm and never returned it. 22. Ireland has been called "the swan abounding land". 23. Pelicans are the most pious of birds. 24. To avoid being bitten by a rabid dog, tuck the heart and right foot of an owl under your left armpit. 25. Cranes migrate south for the sole purpose of launching savage attacks on miniature people, about seven inches high, who they gobble up. 26. You can protect your house from lightning strikes by keeping a blackbird in your living room 27. Crossbills watch over children who fall asleep in direct moonlight and may therefore otherwise come to harm. 28. If bird eggs are incubated by frogs, the birds that hatch from them, irrespective of the parent birds, will be stonechats. 29. Migrating quails are terrified of the sea, and shut their eyes when crossing it, thus often colliding with ships. 30. Nail a dead owl to your barn to protect against storms. 31. The earth was created from mud collected by white-billed divers. 32. If you eat roasted swallow, you are likely to be attacked by dragons. 33. A crossbill tried, but failed, to wrench the nails from Christ's cross during the crucifixion. 34. You can kill gnats and flies with a handful of soil taken from where you are standing when you hear a cuckoo call. 35. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 12:06 Sixty Unassailable Facts About Birds SIXTY UNASSAILABLE FACTS ABOUT BIRDS Delving in the archives, for reasons related to Project Thrilling, I came upon this postage from 2008 which, my memory being the puny thing it is, I had completely forgotten. Well worth rereading. 1. A raven called Dot-son-paa created the world. 2. Startled blackbirds emit piercing cries because they think they are about to be attacked by demons. 3. Each legion of the Roman Army had a Pullarius, whose job it was to look after the cage of sacred chickens they carried with them. 4. If a dove flies over a coal mine, disaster is likely to follow. 5. The souls of unbaptised children take the form of nightjars. 6. Cuckoos in Herefordshire buy horses at a country fair, and sell them at another. 7. Beowulf was reincarnated as a woodpecker. 8. Every single corncrake in Siberia got there by riding on the back of a crane. 9. If you want to provoke someone to commit suicide, send them a picture of an owl. 10. A splinter of wood from a coffin will keep sparrows at bay. 11. If you drink boiled magpie broth you will go mad. 12. If a woman befriends a stork, it will bring her jewellery. 13. In an apotheosis, an eagle is hidden behind a blazing waxen image of a dead emperor, and released when it has melted away. 14. Epileptics can transfer their illness to a chicken by carrying it three times around a well and then spending the night with it asleep under a church altar. 15. It is a good idea to place a wooden diver atop a tall post at the corner of a grave. 16. Robins can speak Latin. 17. Jesus turned a woman into a lapwing after she baked him a cake. 18. On every beach there is a magic stone that cures blindness, but only swallows know how to find it. 19. One way to find gold is to carry with you a stone vomited up by a crane. 20. If you hear a cuckoo before eating your breakfast, ill fortune will follow, possibly to include a loss of feeling in your arms and legs. 21. Nightingales used to be one-eyed, but borrowed the eye from a blindworm and never returned it. 22. Ireland has been called "the swan abounding land". 23. Pelicans are the most pious of birds. 24. To avoid being bitten by a rabid dog, tuck the heart and right foot of an owl under your left armpit. 25. Cranes migrate south for the sole purpose of launching savage attacks on miniature people, about seven inches high, who they gobble up. 26. You can protect your house from lightning strikes by keeping a blackbird in your living room 27. Crossbills watch over children who fall asleep in direct moonlight and may therefore otherwise come to harm. 28. If bird eggs are incubated by frogs, the birds that hatch from them, irrespective of the parent birds, will be stonechats. 29. Migrating quails are terrified of the sea, and shut their eyes when crossing it, thus often colliding with ships. 30. Nail a dead owl to your barn to protect against storms. 31. The earth was created from mud collected by white-billed divers. 32. If you eat roasted swallow, you are likely to be attacked by dragons. 33. A crossbill tried, but failed, to wrench the nails from Christ's cross during the crucifixion. 34. You can kill gnats and flies with a handful of soil taken from where you are standing when you hear a cuckoo call. 35. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-2227:53fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-15Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Dirk Bogarde, With A Moustache, In A Vaporetto 05:02 Grizzled Old Fool At The Haberdashery 10:22 O'er The Hills And Far Away 14:50 The Great Emblotchment 20:12 Old Halob : A Biographical Note 26:00 The Game Of Glossop DIRK BOGARDE, WITH A MOUSTACHE, IN A VAPORETTO Whenever I think about Dirk Bogarde, with a moustache, in a vaporetto, I hear the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler's fifth symphony. Such is the power of cinema. If you've seen Luchino Visconti's Death In Venice (1971), you will know exactly what I'm talking about. I often find myself thinking about Dirk Bogarde, with a moustache, in a vaporetto, probably more often than is normal, and I have absolutely no idea why. If I am able to snap out of the thought within thirty seconds or so, all is well, but once I hit the half-minute mark I invariably break into great heaving sobs, and have to dab at my eyes with an expensive handkerchief, or a rag, whichever comes readily to hand. I try to make sure there is always an expensive handkerchief in one of my pockets, or tucked into the waistband of my trousers, like a midget cummerbund, but if I am going to muck out a pig sty, say, or to scrape grease off the wall of a drainage chute, I am more likely to opt for a rag. Foppishness has its attractions but it is ill-advised in some circumstances. Dirk Bogarde was occasionally foppish early in his career, but by the time he sported that moustache in a vaporetto he had become a sort of Euro-thespian, a serious man, of a kind I would like to see youngsters emulate today. No one has ever asked me how I would tackle the modern plague of feral inner city youth. If they did I would recommend that young tearaways grow moustaches and sit, shattered, in vaporettos. The Adagietto from Mahler's fifth could be piped at them through loudspeakers, or loaded onto their pods. If the government was willing to stump up the cash it might even be possible to have orchestras sent in to the more gruesome sink estates to play the Adagietto live. I recognise that many teenage girls are as violent and unruly as the boys, but the stick-on false moustache is a perennial favourite in joke shops and theatrical costumiers, so the resources are there. It just takes the political will to make it happen. Clearly there would have to be a major increase in vaporetto imports, but a beneficial side-effect would be the regeneration of our canals and estuaries. Speaking as one who has to haul a cart along winding country lanes, sweating like a pig, I would certainly welcome that. I use my expensive handkerchiefs to wipe the grime and perspiration off my neck as often as I dab the tears from my eyes when thinking about Dirk Bogarde, with a moustache, in a vaporetto, if truth be told. If the contents of my cart could be shoved on to a barge and go by canal I would be a happy man. I am already, like the later Dirk Bogarde, a serious man. Happy and serious would be a fantastic combination. I live in hope. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Dirk Bogarde, With A Moustache, In A Vaporetto 05:02 Grizzled Old Fool At The Haberdashery 10:22 O'er The Hills And Far Away 14:50 The Great Emblotchment 20:12 Old Halob : A Biographical Note 26:00 The Game Of Glossop DIRK BOGARDE, WITH A MOUSTACHE, IN A VAPORETTO Whenever I think about Dirk Bogarde, with a moustache, in a vaporetto, I hear the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler's fifth symphony. Such is the power of cinema. If you've seen Luchino Visconti's Death In Venice (1971), you will know exactly what I'm talking about. I often find myself thinking about Dirk Bogarde, with a moustache, in a vaporetto, probably more often than is normal, and I have absolutely no idea why. If I am able to snap out of the thought within thirty seconds or so, all is well, but once I hit the half-minute mark I invariably break into great heaving sobs, and have to dab at my eyes with an expensive handkerchief, or a rag, whichever comes readily to hand. I try to make sure there is always an expensive handkerchief in one of my pockets, or tucked into the waistband of my trousers, like a midget cummerbund, but if I am going to muck out a pig sty, say, or to scrape grease off the wall of a drainage chute, I am more likely to opt for a rag. Foppishness has its attractions but it is ill-advised in some circumstances. Dirk Bogarde was occasionally foppish early in his career, but by the time he sported that moustache in a vaporetto he had become a sort of Euro-thespian, a serious man, of a kind I would like to see youngsters emulate today. No one has ever asked me how I would tackle the modern plague of feral inner city youth. If they did I would recommend that young tearaways grow moustaches and sit, shattered, in vaporettos. The Adagietto from Mahler's fifth could be piped at them through loudspeakers, or loaded onto their pods. If the government was willing to stump up the cash it might even be possible to have orchestras sent in to the more gruesome sink estates to play the Adagietto live. I recognise that many teenage girls are as violent and unruly as the boys, but the stick-on false moustache is a perennial favourite in joke shops and theatrical costumiers, so the resources are there. It just takes the political will to make it happen. Clearly there would have to be a major increase in vaporetto imports, but a beneficial side-effect would be the regeneration of our canals and estuaries. Speaking as one who has to haul a cart along winding country lanes, sweating like a pig, I would certainly welcome that. I use my expensive handkerchiefs to wipe the grime and perspiration off my neck as often as I dab the tears from my eyes when thinking about Dirk Bogarde, with a moustache, in a vaporetto, if truth be told. If the contents of my cart could be shoved on to a barge and go by canal I would be a happy man. I am already, like the later Dirk Bogarde, a serious man. Happy and serious would be a fantastic combination. I live in hope. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-1529:31fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-08Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dobson's Blotter 13:45 Three Examples Of Uncontrollable Flapping About And Twitching 25:26 Grovel With Dampier 28:07 A Shuddering Miasma Of Crepitant Dread DOBSON'S BLOTTER Dobson was very fond of his blotter. Whenever he wrote about it, which was more often than considered normal for a grown man, his prose attains a pitch of purple enthusiasm modern readers can find uncomfortable, not to say distressing. It has been said that the pamphleteer even had a pet name for his blotter, as if it were an animate being, like a puppy or a hamster, but nobody claims to know what it was. Citation needed, as they say on the Wikipedia. There has been some debate, of crushing tedium, as to whether Dobson's attachment was to the blotter itself or to the sheets of blotting paper he inserted under its four leatherette corner flaps. He made something of a ritual of this, changing his blotting paper every Thursday afternoon at about four o clock, just before he had a cup of tea and a plate of bloaters. He seems to have inserted a fresh sheet irrespective of the state of the one to be discarded. As often as not, his blotting paper remained pristine, as he almost always wrote in pencil. The used sheets he kept in a cardboard box shoved underneath the sink in an outbuilding. Each time he filled the box, he secreted it somewhere, like a squirrel, and went to Hubermann's Department Store to get a new cardboard box. To date, nobody has ever discovered where he hid all those boxes of slightly-used blotting paper. It is one of the enduring mysteries beloved of Dobsonists. The blotter itself was unexceptionable, as blotters go. It was a flat leatherette rectangle with corner flaps under which the four corners of a sheet of blotting paper were tucked. Several witnesses have noted that, contrary to what one might expect, the blotter was not always in place on the pamphleteer's escritoire. Sometimes he left it leaning, upright, against the wainscot. At other times he put it in a bag and carried it around with him for no apparent purpose. It was not unknown for him to eat his bloaters off it, or to use it as a bird table. Dobson was fantastically ignorant of the diet of birds, though, and would place his blotter on top of an upright stick in the garden and then scatter hard toffee marbles upon it. Such confectionery was avoided by any little birds alighting on the blotter bird table, for rare is the bird which can digest hard toffee. They would also risk breaking their little beaks on it, for Dobson's preferred toffee marbles, which he bought in paper bags from a pedlar, were the hardest known to humankind, and he gave them an extra bake in his oven, for hours at a time, to make them harder still. In a new, as yet unpublished book, Pamplog and Gloveages tell the story of how Dobson's blotter was stolen and later recovered. Melodramatically, the pamphleteer once described this as "the worst week of my life". On a rambunctious Wednesday, when the zodiac was in a meaningless alignment, the pamphleteer decided he needed to stiffen the back of his blotter to restore its rigidity. He filled a pail with starch and carefully lowered the blotter into it, and then he strode off full of vim to Blister Lane Lido for water polo practice. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Dobson's Blotter 13:45 Three Examples Of Uncontrollable Flapping About And Twitching 25:26 Grovel With Dampier 28:07 A Shuddering Miasma Of Crepitant Dread DOBSON'S BLOTTER Dobson was very fond of his blotter. Whenever he wrote about it, which was more often than considered normal for a grown man, his prose attains a pitch of purple enthusiasm modern readers can find uncomfortable, not to say distressing. It has been said that the pamphleteer even had a pet name for his blotter, as if it were an animate being, like a puppy or a hamster, but nobody claims to know what it was. Citation needed, as they say on the Wikipedia. There has been some debate, of crushing tedium, as to whether Dobson's attachment was to the blotter itself or to the sheets of blotting paper he inserted under its four leatherette corner flaps. He made something of a ritual of this, changing his blotting paper every Thursday afternoon at about four o clock, just before he had a cup of tea and a plate of bloaters. He seems to have inserted a fresh sheet irrespective of the state of the one to be discarded. As often as not, his blotting paper remained pristine, as he almost always wrote in pencil. The used sheets he kept in a cardboard box shoved underneath the sink in an outbuilding. Each time he filled the box, he secreted it somewhere, like a squirrel, and went to Hubermann's Department Store to get a new cardboard box. To date, nobody has ever discovered where he hid all those boxes of slightly-used blotting paper. It is one of the enduring mysteries beloved of Dobsonists. The blotter itself was unexceptionable, as blotters go. It was a flat leatherette rectangle with corner flaps under which the four corners of a sheet of blotting paper were tucked. Several witnesses have noted that, contrary to what one might expect, the blotter was not always in place on the pamphleteer's escritoire. Sometimes he left it leaning, upright, against the wainscot. At other times he put it in a bag and carried it around with him for no apparent purpose. It was not unknown for him to eat his bloaters off it, or to use it as a bird table. Dobson was fantastically ignorant of the diet of birds, though, and would place his blotter on top of an upright stick in the garden and then scatter hard toffee marbles upon it. Such confectionery was avoided by any little birds alighting on the blotter bird table, for rare is the bird which can digest hard toffee. They would also risk breaking their little beaks on it, for Dobson's preferred toffee marbles, which he bought in paper bags from a pedlar, were the hardest known to humankind, and he gave them an extra bake in his oven, for hours at a time, to make them harder still. In a new, as yet unpublished book, Pamplog and Gloveages tell the story of how Dobson's blotter was stolen and later recovered. Melodramatically, the pamphleteer once described this as "the worst week of my life". On a rambunctious Wednesday, when the zodiac was in a meaningless alignment, the pamphleteer decided he needed to stiffen the back of his blotter to restore its rigidity. He filled a pail with starch and carefully lowered the blotter into it, and then he strode off full of vim to Blister Lane Lido for water polo practice. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-0830:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-01Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:44 Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips 05:57 The Legend Of The Golden Pig 13:35 Thicket 17:33 Crushed And Squashed 24:21 Wisps and Clumps 29:42 "In bygone days the world was a..." FRITZ : HIS HINGE AND HIS PIPS Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips is the terrific new bestseller from Pebblehead. This time, the paperbackist gives us a thriller and, gosh, it certainly makes for an exciting read. The beginning of the book, though, is deceptively slow-moving, even dull. We learn that the eponymous hero is an emotional cripple who wallows in a stew of malignant Weltschmerz. He is an unattractive character, wearing unattractive clothing, giving off an unattractive pong, and living in an unattractive chalet in an unattractive seaside resort. We do not warm to him as we learn, in chapters one and two, of his grumbling and his scruffy dog and the bits of celery and spring onion forever stuck in his beard. We are repelled by his grimy bathtub and his many stains. But then, in chapter three, Pebblehead pulls the rabbit out of the hat and we are off on a pell-mell rollercoaster ride of thrills and spills aplenty. What happens is that Fritz decides one morning to eat a piece of fruit. It is a pip-riddled fruit, and Fritz spits out the pips with such force that they lodge in the hinge of his door. The door is ajar at the time, because Fritz's scruffy dog has lolloped into the chalet garden to piss on a briar patch. When the dog comes back in, Fritz goes to close the door, but cannot. It turns out that the pips Fritz spat across the room are of adamantine hardness, and, lodged in the hinge, prevent the door from shutting. Thus begins a sequence of events that propels Fritz and his scruffy dog through a series of adventures that begins in an ironmonger's shop and rapidly moves on to a coathanger factory, a sausage maker's, the undersea headquarters of a madcap swordfish person, and a barn full of cows. All the while, the pips remain stuck in the hinge and the chalet door stays maddeningly ajar. Yet as the story progresses, Fritz's Weltschmerz becomes less malignant and his dog less scruffy. By chapter forty-nine, when we find Fritz picking bits of celery and spring onion out of his beard and disposing of them down a hygenic chute, we are ready to forgive the griminess of his bathtub. It must be said that the novel is not an unalloyed success. I could have done without the excessive use of exclamation marks, for example, and Pebblehead's pip descriptions are deplorable. I suspect he may have copied them out of a cheap botanical gazetteer without first checking its accuracy. He has committed similar sins in the past, notably in the Wet Behind The Ears trilogy, vast chunks of which were plagiarised from a mistranslated Serbian birdseed catalogue. These minor cavils aside, Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips is a tremendous addition to the Pebblehead canon. Read it with your feet up, on your balcony, if you have a balcony, with a bag of snacks at your side, the constant tweeting of chaffinches assailing your ears, freshly laundered socks on the washing line, sprites in the wainscot, and butchers' drapes billowing in the balmy spring breeze. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:44 Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips 05:57 The Legend Of The Golden Pig 13:35 Thicket 17:33 Crushed And Squashed 24:21 Wisps and Clumps 29:42 "In bygone days the world was a..." FRITZ : HIS HINGE AND HIS PIPS Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips is the terrific new bestseller from Pebblehead. This time, the paperbackist gives us a thriller and, gosh, it certainly makes for an exciting read. The beginning of the book, though, is deceptively slow-moving, even dull. We learn that the eponymous hero is an emotional cripple who wallows in a stew of malignant Weltschmerz. He is an unattractive character, wearing unattractive clothing, giving off an unattractive pong, and living in an unattractive chalet in an unattractive seaside resort. We do not warm to him as we learn, in chapters one and two, of his grumbling and his scruffy dog and the bits of celery and spring onion forever stuck in his beard. We are repelled by his grimy bathtub and his many stains. But then, in chapter three, Pebblehead pulls the rabbit out of the hat and we are off on a pell-mell rollercoaster ride of thrills and spills aplenty. What happens is that Fritz decides one morning to eat a piece of fruit. It is a pip-riddled fruit, and Fritz spits out the pips with such force that they lodge in the hinge of his door. The door is ajar at the time, because Fritz's scruffy dog has lolloped into the chalet garden to piss on a briar patch. When the dog comes back in, Fritz goes to close the door, but cannot. It turns out that the pips Fritz spat across the room are of adamantine hardness, and, lodged in the hinge, prevent the door from shutting. Thus begins a sequence of events that propels Fritz and his scruffy dog through a series of adventures that begins in an ironmonger's shop and rapidly moves on to a coathanger factory, a sausage maker's, the undersea headquarters of a madcap swordfish person, and a barn full of cows. All the while, the pips remain stuck in the hinge and the chalet door stays maddeningly ajar. Yet as the story progresses, Fritz's Weltschmerz becomes less malignant and his dog less scruffy. By chapter forty-nine, when we find Fritz picking bits of celery and spring onion out of his beard and disposing of them down a hygenic chute, we are ready to forgive the griminess of his bathtub. It must be said that the novel is not an unalloyed success. I could have done without the excessive use of exclamation marks, for example, and Pebblehead's pip descriptions are deplorable. I suspect he may have copied them out of a cheap botanical gazetteer without first checking its accuracy. He has committed similar sins in the past, notably in the Wet Behind The Ears trilogy, vast chunks of which were plagiarised from a mistranslated Serbian birdseed catalogue. These minor cavils aside, Fritz : His Hinge And His Pips is a tremendous addition to the Pebblehead canon. Read it with your feet up, on your balcony, if you have a balcony, with a bag of snacks at your side, the constant tweeting of chaffinches assailing your ears, freshly laundered socks on the washing line, sprites in the wainscot, and butchers' drapes billowing in the balmy spring breeze. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-05-0130:28fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-24Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Disquieting Ploppy Noises From Behind The Panel 24:55 The Influence Of Ploppy Noises In The Works Of Pebblehead 28:02 "On my return to the city that..." DISQUIETING PLOPPY NOISES FROM BEHIND THE PANEL Dobson wrote extensively during the period when he was hunkered down in a janitorium. The key pamphlets from this time were collected in a compendium and published as a thick paperback with a garish cover design suitable for sale at airport bookstalls. It is thought to be the only instance where Dobson's name was embossed in gold. Alas, this failed to impress the reading public, and very few copies of the book were sold, although we should bear in mind that I write of a time before mass commercial aeroplane travel, so there were fewer airports, and even fewer airport bookstalls, and only a handful of customers frequenting those that did exist. One early airport bookstall worthy of note was that opened at Tantarabim Rustic Airfield by Marigold Chew's cousin Basil Chew. Basil was a peg-legged pear-shaped man with tremendous Ruritanian moustachios, a fuddle-headed entrepreneur whose every business scheme failed. He simply had no grasp of reality, his view of the world being at once mistaken, hallucinatory, and plain wrong. If one were unkind, one would call him a blockhead. But he had charm, and winning ways, and when he twirled those fine moustachios people swooned with besotment. Thus he was able to convince a few foolhardy financiers to back his airport bookstall, where, under the delusion that aeroplanes flew at the speed of a peasant trudging along a muddy country lane and that passengers would need extremely fat books to keep them occupied, he stocked only mighty tomes of great and forbidding length. Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, Robert Burton's The Anatomy Of Melancholy, Boswell's The Life Of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Comprehending An Account Of His Studies And Numerous Works, In Chronological Order; A Series Of His Epistolatory Correspondence And Conversations With Many Eminent Persons; And Various Original Pieces Of His Composition, Never Before Published: The Whole Exhibiting A View Of Literature And Literary Men In Great-Britain, For Near Half A Century, During Which He Flourished, and Henry Darger's The Story Of The Vivian Girls, In What Is Known As The Realms Of The Unreal, Of The Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused By The Child Slave Rebellion were, in fact, the only books available at Basil Chew's bookstall until, under pressure from his cousin, he agreed to carry the gold-embossed Dobson compendium. During the six months the business lasted, he did not sell a single book, and was kept afloat only by his sideline in toffee apples, in-flight pastry novelties, and moustachio wax. A compelling reason for the lack of success of Dobson's big fat book is not so much its preposterous length but that, curiously, he did not include an account of the most interesting thing that happened during the janitorium period. This was the series of events that have elsewhere been described as Dobson And The Disquieting Ploppy Noises From Behind A Panel, the title given to a ravishing essay by ravishing essayist Maud Glubb. A close reading of La Glubb's text reveals many fascinating details, but is far from complete. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Disquieting Ploppy Noises From Behind The Panel 24:55 The Influence Of Ploppy Noises In The Works Of Pebblehead 28:02 "On my return to the city that..." DISQUIETING PLOPPY NOISES FROM BEHIND THE PANEL Dobson wrote extensively during the period when he was hunkered down in a janitorium. The key pamphlets from this time were collected in a compendium and published as a thick paperback with a garish cover design suitable for sale at airport bookstalls. It is thought to be the only instance where Dobson's name was embossed in gold. Alas, this failed to impress the reading public, and very few copies of the book were sold, although we should bear in mind that I write of a time before mass commercial aeroplane travel, so there were fewer airports, and even fewer airport bookstalls, and only a handful of customers frequenting those that did exist. One early airport bookstall worthy of note was that opened at Tantarabim Rustic Airfield by Marigold Chew's cousin Basil Chew. Basil was a peg-legged pear-shaped man with tremendous Ruritanian moustachios, a fuddle-headed entrepreneur whose every business scheme failed. He simply had no grasp of reality, his view of the world being at once mistaken, hallucinatory, and plain wrong. If one were unkind, one would call him a blockhead. But he had charm, and winning ways, and when he twirled those fine moustachios people swooned with besotment. Thus he was able to convince a few foolhardy financiers to back his airport bookstall, where, under the delusion that aeroplanes flew at the speed of a peasant trudging along a muddy country lane and that passengers would need extremely fat books to keep them occupied, he stocked only mighty tomes of great and forbidding length. Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, Robert Burton's The Anatomy Of Melancholy, Boswell's The Life Of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Comprehending An Account Of His Studies And Numerous Works, In Chronological Order; A Series Of His Epistolatory Correspondence And Conversations With Many Eminent Persons; And Various Original Pieces Of His Composition, Never Before Published: The Whole Exhibiting A View Of Literature And Literary Men In Great-Britain, For Near Half A Century, During Which He Flourished, and Henry Darger's The Story Of The Vivian Girls, In What Is Known As The Realms Of The Unreal, Of The Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused By The Child Slave Rebellion were, in fact, the only books available at Basil Chew's bookstall until, under pressure from his cousin, he agreed to carry the gold-embossed Dobson compendium. During the six months the business lasted, he did not sell a single book, and was kept afloat only by his sideline in toffee apples, in-flight pastry novelties, and moustachio wax. A compelling reason for the lack of success of Dobson's big fat book is not so much its preposterous length but that, curiously, he did not include an account of the most interesting thing that happened during the janitorium period. This was the series of events that have elsewhere been described as Dobson And The Disquieting Ploppy Noises From Behind A Panel, the title given to a ravishing essay by ravishing essayist Maud Glubb. A close reading of La Glubb's text reveals many fascinating details, but is far from complete. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-2429:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-17Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Neglected Crunches 02:38 Second Letter From A Wooden Child 23:27 Sinbad Hoonjaw 25:32 More About Captain Cake 27:09 Righteous, And Covered In Mud NEGLECTED CRUNCHES There is much in the news these days about the credit crunch, but this should not lead us to neglect many other important crunches. I sometimes worry that less attention is paid to some crunches because they lack the alliterative quality of the credit crunch, which of course makes it a favourite of headline writers and broadcasters. Actually, it's not quite true that I "sometimes" worry about this. If truth be told, my fretfulness about neglected crunches is starting to consume my every waking thought. Yesterday, for example, I was standing upon a bridge, staring off into the distance, buffeted by a gale, and all I could think of was the fact that the credit crunch is pushing some of my preferred crunches off the front pages. I don't have any useful media connections--or, to be more precise, my people don't have any connections with their people--so it's not as if I can just send a few metal tapping machine messages to selected newspaper crunch reporters and put pressure on them to cover other crunches. Would that I could! What I did instead, yesterday, was to trudge disconsolately home and to spend a fruitful few hours studying Pebblehead's bestselling paperback The Bumper Book Of Crunches. I can recommend this fantastic, and very fat, book to anyone who seeks to broaden their knowledge beyond the credit crunch. It is packed with crunch-related facts, anecdotage, illustrations, diagrams, and even its very own cleverly-crafted crunchiness. SECOND LETTER FROM A WOODEN CHILD Ever since I posted here the letter I received from a wooden child, he has been badgering me to publish more of his writing. I have been inundated with screeds, all of which I have heartlessly chucked down the clanking refuse chute at the side of my escritoire. Today, though, I have decided to indulge him, because his latest missive is quite interesting. Here it is: Dear Mr Key : It may surprise you to know that, despite being a wooden child abandoned to a Mercy Home nestled deep in the gloomy woods, I am a voracious reader and a keen user of my local library. Well, it is not exactly local, given that it is located far away beyond the sinister purple hills that loom at the edge of the woods, but I regularly scamper over there when allowed out of the Mercy Home by the beadle. On my most recent visit, I was delighted to find a copy of a scholarly work by Dot Tint, entitled On The Vampiric Sea Shanties Of Ancient Pointy Town. You may be familiar with this book, which takes a forensic approach to the surprisingly blood-sucking subject matter of many of the sea shanties sung by the mariners who sailed from Pointy Town harbour in days of yore. It took a bluestocking of Dot Tint's perspicuity to winnow from these almost-forgotten songs insights into matters which have great resonance for us today, such as poop deck vampires, the dilution of blood with bilgewater, and the credit crunch. I know you worry about other, neglected crunches, but stick with me here, if only because I have my wooden finger on the pulse. Not on my own pulse, obviously, because I do not have one, being wooden. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Neglected Crunches 02:38 Second Letter From A Wooden Child 23:27 Sinbad Hoonjaw 25:32 More About Captain Cake 27:09 Righteous, And Covered In Mud NEGLECTED CRUNCHES There is much in the news these days about the credit crunch, but this should not lead us to neglect many other important crunches. I sometimes worry that less attention is paid to some crunches because they lack the alliterative quality of the credit crunch, which of course makes it a favourite of headline writers and broadcasters. Actually, it's not quite true that I "sometimes" worry about this. If truth be told, my fretfulness about neglected crunches is starting to consume my every waking thought. Yesterday, for example, I was standing upon a bridge, staring off into the distance, buffeted by a gale, and all I could think of was the fact that the credit crunch is pushing some of my preferred crunches off the front pages. I don't have any useful media connections--or, to be more precise, my people don't have any connections with their people--so it's not as if I can just send a few metal tapping machine messages to selected newspaper crunch reporters and put pressure on them to cover other crunches. Would that I could! What I did instead, yesterday, was to trudge disconsolately home and to spend a fruitful few hours studying Pebblehead's bestselling paperback The Bumper Book Of Crunches. I can recommend this fantastic, and very fat, book to anyone who seeks to broaden their knowledge beyond the credit crunch. It is packed with crunch-related facts, anecdotage, illustrations, diagrams, and even its very own cleverly-crafted crunchiness. SECOND LETTER FROM A WOODEN CHILD Ever since I posted here the letter I received from a wooden child, he has been badgering me to publish more of his writing. I have been inundated with screeds, all of which I have heartlessly chucked down the clanking refuse chute at the side of my escritoire. Today, though, I have decided to indulge him, because his latest missive is quite interesting. Here it is: Dear Mr Key : It may surprise you to know that, despite being a wooden child abandoned to a Mercy Home nestled deep in the gloomy woods, I am a voracious reader and a keen user of my local library. Well, it is not exactly local, given that it is located far away beyond the sinister purple hills that loom at the edge of the woods, but I regularly scamper over there when allowed out of the Mercy Home by the beadle. On my most recent visit, I was delighted to find a copy of a scholarly work by Dot Tint, entitled On The Vampiric Sea Shanties Of Ancient Pointy Town. You may be familiar with this book, which takes a forensic approach to the surprisingly blood-sucking subject matter of many of the sea shanties sung by the mariners who sailed from Pointy Town harbour in days of yore. It took a bluestocking of Dot Tint's perspicuity to winnow from these almost-forgotten songs insights into matters which have great resonance for us today, such as poop deck vampires, the dilution of blood with bilgewater, and the credit crunch. I know you worry about other, neglected crunches, but stick with me here, if only because I have my wooden finger on the pulse. Not on my own pulse, obviously, because I do not have one, being wooden. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-1729:50fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-10Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Botany Lesson 04:41 Buster And Radbod 15:35 Letter From A Wooden Child 23:32 Some Rare Editions of the Bible : Number One 26:42 Bring Forth, Devil, Your Elks BOTANY LESSON In today's botany lesson we are going to study a stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort. We are going to examine it very very closely with the naked eye, and then under a microscope, and then, from an exemplary distance, through a telescope. We shall thoroughly sniff it, having first had our nasal passages cleared and fumigated with a nasal fumigation siphon-and-pump contraption specially made for us by a boffin. We are going to test the effect upon it of both extreme heat and extreme cold, as well as room temperature and other exemplary temperatures it is likely to encounter in what can laughingly still be referred to as the "real world". Thus far I have spoken of both distance and temperature as being exemplary and I am not finished with my exemplars. We are going to attach electrical wires to the stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort and subject it to low and high voltages using a targeted electrical voltage delivery contraption specially made for us by a boffin. We shall designate one such voltage as an exemplary voltage, for reasons which will become apparent. Immersion in a tub of water will be the next step. We will be using water from the duckpond, having first boiled it and allowed it to cool. The water will be collected from the duckpond in pails, then transferred to a pan. It will be allowed to cool in the pan before being poured into the tub through a funnel. Rubber gloves will be worn during this procedure. The colour of the rubber gloves worn is open to choice, except that they ought not be the same colour as the stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort. A rubber glove pigmentation chart has been specially prepared for us by a boffin, and we shall refer to it before plumping for our rubber gloves. We will then test the pH value of the stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort before breaking for lunch. Lunch will be served in the sixth floor canteen. The prices are reasonable and the queues are short. There is a goodly selection of pies, cereals, chunks of unidentified meat, oats, barley, thieveries from squirrels' winter storage, baked turnips, cocoa powder, blood oranges, various animal innards, gravy in boats and gravy in a spoon, plums, balsamic vinegar, toffee pudding, dentally-challenging biscuits and crackers, clam chowder, wafers with a drizzle of light ale, pastries, dried citrus husks, blancmange, lemon curd, bog sludge, and aspirins. The sing-song will take place immediately after lunch in the sixth floor canteen annexe. Song-sheets in a bold, hectoring typeface have been specially prepared for us by a madrigalist. Upon our return we will slice up the stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort with a big sharp exemplary slicing implement. There will then be a test paper in multiple-choice format, to be completed in pencil. The rubber gloves should be disposed of down a chute, the location of which will be announced in due time. Any questions? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Botany Lesson 04:41 Buster And Radbod 15:35 Letter From A Wooden Child 23:32 Some Rare Editions of the Bible : Number One 26:42 Bring Forth, Devil, Your Elks BOTANY LESSON In today's botany lesson we are going to study a stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort. We are going to examine it very very closely with the naked eye, and then under a microscope, and then, from an exemplary distance, through a telescope. We shall thoroughly sniff it, having first had our nasal passages cleared and fumigated with a nasal fumigation siphon-and-pump contraption specially made for us by a boffin. We are going to test the effect upon it of both extreme heat and extreme cold, as well as room temperature and other exemplary temperatures it is likely to encounter in what can laughingly still be referred to as the "real world". Thus far I have spoken of both distance and temperature as being exemplary and I am not finished with my exemplars. We are going to attach electrical wires to the stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort and subject it to low and high voltages using a targeted electrical voltage delivery contraption specially made for us by a boffin. We shall designate one such voltage as an exemplary voltage, for reasons which will become apparent. Immersion in a tub of water will be the next step. We will be using water from the duckpond, having first boiled it and allowed it to cool. The water will be collected from the duckpond in pails, then transferred to a pan. It will be allowed to cool in the pan before being poured into the tub through a funnel. Rubber gloves will be worn during this procedure. The colour of the rubber gloves worn is open to choice, except that they ought not be the same colour as the stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort. A rubber glove pigmentation chart has been specially prepared for us by a boffin, and we shall refer to it before plumping for our rubber gloves. We will then test the pH value of the stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort before breaking for lunch. Lunch will be served in the sixth floor canteen. The prices are reasonable and the queues are short. There is a goodly selection of pies, cereals, chunks of unidentified meat, oats, barley, thieveries from squirrels' winter storage, baked turnips, cocoa powder, blood oranges, various animal innards, gravy in boats and gravy in a spoon, plums, balsamic vinegar, toffee pudding, dentally-challenging biscuits and crackers, clam chowder, wafers with a drizzle of light ale, pastries, dried citrus husks, blancmange, lemon curd, bog sludge, and aspirins. The sing-song will take place immediately after lunch in the sixth floor canteen annexe. Song-sheets in a bold, hectoring typeface have been specially prepared for us by a madrigalist. Upon our return we will slice up the stalk of Fufton's Bladderwort with a big sharp exemplary slicing implement. There will then be a test paper in multiple-choice format, to be completed in pencil. The rubber gloves should be disposed of down a chute, the location of which will be announced in due time. Any questions? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-1030:19fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-03Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Dobson's SWAT Team 07:36 Pilgrimage To Pointy Town 22:29 A Message to Readers From Fatima Gilliblat 23:15 Pilgrimage To Pointy Town 27:10 The Spitting Mills DOBSON'S SWAT TEAM One wintertime, in a period when he was watching far too many action films, Dobson decided that he wanted to have his own SWAT team, to deploy as the fancy took him. Marigold Chew pointed out to the pamphleteer that this latest notion of his was particularly demented. She asked him where he expected to billet his team, how he proposed to pay them, in what delusional circumstances he might order them out on a mission, and, crucially, what resources he had to ensure they were given a thorough debriefing, with access if necessary to post-traumatic stress disorder counselling. Dobson replied with a series of low grunting noises, before clambering into his new oversized Uruguayan fair trade kagoul and crashing out into the downpour. The kagoul was second-hand, stained and rent in many places, but it was new to Dobson and he thought he cut a dash in it, though of course he did not, for Dobson rarely if ever cut a dash, and then only by accident. As he trudged along the canal towpath into town, Dobson composed in his fuming brain the advertisement he planned to place in the "Situations Vacant" column of the Evening Sofa & Last Trump. It duly appeared, remarkably free of misprints, a few hours later. Wanted. SWAT team to carry out engagements on behalf of out of print pamphleteer. Some of the missions may be perilous. Applicants should be armed to the teeth and preferably dressed from head to foot in black, with big black boots and shiny black helmets with visors. You will be able to give a full account of the vitality of your pneuma, in the ancient Greek sense of the fiery essence in the air, the creative and animating spirit drawn into the body through the lungs and generating your innate heat. Benefits include free pamphlets and lots of smoking breaks. It did not escape Marigold Chew's notice that the advertisement failed to address any of the questions she had raised with Dobson earlier. That evening, on the way to a peasant theatre adaptation of Airport Chaplain, she tried a different tack. "Assuming for a moment that a sufficient tally of persons with vibrant pneuma apply to be on your SWAT team, Dobson," she said, "What sort of missions do you intend to send them on?" "SWAT team missions!" replied Dobson, excitedly, as their tram ploughed through a puddle of ice, "Missions that will test their valour and grit as well as their pneuma!" Pressed to supply just one tiny example before they arrived at the dilapidated barn that had been converted by goateed trust fund gits into a "performance space", Dobson suggested that he would deploy his SWAT team in the event of a calamitous tram collision resulting in dozens of dead and injured tram passengers. Marigold Chew pointed out that as there was but a single tram that plied the tram tracks of the town, no such collision could take place. Dobson countered that the tram might collide with a bus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:20 Dobson's SWAT Team 07:36 Pilgrimage To Pointy Town 22:29 A Message to Readers From Fatima Gilliblat 23:15 Pilgrimage To Pointy Town 27:10 The Spitting Mills DOBSON'S SWAT TEAM One wintertime, in a period when he was watching far too many action films, Dobson decided that he wanted to have his own SWAT team, to deploy as the fancy took him. Marigold Chew pointed out to the pamphleteer that this latest notion of his was particularly demented. She asked him where he expected to billet his team, how he proposed to pay them, in what delusional circumstances he might order them out on a mission, and, crucially, what resources he had to ensure they were given a thorough debriefing, with access if necessary to post-traumatic stress disorder counselling. Dobson replied with a series of low grunting noises, before clambering into his new oversized Uruguayan fair trade kagoul and crashing out into the downpour. The kagoul was second-hand, stained and rent in many places, but it was new to Dobson and he thought he cut a dash in it, though of course he did not, for Dobson rarely if ever cut a dash, and then only by accident. As he trudged along the canal towpath into town, Dobson composed in his fuming brain the advertisement he planned to place in the "Situations Vacant" column of the Evening Sofa & Last Trump. It duly appeared, remarkably free of misprints, a few hours later. Wanted. SWAT team to carry out engagements on behalf of out of print pamphleteer. Some of the missions may be perilous. Applicants should be armed to the teeth and preferably dressed from head to foot in black, with big black boots and shiny black helmets with visors. You will be able to give a full account of the vitality of your pneuma, in the ancient Greek sense of the fiery essence in the air, the creative and animating spirit drawn into the body through the lungs and generating your innate heat. Benefits include free pamphlets and lots of smoking breaks. It did not escape Marigold Chew's notice that the advertisement failed to address any of the questions she had raised with Dobson earlier. That evening, on the way to a peasant theatre adaptation of Airport Chaplain, she tried a different tack. "Assuming for a moment that a sufficient tally of persons with vibrant pneuma apply to be on your SWAT team, Dobson," she said, "What sort of missions do you intend to send them on?" "SWAT team missions!" replied Dobson, excitedly, as their tram ploughed through a puddle of ice, "Missions that will test their valour and grit as well as their pneuma!" Pressed to supply just one tiny example before they arrived at the dilapidated barn that had been converted by goateed trust fund gits into a "performance space", Dobson suggested that he would deploy his SWAT team in the event of a calamitous tram collision resulting in dozens of dead and injured tram passengers. Marigold Chew pointed out that as there was but a single tram that plied the tram tracks of the town, no such collision could take place. Dobson countered that the tram might collide with a bus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-04-0328:27fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-03-27Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 A Cowboy Story 09:32 The Path Of Pollen 13:56 The Adventures of Tiny Enid 20:24 Five Years Ago 23:56 Homage to Esther and Abi Ofarim 28:07 "When I was desirous to delight my..." A COWBOY STORY Bristow, Cuddy and I were out on the trail. It pleased me that the shanks and withers of my horse were clearly superior to those of my companions' horses. Were we to gallop to a gulch I felt sure that I would get there first. But we were in no hurry. I was the only one with a working knowledge of the importance of vitamins, so I was in charge of our picnic arrangements, as usual. My plan was for us to chow down at sunset, further up the trail, once we'd passed Binsey Poplars. There ain't no poplars at Binsey, just scrub and tumbleweed, but the place is sainted to the memory of Gerard Manley Hopkins, so that's why the folk there call it what they do. A lot of those folk are monks who spend their days grunting over illuminated manuscripts in the scriptorium, but there's a fair smattering of cowpokes and wranglers and ornery cuss-mouthed old biddies too. You'd need some kind of vade mecum to keep track of all the shenanigans they get up to, and that includes the monks. Bristow was originally from Finland. His real name had lots of double 'i's and double 'k's in it, it was too much of a mouthful, so he was known as Bristow. Back in Helsinki, or Helsingfors, he had a wife, name of Theodora, who wallowed in a swamp of moral turpitude. She had a way of tilting her head at a particular angle that drove Bristow hobgoblin crazy, and that was why he'd left Finnish shores and was beside me now, on his horse, heading along the trail. He was so daze-brained that he thought he knew more about vitamins than I did, but I had him down as a cornpone and buckwheat kind of man, and I was rarely wrong. I'd been wrong about Cuddy, true enough. Cuddy was a talented countertenor who'd sung a few arias in his time, back east. But then he got infected tonsils and suffered all sorts of disasters. He lost an eye and some of his bones and could no longer pay the rent on his flophouse room, so he hitched a ride on the Big Old Golem Railroad and fetched up on the prairie with nothing but a pair of spurs and a bottle of mouthwash. His hair was yellow and he had gruesome personal habits, but I gave him a horse and let him ride with me. Sometimes a man needs a helping hand. Cuddy sang as we rode along the trail. "Oh Mama," he sang, "What colour will the lights be? Will they turn blue on me?" It was a song that Wacko Jimmy Osterburg would record on the phonograph years down the line, but even with his ravaged tonsils I always preferred Cuddy's take on it. You could tell he'd once wowed the plutocrats at the opera house. But those days were gone, and Cuddy knew it. Maybe that's why he never bothered polishing his spurs. My spurs were glistening. I had them made specially, from pewter, by a pewter spur maker back in Choctaw country. They were fastened to the heels of my Bingle boots. The Bingle company makes the sturdiest boots you're ever likely to wear, and I know I'm going to die with my Bingle boots on. They're advertised as "the boots of destiny", and even if you have no idea what your destiny will be, they're the boots you'll want to be shod in when you meet it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-03-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 A Cowboy Story 09:32 The Path Of Pollen 13:56 The Adventures of Tiny Enid 20:24 Five Years Ago 23:56 Homage to Esther and Abi Ofarim 28:07 "When I was desirous to delight my..." A COWBOY STORY Bristow, Cuddy and I were out on the trail. It pleased me that the shanks and withers of my horse were clearly superior to those of my companions' horses. Were we to gallop to a gulch I felt sure that I would get there first. But we were in no hurry. I was the only one with a working knowledge of the importance of vitamins, so I was in charge of our picnic arrangements, as usual. My plan was for us to chow down at sunset, further up the trail, once we'd passed Binsey Poplars. There ain't no poplars at Binsey, just scrub and tumbleweed, but the place is sainted to the memory of Gerard Manley Hopkins, so that's why the folk there call it what they do. A lot of those folk are monks who spend their days grunting over illuminated manuscripts in the scriptorium, but there's a fair smattering of cowpokes and wranglers and ornery cuss-mouthed old biddies too. You'd need some kind of vade mecum to keep track of all the shenanigans they get up to, and that includes the monks. Bristow was originally from Finland. His real name had lots of double 'i's and double 'k's in it, it was too much of a mouthful, so he was known as Bristow. Back in Helsinki, or Helsingfors, he had a wife, name of Theodora, who wallowed in a swamp of moral turpitude. She had a way of tilting her head at a particular angle that drove Bristow hobgoblin crazy, and that was why he'd left Finnish shores and was beside me now, on his horse, heading along the trail. He was so daze-brained that he thought he knew more about vitamins than I did, but I had him down as a cornpone and buckwheat kind of man, and I was rarely wrong. I'd been wrong about Cuddy, true enough. Cuddy was a talented countertenor who'd sung a few arias in his time, back east. But then he got infected tonsils and suffered all sorts of disasters. He lost an eye and some of his bones and could no longer pay the rent on his flophouse room, so he hitched a ride on the Big Old Golem Railroad and fetched up on the prairie with nothing but a pair of spurs and a bottle of mouthwash. His hair was yellow and he had gruesome personal habits, but I gave him a horse and let him ride with me. Sometimes a man needs a helping hand. Cuddy sang as we rode along the trail. "Oh Mama," he sang, "What colour will the lights be? Will they turn blue on me?" It was a song that Wacko Jimmy Osterburg would record on the phonograph years down the line, but even with his ravaged tonsils I always preferred Cuddy's take on it. You could tell he'd once wowed the plutocrats at the opera house. But those days were gone, and Cuddy knew it. Maybe that's why he never bothered polishing his spurs. My spurs were glistening. I had them made specially, from pewter, by a pewter spur maker back in Choctaw country. They were fastened to the heels of my Bingle boots. The Bingle company makes the sturdiest boots you're ever likely to wear, and I know I'm going to die with my Bingle boots on. They're advertised as "the boots of destiny", and even if you have no idea what your destiny will be, they're the boots you'll want to be shod in when you meet it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-03-2730:23fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-02-28Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 By Aerostat to Hooting Yard 14:33 They've Stolen Dobson's Brain! 19:24 Three Years Ago BY AEROSTAT TO HOOTING YARD by Frank Key Oh, I so wanted this to be a seafaring yarn. I wanted to hear the wind in the rigging, smell the salt tang in the breeze, roll with the creak and lurch of old wooden boards on the deck. I wanted to write a maritime tale, of a fabric woven of ships' cables and hawsers, an arctic wind blowing through it and birds of prey hovering over it. I wanted to prattle on about smacks, bilgewater, fo'c'sles, and splicing the mainbrace, whatever that means. Pirates would appear, cutlasses gleaming. Perched in the crow's nest, I would yell "land ahoy!", then scurry down the rigging to help tamp down the binnacles. At first, things had looked hopeful. I had received my instructions from Dobson. As ever, he was precise: "Track down Burble. Beat him to death with a club. Wrap him in chains and throw him down a flooded mineshaft. I shall expect a full report upon your return. Dobson." As soon as I had read his memo, I doused it in highly inflammable chemicals and took it down to the boiler room of my building. There, in solitude and gloom, I placed it in the roaring furnace. The flames licked up towards my face, and I turned away. I knew the tears would not be long in coming. It had been two years since one of Dobson's communiques had uprooted me from my rut and catapulted me into frantic adventure; three years before that I had been sent on a mission, ranging over four continents; the year before that embroiled in a world-shattering plot; and there had been at least half a dozen earlier escapades. No doubt these Dobson-inspired excitements were meant to be wild and life-enhancing, yet I yearned for tedium and futility. Trudging out of the boiler room, I began to sob. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before I could once again wallow in monotony and ennui. Despite my misgivings, I am very particular about my work. Dobson has even accused me of being finicky. I began to pack at once, having dusted down the enormous haversack which I always carry on my assignments. Within an hour of receiving my instructions, the packing was done, and I was perched on a wooden stool in my kitchen, wolfing down a bowl of slops. I had no idea when next I would eat. Having twice been struck by lightning while doing Dobson's bidding, I had taken the precaution of sprinkling finely-ground purslane on to my slops, and stashing a small pouch of the stuff in my haversack. Another half hour and I was out of the door and on my way. The weather was incomprehensible: I shall not record it here. I checked my watch by the gasworks' clock and spat into a hedgerow. It was not for me to question why Dobson wanted Burble obliterated, yet I could not help feeling a small pang of surprise. I had always understood Burble to be a trusted agent, a man who could be relied upon. I knew for a fact that he had been invaluable when Perkins and Throwback contracted the dengue, and were ensnared by a band of repressed mahouts. I could only assume that he had lately committed some heinous offence for which Dobson could not forgive him. What on earth could he have done? But I could not allow myself to dwell on such matters. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-02-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 By Aerostat to Hooting Yard 14:33 They've Stolen Dobson's Brain! 19:24 Three Years Ago BY AEROSTAT TO HOOTING YARD by Frank Key Oh, I so wanted this to be a seafaring yarn. I wanted to hear the wind in the rigging, smell the salt tang in the breeze, roll with the creak and lurch of old wooden boards on the deck. I wanted to write a maritime tale, of a fabric woven of ships' cables and hawsers, an arctic wind blowing through it and birds of prey hovering over it. I wanted to prattle on about smacks, bilgewater, fo'c'sles, and splicing the mainbrace, whatever that means. Pirates would appear, cutlasses gleaming. Perched in the crow's nest, I would yell "land ahoy!", then scurry down the rigging to help tamp down the binnacles. At first, things had looked hopeful. I had received my instructions from Dobson. As ever, he was precise: "Track down Burble. Beat him to death with a club. Wrap him in chains and throw him down a flooded mineshaft. I shall expect a full report upon your return. Dobson." As soon as I had read his memo, I doused it in highly inflammable chemicals and took it down to the boiler room of my building. There, in solitude and gloom, I placed it in the roaring furnace. The flames licked up towards my face, and I turned away. I knew the tears would not be long in coming. It had been two years since one of Dobson's communiques had uprooted me from my rut and catapulted me into frantic adventure; three years before that I had been sent on a mission, ranging over four continents; the year before that embroiled in a world-shattering plot; and there had been at least half a dozen earlier escapades. No doubt these Dobson-inspired excitements were meant to be wild and life-enhancing, yet I yearned for tedium and futility. Trudging out of the boiler room, I began to sob. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before I could once again wallow in monotony and ennui. Despite my misgivings, I am very particular about my work. Dobson has even accused me of being finicky. I began to pack at once, having dusted down the enormous haversack which I always carry on my assignments. Within an hour of receiving my instructions, the packing was done, and I was perched on a wooden stool in my kitchen, wolfing down a bowl of slops. I had no idea when next I would eat. Having twice been struck by lightning while doing Dobson's bidding, I had taken the precaution of sprinkling finely-ground purslane on to my slops, and stashing a small pouch of the stuff in my haversack. Another half hour and I was out of the door and on my way. The weather was incomprehensible: I shall not record it here. I checked my watch by the gasworks' clock and spat into a hedgerow. It was not for me to question why Dobson wanted Burble obliterated, yet I could not help feeling a small pang of surprise. I had always understood Burble to be a trusted agent, a man who could be relied upon. I knew for a fact that he had been invaluable when Perkins and Throwback contracted the dengue, and were ensnared by a band of repressed mahouts. I could only assume that he had lately committed some heinous offence for which Dobson could not forgive him. What on earth could he have done? But I could not allow myself to dwell on such matters. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-02-2827:29fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-02-21Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:35 By Aerostat to Hooting Yard BY AEROSTAT TO HOOTING YARD by Frank Key Oh, I so wanted this to be a seafaring yarn. I wanted to hear the wind in the rigging, smell the salt tang in the breeze, roll with the creak and lurch of old wooden boards on the deck. I wanted to write a maritime tale, of a fabric woven of ships' cables and hawsers, an arctic wind blowing through it and birds of prey hovering over it. I wanted to prattle on about smacks, bilgewater, fo'c'sles, and splicing the mainbrace, whatever that means. Pirates would appear, cutlasses gleaming. Perched in the crow's nest, I would yell "land ahoy!", then scurry down the rigging to help tamp down the binnacles. At first, things had looked hopeful. I had received my instructions from Dobson. As ever, he was precise: "Track down Burble. Beat him to death with a club. Wrap him in chains and throw him down a flooded mineshaft. I shall expect a full report upon your return. Dobson." As soon as I had read his memo, I doused it in highly inflammable chemicals and took it down to the boiler room of my building. There, in solitude and gloom, I placed it in the roaring furnace. The flames licked up towards my face, and I turned away. I knew the tears would not be long in coming. It had been two years since one of Dobson's communiques had uprooted me from my rut and catapulted me into frantic adventure; three years before that I had been sent on a mission, ranging over four continents; the year before that embroiled in a world-shattering plot; and there had been at least half a dozen earlier escapades. No doubt these Dobson-inspired excitements were meant to be wild and life-enhancing, yet I yearned for tedium and futility. Trudging out of the boiler room, I began to sob. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before I could once again wallow in monotony and ennui. Despite my misgivings, I am very particular about my work. Dobson has even accused me of being finicky. I began to pack at once, having dusted down the enormous haversack which I always carry on my assignments. Within an hour of receiving my instructions, the packing was done, and I was perched on a wooden stool in my kitchen, wolfing down a bowl of slops. I had no idea when next I would eat. Having twice been struck by lightning while doing Dobson's bidding, I had taken the precaution of sprinkling finely-ground purslane on to my slops, and stashing a small pouch of the stuff in my haversack. Another half hour and I was out of the door and on my way. The weather was incomprehensible: I shall not record it here. I checked my watch by the gasworks' clock and spat into a hedgerow. It was not for me to question why Dobson wanted Burble obliterated, yet I could not help feeling a small pang of surprise. I had always understood Burble to be a trusted agent, a man who could be relied upon. I knew for a fact that he had been invaluable when Perkins and Throwback contracted the dengue, and were ensnared by a band of repressed mahouts. I could only assume that he had lately committed some heinous offence for which Dobson could not forgive him. What on earth could he have done? But I could not allow myself to dwell on such matters. It would not get the dog bathed, the roof fed, or the baby mended, whatever that saying is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-02-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:35 By Aerostat to Hooting Yard BY AEROSTAT TO HOOTING YARD by Frank Key Oh, I so wanted this to be a seafaring yarn. I wanted to hear the wind in the rigging, smell the salt tang in the breeze, roll with the creak and lurch of old wooden boards on the deck. I wanted to write a maritime tale, of a fabric woven of ships' cables and hawsers, an arctic wind blowing through it and birds of prey hovering over it. I wanted to prattle on about smacks, bilgewater, fo'c'sles, and splicing the mainbrace, whatever that means. Pirates would appear, cutlasses gleaming. Perched in the crow's nest, I would yell "land ahoy!", then scurry down the rigging to help tamp down the binnacles. At first, things had looked hopeful. I had received my instructions from Dobson. As ever, he was precise: "Track down Burble. Beat him to death with a club. Wrap him in chains and throw him down a flooded mineshaft. I shall expect a full report upon your return. Dobson." As soon as I had read his memo, I doused it in highly inflammable chemicals and took it down to the boiler room of my building. There, in solitude and gloom, I placed it in the roaring furnace. The flames licked up towards my face, and I turned away. I knew the tears would not be long in coming. It had been two years since one of Dobson's communiques had uprooted me from my rut and catapulted me into frantic adventure; three years before that I had been sent on a mission, ranging over four continents; the year before that embroiled in a world-shattering plot; and there had been at least half a dozen earlier escapades. No doubt these Dobson-inspired excitements were meant to be wild and life-enhancing, yet I yearned for tedium and futility. Trudging out of the boiler room, I began to sob. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before I could once again wallow in monotony and ennui. Despite my misgivings, I am very particular about my work. Dobson has even accused me of being finicky. I began to pack at once, having dusted down the enormous haversack which I always carry on my assignments. Within an hour of receiving my instructions, the packing was done, and I was perched on a wooden stool in my kitchen, wolfing down a bowl of slops. I had no idea when next I would eat. Having twice been struck by lightning while doing Dobson's bidding, I had taken the precaution of sprinkling finely-ground purslane on to my slops, and stashing a small pouch of the stuff in my haversack. Another half hour and I was out of the door and on my way. The weather was incomprehensible: I shall not record it here. I checked my watch by the gasworks' clock and spat into a hedgerow. It was not for me to question why Dobson wanted Burble obliterated, yet I could not help feeling a small pang of surprise. I had always understood Burble to be a trusted agent, a man who could be relied upon. I knew for a fact that he had been invaluable when Perkins and Throwback contracted the dengue, and were ensnared by a band of repressed mahouts. I could only assume that he had lately committed some heinous offence for which Dobson could not forgive him. What on earth could he have done? But I could not allow myself to dwell on such matters. It would not get the dog bathed, the roof fed, or the baby mended, whatever that saying is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-02-2128:44fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-02-14Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 By Aerostat to Hooting Yard BY AEROSTAT TO HOOTING YARD by Frank Key Oh, I so wanted this to be a seafaring yarn. I wanted to hear the wind in the rigging, smell the salt tang in the breeze, roll with the creak and lurch of old wooden boards on the deck. I wanted to write a maritime tale, of a fabric woven of ships' cables and hawsers, an arctic wind blowing through it and birds of prey hovering over it. I wanted to prattle on about smacks, bilgewater, fo'c'sles, and splicing the mainbrace, whatever that means. Pirates would appear, cutlasses gleaming. Perched in the crow's nest, I would yell "land ahoy!", then scurry down the rigging to help tamp down the binnacles. At first, things had looked hopeful. I had received my instructions from Dobson. As ever, he was precise: "Track down Burble. Beat him to death with a club. Wrap him in chains and throw him down a flooded mineshaft. I shall expect a full report upon your return. Dobson." As soon as I had read his memo, I doused it in highly inflammable chemicals and took it down to the boiler room of my building. There, in solitude and gloom, I placed it in the roaring furnace. The flames licked up towards my face, and I turned away. I knew the tears would not be long in coming. It had been two years since one of Dobson's communiques had uprooted me from my rut and catapulted me into frantic adventure; three years before that I had been sent on a mission, ranging over four continents; the year before that embroiled in a world-shattering plot; and there had been at least half a dozen earlier escapades. No doubt these Dobson-inspired excitements were meant to be wild and life-enhancing, yet I yearned for tedium and futility. Trudging out of the boiler room, I began to sob. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before I could once again wallow in monotony and ennui. Despite my misgivings, I am very particular about my work. Dobson has even accused me of being finicky. I began to pack at once, having dusted down the enormous haversack which I always carry on my assignments. Within an hour of receiving my instructions, the packing was done, and I was perched on a wooden stool in my kitchen, wolfing down a bowl of slops. I had no idea when next I would eat. Having twice been struck by lightning while doing Dobson's bidding, I had taken the precaution of sprinkling finely-ground purslane on to my slops, and stashing a small pouch of the stuff in my haversack. Another half hour and I was out of the door and on my way. The weather was incomprehensible: I shall not record it here. I checked my watch by the gasworks' clock and spat into a hedgerow. It was not for me to question why Dobson wanted Burble obliterated, yet I could not help feeling a small pang of surprise. I had always understood Burble to be a trusted agent, a man who could be relied upon. I knew for a fact that he had been invaluable when Perkins and Throwback contracted the dengue, and were ensnared by a band of repressed mahouts. I could only assume that he had lately committed some heinous offence for which Dobson could not forgive him. What on earth could he have done? But I could not allow myself to dwell on such matters. It would not get the dog bathed, the roof fed, or the baby mended, whatever that saying is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-02-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 By Aerostat to Hooting Yard BY AEROSTAT TO HOOTING YARD by Frank Key Oh, I so wanted this to be a seafaring yarn. I wanted to hear the wind in the rigging, smell the salt tang in the breeze, roll with the creak and lurch of old wooden boards on the deck. I wanted to write a maritime tale, of a fabric woven of ships' cables and hawsers, an arctic wind blowing through it and birds of prey hovering over it. I wanted to prattle on about smacks, bilgewater, fo'c'sles, and splicing the mainbrace, whatever that means. Pirates would appear, cutlasses gleaming. Perched in the crow's nest, I would yell "land ahoy!", then scurry down the rigging to help tamp down the binnacles. At first, things had looked hopeful. I had received my instructions from Dobson. As ever, he was precise: "Track down Burble. Beat him to death with a club. Wrap him in chains and throw him down a flooded mineshaft. I shall expect a full report upon your return. Dobson." As soon as I had read his memo, I doused it in highly inflammable chemicals and took it down to the boiler room of my building. There, in solitude and gloom, I placed it in the roaring furnace. The flames licked up towards my face, and I turned away. I knew the tears would not be long in coming. It had been two years since one of Dobson's communiques had uprooted me from my rut and catapulted me into frantic adventure; three years before that I had been sent on a mission, ranging over four continents; the year before that embroiled in a world-shattering plot; and there had been at least half a dozen earlier escapades. No doubt these Dobson-inspired excitements were meant to be wild and life-enhancing, yet I yearned for tedium and futility. Trudging out of the boiler room, I began to sob. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before I could once again wallow in monotony and ennui. Despite my misgivings, I am very particular about my work. Dobson has even accused me of being finicky. I began to pack at once, having dusted down the enormous haversack which I always carry on my assignments. Within an hour of receiving my instructions, the packing was done, and I was perched on a wooden stool in my kitchen, wolfing down a bowl of slops. I had no idea when next I would eat. Having twice been struck by lightning while doing Dobson's bidding, I had taken the precaution of sprinkling finely-ground purslane on to my slops, and stashing a small pouch of the stuff in my haversack. Another half hour and I was out of the door and on my way. The weather was incomprehensible: I shall not record it here. I checked my watch by the gasworks' clock and spat into a hedgerow. It was not for me to question why Dobson wanted Burble obliterated, yet I could not help feeling a small pang of surprise. I had always understood Burble to be a trusted agent, a man who could be relied upon. I knew for a fact that he had been invaluable when Perkins and Throwback contracted the dengue, and were ensnared by a band of repressed mahouts. I could only assume that he had lately committed some heinous offence for which Dobson could not forgive him. What on earth could he have done? But I could not allow myself to dwell on such matters. It would not get the dog bathed, the roof fed, or the baby mended, whatever that saying is. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-02-148:01fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-01-31Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Jug o' Paraffin 06:12 Hectic Clanging 10:56 The Great Ecstasy Of Tiny Enid 16:31 A Vast And Chilly Gasworks 23:56 Are You A Bird Or A Cow? JUG O' PARAFFIN A curious tale attaches itself to the shortest pamphlet Dobson ever published. Of a light-hearted, even frisky, disposition one foul winter's day, he wrote as follows: Obtain a large jug of paraffin. Remove the cap from the jug and slosh the paraffin over a pile of something dry and brittle in a public place. Toss a lighted match onto it, stand back, and watch the resulting blaze. This will warm your cockles and provide a pleasing spectacle to pass the time of day. Having nothing further to add, the pamphleteer persuaded Marigold Chew to set these four sentences in a particularly decisive and heroic typeface, and issued it under the unambiguous title Fun With Paraffin! For the cover, Marigold Chew chose a mezzotint by the mezzotintist Rex Tint, depicting his sister Dot Tint hand-tinting one of his mezzotints with a paraffin-based colourant. Before doing any typesetting or production work on the pamphlet, however, Marigold Chew had a fractious to-do with Dobson over his use of the word jug. She insisted that a jug was by definition an open-necked container, and that he should prefer the word canister, for a canister would have a cap, and be a more likely receptacle for paraffin, than would a jug, which, though it may be fitted with a plug or stopper, would never have a cap. Dobson never took kindly to having his errors pointed out to him, believing that the sheer force of his prose, even in so short a pamphlet as this, ought to silence his critics. He was fond of quoting Christopher Smart's line from Jubilate Agno, where the poet says "For I pray God for the ostriches of Salisbury Plain, the beavers of the Medway, and silver fish of Thames". Sorry, wrong line. I was distracted there for a moment by a freshly-laundered dishcloth flapping in the breeze. The line Dobson liked to use to defend himself against detractors was "For my talent is to give an Impression upon words by punching, that when the reader casts his eye upon 'em, he takes up the image from the mould which I have made". Marigold Chew, though, was a stickler, and challenged Dobson to produce, in the real world rather than from the skewed universe inside his skull, a jug sealed with a cap. Characteristically, the pamphleteer tried to shirk this by muttering some nonsense about his urgent need to examine a nest of stints in a shrubbery over by the pond. Why on earth he persisted in his lifelong delusion that ornithology could rescue him from any pickle he found himself in is a question for wiser heads than mine. Marigold Chew made short shrift of his stinty babblings, of course, and Dobson was left with no choice but to head off to Hubermann's in the hope that somewhere on the shelves of that unutterably gorgeous department store he might pounce upon a capped jug. And therein lies the strangeness of this tale. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-01-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Jug o' Paraffin 06:12 Hectic Clanging 10:56 The Great Ecstasy Of Tiny Enid 16:31 A Vast And Chilly Gasworks 23:56 Are You A Bird Or A Cow? JUG O' PARAFFIN A curious tale attaches itself to the shortest pamphlet Dobson ever published. Of a light-hearted, even frisky, disposition one foul winter's day, he wrote as follows: Obtain a large jug of paraffin. Remove the cap from the jug and slosh the paraffin over a pile of something dry and brittle in a public place. Toss a lighted match onto it, stand back, and watch the resulting blaze. This will warm your cockles and provide a pleasing spectacle to pass the time of day. Having nothing further to add, the pamphleteer persuaded Marigold Chew to set these four sentences in a particularly decisive and heroic typeface, and issued it under the unambiguous title Fun With Paraffin! For the cover, Marigold Chew chose a mezzotint by the mezzotintist Rex Tint, depicting his sister Dot Tint hand-tinting one of his mezzotints with a paraffin-based colourant. Before doing any typesetting or production work on the pamphlet, however, Marigold Chew had a fractious to-do with Dobson over his use of the word jug. She insisted that a jug was by definition an open-necked container, and that he should prefer the word canister, for a canister would have a cap, and be a more likely receptacle for paraffin, than would a jug, which, though it may be fitted with a plug or stopper, would never have a cap. Dobson never took kindly to having his errors pointed out to him, believing that the sheer force of his prose, even in so short a pamphlet as this, ought to silence his critics. He was fond of quoting Christopher Smart's line from Jubilate Agno, where the poet says "For I pray God for the ostriches of Salisbury Plain, the beavers of the Medway, and silver fish of Thames". Sorry, wrong line. I was distracted there for a moment by a freshly-laundered dishcloth flapping in the breeze. The line Dobson liked to use to defend himself against detractors was "For my talent is to give an Impression upon words by punching, that when the reader casts his eye upon 'em, he takes up the image from the mould which I have made". Marigold Chew, though, was a stickler, and challenged Dobson to produce, in the real world rather than from the skewed universe inside his skull, a jug sealed with a cap. Characteristically, the pamphleteer tried to shirk this by muttering some nonsense about his urgent need to examine a nest of stints in a shrubbery over by the pond. Why on earth he persisted in his lifelong delusion that ornithology could rescue him from any pickle he found himself in is a question for wiser heads than mine. Marigold Chew made short shrift of his stinty babblings, of course, and Dobson was left with no choice but to head off to Hubermann's in the hope that somewhere on the shelves of that unutterably gorgeous department store he might pounce upon a capped jug. And therein lies the strangeness of this tale. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-01-3128:05fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-01-17Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Absence Of Swans 17:13 Tosspot In A Bivouac 21:43 The Sea And Crime 26:29 A New Com ABSENCE OF SWANS There were barrage balloons in the sky on the morning when I decided to mesmerise a swan. I had been thinking of doing so for some time, for months in fact. The idea of having so savage a bird as a swan within my power enthralled me. Gerard Manley Hopkins famously mesmerised a duck, on the twenty-seventh of April 1871, but I was going to go one better, and entrance a large white swan. I filled my pockets with pebbles, and pranced towards the pond, where I fully expected to find a few swans swanning about, one of which I would choose as my mesmeric subject swan. I looked up at the barrage balloons, wondering why there were so many of them, in huddles, just below cloud level. Was that the correct altitude for barrage balloons? I knew not. I had neglected, that morning, to wash my hair, and I am afraid to say that it was disgustingly greasy as a consequence. And a further consequence was that as I made my way towards the pond I was jeered at by a little tangle of hoodies, who used the greasiness of my hair as a pretext to abuse me. I suspect that, had I washed my hair, they would have lit upon some other feature, my carriage or my garments or the scars on my face where I had been bitten by birds. Now, I have always found that the most effective way to deal with hoodies and similar riffraff is to visit upon them sudden, ferocious and inexplicable violence. So packed with pebbles were my pockets that I had no room, that morning, for hand grenades or pepper-sprays or petrol-soaked rags, so my usual avenues of hoodie-terrorising were closed. Instead, I ran at them, whirling my arms and screeching as loud as a sedge of bitterns. The bittern is one of the noisiest birds in the avian panoply, and its loud, booming call is one of the farthest travelling of all bird songs. The male calls relentlessly both day and night from deep within his reed bed, hoping to attract a female into his territory. My purpose, of course, was to repel rather than to attract, and in this I was successful. The hoodies fled from me, as I expect you would have done, for when I am frightening I am very frightening. Composing myself, I turned back to the path and continued towards the pond. It was a fine pond, as ponds go, the shape of a frying-pan when viewed from above, as I had viewed it many times, from hot air balloons and aerostats. It is many years now since I have been aloft. My physician identified a peculiar substance in my head which throbbed and became inflamed if I travelled much above sea level, so I took her advice, moved to a flat part of the country, and, with some regret, curtailed my aerial exploits. I feared that my close study of birds would be in jeopardy now I was forced, for medical reasons, to hunker close to the ground, but it soon became apparent that I still had numberless ornithological opportunities, given that many birds stick pretty close to the ground themselves, a lot of the time, swans among them. To my utmost dismay, upon arrival at the pond I saw no swans at all. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-01-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Absence Of Swans 17:13 Tosspot In A Bivouac 21:43 The Sea And Crime 26:29 A New Com ABSENCE OF SWANS There were barrage balloons in the sky on the morning when I decided to mesmerise a swan. I had been thinking of doing so for some time, for months in fact. The idea of having so savage a bird as a swan within my power enthralled me. Gerard Manley Hopkins famously mesmerised a duck, on the twenty-seventh of April 1871, but I was going to go one better, and entrance a large white swan. I filled my pockets with pebbles, and pranced towards the pond, where I fully expected to find a few swans swanning about, one of which I would choose as my mesmeric subject swan. I looked up at the barrage balloons, wondering why there were so many of them, in huddles, just below cloud level. Was that the correct altitude for barrage balloons? I knew not. I had neglected, that morning, to wash my hair, and I am afraid to say that it was disgustingly greasy as a consequence. And a further consequence was that as I made my way towards the pond I was jeered at by a little tangle of hoodies, who used the greasiness of my hair as a pretext to abuse me. I suspect that, had I washed my hair, they would have lit upon some other feature, my carriage or my garments or the scars on my face where I had been bitten by birds. Now, I have always found that the most effective way to deal with hoodies and similar riffraff is to visit upon them sudden, ferocious and inexplicable violence. So packed with pebbles were my pockets that I had no room, that morning, for hand grenades or pepper-sprays or petrol-soaked rags, so my usual avenues of hoodie-terrorising were closed. Instead, I ran at them, whirling my arms and screeching as loud as a sedge of bitterns. The bittern is one of the noisiest birds in the avian panoply, and its loud, booming call is one of the farthest travelling of all bird songs. The male calls relentlessly both day and night from deep within his reed bed, hoping to attract a female into his territory. My purpose, of course, was to repel rather than to attract, and in this I was successful. The hoodies fled from me, as I expect you would have done, for when I am frightening I am very frightening. Composing myself, I turned back to the path and continued towards the pond. It was a fine pond, as ponds go, the shape of a frying-pan when viewed from above, as I had viewed it many times, from hot air balloons and aerostats. It is many years now since I have been aloft. My physician identified a peculiar substance in my head which throbbed and became inflamed if I travelled much above sea level, so I took her advice, moved to a flat part of the country, and, with some regret, curtailed my aerial exploits. I feared that my close study of birds would be in jeopardy now I was forced, for medical reasons, to hunker close to the ground, but it soon became apparent that I still had numberless ornithological opportunities, given that many birds stick pretty close to the ground themselves, a lot of the time, swans among them. To my utmost dismay, upon arrival at the pond I saw no swans at all. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-01-1729:13fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2008-01-10Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 A New Year Tanager 03:16 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--I 15:34 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--II 16:46 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--III 24:45 Blodgett's Schloss A NEW YEAR TANAGER Traditionally, the tanager is the new year bird of Hooting Yard. A small to medium sized member of the bird family Thraupidae, the tanager picks insects off branches, often has a rather dull song, and lives in a cup nest on a tree branch. Sometimes the cup can be almost globular, but that's a tanager for you. Because it is a tropical bird, flocks of tanagers are incredibly rare in the sky around Haemoglobin Towers, so the majority of Hooting Yard's new year tanager birds are made of paper or cardboard. Well, all of them. The making of paper or cardboard birds, often very elaborate ones, but sometimes really quite shoddy and slapdash, has long been found to be a splendid way of keeping the tinies of Pang Hill Orphanage busy during the winter nights, when other, more fortunate children are fast asleep. Throughout the month of December, the orphanage attic, open to the freezing and black night sky, rings out with the jolly cries of infants competing with each other to craft the very best paper or cardboard tanager using shredded newspaper or crumpled cartons or torn-up Popsie The Pig annuals donated by a foundlings' charity. These latter are eagerly grasped by the larger and more lumbering orphans, for the pretty coloured pictures of Popsie The Pig and her pals make for splendid plumage on the paper birds. On New Year's Eve, each tiny collapses with exhaustion on the floor of the attic, and a trio of worthies roams among their fallen little bodies, destroying all but one of the paper or cardboard tanagers with hammers and slicers. The sole surviving paper bird is carried off for the Hooting Yard festivities that begin at dawn on New Year's Day, by which time the orphans have been bundled downstairs and locked into the filthy and infested canteen for their breakfast of cauliflower water and radishes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-01-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 A New Year Tanager 03:16 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--I 15:34 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--II 16:46 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--III 24:45 Blodgett's Schloss A NEW YEAR TANAGER Traditionally, the tanager is the new year bird of Hooting Yard. A small to medium sized member of the bird family Thraupidae, the tanager picks insects off branches, often has a rather dull song, and lives in a cup nest on a tree branch. Sometimes the cup can be almost globular, but that's a tanager for you. Because it is a tropical bird, flocks of tanagers are incredibly rare in the sky around Haemoglobin Towers, so the majority of Hooting Yard's new year tanager birds are made of paper or cardboard. Well, all of them. The making of paper or cardboard birds, often very elaborate ones, but sometimes really quite shoddy and slapdash, has long been found to be a splendid way of keeping the tinies of Pang Hill Orphanage busy during the winter nights, when other, more fortunate children are fast asleep. Throughout the month of December, the orphanage attic, open to the freezing and black night sky, rings out with the jolly cries of infants competing with each other to craft the very best paper or cardboard tanager using shredded newspaper or crumpled cartons or torn-up Popsie The Pig annuals donated by a foundlings' charity. These latter are eagerly grasped by the larger and more lumbering orphans, for the pretty coloured pictures of Popsie The Pig and her pals make for splendid plumage on the paper birds. On New Year's Eve, each tiny collapses with exhaustion on the floor of the attic, and a trio of worthies roams among their fallen little bodies, destroying all but one of the paper or cardboard tanagers with hammers and slicers. The sole surviving paper bird is carried off for the Hooting Yard festivities that begin at dawn on New Year's Day, by which time the orphans have been bundled downstairs and locked into the filthy and infested canteen for their breakfast of cauliflower water and radishes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2008-01-1030:16fullfalsehooting-yard-podcast-1Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hooting-yard-podcast-1Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hooting-yard-podcast-131:58fullfalsehooting-yard-liveTue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hooting-yard-liveHooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hooting-yard-live1:17:45fullfalsehooting-yard-special-jubilate-agnoThu, 27 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hooting-yard-special-jubilate-agnoHooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hooting-yard-special-jubilate-agno3:05:16fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-12-13Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Laundry Bag Boy 19:58 An Essay Concerning A Bird Perched On A Promontory LAUNDRY BAG BOY I have never been a fan of comic books, nor have I developed a taste for graphic novels. I can admire the skill and inventiveness, but somehow I can't drum up genuine enthusiasm. Of course, as a child, I had my weekly diet of comics, including Pipsy Papsy, Factorum Et Dictorum Memorabilium, and The Dinky, but when I discovered proper books I was smitten by prose, and there was no turning back. Until last week, that is, when I discovered a fantastic comic featuring the cartoon superhero Laundry Bag Boy. I have to admit it has been a revelation, and I am smitten all over again, this time by crude and cack-handed drawings and by storylines which have surely been devised by a dribbling toddler. Yet there is a majestic genius about Laundry Bag Boy, his adventures, his scrapes, his pratfalls, his laundry bag, that I find irresistible. The comic I picked up, absent-mindedly, from where it had been discarded on a bench under a sycamore by a path in a park, was fat and dog-eared and threatened by rainfall. I thought no more than to carry it to the nearest municipal waste bin and consign it to oblivion, but the waste bins had been commandeered by an avant garde arts project organised by a man called Simon, whose name was Peter, just like one of the apostles of Christ. But whereas the apostles were, as Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) observed, "illiterate half-starved visionaries in some dark corner of a Graeco-Syrian slum", the artist Simon and his pals were goatee-bearded trendies from Shoreditch destined to rot in hell. Before they rotted, they had filled all the municipal waste bins in the park with some kind of compacted orange substance, hard as concrete, rendering the bins unusable. According to leaflets available from a temporary kiosk, this "art intervention" was a "courageous statement about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror". Much as I would have liked to wander through the park from bin to bin contemplating this thought-provoking work, I found that my thoughts were paralysed rather than provoked, so instead I took shelter from the downpour under a derelict bandstand and began to leaf through the comic. I am so glad I did. Issue 10, Volume 34 of Laundry Bag Boy contained a couple of short strips about Douglas The Pig, who was, I learned, Laundry Bag Boy's pet pig, and a few pages of adverts and promotions for other publications. The bulk of the comic, however, was a single full-length comic strip adventure called Laundry Bag Boy : The Shakatak Years. Now, just as in my adulthood I have never been a comics buff, nor have I ever cared much, or at all, for Shakatak, the British jazz-funk band who had hits in the 1980s with "Night Birds" and "Down On The Street", among others. Frankly, their smooth pap left me cold when first I heard it, and still does, two decades on. Readers who disagree with me, and who wish to champion the music of Shakatak and show me the error of my ways, are invited to argue their case in the Comments, but I will only pay attention to contributions which shake me to the core and force me to reassess my entire Weltanschauung. Those are the stakes. Be very careful before you tap that keyboard and hit "Send". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-12-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Laundry Bag Boy 19:58 An Essay Concerning A Bird Perched On A Promontory LAUNDRY BAG BOY I have never been a fan of comic books, nor have I developed a taste for graphic novels. I can admire the skill and inventiveness, but somehow I can't drum up genuine enthusiasm. Of course, as a child, I had my weekly diet of comics, including Pipsy Papsy, Factorum Et Dictorum Memorabilium, and The Dinky, but when I discovered proper books I was smitten by prose, and there was no turning back. Until last week, that is, when I discovered a fantastic comic featuring the cartoon superhero Laundry Bag Boy. I have to admit it has been a revelation, and I am smitten all over again, this time by crude and cack-handed drawings and by storylines which have surely been devised by a dribbling toddler. Yet there is a majestic genius about Laundry Bag Boy, his adventures, his scrapes, his pratfalls, his laundry bag, that I find irresistible. The comic I picked up, absent-mindedly, from where it had been discarded on a bench under a sycamore by a path in a park, was fat and dog-eared and threatened by rainfall. I thought no more than to carry it to the nearest municipal waste bin and consign it to oblivion, but the waste bins had been commandeered by an avant garde arts project organised by a man called Simon, whose name was Peter, just like one of the apostles of Christ. But whereas the apostles were, as Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) observed, "illiterate half-starved visionaries in some dark corner of a Graeco-Syrian slum", the artist Simon and his pals were goatee-bearded trendies from Shoreditch destined to rot in hell. Before they rotted, they had filled all the municipal waste bins in the park with some kind of compacted orange substance, hard as concrete, rendering the bins unusable. According to leaflets available from a temporary kiosk, this "art intervention" was a "courageous statement about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror". Much as I would have liked to wander through the park from bin to bin contemplating this thought-provoking work, I found that my thoughts were paralysed rather than provoked, so instead I took shelter from the downpour under a derelict bandstand and began to leaf through the comic. I am so glad I did. Issue 10, Volume 34 of Laundry Bag Boy contained a couple of short strips about Douglas The Pig, who was, I learned, Laundry Bag Boy's pet pig, and a few pages of adverts and promotions for other publications. The bulk of the comic, however, was a single full-length comic strip adventure called Laundry Bag Boy : The Shakatak Years. Now, just as in my adulthood I have never been a comics buff, nor have I ever cared much, or at all, for Shakatak, the British jazz-funk band who had hits in the 1980s with "Night Birds" and "Down On The Street", among others. Frankly, their smooth pap left me cold when first I heard it, and still does, two decades on. Readers who disagree with me, and who wish to champion the music of Shakatak and show me the error of my ways, are invited to argue their case in the Comments, but I will only pay attention to contributions which shake me to the core and force me to reassess my entire Weltanschauung. Those are the stakes. Be very careful before you tap that keyboard and hit "Send". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-12-1332:22fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-12-06Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:28 "There was an interesting communication at, of..." 18:53 Paupers' Drool 24:31 Pipistrelle Pursuivant "THERE WAS AN INTERESTING COMMUNICATION AT, OF..." "There was an interesting communication at, of all places, Salisbury railway station in 1966. I was advised by communications to build a copper cone to help my condition. Having read of the apparent Atlantean cones in Other Tongues, Other Flesh by George Hunt Williamson, with their complicated circuits, I felt unqualified to build one. The answer rapped back: 'Just build a simple cone of copper--that's not beyond you is it?' I sat up with a start--surely space people would not talk like that? But it jerked me out of my self-pity and I began a regular daily use of a cone which my father made from a piece of scrap sheet copper." -- Jimmy Goddard, Cosmic Friends PAUPERS' DROOL It was once believed that children frightened by thunderstorms could be emboldened by the application of a tincture of paupers' drool to their infant foreheads. When I say "it was once believed", I mean to be very specific. This was once believed, by one person, for a very brief period of time. The person was Prince Fulgencio, the so-called 'prancing prince', who one autumn day found his daughter, the Infanta Gertrude, cowering behind an arras in her playroom. One rarely finds an arras these days anywhere except upon the dramatic stage, but the prancing prince had thespian inclinations and his palace was littered with theatrical props. "Whyfore art thou cowering so behind the arras as thunderclaps rend the sky?" asked the prince. In reply, the Infanta Gertrude whimpered in terror as a fresh thunderclap rent the sky. Her playroom was on the topmost floor of the palace, and its ceiling had been removed, exposing the room to the mighty firmament overhead. The prince wanted to toughen up his daughter in preparation for a life of ruthless tyranny, and it dismayed him to see her milksop ways. Thus it was that he strode off into the Weird Woods of Woobyhoobyhoo to consult with the Wise Woman. He found her, oblivious of the storm, tossing fallen and gathered crab apples to her team of pigs. The Wise Woman was a shape shifter, and on this particular day she could have been mistaken for Nova Pilbeam, that siren of the British screen who, in the 1930s, starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Young And Innocent and the first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-12-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:28 "There was an interesting communication at, of..." 18:53 Paupers' Drool 24:31 Pipistrelle Pursuivant "THERE WAS AN INTERESTING COMMUNICATION AT, OF..." "There was an interesting communication at, of all places, Salisbury railway station in 1966. I was advised by communications to build a copper cone to help my condition. Having read of the apparent Atlantean cones in Other Tongues, Other Flesh by George Hunt Williamson, with their complicated circuits, I felt unqualified to build one. The answer rapped back: 'Just build a simple cone of copper--that's not beyond you is it?' I sat up with a start--surely space people would not talk like that? But it jerked me out of my self-pity and I began a regular daily use of a cone which my father made from a piece of scrap sheet copper." -- Jimmy Goddard, Cosmic Friends PAUPERS' DROOL It was once believed that children frightened by thunderstorms could be emboldened by the application of a tincture of paupers' drool to their infant foreheads. When I say "it was once believed", I mean to be very specific. This was once believed, by one person, for a very brief period of time. The person was Prince Fulgencio, the so-called 'prancing prince', who one autumn day found his daughter, the Infanta Gertrude, cowering behind an arras in her playroom. One rarely finds an arras these days anywhere except upon the dramatic stage, but the prancing prince had thespian inclinations and his palace was littered with theatrical props. "Whyfore art thou cowering so behind the arras as thunderclaps rend the sky?" asked the prince. In reply, the Infanta Gertrude whimpered in terror as a fresh thunderclap rent the sky. Her playroom was on the topmost floor of the palace, and its ceiling had been removed, exposing the room to the mighty firmament overhead. The prince wanted to toughen up his daughter in preparation for a life of ruthless tyranny, and it dismayed him to see her milksop ways. Thus it was that he strode off into the Weird Woods of Woobyhoobyhoo to consult with the Wise Woman. He found her, oblivious of the storm, tossing fallen and gathered crab apples to her team of pigs. The Wise Woman was a shape shifter, and on this particular day she could have been mistaken for Nova Pilbeam, that siren of the British screen who, in the 1930s, starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Young And Innocent and the first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-12-0630:07fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-22Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 The Heft Of Dough 06:55 The Elder Bog 14:36 Dentist's Potting Shed 23:43 I Heard The Owl Call My Name THE HEFT OF DOUGH The Heft Of Dough is the title of an LP recorded towards the end of the last century by Agnetha and Anna-Frid and Benny and Bjorn (alphabetical order). The Scandinavian foursome were joined on this occasion by virtuoso glockenspielist Dot Tint, who until then was better known as the accompanist of an oompah band devoted to masterpieces of the Baroque. Dot was introduced to Agnetha, Anna-Frid et al, by her brother Rex Tint, the mezzotintist, who had been commissioned by either Benny or Bjorn to create a mezzotint for the cover of an earlier LP by the quartet. Temperamental Rex completed the work but, in a characteristic fit of hysterics, destroyed it before it could be used, alleging that it failed to meet the exacting standards he set himself. This is unlikely to be true, and those in the know suggest it was simply yet another unreasonable tantrum by the talented but tiresome mezzotintist. His sister possessed a more equable demeanour, and the recording sessions for The Heft Of Dough were notable for their almost uncanny calm. Granted, Benny went postal one afternoon when Anna-Frid sang her lines tapioca rather than, as the score required, marmalade, and he threatened to tear her throat out, but it was only that, a threat, and he was quickly persuaded to go and take a nap. It was Dot Tint who did the persuading, and it was upon Dot Tint's divan that he napped. Dot took her divan everywhere, for she was overfond of naps herself. Some said her calmness was closer to narcolepsy, and I suppose it is true that she only ever seemed fully awake when bashing beauty from her glockenspiel. Press interest in the sessions was intense. Agnetha and Anna-Frid and Benny and Bjorn had recently had a hit single with the prize-winning, insanely catchy song Lepanto, the lyrics of which cleverly use the 1571 Battle of Lepanto between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire as a metaphor for the more obvious pop pap theme of romantic love. To keep intrusive hacks off limits, all approaches to the recording studios were baited with baffles, made of cement. These served a secondary purpose of deterring Rex Tint from barging his way in. The insufferable mezzotintist declared that he had "unfinished business" with Benny, or possibly with Bjorn, and was set on disrupting the recording of the LP. Frustrated by the baffles, he took to stalking the streets of the nearest township, cursing and jabbering, until distracted at last by a fresh commission for a set of mezzotints, though this was a ruse contrived by his sister Dot to lure him even further away from the studio. By the time Rex Tint discovered he had been fooled, he was holed up in a chalet on the other side of the globe while Agnetha and Anna-Frid and Benny and Bjorn and Dot Tint were putting the finishing touches to their LP. The Heft Of Dough is a concept album in which the fivesome use the heft of a ball of dough as a symbol for various historical attempts to measure the weight of the human soul. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 The Heft Of Dough 06:55 The Elder Bog 14:36 Dentist's Potting Shed 23:43 I Heard The Owl Call My Name THE HEFT OF DOUGH The Heft Of Dough is the title of an LP recorded towards the end of the last century by Agnetha and Anna-Frid and Benny and Bjorn (alphabetical order). The Scandinavian foursome were joined on this occasion by virtuoso glockenspielist Dot Tint, who until then was better known as the accompanist of an oompah band devoted to masterpieces of the Baroque. Dot was introduced to Agnetha, Anna-Frid et al, by her brother Rex Tint, the mezzotintist, who had been commissioned by either Benny or Bjorn to create a mezzotint for the cover of an earlier LP by the quartet. Temperamental Rex completed the work but, in a characteristic fit of hysterics, destroyed it before it could be used, alleging that it failed to meet the exacting standards he set himself. This is unlikely to be true, and those in the know suggest it was simply yet another unreasonable tantrum by the talented but tiresome mezzotintist. His sister possessed a more equable demeanour, and the recording sessions for The Heft Of Dough were notable for their almost uncanny calm. Granted, Benny went postal one afternoon when Anna-Frid sang her lines tapioca rather than, as the score required, marmalade, and he threatened to tear her throat out, but it was only that, a threat, and he was quickly persuaded to go and take a nap. It was Dot Tint who did the persuading, and it was upon Dot Tint's divan that he napped. Dot took her divan everywhere, for she was overfond of naps herself. Some said her calmness was closer to narcolepsy, and I suppose it is true that she only ever seemed fully awake when bashing beauty from her glockenspiel. Press interest in the sessions was intense. Agnetha and Anna-Frid and Benny and Bjorn had recently had a hit single with the prize-winning, insanely catchy song Lepanto, the lyrics of which cleverly use the 1571 Battle of Lepanto between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire as a metaphor for the more obvious pop pap theme of romantic love. To keep intrusive hacks off limits, all approaches to the recording studios were baited with baffles, made of cement. These served a secondary purpose of deterring Rex Tint from barging his way in. The insufferable mezzotintist declared that he had "unfinished business" with Benny, or possibly with Bjorn, and was set on disrupting the recording of the LP. Frustrated by the baffles, he took to stalking the streets of the nearest township, cursing and jabbering, until distracted at last by a fresh commission for a set of mezzotints, though this was a ruse contrived by his sister Dot to lure him even further away from the studio. By the time Rex Tint discovered he had been fooled, he was holed up in a chalet on the other side of the globe while Agnetha and Anna-Frid and Benny and Bjorn and Dot Tint were putting the finishing touches to their LP. The Heft Of Dough is a concept album in which the fivesome use the heft of a ball of dough as a symbol for various historical attempts to measure the weight of the human soul. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-2230:45fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-15Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Thousands Of Unusual And Arresting Facts About Birds 15:42 Museum 19:22 Pancake Hints 22:36 Cargpan And Beppo THOUSANDS OF UNUSUAL AND ARRESTING FACTS ABOUT BIRDS Thousands Of Unusual And Arresting Facts About Birds was one of the fattest pamphlets Dobson ever published. The title is something of a misnomer, for the remarkable thing about this work is that it contains not a single fact about birds whatsoever. Indeed, apart from the occasional passing mention of starlings (page 49), shrikelets (page 92) and a swan (page 119), birds are signally absent from the text. In spite of this, the pamphlet has been hailed by the upstart young Dobsonist Ted Cack as "the most informative text on ornithology that I have ever read". Cack is not always the most intellectually agile of critics, though, so perhaps we should not take him too seriously, the way we might furrow our brows in deep concentration at even the merest squib from a theoretical colossus like, say, Terry Eagleton. Dobson wrote the pamphlet at a time when he was preoccupied with moles. He was fascinated by their burrowing habits, near-blindness, and twitching snouts. Although the snouts of moles twitch less than those of shrews, particularly elephant shrews, Dobson was enamoured of what he considered the more "moley" twitching of the snouts of moles. Why, then, did he not essay a pamphlet of unusual and arresting facts about moles, rather than birds, when it was moles that intrigued him during this period? It should be noted that his tract makes no mention of [insert Latin tag for moles here] either. A clue may be found in the fact that at the time of the pamphlet's writing, Dobson was engaged in a feud with a bellicose undertaker from down Pointy Town way. No one can be quite sure any more what caused the vendetta, not even Ted Cack, who admits to utter beflummoxment about the whole matter. But there was an exchange of letters, among much else, and in one of these the out of print pamphleteer wrote as follows: "Not only are you a singularly bellicose undertaker, sir, but you keep the seats in your death carriage in a very greasy condition. My dry cleaners had the devil of a job returning my trousers to their usual impeccability after last I sat upon those seats when attending the funeral rites of Thruxtonshaw Beppo, the noted mole- and bird-expert whose friendship I had come to treasure. It is true that I have not sought from you financial recompense for the cost of degreasing my trousers, but that is only because I have a more terrible revenge in mind." The authenticity of this letter has been questioned, chiefly because the last thing one tends to associate with Dobson is a pair of impeccable trousers. I am not suggesting that he was forever covered in grease, far from it, but a certain shabbiness, even grubbiness, was part of his general aura, even the aura detected by our psychic brethren and sistren, as attested by the redoubtable Madame Boubou, who sometimes did "readings" of the pamphleteer's ethereal being. Dobson himself was unaware of these, as the turbanned Madame was given to following him about, skulking down alleyways or creeping after him as he reconnoitred picnicking spots in fields and parkland. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Thousands Of Unusual And Arresting Facts About Birds 15:42 Museum 19:22 Pancake Hints 22:36 Cargpan And Beppo THOUSANDS OF UNUSUAL AND ARRESTING FACTS ABOUT BIRDS Thousands Of Unusual And Arresting Facts About Birds was one of the fattest pamphlets Dobson ever published. The title is something of a misnomer, for the remarkable thing about this work is that it contains not a single fact about birds whatsoever. Indeed, apart from the occasional passing mention of starlings (page 49), shrikelets (page 92) and a swan (page 119), birds are signally absent from the text. In spite of this, the pamphlet has been hailed by the upstart young Dobsonist Ted Cack as "the most informative text on ornithology that I have ever read". Cack is not always the most intellectually agile of critics, though, so perhaps we should not take him too seriously, the way we might furrow our brows in deep concentration at even the merest squib from a theoretical colossus like, say, Terry Eagleton. Dobson wrote the pamphlet at a time when he was preoccupied with moles. He was fascinated by their burrowing habits, near-blindness, and twitching snouts. Although the snouts of moles twitch less than those of shrews, particularly elephant shrews, Dobson was enamoured of what he considered the more "moley" twitching of the snouts of moles. Why, then, did he not essay a pamphlet of unusual and arresting facts about moles, rather than birds, when it was moles that intrigued him during this period? It should be noted that his tract makes no mention of [insert Latin tag for moles here] either. A clue may be found in the fact that at the time of the pamphlet's writing, Dobson was engaged in a feud with a bellicose undertaker from down Pointy Town way. No one can be quite sure any more what caused the vendetta, not even Ted Cack, who admits to utter beflummoxment about the whole matter. But there was an exchange of letters, among much else, and in one of these the out of print pamphleteer wrote as follows: "Not only are you a singularly bellicose undertaker, sir, but you keep the seats in your death carriage in a very greasy condition. My dry cleaners had the devil of a job returning my trousers to their usual impeccability after last I sat upon those seats when attending the funeral rites of Thruxtonshaw Beppo, the noted mole- and bird-expert whose friendship I had come to treasure. It is true that I have not sought from you financial recompense for the cost of degreasing my trousers, but that is only because I have a more terrible revenge in mind." The authenticity of this letter has been questioned, chiefly because the last thing one tends to associate with Dobson is a pair of impeccable trousers. I am not suggesting that he was forever covered in grease, far from it, but a certain shabbiness, even grubbiness, was part of his general aura, even the aura detected by our psychic brethren and sistren, as attested by the redoubtable Madame Boubou, who sometimes did "readings" of the pamphleteer's ethereal being. Dobson himself was unaware of these, as the turbanned Madame was given to following him about, skulking down alleyways or creeping after him as he reconnoitred picnicking spots in fields and parkland. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-1529:28fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-08Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Mr Bayes, The Clergyman 03:23 Blodgett And Trubshaw 15:57 Singalongadabbler 17:11 Bird Observation 19:29 Sappensopp Days MR BAYES, THE CLERGYMAN Nothing now would serve him but he must be a madman in print, and write a book of Ecclesiastical Policy. There he distributes all the Territories of Conscience into the Princes Province, and makes the Hierarchy to be but Bishops of the Air: and talks at such an extravagant rate in things of higher concernment, that the Reader will avow that in the whole discourse he had not one lucid interval. This Book he was so bent upon, that he sate up late at nights, and wanting sleep, and drinking sometimes Wine to animate his Fancy, it increas'd his Distemper. Beside that too he had the misfortune to have two Friends, who being also out of their wits, and of the same though something a calmer phrensy, spurr'd him on perpetually with commendation. But when his Book was once come out, and he saw himself an Author: that some of the Galants of the Town layd by the new Tune and the Tay, tay, tarry, to quote some of his impertinencies; that his Title page was posted and pasted up at every avenue next under the Play for that afternoon at the Kings or the Dukes House; the Vain-Glory of this totally confounded him. He lost all the little remains of his understanding, and his Cerebellum was so dryed up that there was more brains in a Walnut and both their Shells were alike thin and brittle... so this Gentleman, in the Dog-dayes, stragling by Temple-bar, in a massy Cassock and Surcingle, and taking the opportunity at once to piss and admire the Title-page of his Book; a tall Servant of his, one J.O. that was not so careful as he should be, or whether he did it of purpose, lets another Book of four hundred leaves fall upon his head; which meeting with the former fracture in his Cranium, and all the concurrent Accidents already mentioned, has utterly undone him. Andrew Marvell, The Rehearsal Transpros'd (1672) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Mr Bayes, The Clergyman 03:23 Blodgett And Trubshaw 15:57 Singalongadabbler 17:11 Bird Observation 19:29 Sappensopp Days MR BAYES, THE CLERGYMAN Nothing now would serve him but he must be a madman in print, and write a book of Ecclesiastical Policy. There he distributes all the Territories of Conscience into the Princes Province, and makes the Hierarchy to be but Bishops of the Air: and talks at such an extravagant rate in things of higher concernment, that the Reader will avow that in the whole discourse he had not one lucid interval. This Book he was so bent upon, that he sate up late at nights, and wanting sleep, and drinking sometimes Wine to animate his Fancy, it increas'd his Distemper. Beside that too he had the misfortune to have two Friends, who being also out of their wits, and of the same though something a calmer phrensy, spurr'd him on perpetually with commendation. But when his Book was once come out, and he saw himself an Author: that some of the Galants of the Town layd by the new Tune and the Tay, tay, tarry, to quote some of his impertinencies; that his Title page was posted and pasted up at every avenue next under the Play for that afternoon at the Kings or the Dukes House; the Vain-Glory of this totally confounded him. He lost all the little remains of his understanding, and his Cerebellum was so dryed up that there was more brains in a Walnut and both their Shells were alike thin and brittle... so this Gentleman, in the Dog-dayes, stragling by Temple-bar, in a massy Cassock and Surcingle, and taking the opportunity at once to piss and admire the Title-page of his Book; a tall Servant of his, one J.O. that was not so careful as he should be, or whether he did it of purpose, lets another Book of four hundred leaves fall upon his head; which meeting with the former fracture in his Cranium, and all the concurrent Accidents already mentioned, has utterly undone him. Andrew Marvell, The Rehearsal Transpros'd (1672) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-0822:03fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-01Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Civic Platform 07:03 Tiny Enid And The Gormless Nipper 16:58 Hot Things 19:51 Pea News 24:48 Head To Head CIVIC PLATFORM Yesterday I mentioned Donald Tusk's Civic Platform, and I am reminded that for a long time now there has been talk of creating a Hooting Yard Civic Platform. Unfortunately, the discussions have been mired in disagreement, unintelligibility, hysteria and pomposity, but perhaps it is time to let bygones be bygones and crack on with the job. Any future Hooting Yard Civic Platform will be robust rather than weedy, and it will be fit for purpose. Those are really the only two things we need to bear in mind, for all else is "as a vapour of haze in a mist of unknowing", as Mrs Gubbins put it the other day, while talking in her sleep. It is difficult to overstate the importance of Mrs Gubbins' contribution to this project. The crone is nearly ninety now, and has very few teeth in her head, but she has been around long enough to see an impressive number of Platforms, both Civic and otherwise, come and go. Our Platform, when it is built, will rest on solid foundations, and we must thank her for that, even if she is likely to be taking an afternoon nap when we do so. I had hoped to bring on board a squad of zonk-eyed Milibands to kick-start this new, energetic phase of Civic Platform development, but Mrs Gubbins' head turned green and septic when this idea was mooted, so I abandoned it. Instead, I got a pot of paint and daubed NOT WEEDY, ROBUST on a makeshift proto-Platform donated by Old Farmer Frack. Apparently it is made out of bits of a cow byre that he smashed up one night, but it serves its purpose admirably and looks very civic, plopped in the middle of a field rife with bracken. Mrs Gubbins, whose head is thankfully back to normal, has planted some nettles thereabouts, to add what she calls "a dash of Spartan rigour" to the scene. Whether the Spartans made use of nettles in such a way is not something I know about, and nor I suspect does La Gubbins, but it is always best to humour her fancies. Attractive as the proto-Platform is, it lacks a certain coherence, for it remains unclear what kind of initiatives and policies will be launched from it. And believe you me, I intend the Hooting Yard Civic Platform to be a launch pad for a bewildering number of initiatives and policies. That is why a particularly damp and gloomy cellar in Pang Hill Orphanage will be the headquarters, soon I hope, of the Pang Hill Orphanage Think Tank, from which ideas will fizz. It would already have been set up had I been able to bash into Old Farmer Frack's head the notion that, as a mad bellowing rustic, he is not a suitable candidate to be the Think Tank's Director. He has his heart set on the position, bless him, even though it does not involve cows, but I am hoping to fob him off by making him an Honorary Patron. Which brings me neatly to the main point of this otherwise witless bibblydib, which is that you too can apply to sit alongside Old Farmer Frack at the snackbar counter reserved for Honorary Patrons of the Hooting Yard Civic Platform. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Civic Platform 07:03 Tiny Enid And The Gormless Nipper 16:58 Hot Things 19:51 Pea News 24:48 Head To Head CIVIC PLATFORM Yesterday I mentioned Donald Tusk's Civic Platform, and I am reminded that for a long time now there has been talk of creating a Hooting Yard Civic Platform. Unfortunately, the discussions have been mired in disagreement, unintelligibility, hysteria and pomposity, but perhaps it is time to let bygones be bygones and crack on with the job. Any future Hooting Yard Civic Platform will be robust rather than weedy, and it will be fit for purpose. Those are really the only two things we need to bear in mind, for all else is "as a vapour of haze in a mist of unknowing", as Mrs Gubbins put it the other day, while talking in her sleep. It is difficult to overstate the importance of Mrs Gubbins' contribution to this project. The crone is nearly ninety now, and has very few teeth in her head, but she has been around long enough to see an impressive number of Platforms, both Civic and otherwise, come and go. Our Platform, when it is built, will rest on solid foundations, and we must thank her for that, even if she is likely to be taking an afternoon nap when we do so. I had hoped to bring on board a squad of zonk-eyed Milibands to kick-start this new, energetic phase of Civic Platform development, but Mrs Gubbins' head turned green and septic when this idea was mooted, so I abandoned it. Instead, I got a pot of paint and daubed NOT WEEDY, ROBUST on a makeshift proto-Platform donated by Old Farmer Frack. Apparently it is made out of bits of a cow byre that he smashed up one night, but it serves its purpose admirably and looks very civic, plopped in the middle of a field rife with bracken. Mrs Gubbins, whose head is thankfully back to normal, has planted some nettles thereabouts, to add what she calls "a dash of Spartan rigour" to the scene. Whether the Spartans made use of nettles in such a way is not something I know about, and nor I suspect does La Gubbins, but it is always best to humour her fancies. Attractive as the proto-Platform is, it lacks a certain coherence, for it remains unclear what kind of initiatives and policies will be launched from it. And believe you me, I intend the Hooting Yard Civic Platform to be a launch pad for a bewildering number of initiatives and policies. That is why a particularly damp and gloomy cellar in Pang Hill Orphanage will be the headquarters, soon I hope, of the Pang Hill Orphanage Think Tank, from which ideas will fizz. It would already have been set up had I been able to bash into Old Farmer Frack's head the notion that, as a mad bellowing rustic, he is not a suitable candidate to be the Think Tank's Director. He has his heart set on the position, bless him, even though it does not involve cows, but I am hoping to fob him off by making him an Honorary Patron. Which brings me neatly to the main point of this otherwise witless bibblydib, which is that you too can apply to sit alongside Old Farmer Frack at the snackbar counter reserved for Honorary Patrons of the Hooting Yard Civic Platform. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-11-0129:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-10-18Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Joost Van Dongelbraacke's Peppery Constitution 07:57 Cadet's Dilemma 16:38 Airport Chaplain 25:15 Toffee Apple Wrapper Saved From The Flames JOOST VAN DONGELBRAACKE'S PEPPERY CONSTITUTION Joost Van Dongelbraacke's peppery constitution is the subject of not one, not two, but three new publications, a book, a pamphlet, and a monthly magazine. One might think that the constitution of a suburban shaman is too thin a topic to support a regular periodical, particularly such a fat and glossy one, but that is to discount the monomania of its editor, Tilly Whelkstallholder. Tilly is a woman of considerable intellectual energy. Early in life, her ambition was to become, like Eva Crane, a pivotal figure in the world of beekeeping for half a century, but she had to abandon this plan when it became clear that, try as she might, she simply could not get her head around the difference between bees, wasps and hornets. She would stare for hours at photographs, or illustrations, or dead bees, wasps and hornets suspended in aspic or a similar jelly, but all that happened was that her brain became a fuddled and fuming thing, and she had to go to the canteen at Hubermann's department store for a reviving cup of tea. It was over one such refreshment that she first encountered the name Joost Van Dongelbraacke. The suburban shaman had been invited to respond to a Q & A in that week's issue of Dashed Beekeeping Ambitions magazine, and Tilly found some of his answers fascinating. For example, asked who he would invite to his ideal dinner party, Van Dongelbraacke listed Jack and Bobby Charlton, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Jack Teagarden, Bobby Previte, and Eva Crane, among some two hundred guests. In response to the question "O Joost, why hast thou forsaken me?", he reportedly answered with a stream of heavily sub-edited invective. What really took Tilly's fancy, though, was the revelation that Van Dongelbraacke had a peppery constitution. Downing what remained of her cup of tea, she hurried out of the canteen, popped in to a kiosk to buy a bus ticket and a carton of expensive Paraguayan cigarettes, and dawdled impatiently at the bus shelter until the number 5724938 arrived. Settling herself in the seat just behind the driver, she plotted the first edition of Joost Van Dongelbraacke's Peppery Constitution Monthly Magazine as the bus juddered along the muddy lane out of town, past the swimming pool and the heron enclosure, down through the big frightening tunnel and out onto the sycamore- and lupin-lined highway, picking up speed as it screeched through villages named after French film directors, swerved off towards the Blister Lane Bypass, then thundered inexorably downhill parallel with the derelict funicular railway until it reached the bus depot on the outskirts of the tiny and gruesome fishing village where Tilly rented half a barn during the summer months. It was winter, so she had no key, and had to clamber in though a funnel at the back of the other half of the barn and then smash down the connecting door with an axe. A week later, the first issue of her magazine appeared on the shelves of Old Ma Purgative's pie shop and newsagent's. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-10-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Joost Van Dongelbraacke's Peppery Constitution 07:57 Cadet's Dilemma 16:38 Airport Chaplain 25:15 Toffee Apple Wrapper Saved From The Flames JOOST VAN DONGELBRAACKE'S PEPPERY CONSTITUTION Joost Van Dongelbraacke's peppery constitution is the subject of not one, not two, but three new publications, a book, a pamphlet, and a monthly magazine. One might think that the constitution of a suburban shaman is too thin a topic to support a regular periodical, particularly such a fat and glossy one, but that is to discount the monomania of its editor, Tilly Whelkstallholder. Tilly is a woman of considerable intellectual energy. Early in life, her ambition was to become, like Eva Crane, a pivotal figure in the world of beekeeping for half a century, but she had to abandon this plan when it became clear that, try as she might, she simply could not get her head around the difference between bees, wasps and hornets. She would stare for hours at photographs, or illustrations, or dead bees, wasps and hornets suspended in aspic or a similar jelly, but all that happened was that her brain became a fuddled and fuming thing, and she had to go to the canteen at Hubermann's department store for a reviving cup of tea. It was over one such refreshment that she first encountered the name Joost Van Dongelbraacke. The suburban shaman had been invited to respond to a Q & A in that week's issue of Dashed Beekeeping Ambitions magazine, and Tilly found some of his answers fascinating. For example, asked who he would invite to his ideal dinner party, Van Dongelbraacke listed Jack and Bobby Charlton, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Jack Teagarden, Bobby Previte, and Eva Crane, among some two hundred guests. In response to the question "O Joost, why hast thou forsaken me?", he reportedly answered with a stream of heavily sub-edited invective. What really took Tilly's fancy, though, was the revelation that Van Dongelbraacke had a peppery constitution. Downing what remained of her cup of tea, she hurried out of the canteen, popped in to a kiosk to buy a bus ticket and a carton of expensive Paraguayan cigarettes, and dawdled impatiently at the bus shelter until the number 5724938 arrived. Settling herself in the seat just behind the driver, she plotted the first edition of Joost Van Dongelbraacke's Peppery Constitution Monthly Magazine as the bus juddered along the muddy lane out of town, past the swimming pool and the heron enclosure, down through the big frightening tunnel and out onto the sycamore- and lupin-lined highway, picking up speed as it screeched through villages named after French film directors, swerved off towards the Blister Lane Bypass, then thundered inexorably downhill parallel with the derelict funicular railway until it reached the bus depot on the outskirts of the tiny and gruesome fishing village where Tilly rented half a barn during the summer months. It was winter, so she had no key, and had to clamber in though a funnel at the back of the other half of the barn and then smash down the connecting door with an axe. A week later, the first issue of her magazine appeared on the shelves of Old Ma Purgative's pie shop and newsagent's. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-10-1829:01fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-10-11Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:29 Pudding Flaps 03:16 A Bit Of A Kerfuffle Down By The Bins Outside The Barn 17:22 Being A Robber Baron PUDDING FLAPS A while ago I wrote about hiking pickles, and today I want to address the equally important topic of pudding flaps. Flaps about pudding are rarer than they once were, chiefly because puddings play a less critical role in our diets than used to be the case. Time was when no meal was innocent of a pudding, and though of course not every pudding preparation was the occasion of a flap, the incidence of such flaps was obviously more frequent. One or two psychoculinary statisticians have attempted to put a precise figure on the occurrence of pudding flaps, and one feels pity for them, pity mixed with mocking laughter. Sooner or later, I think, we are going to have to accept that we will never know how often the making of a pudding was done in a state of flap, certainly not to a statistically significant extent. The implications of this are, of course, that I may be able to say nothing pertinent about pudding flaps save for what I have already said, that they used to be more common than they are in the gilded paradise we live in today. And it is a sort of Eden, as we zoom around the glistening metropolis in bendy hoverbuses, primping our bouffants with space-age preening tweezers, scanning the electronic information silos for the latest diktats from our Supreme Leader, the Great Helmswoman Hazel Blears, plugging our pods into hubs, enduring cataclysmic hailstorms with undiminished joie de vivre, and taking our state-provided One-Pig-Per-Person-Policy pig for a brisk walk through the concrete underpasses below the boulevards. Yet some say it is a fool's paradise, and they may be right. Perhaps there is a deep, primeval human need to get into a flap when preparing a pudding, whether it is a pudding of suet or of plums or of greasy slops. Our loss of those flaps, at least in our daily lives, has cost us dear. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-10-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:29 Pudding Flaps 03:16 A Bit Of A Kerfuffle Down By The Bins Outside The Barn 17:22 Being A Robber Baron PUDDING FLAPS A while ago I wrote about hiking pickles, and today I want to address the equally important topic of pudding flaps. Flaps about pudding are rarer than they once were, chiefly because puddings play a less critical role in our diets than used to be the case. Time was when no meal was innocent of a pudding, and though of course not every pudding preparation was the occasion of a flap, the incidence of such flaps was obviously more frequent. One or two psychoculinary statisticians have attempted to put a precise figure on the occurrence of pudding flaps, and one feels pity for them, pity mixed with mocking laughter. Sooner or later, I think, we are going to have to accept that we will never know how often the making of a pudding was done in a state of flap, certainly not to a statistically significant extent. The implications of this are, of course, that I may be able to say nothing pertinent about pudding flaps save for what I have already said, that they used to be more common than they are in the gilded paradise we live in today. And it is a sort of Eden, as we zoom around the glistening metropolis in bendy hoverbuses, primping our bouffants with space-age preening tweezers, scanning the electronic information silos for the latest diktats from our Supreme Leader, the Great Helmswoman Hazel Blears, plugging our pods into hubs, enduring cataclysmic hailstorms with undiminished joie de vivre, and taking our state-provided One-Pig-Per-Person-Policy pig for a brisk walk through the concrete underpasses below the boulevards. Yet some say it is a fool's paradise, and they may be right. Perhaps there is a deep, primeval human need to get into a flap when preparing a pudding, whether it is a pudding of suet or of plums or of greasy slops. Our loss of those flaps, at least in our daily lives, has cost us dear. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-10-1128:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-10-06Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Bashing Biscuit Tins 08:16 Colossus 15:23 Oily Git 21:46 Notes Towards A History Of Blister Lane Bypass 26:36 Allocation Of Hooting Yard Weeks BASHING BISCUIT TINS If you were fortunate enough to be hanging around with Blodgett on a Thursday morning in the middling years of the last century, you would as likely as not have been witness to a display of rare skill. For it was Blodgett's endearing habit in those days, on Thursday mornings, to bash out various national anthems, using his fists, and sometimes sticks, on the base of an upturned biscuit tin. He would have eaten all the biscuits for his breakfast, of course. Blodgett had learned by heart the national anthem of almost every state and statelet on the planet, reduced each one to its rhythmic core, and bashed them out on biscuit tins. He would do this at home, or by the edge of a pond, or halfway up a hillside. In truth, it mattered not where he was, for he had fallen into a routine. Thursday meant biscuits for breakfast, then bashing out anthems. So energetically did he thump and bash that by the end of his recital the biscuit tin would be a dented and effectively destroyed thing. Apparently he passed the ruined tins on to Jasper Poxhaven, the sinister scrap metal dealer whose yard was a few doors away from Blodgett's chalet. Blodgett was not fussy about his biscuits, and would gobble down whatever the tin contained. The biscuit shop was conveniently located between his chalet and Poxhaven's yard, so you can see that fortune favoured the accomplishment of his designs. He might take his tin to the pond, or to the hillside, if the weather was balmy, but if it rained, or there were tempests and cataclysms, he would hurry back indoors. I am not sure if he kept a dog at this time, but if he did it was probably the deaf dog of which we know he became fond, its lack of hearing rendering it oblivious to the frantic bashing of the biscuit tins. It would be useful to gain some clarity about this, because it raises the possibility that Blodgett may have bought a tin of dog biscuits from time to time, and given them to the dog rather than bolting them down himself, which would have been a boon at such times as he suffered from stomach cramps. Certainly there is evidence that the biscuit shop sold dog biscuits as well as biscuits for human beings. It also sold hard tack biscuits for the many jolly jack tars and matelots who congregated at the quayside, babbling incoherent maritime gibberish while gutting fish in a desultory fashion. I have said that sometimes Blodgett bashed his biscuit tins with his fists and that sometimes he deployed a pair of sticks. Had you asked him about this, he would have explained that the different timbres of fists and sticks were each appropriate for certain national anthems. Indeed, one of his little mottos at the time was "European fists, South American sticks!", which he always shouted with great enthusiasm. That leaves unclear the preferred thumping implement for the anthems of other continents, but Blodgett was the first to admit that he was not yet fully au fait with all the anthems in the world, just most of them. This may have been a specious claim, but who in that wretched seaport knew enough to challenge him? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-10-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Bashing Biscuit Tins 08:16 Colossus 15:23 Oily Git 21:46 Notes Towards A History Of Blister Lane Bypass 26:36 Allocation Of Hooting Yard Weeks BASHING BISCUIT TINS If you were fortunate enough to be hanging around with Blodgett on a Thursday morning in the middling years of the last century, you would as likely as not have been witness to a display of rare skill. For it was Blodgett's endearing habit in those days, on Thursday mornings, to bash out various national anthems, using his fists, and sometimes sticks, on the base of an upturned biscuit tin. He would have eaten all the biscuits for his breakfast, of course. Blodgett had learned by heart the national anthem of almost every state and statelet on the planet, reduced each one to its rhythmic core, and bashed them out on biscuit tins. He would do this at home, or by the edge of a pond, or halfway up a hillside. In truth, it mattered not where he was, for he had fallen into a routine. Thursday meant biscuits for breakfast, then bashing out anthems. So energetically did he thump and bash that by the end of his recital the biscuit tin would be a dented and effectively destroyed thing. Apparently he passed the ruined tins on to Jasper Poxhaven, the sinister scrap metal dealer whose yard was a few doors away from Blodgett's chalet. Blodgett was not fussy about his biscuits, and would gobble down whatever the tin contained. The biscuit shop was conveniently located between his chalet and Poxhaven's yard, so you can see that fortune favoured the accomplishment of his designs. He might take his tin to the pond, or to the hillside, if the weather was balmy, but if it rained, or there were tempests and cataclysms, he would hurry back indoors. I am not sure if he kept a dog at this time, but if he did it was probably the deaf dog of which we know he became fond, its lack of hearing rendering it oblivious to the frantic bashing of the biscuit tins. It would be useful to gain some clarity about this, because it raises the possibility that Blodgett may have bought a tin of dog biscuits from time to time, and given them to the dog rather than bolting them down himself, which would have been a boon at such times as he suffered from stomach cramps. Certainly there is evidence that the biscuit shop sold dog biscuits as well as biscuits for human beings. It also sold hard tack biscuits for the many jolly jack tars and matelots who congregated at the quayside, babbling incoherent maritime gibberish while gutting fish in a desultory fashion. I have said that sometimes Blodgett bashed his biscuit tins with his fists and that sometimes he deployed a pair of sticks. Had you asked him about this, he would have explained that the different timbres of fists and sticks were each appropriate for certain national anthems. Indeed, one of his little mottos at the time was "European fists, South American sticks!", which he always shouted with great enthusiasm. That leaves unclear the preferred thumping implement for the anthems of other continents, but Blodgett was the first to admit that he was not yet fully au fait with all the anthems in the world, just most of them. This may have been a specious claim, but who in that wretched seaport knew enough to challenge him? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-10-0630:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-27Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 The Numan Question 06:44 Up In The Mountains 21:27 In Ponga THE NUMAN QUESTION A generation ago, the aeroplane pilot and sage Numan asked "Are friends electric?" It was pertinent then, and is perhaps more so now. Over the years, many thinkers have grappled with Numan's question, but it is fair to say that none has been able to give a satisfactory answer. Much publicity was generated when Pilbrow published his big fat Symposium on the problem. The garlanded laureate of pseudo-sci fi hermeneutic psychobabble persuaded over a hundred movers, shakers, and hysterics to respond to the poser put by Numan, and then toured the radio and television studios giving inaccurate summaries of their replies. Few who saw it will forget the Newsnight appearance when Pilbrow's pretensions were comprehensively demolished by weatherman Daniel Corbett, who strode across the set from his meteorological map and literally tore a copy of the Symposium to shreds before Pilbrow's--and Jeremy Paxman's--eyes. It was a cheaply-produced paperback edition of the book, with weakly-glued binding, but Corbett's feat was no less impressive for that. Since that watershed, there have been other, muted responses to Numan, appearing for the most part tucked away in little-read specialist journals or inserted at the tail-end of lectures delivered in draughty, half-empty civic halls in the depths of winter. The question remains cogent. The responses have, almost invariably, shirked its implicit challenge. Until now. For last week, Blodgett commandeered space in all the major newspapers to announce his answer. "Are friends electric? No!" it read, in big bold letters, and then, in smaller type, continued "Not my friends, at any rate. My friends are made of gas." Blodgett went on to describe the small band of his pals who appear to him in the form of clouds of luminous, and sometimes volatile, gas. Anticipating the charge that he is subject to hallucinations, he refutes it with aplomb. Blodgett's gas friends shimmer around him, he says, ethereal, mercurial, and insubstantial, but boon companions still. He gives the example of his friend Abu Qatooba, a friend composed of particularly volatile gas, an Islamic fundamentalist gas-form forever railing against the iniquities of pretty much everything he disagrees with and threatening to behead sinners and apostates and infidels. Blodgett is himself an infidel, of course, and this has led some critics to claim that he is making up all this stuff about a gang of friends made out of gas who hover around him. He is keen to dispel the impression that his chums are ghosts or wraiths. "They are as real as you or I," he writes, "Completely human, with human virtues and vices. But they are formed of gas clouds. Abu Qatooba and I disagree on many points, but I count him as my friend because I admire his striking beard, also of course made out of gas, and his amusing tendency to fly off the handle at tiny provocations." Blodgett gives fewer details of his other gas-pals, although he finds room to mention Daisy Blunkett, a blind widow-woman with a gas guide dog, and Anhopetep, an ancient Egyptian gas pharaoh. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 The Numan Question 06:44 Up In The Mountains 21:27 In Ponga THE NUMAN QUESTION A generation ago, the aeroplane pilot and sage Numan asked "Are friends electric?" It was pertinent then, and is perhaps more so now. Over the years, many thinkers have grappled with Numan's question, but it is fair to say that none has been able to give a satisfactory answer. Much publicity was generated when Pilbrow published his big fat Symposium on the problem. The garlanded laureate of pseudo-sci fi hermeneutic psychobabble persuaded over a hundred movers, shakers, and hysterics to respond to the poser put by Numan, and then toured the radio and television studios giving inaccurate summaries of their replies. Few who saw it will forget the Newsnight appearance when Pilbrow's pretensions were comprehensively demolished by weatherman Daniel Corbett, who strode across the set from his meteorological map and literally tore a copy of the Symposium to shreds before Pilbrow's--and Jeremy Paxman's--eyes. It was a cheaply-produced paperback edition of the book, with weakly-glued binding, but Corbett's feat was no less impressive for that. Since that watershed, there have been other, muted responses to Numan, appearing for the most part tucked away in little-read specialist journals or inserted at the tail-end of lectures delivered in draughty, half-empty civic halls in the depths of winter. The question remains cogent. The responses have, almost invariably, shirked its implicit challenge. Until now. For last week, Blodgett commandeered space in all the major newspapers to announce his answer. "Are friends electric? No!" it read, in big bold letters, and then, in smaller type, continued "Not my friends, at any rate. My friends are made of gas." Blodgett went on to describe the small band of his pals who appear to him in the form of clouds of luminous, and sometimes volatile, gas. Anticipating the charge that he is subject to hallucinations, he refutes it with aplomb. Blodgett's gas friends shimmer around him, he says, ethereal, mercurial, and insubstantial, but boon companions still. He gives the example of his friend Abu Qatooba, a friend composed of particularly volatile gas, an Islamic fundamentalist gas-form forever railing against the iniquities of pretty much everything he disagrees with and threatening to behead sinners and apostates and infidels. Blodgett is himself an infidel, of course, and this has led some critics to claim that he is making up all this stuff about a gang of friends made out of gas who hover around him. He is keen to dispel the impression that his chums are ghosts or wraiths. "They are as real as you or I," he writes, "Completely human, with human virtues and vices. But they are formed of gas clouds. Abu Qatooba and I disagree on many points, but I count him as my friend because I admire his striking beard, also of course made out of gas, and his amusing tendency to fly off the handle at tiny provocations." Blodgett gives fewer details of his other gas-pals, although he finds room to mention Daisy Blunkett, a blind widow-woman with a gas guide dog, and Anhopetep, an ancient Egyptian gas pharaoh. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-2730:49fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-20Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 The Huffington Post 02:59 Tidy Is As Tidy Does 08:03 Bonkers Maisie 14:54 The Sick Pig 22:29 Himmelfarb 26:27 Boot Bath THE HUFFINGTON POST Whenever bumpkins gather of an evening in the shack at the end of the lane, sooner or later their talk will turn to the Huffington Post. It is not uncommon for the peasantry to fixate upon minutiae, of course. We think of Old Farmer Frack, obsessed with his bellowing cows, or the eerie barn at Scroonhoonpooge, or any number of pig-related outbreaks of countryside mass hysteria, often focussed upon something as insignificant as the shape of a newborn pig's snout or trotters. Yet the bumpkins' preoccupation with the Huffington Post was curious, for to the untrained eye it looked like any other fencepost or stake or piece of paling. I dare say you or I would pass by that post without giving it a glance, and the prattle of the bumpkins of an evening in the shack at the end of the lane would sound to us nonsensical. But rustic wisdom is hard won, and only a fool would dismiss the bumpkins' shack chatter as drivel. On a balmy evening one such fool blundered into the shack at the end of the lane and, hearing the bumpkins bandying the profundities of Huffington Post lore, took it for the idiocy of defectives. With his briefcase and bowler hat it was clear the fool dwelt in a city. Clear, too, that he could not tell the Huffington Post from any other posts and stakes and pales thumped into the muck for fencing the fields. His manner and his smirks were disparaging of the bumpkins, and when he left the shack and was making his way to the railway station, they waylaid him and carried him off to the eerie barn at Scroonhoonpooge. And as they had done with others who came to mock, they coated him in farmyard slurry and tar and poked him with pitchforks, and when they were done with him they buried him at midnight under the Huffington Post. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 The Huffington Post 02:59 Tidy Is As Tidy Does 08:03 Bonkers Maisie 14:54 The Sick Pig 22:29 Himmelfarb 26:27 Boot Bath THE HUFFINGTON POST Whenever bumpkins gather of an evening in the shack at the end of the lane, sooner or later their talk will turn to the Huffington Post. It is not uncommon for the peasantry to fixate upon minutiae, of course. We think of Old Farmer Frack, obsessed with his bellowing cows, or the eerie barn at Scroonhoonpooge, or any number of pig-related outbreaks of countryside mass hysteria, often focussed upon something as insignificant as the shape of a newborn pig's snout or trotters. Yet the bumpkins' preoccupation with the Huffington Post was curious, for to the untrained eye it looked like any other fencepost or stake or piece of paling. I dare say you or I would pass by that post without giving it a glance, and the prattle of the bumpkins of an evening in the shack at the end of the lane would sound to us nonsensical. But rustic wisdom is hard won, and only a fool would dismiss the bumpkins' shack chatter as drivel. On a balmy evening one such fool blundered into the shack at the end of the lane and, hearing the bumpkins bandying the profundities of Huffington Post lore, took it for the idiocy of defectives. With his briefcase and bowler hat it was clear the fool dwelt in a city. Clear, too, that he could not tell the Huffington Post from any other posts and stakes and pales thumped into the muck for fencing the fields. His manner and his smirks were disparaging of the bumpkins, and when he left the shack and was making his way to the railway station, they waylaid him and carried him off to the eerie barn at Scroonhoonpooge. And as they had done with others who came to mock, they coated him in farmyard slurry and tar and poked him with pitchforks, and when they were done with him they buried him at midnight under the Huffington Post. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-2031:01fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-13Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Goofy, Macabre 21:36 On The Song Of The Grunty Man 28:20 Name That Boy! GOOFY, MACABRE One of the difficulties that beset Joost Van Dongelbraacke throughout his career as a so-called "suburban shaman" was the ruinous cost of insurance. Having been dragged through the courts by a Pointy Town quantity surveyor who claimed emotional distress, disfigurement and loss of earnings after being entranced into a week-long state of whirling ecstatic frenzy, Van Dongelbraacke vowed never again to practise his mystic arts without being covered. His first approach was to a greasy insurance agent with an unfortunate cowlick of hair who dithered and faffed and seemed more intent on his executive desktop bonsai garden than on the urgency of the suburban shaman's business. The next three people he consulted were by turns lost in wistfulness, egg-bound, and unseemly, and one of them failed to provide Van Dongelbraacke with a suitable chair in which to sit during their appointment. He was ushered into a seat that emitted pneumatic hisses and tilted and swivelled on tubular steel pistons. It was, Van Dongelbraacke thought, the most unshamanic chair in which he had ever tried to sit. He judged each of the three to be unsuitable. And then one evening in a tavern the suburban shaman struck up a conversation with a mountebank who was passing through Pointy Town on his way to a seaside psychic smorgasbord. Ferns and berries decked the brim of this mountebank's hat. His visage was half flesh, half mascara. At a certain angle you could have mistaken him for the god Baal. It was difficult to imagine that he had once been an actuary, but that was indeed the case, and he had maintained many friendships with past office colleagues in the insurance industry. Listening attentively to Van Dongelbraacke's plight as the two of them sank pint after pint of diluted rosemary-and-hibiscus syrup on the tavern balcony, looking out over the filth-strewn fields which stretched unbroken to the horizon, the mountebank eventually took a card out of his pocket and handed it to the shaman. "This is the man you need," he said, "His premiums are ridiculously expensive, you may be alarmed by his taste in cloisonnee enamel ware, and never, ever try to make him laugh. But those things aside, he is as fine an insurance man as you will find on the terrestrial globe." Van Dongelbraacke was puzzled by this reference to a globe, for in his belief system the earth was cylindrical, tapered at one end and ineffably mysterious at the other. But he liked and trusted the mountebank, whose pincer-liked perspicuity appealed to him, as did the hat-brim decked with ferns and berries, a look which the suburban shaman was to ape in the coming years. Six weeks later, after a particularly exhausting session of communal hysteria around a bonfire in one of those filthy fields, Van Dongelbraacke took the bus to O'Houlihan's Wharf. He had the insurance man's card in his pocket, and berries on the brim of his hat. The ferns, he decided, would have to wait. At the time of which I write, the pier at that brine-soaked hellhole had not yet collapsed, and it was in a booth at the far end, a mile or more out to sea, that the suburban shaman came face to face with Jean-Claude Unanugu. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Goofy, Macabre 21:36 On The Song Of The Grunty Man 28:20 Name That Boy! GOOFY, MACABRE One of the difficulties that beset Joost Van Dongelbraacke throughout his career as a so-called "suburban shaman" was the ruinous cost of insurance. Having been dragged through the courts by a Pointy Town quantity surveyor who claimed emotional distress, disfigurement and loss of earnings after being entranced into a week-long state of whirling ecstatic frenzy, Van Dongelbraacke vowed never again to practise his mystic arts without being covered. His first approach was to a greasy insurance agent with an unfortunate cowlick of hair who dithered and faffed and seemed more intent on his executive desktop bonsai garden than on the urgency of the suburban shaman's business. The next three people he consulted were by turns lost in wistfulness, egg-bound, and unseemly, and one of them failed to provide Van Dongelbraacke with a suitable chair in which to sit during their appointment. He was ushered into a seat that emitted pneumatic hisses and tilted and swivelled on tubular steel pistons. It was, Van Dongelbraacke thought, the most unshamanic chair in which he had ever tried to sit. He judged each of the three to be unsuitable. And then one evening in a tavern the suburban shaman struck up a conversation with a mountebank who was passing through Pointy Town on his way to a seaside psychic smorgasbord. Ferns and berries decked the brim of this mountebank's hat. His visage was half flesh, half mascara. At a certain angle you could have mistaken him for the god Baal. It was difficult to imagine that he had once been an actuary, but that was indeed the case, and he had maintained many friendships with past office colleagues in the insurance industry. Listening attentively to Van Dongelbraacke's plight as the two of them sank pint after pint of diluted rosemary-and-hibiscus syrup on the tavern balcony, looking out over the filth-strewn fields which stretched unbroken to the horizon, the mountebank eventually took a card out of his pocket and handed it to the shaman. "This is the man you need," he said, "His premiums are ridiculously expensive, you may be alarmed by his taste in cloisonnee enamel ware, and never, ever try to make him laugh. But those things aside, he is as fine an insurance man as you will find on the terrestrial globe." Van Dongelbraacke was puzzled by this reference to a globe, for in his belief system the earth was cylindrical, tapered at one end and ineffably mysterious at the other. But he liked and trusted the mountebank, whose pincer-liked perspicuity appealed to him, as did the hat-brim decked with ferns and berries, a look which the suburban shaman was to ape in the coming years. Six weeks later, after a particularly exhausting session of communal hysteria around a bonfire in one of those filthy fields, Van Dongelbraacke took the bus to O'Houlihan's Wharf. He had the insurance man's card in his pocket, and berries on the brim of his hat. The ferns, he decided, would have to wait. At the time of which I write, the pier at that brine-soaked hellhole had not yet collapsed, and it was in a booth at the far end, a mile or more out to sea, that the suburban shaman came face to face with Jean-Claude Unanugu. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-1331:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-06Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:54 Puny And Dying 04:40 The Man Who Would Be Dobson 21:37 Drink Ye Every One The Waters Of His Own Cistern, Until I Come And Take You Away 24:19 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet PUNY AND DYING Yesterday I listened, belatedly, to a Little Atoms interview with Jonathan Meades. (It's available for download here--the second one, dated 11 May 2007, though the earlier interview is well worth your attention too.) Each Little Atoms show has a musical interlude, often chosen by the guest. The magnificent Meades, perhaps the only reason to watch television these days, picked La canzone dell'amore perduto by Fabrizio de Andre. Not being at all familiar with Italian cantautores of the late twentieth century, his name was new to me, but I adored the song, so I decided to find out more. You can go and read his wikipedia entry, as I did, and do further research if you so wish, as I haven't, yet. The entry devotes a paragraph to de Andre's kidnapping by Sardinian bandits in 1979, which is interesting, but I thought I'd draw your attention to two other things, mentioned in passing, that particularly intrigued me. De Andre's first wife was named Puny. This is a superbly Hooting Yardish name, isn't it? I do not think it will be too long before a character named Puny turns up in a piece of prose here, perhaps one that features heroic infant Tiny Enid. I recall that somewhere or other I refer to a book or film entitled I Was Puny Vercingetorix, and though puny there was intended as an adjective rather than as a first name, I may have to revisit that in the light of my new knowledge. The other thing that made me slap my forehead with glee was the title of de Andre's second album--or rather, the contrast between it and the titles between which it was bracketed. (Forgive those two 'between's, I can't think offhand of a more felicitous way of putting it.) The first album was called Volume One, and the third was dubbed Volume Three. Yet for some extraordinary reason, the title of what a lesser artist would have called Volume Two was instead Tutti morimmo a stento, or We All Died Agonizingly. That's the thing about Jonathan Meades, he provides you with new and unexpected avenues to explore, even when he's just picking a piece of music. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:54 Puny And Dying 04:40 The Man Who Would Be Dobson 21:37 Drink Ye Every One The Waters Of His Own Cistern, Until I Come And Take You Away 24:19 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet PUNY AND DYING Yesterday I listened, belatedly, to a Little Atoms interview with Jonathan Meades. (It's available for download here--the second one, dated 11 May 2007, though the earlier interview is well worth your attention too.) Each Little Atoms show has a musical interlude, often chosen by the guest. The magnificent Meades, perhaps the only reason to watch television these days, picked La canzone dell'amore perduto by Fabrizio de Andre. Not being at all familiar with Italian cantautores of the late twentieth century, his name was new to me, but I adored the song, so I decided to find out more. You can go and read his wikipedia entry, as I did, and do further research if you so wish, as I haven't, yet. The entry devotes a paragraph to de Andre's kidnapping by Sardinian bandits in 1979, which is interesting, but I thought I'd draw your attention to two other things, mentioned in passing, that particularly intrigued me. De Andre's first wife was named Puny. This is a superbly Hooting Yardish name, isn't it? I do not think it will be too long before a character named Puny turns up in a piece of prose here, perhaps one that features heroic infant Tiny Enid. I recall that somewhere or other I refer to a book or film entitled I Was Puny Vercingetorix, and though puny there was intended as an adjective rather than as a first name, I may have to revisit that in the light of my new knowledge. The other thing that made me slap my forehead with glee was the title of de Andre's second album--or rather, the contrast between it and the titles between which it was bracketed. (Forgive those two 'between's, I can't think offhand of a more felicitous way of putting it.) The first album was called Volume One, and the third was dubbed Volume Three. Yet for some extraordinary reason, the title of what a lesser artist would have called Volume Two was instead Tutti morimmo a stento, or We All Died Agonizingly. That's the thing about Jonathan Meades, he provides you with new and unexpected avenues to explore, even when he's just picking a piece of music. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-06-0630:41fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-30Wed, 30 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Pabstus Tack Trilogy 04:22 Pale And Fierce 15:39 A Byword For Utter Gorgeousness 23:35 Pebblehead Versus Pebblehead THE PABSTUS TACK TRILOGY What better way to spend a wet Bank Holiday afternoon than to curl up in front of the television to watch a trilogy of films by one of the great unsung auteurs of the silent screen? The cable channel UK Golden Pap is to be congratulated for screening the masterworks of the great--and greatly misunderstood--Pabstus Tack. When Tack's films are mentioned, which is rarely, they are dismissed as fey, twee confections for children, in an age when childhood was seen as a time of purity and innocence. Thus the damning rebuke of a cravat-wearing, pipe-smoking, goatee-bearded critic like Jean-Luc Boff, who wrote: "With these insipid pieces of froth, Tack not only drains his films of sound and colour, but also of plot, tension, engagement, disturbance, of life and death and sex." What Boff says is true, yet he fails to understand just how radical an approach Tack took. Yes, these films are indeed fey and twee, yet at the same time they are cloying and saccharine, miraculously inoffensive, whimsical in the most nauseating sense of the word. The first in the trilogy is Pippi The Pony Goes To The Paddling Pool. The part of Pippi was played by Tack's own pony, Poopy, a placid, well-groomed little darling with gossamer ribbons flowing from its mane. In silent black and white, we watch as Pippi canters towards a paddling pool and splashes about, gently and charmingly. There are no fancy camera angles, no clever-clever montage. "Look," Tack is saying, "A pony in a paddling pool." He followed this up with Biffy The Africanised Killer Bee Joins A Swarm. In this, possibly the finest of the three films, Biffy--played by Tack's pet Africanised killer bee, Letitia--is shown buzzing around a municipal flowerbed, then going off to join a swarm of her fellows. Tack's camera is static except at the very end, where it pans to show Biffy's journey from solitude to companionship. The last film is the one where Tack takes the greatest risk with his creative vision. With Schmoopy The Vampire Bat Sucks The Life-Blood From A Consumptive Orphan the task of retaining a quintessentially Tackesque tweeness must at times have seemed impossible. But once again, the auteur in Tack pulls it off, in a magnificently sugar-coated fairy cake of a film. Schmoopy, by the way, was played by Tack's own vampire bat, Flopsy, while the part of the consumptive orphan went to a doe-eyed--and consumptive--orphan the director found swooning and crumpled, clutching weakly at the railings of Pang Hill Orphanage during a blizzard. If there is a better way to spend eleven hours on a wet Bank Holiday than watching these films, I for one am at a loss to think what it might be. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Pabstus Tack Trilogy 04:22 Pale And Fierce 15:39 A Byword For Utter Gorgeousness 23:35 Pebblehead Versus Pebblehead THE PABSTUS TACK TRILOGY What better way to spend a wet Bank Holiday afternoon than to curl up in front of the television to watch a trilogy of films by one of the great unsung auteurs of the silent screen? The cable channel UK Golden Pap is to be congratulated for screening the masterworks of the great--and greatly misunderstood--Pabstus Tack. When Tack's films are mentioned, which is rarely, they are dismissed as fey, twee confections for children, in an age when childhood was seen as a time of purity and innocence. Thus the damning rebuke of a cravat-wearing, pipe-smoking, goatee-bearded critic like Jean-Luc Boff, who wrote: "With these insipid pieces of froth, Tack not only drains his films of sound and colour, but also of plot, tension, engagement, disturbance, of life and death and sex." What Boff says is true, yet he fails to understand just how radical an approach Tack took. Yes, these films are indeed fey and twee, yet at the same time they are cloying and saccharine, miraculously inoffensive, whimsical in the most nauseating sense of the word. The first in the trilogy is Pippi The Pony Goes To The Paddling Pool. The part of Pippi was played by Tack's own pony, Poopy, a placid, well-groomed little darling with gossamer ribbons flowing from its mane. In silent black and white, we watch as Pippi canters towards a paddling pool and splashes about, gently and charmingly. There are no fancy camera angles, no clever-clever montage. "Look," Tack is saying, "A pony in a paddling pool." He followed this up with Biffy The Africanised Killer Bee Joins A Swarm. In this, possibly the finest of the three films, Biffy--played by Tack's pet Africanised killer bee, Letitia--is shown buzzing around a municipal flowerbed, then going off to join a swarm of her fellows. Tack's camera is static except at the very end, where it pans to show Biffy's journey from solitude to companionship. The last film is the one where Tack takes the greatest risk with his creative vision. With Schmoopy The Vampire Bat Sucks The Life-Blood From A Consumptive Orphan the task of retaining a quintessentially Tackesque tweeness must at times have seemed impossible. But once again, the auteur in Tack pulls it off, in a magnificently sugar-coated fairy cake of a film. Schmoopy, by the way, was played by Tack's own vampire bat, Flopsy, while the part of the consumptive orphan went to a doe-eyed--and consumptive--orphan the director found swooning and crumpled, clutching weakly at the railings of Pang Hill Orphanage during a blizzard. If there is a better way to spend eleven hours on a wet Bank Holiday than watching these films, I for one am at a loss to think what it might be. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-3030:06fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-23Wed, 23 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Tugboat Tales, Number One 11:38 Crouch And Kaka 18:50 Annals Of The Frankish Kings 28:29 Dismantled Wooden Myrna Loy 29:57 Mrs Gubbins Throws a Fit TUGBOAT TALES, NUMBER ONE I once read a story, I can't remember where, about a dyspeptic tugboat captain who wore sinister black gloves and struck fear into his crew. I remember that his name was Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, and that his tugboat was ancient and rusty and rotten. I think I read the story in a newspaper, which would suggest that it was factual rather than some made-up fiction, but I can't be sure. The captain's black gloves were made of wool, and often became tattered and frayed, and I recall a phrase in the story where we were told that he used to "darn them with malevolence". I've done a lot of darning in my time, for I am handy with needle and thread and crochet and knitting needles and suchlike, I have darned socks and jumpers and balaclavas and mittens, though not, admittedly, gloves, yet I cannot for the life of me think how I might darn something malevolently, though god knows I tried to, in the weeks and months after reading the story of Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, in that newspaper, if it was a newspaper. It may have been a periodical. I tried snarling, or spitting at passing puppy-dogs as I darned, but it came across as churlish and bad-tempered rather than malevolent, and I felt like a fool. When the captain snarled, he made a sound like the cawing of a thousand crows, and when he spat, he spat sulphur. There were no puppies on the tugboat, of course, but there was a badger. The captain did not snarl at it, because it was his creature, his familiar. At one point I think it is described as a "demonic badger", whatever that may be. I think we were meant to see the captain as a kind of Ahab figure, obsessed and mad as well as sinister, but for me this effect was flawed by the fact that it was a rented tugboat. Bagshaw/Shawbag did not own it. Every week he had to slip some coinage into the waiting palm of a seaside bureaucrat, representative of a dull organisation stuffed with accountants and administrators. Their main business seemed to be civic coastline management and prettifying, with renting out a tugboat to a sinister begloved madman as an afterthought. Somehow that made him less the master of his vessel, for me, and I remember tutting ruefully as I read the paragraph in which this was explained. Whoever wrote the story clearly felt it was important, for it was a very long paragraph, leaden with detail, and I skipped past it on my subsequent rereadings. So there was Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, on his rented tugboat, with his demonic badger and a terror-stricken crew, and then there was the radio cabin, a tiny cubbyhole squeezed under the orlop deck. I am no expert on maritime hoo-ha, but I suspect it is unusual for a tugboat to have an orlop deck, let alone a radio cabin. No illustrations accompanied the story, and the writer is vague on details about the tugboat's specifications. I have to say that this did not bother me when I read it, and it was only years later, when I talked about the tugboat with a raddled and brine-soaked old sea dog while on holiday at O'Houlihan's Wharf that I learned of these anomalies. I put them out of mind, however. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Tugboat Tales, Number One 11:38 Crouch And Kaka 18:50 Annals Of The Frankish Kings 28:29 Dismantled Wooden Myrna Loy 29:57 Mrs Gubbins Throws a Fit TUGBOAT TALES, NUMBER ONE I once read a story, I can't remember where, about a dyspeptic tugboat captain who wore sinister black gloves and struck fear into his crew. I remember that his name was Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, and that his tugboat was ancient and rusty and rotten. I think I read the story in a newspaper, which would suggest that it was factual rather than some made-up fiction, but I can't be sure. The captain's black gloves were made of wool, and often became tattered and frayed, and I recall a phrase in the story where we were told that he used to "darn them with malevolence". I've done a lot of darning in my time, for I am handy with needle and thread and crochet and knitting needles and suchlike, I have darned socks and jumpers and balaclavas and mittens, though not, admittedly, gloves, yet I cannot for the life of me think how I might darn something malevolently, though god knows I tried to, in the weeks and months after reading the story of Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, in that newspaper, if it was a newspaper. It may have been a periodical. I tried snarling, or spitting at passing puppy-dogs as I darned, but it came across as churlish and bad-tempered rather than malevolent, and I felt like a fool. When the captain snarled, he made a sound like the cawing of a thousand crows, and when he spat, he spat sulphur. There were no puppies on the tugboat, of course, but there was a badger. The captain did not snarl at it, because it was his creature, his familiar. At one point I think it is described as a "demonic badger", whatever that may be. I think we were meant to see the captain as a kind of Ahab figure, obsessed and mad as well as sinister, but for me this effect was flawed by the fact that it was a rented tugboat. Bagshaw/Shawbag did not own it. Every week he had to slip some coinage into the waiting palm of a seaside bureaucrat, representative of a dull organisation stuffed with accountants and administrators. Their main business seemed to be civic coastline management and prettifying, with renting out a tugboat to a sinister begloved madman as an afterthought. Somehow that made him less the master of his vessel, for me, and I remember tutting ruefully as I read the paragraph in which this was explained. Whoever wrote the story clearly felt it was important, for it was a very long paragraph, leaden with detail, and I skipped past it on my subsequent rereadings. So there was Captain Bagshaw, or Shawbag, on his rented tugboat, with his demonic badger and a terror-stricken crew, and then there was the radio cabin, a tiny cubbyhole squeezed under the orlop deck. I am no expert on maritime hoo-ha, but I suspect it is unusual for a tugboat to have an orlop deck, let alone a radio cabin. No illustrations accompanied the story, and the writer is vague on details about the tugboat's specifications. I have to say that this did not bother me when I read it, and it was only years later, when I talked about the tugboat with a raddled and brine-soaked old sea dog while on holiday at O'Houlihan's Wharf that I learned of these anomalies. I put them out of mind, however. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-2332:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-16Wed, 16 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Kimika Ying Writes In 04:10 An extract from Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning 10:00 Punter Hoonjaw 12:46 Dobsoniana 17:52 A Person From Porlock 20:10 Important Lark Information KIMIKA YING WRITES IN A letter arrives from Kimika Ying: Dear Mr. Key : I came across the following picture today which struck me as remarkably familiar, and words from one of your earlier writings came to mind: "Each Saturday morning, I don the diving helmet and cycle fourteen voots to a bucolic hamlet.." You may well have seen this photo before, but while it was on my mind I wanted to take a moment to thank you for making the world a more surreal place. Listening to Hooting Yard is always a pleasure. I had not seen the picture before, and nor did I recall the piece Ms Ying quoted--not surprisingly, as it is nine years old, appearing here in March 2004. Here are both the photograph (from this source) and my elderly tale, What's On In Mustard Parva. My diving helmet is made of gleaming brass. I polish it once a week, on Friday afternoons. Each Saturday morning, I don the diving helmet and cycle fourteen voots to a bucolic hamlet called Mustard Parva. (Curiously, there is no neighbouring village named Mustard Magna, although a rustic barnyard person I met while drinking a pot of gaar in the local gaar-pot drinking hut told me that there had once been such a place. In the year of his birth, this toothless derelict said, the sizeable cluster of wooden buildings known as Mustard Magna had been invaded by a sloth of bears, many hundreds of them, driven insane by ergot poisoning, each bear capable of destroying a humble peasant dwelling with a single thwack from its mighty paw. Two hours after the first bear lumbered across Sawdust Bridge, the village was completely obliterated. It is still shown on some maps.) Jamming my bicycle into a kiosk on Mustard Parva's Yoko Ono Boulevard, I join six or seven other diving helmet enthusiasts for our weekly meeting. Huddled together in the upstairs room of a building fast succumbing to dry rot, we discuss our diving helmets and take lamentably inaccurate minutes which are published regularly through the good offices of the Mustard Parva Thing, whose editor is none other than the blind cousin of Marigold Chew. Source : The Belle of Amherst & Other Essays Written During An Unprecedented Pea-souper by Dobson (limited edition of three copies, unsigned, bound in tat, and coated with a foul-smelling medicament concocted by Dr Fang) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Kimika Ying Writes In 04:10 An extract from Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning 10:00 Punter Hoonjaw 12:46 Dobsoniana 17:52 A Person From Porlock 20:10 Important Lark Information KIMIKA YING WRITES IN A letter arrives from Kimika Ying: Dear Mr. Key : I came across the following picture today which struck me as remarkably familiar, and words from one of your earlier writings came to mind: "Each Saturday morning, I don the diving helmet and cycle fourteen voots to a bucolic hamlet.." You may well have seen this photo before, but while it was on my mind I wanted to take a moment to thank you for making the world a more surreal place. Listening to Hooting Yard is always a pleasure. I had not seen the picture before, and nor did I recall the piece Ms Ying quoted--not surprisingly, as it is nine years old, appearing here in March 2004. Here are both the photograph (from this source) and my elderly tale, What's On In Mustard Parva. My diving helmet is made of gleaming brass. I polish it once a week, on Friday afternoons. Each Saturday morning, I don the diving helmet and cycle fourteen voots to a bucolic hamlet called Mustard Parva. (Curiously, there is no neighbouring village named Mustard Magna, although a rustic barnyard person I met while drinking a pot of gaar in the local gaar-pot drinking hut told me that there had once been such a place. In the year of his birth, this toothless derelict said, the sizeable cluster of wooden buildings known as Mustard Magna had been invaded by a sloth of bears, many hundreds of them, driven insane by ergot poisoning, each bear capable of destroying a humble peasant dwelling with a single thwack from its mighty paw. Two hours after the first bear lumbered across Sawdust Bridge, the village was completely obliterated. It is still shown on some maps.) Jamming my bicycle into a kiosk on Mustard Parva's Yoko Ono Boulevard, I join six or seven other diving helmet enthusiasts for our weekly meeting. Huddled together in the upstairs room of a building fast succumbing to dry rot, we discuss our diving helmets and take lamentably inaccurate minutes which are published regularly through the good offices of the Mustard Parva Thing, whose editor is none other than the blind cousin of Marigold Chew. Source : The Belle of Amherst & Other Essays Written During An Unprecedented Pea-souper by Dobson (limited edition of three copies, unsigned, bound in tat, and coated with a foul-smelling medicament concocted by Dr Fang) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-1629:53fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-09Wed, 09 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Note on Pigs 16:48 Trumpets and Banners 19:30 Mansfield 28:20 "The wind was howling like a thousand..." A NOTE ON PIGS "From the grossness of his feeding, from the large amount of aliment he consumes, his gluttonous way of eating it, from his slothful habits, laziness, and indulgence in sleep, the pig is particularly liable to disease, and especially indigestion, heartburn and affections of the skin," wrote Isaballa Beeton in her Book Of Household Management (1861), continuing to note "To counteract the consequence of a violation of the physical laws, a powerful monitor in the brain of a pig teaches him to seek for relief and medicine." When he read these words, exactly one hundred years after their publication, a firestorm convulsed Dobson's brain. He had never given much thought to pigs, but now he became obsessed with discovering the precise nature of that "powerful monitor". If he could harness its power, who knew what wonders might be achieved? "I am going to devote the rest of my life to what Mrs Beeton calls the 'powerful monitor in the brain of a pig'" he announced to Marigold Chew one rainy Wednesday morning in 1961, as they walked across the sodden fields towards the old kiosk for their breakfast crackers, "And I will harness it!" he added, shouting. "You are going to become half man, half pig?" asked Marigold Chew. "Of course not," countered the out of print pamphleteer, and went into one of his sulks. Marigold Chew assumed that this latest fad of Dobson's would fizzle out within hours or days, and was disconcerted a week later to find dozens of pigs lolling around in the back garden. Standing in their midst was Dobson, holding a large metal cone from which wires and other gubbins trailed. "Where did all these pigs come from and what's that your holding?" asked Marigold Chew. "I borrowed the pigs from Old Farmer Geistigenacht, and this is a rudimentary brain scanning machine with which I intend to locate the powerful monitor contained in the brain of each and every pig. Isn't that obvious?" So saying, Dobson approached the pig nearest him, a plump and dappled creature of I know not what breed of hog, and tried to affix one of the lengths of trailing wire to its head. Being a butterfingers, the pamphleteer-turned-pigman failed at even his umpteenth attempt, for the pig defied all attempts to be forcibly attached to the metal cone. Marigold Chew did not offer to help, instead returning to the house to make a cup of cocoa and to play a recording by the Bodger's Spinney Dance Orchestra at deafening volume to drown out the grunting and squealing noises from the garden. Dobson came in about half an hour later, fractious and dishevelled, his hair in a frenzy and his cone dented. "The monitors in the brains of these pigs," he said, "Are more powerful than Mrs Beeton realised. Even though my splendid metal cone has been dented, and its trailing wires and other gubbins frayed, rent, or in some cases detached, initial readings indicate to me that extremely interesting vibrations are being emitted, especially by the plumpest and most dappled pigs. Not just vibrations, but rays!" He took a hammer from a cupboard and began beating out the dents in the cone. "Readings?" asked Marigold Chew. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Note on Pigs 16:48 Trumpets and Banners 19:30 Mansfield 28:20 "The wind was howling like a thousand..." A NOTE ON PIGS "From the grossness of his feeding, from the large amount of aliment he consumes, his gluttonous way of eating it, from his slothful habits, laziness, and indulgence in sleep, the pig is particularly liable to disease, and especially indigestion, heartburn and affections of the skin," wrote Isaballa Beeton in her Book Of Household Management (1861), continuing to note "To counteract the consequence of a violation of the physical laws, a powerful monitor in the brain of a pig teaches him to seek for relief and medicine." When he read these words, exactly one hundred years after their publication, a firestorm convulsed Dobson's brain. He had never given much thought to pigs, but now he became obsessed with discovering the precise nature of that "powerful monitor". If he could harness its power, who knew what wonders might be achieved? "I am going to devote the rest of my life to what Mrs Beeton calls the 'powerful monitor in the brain of a pig'" he announced to Marigold Chew one rainy Wednesday morning in 1961, as they walked across the sodden fields towards the old kiosk for their breakfast crackers, "And I will harness it!" he added, shouting. "You are going to become half man, half pig?" asked Marigold Chew. "Of course not," countered the out of print pamphleteer, and went into one of his sulks. Marigold Chew assumed that this latest fad of Dobson's would fizzle out within hours or days, and was disconcerted a week later to find dozens of pigs lolling around in the back garden. Standing in their midst was Dobson, holding a large metal cone from which wires and other gubbins trailed. "Where did all these pigs come from and what's that your holding?" asked Marigold Chew. "I borrowed the pigs from Old Farmer Geistigenacht, and this is a rudimentary brain scanning machine with which I intend to locate the powerful monitor contained in the brain of each and every pig. Isn't that obvious?" So saying, Dobson approached the pig nearest him, a plump and dappled creature of I know not what breed of hog, and tried to affix one of the lengths of trailing wire to its head. Being a butterfingers, the pamphleteer-turned-pigman failed at even his umpteenth attempt, for the pig defied all attempts to be forcibly attached to the metal cone. Marigold Chew did not offer to help, instead returning to the house to make a cup of cocoa and to play a recording by the Bodger's Spinney Dance Orchestra at deafening volume to drown out the grunting and squealing noises from the garden. Dobson came in about half an hour later, fractious and dishevelled, his hair in a frenzy and his cone dented. "The monitors in the brains of these pigs," he said, "Are more powerful than Mrs Beeton realised. Even though my splendid metal cone has been dented, and its trailing wires and other gubbins frayed, rent, or in some cases detached, initial readings indicate to me that extremely interesting vibrations are being emitted, especially by the plumpest and most dappled pigs. Not just vibrations, but rays!" He took a hammer from a cupboard and began beating out the dents in the cone. "Readings?" asked Marigold Chew. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-0930:03fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-02Wed, 02 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Rose Garden 06:11 Epoch of Snares 12:51 Tenth Anniversary (IV) ROSE GARDEN I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden. Go and look at the paperwork, where it is clearly stated that I promised you a ditch rife with puddles and nettles, teeming with tiny creatures, worms, flatworms, things with hundreds of legs and vibrating antennae, things with bulbous globular eyes and things with no eyes at all. It is also made crystal clear that this ditch is designed to surround your chalet, like a moat, and that no roses will grow in it. A towering hollyhock or two, yes, but not a single rose. Why on earth do you think that I promised you a rose garden? How dare you accuse me of tampering with the papers! Are you seriously suggesting that I tippexed out whole paragraphs of the original and used a scratchy nib to insert a completely different schedule of works? You are casting aspersions upon my skills as a landscape designer of note and inferring that I am but a brute armed with a spade. I travelled the length and breadth of the country to find you specimens of the creepy crawlies you requested, rare maggots, weird blind wriggling transparent night crawlers, slithering horrors, and all the rest. There was no rainfall for weeks on end, so I created those puddles with my bare hands, carting bucket after bucket of duckpond water from the brackish duckpond over yonder beyond the municipal bandstand. It would have been a lot easier to plant a few roses in the ground, believe me. Yes, I know you did not call me a brute with a spade, those were my words, but that is what you would have said were you a man of plain speech rather than a pompous puffed up milksop given to Jesuitical circumlocution. Has it occurred to you that your very verbosity may have contributed to you getting a ditch dug around your chalet instead of a rose garden? You could have said to me "I'd like a rose garden, please," and I would have taken that on board, but oh no, such simple language is not your style. You did not say "I'd like a rose garden, please". I refute that utterly. If you had said that, why would I be clutching three files of paperwork which clearly show that you asked for a moat-like ditch rife with puddles and nettles and creeping creatures to be dug to a depth of six feet around your chalet, without any provision for a drawbridge? Do you think I just made that up off the top of my head? Why would I do that? Ditch digging is back-breaking work, especially when you only have one old rusty dented bent and battered spade to work with. Try it yourself. There is no drawbridge straddling the ditch because you clearly specified that you did not require one. Yes, that did perplex me, but I assumed you were planning to vault the ditch on those long spidery legs of yours. It is preposterous to argue now that you did not ask for a drawbridge because you would not need one to gain access to this putative rose garden you keep harping on about. Will you stop banging your fists on that portcullis? Well... I will grant you that. It is indeed unusual to find a portcullis blocking the door of a chalet where there is no accompanying drawbridge. The two usually go together, I agree. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Rose Garden 06:11 Epoch of Snares 12:51 Tenth Anniversary (IV) ROSE GARDEN I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden. Go and look at the paperwork, where it is clearly stated that I promised you a ditch rife with puddles and nettles, teeming with tiny creatures, worms, flatworms, things with hundreds of legs and vibrating antennae, things with bulbous globular eyes and things with no eyes at all. It is also made crystal clear that this ditch is designed to surround your chalet, like a moat, and that no roses will grow in it. A towering hollyhock or two, yes, but not a single rose. Why on earth do you think that I promised you a rose garden? How dare you accuse me of tampering with the papers! Are you seriously suggesting that I tippexed out whole paragraphs of the original and used a scratchy nib to insert a completely different schedule of works? You are casting aspersions upon my skills as a landscape designer of note and inferring that I am but a brute armed with a spade. I travelled the length and breadth of the country to find you specimens of the creepy crawlies you requested, rare maggots, weird blind wriggling transparent night crawlers, slithering horrors, and all the rest. There was no rainfall for weeks on end, so I created those puddles with my bare hands, carting bucket after bucket of duckpond water from the brackish duckpond over yonder beyond the municipal bandstand. It would have been a lot easier to plant a few roses in the ground, believe me. Yes, I know you did not call me a brute with a spade, those were my words, but that is what you would have said were you a man of plain speech rather than a pompous puffed up milksop given to Jesuitical circumlocution. Has it occurred to you that your very verbosity may have contributed to you getting a ditch dug around your chalet instead of a rose garden? You could have said to me "I'd like a rose garden, please," and I would have taken that on board, but oh no, such simple language is not your style. You did not say "I'd like a rose garden, please". I refute that utterly. If you had said that, why would I be clutching three files of paperwork which clearly show that you asked for a moat-like ditch rife with puddles and nettles and creeping creatures to be dug to a depth of six feet around your chalet, without any provision for a drawbridge? Do you think I just made that up off the top of my head? Why would I do that? Ditch digging is back-breaking work, especially when you only have one old rusty dented bent and battered spade to work with. Try it yourself. There is no drawbridge straddling the ditch because you clearly specified that you did not require one. Yes, that did perplex me, but I assumed you were planning to vault the ditch on those long spidery legs of yours. It is preposterous to argue now that you did not ask for a drawbridge because you would not need one to gain access to this putative rose garden you keep harping on about. Will you stop banging your fists on that portcullis? Well... I will grant you that. It is indeed unusual to find a portcullis blocking the door of a chalet where there is no accompanying drawbridge. The two usually go together, I agree. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-05-0222:39fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-04-18Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:05 Cargpan And Beppo 06:41 "These palliards be called also clapperdudgeons. These..." 11:45 The Adventures of the Men With Whisks 17:10 Scenes From the Lives of the Poets : 1. Maud Abdab 18:20 A Guide to Pointy Town : Part Two 23:48 On Fiends Of The Farmyard CARGPAN AND BEPPO A topic of consuming interest to a number of people is the manner in which Detective Captain Cargpan cut his crime-fighting chops. So impassioned are some that there is a weekly magazine to cater to their needs, entitled O Cargpan! That Thou Were With Us Still! in which beetle-browed fans with nothing better to do publish lengthy and frankly tedious disquisitions upon the earlier cases of the renowned copper. A short extract will suffice to give you some idea of the content: Later that summer, Cargpan was assigned to the team which had been trying, fruitlessly, to solve the mysterious case of the pod persons from Porlock. Acting on a tip off from Krumbein, the ambitious young detective took fruit with him to his first briefing. His plums were bruised, but he calculated, correctly, that the investigation would no longer be fruitless. His colleagues on the case were Kandinsky, Ferrero-Roche, Pabulum, Squit, Cranedneck, Solomon Gilliblat, Hinges, Darjeeling, Mens Sana, Pillipap, Coobin, Hoobin, Therapanticack and Choobin, Wesk, Flopper, Ruskin, Whistler, Pinkerton, Peris, Perisc, Periscope, Boo Boo, Conceptalbum, Wherwithal, Fanfares, Desk Sergeant Greasejacket, Desk Sergeant Greasejacket's performing monkey, Flamboyant Man, Elspeth Duckwind, Lavengro, Rasselas, Pompidou and Vampire, Threadbare, Pot, Gack, Snap, Tiddlepan, Forlorn, Riskassessor, Kow Fat Loon, Hoon Bat Lim, Goon Fang, Chow Hang Lip, Kim Park Goong, Trilby Baxter, Serp, Slop, Shandy, Martinamis, Woolgatherer, Poopsie Clutterbuck, Poopsie Clutterbuck's crippled nephew Simon, whose name was Peter, a pool of seconded temporary volunteers, and some horses, all under the command of Super Captain Fausto Coppi, no relation to the legendary cyclist of that name. This is the kind of thing the O Cargpan! That Thou Were With Us Still! readers adore. No doubt it took prodigious research to compile that list of team-members, but those of us with a less specialist approach are left wondering how, or even if, the case of the pod persons from Porlock was solved. The author of the piece does not tell us, nor does she follow up the ramifications of Cargpan's provision of a basket of fruit. Later in his career, of course, like many fictional detectives, Detective Captain Cargpan had a trusty assistant, a Watson to his Holmes. You will find no mention of Beppo in the umpteen thousand pages of the bound volumes of O Cargpan! That Thou Were With Us Still! held in the reference library at Pointy Town, nor in any of the myriad other journals devoted to the cutting of Cargpan's crime-fighting chops. Beppo was not yet born when the great detective joined the constabulary, and it was not until the famous case of the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant that the diminutive helpmeet appeared on the scene. Interestingly, this case is one that the aforementioned Dr Watson attributed, in passing, to Sherlock Holmes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-04-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:05 Cargpan And Beppo 06:41 "These palliards be called also clapperdudgeons. These..." 11:45 The Adventures of the Men With Whisks 17:10 Scenes From the Lives of the Poets : 1. Maud Abdab 18:20 A Guide to Pointy Town : Part Two 23:48 On Fiends Of The Farmyard CARGPAN AND BEPPO A topic of consuming interest to a number of people is the manner in which Detective Captain Cargpan cut his crime-fighting chops. So impassioned are some that there is a weekly magazine to cater to their needs, entitled O Cargpan! That Thou Were With Us Still! in which beetle-browed fans with nothing better to do publish lengthy and frankly tedious disquisitions upon the earlier cases of the renowned copper. A short extract will suffice to give you some idea of the content: Later that summer, Cargpan was assigned to the team which had been trying, fruitlessly, to solve the mysterious case of the pod persons from Porlock. Acting on a tip off from Krumbein, the ambitious young detective took fruit with him to his first briefing. His plums were bruised, but he calculated, correctly, that the investigation would no longer be fruitless. His colleagues on the case were Kandinsky, Ferrero-Roche, Pabulum, Squit, Cranedneck, Solomon Gilliblat, Hinges, Darjeeling, Mens Sana, Pillipap, Coobin, Hoobin, Therapanticack and Choobin, Wesk, Flopper, Ruskin, Whistler, Pinkerton, Peris, Perisc, Periscope, Boo Boo, Conceptalbum, Wherwithal, Fanfares, Desk Sergeant Greasejacket, Desk Sergeant Greasejacket's performing monkey, Flamboyant Man, Elspeth Duckwind, Lavengro, Rasselas, Pompidou and Vampire, Threadbare, Pot, Gack, Snap, Tiddlepan, Forlorn, Riskassessor, Kow Fat Loon, Hoon Bat Lim, Goon Fang, Chow Hang Lip, Kim Park Goong, Trilby Baxter, Serp, Slop, Shandy, Martinamis, Woolgatherer, Poopsie Clutterbuck, Poopsie Clutterbuck's crippled nephew Simon, whose name was Peter, a pool of seconded temporary volunteers, and some horses, all under the command of Super Captain Fausto Coppi, no relation to the legendary cyclist of that name. This is the kind of thing the O Cargpan! That Thou Were With Us Still! readers adore. No doubt it took prodigious research to compile that list of team-members, but those of us with a less specialist approach are left wondering how, or even if, the case of the pod persons from Porlock was solved. The author of the piece does not tell us, nor does she follow up the ramifications of Cargpan's provision of a basket of fruit. Later in his career, of course, like many fictional detectives, Detective Captain Cargpan had a trusty assistant, a Watson to his Holmes. You will find no mention of Beppo in the umpteen thousand pages of the bound volumes of O Cargpan! That Thou Were With Us Still! held in the reference library at Pointy Town, nor in any of the myriad other journals devoted to the cutting of Cargpan's crime-fighting chops. Beppo was not yet born when the great detective joined the constabulary, and it was not until the famous case of the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant that the diminutive helpmeet appeared on the scene. Interestingly, this case is one that the aforementioned Dr Watson attributed, in passing, to Sherlock Holmes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-04-1828:12fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-04-11Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:08 Tenth Anniversary (IV) 07:56 Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From the Stars, Chapter Thirteen 15:43 Dietary News 20:32 Blazing Excelsior Saturated With Turpentine 27:14 Certain Aspects of Plastic Baubles and Plastic Sheeting TENTH ANNIVERSARY (IV) It is day four of our tenth anniversary celebrations. Here is a piece entitled Far, Far Away, originally posted on Monday 4 September 2006. It is one of Mr Key's own favourites. Far, far away, there is a galaxy of shattered stars, stars crumpled and curdled and destitute, and there is a planet tucked in among these sorry stars, a tiny pink planet of gas and water and thick foliage, and tucked in among the fronds and creepers and enormous leaves of this foliage lie millions of unhatched eggs, and when they hatch they will hatch millions of magnetic mute blind love monkeys. I am a crew member of the starship Corrugated Cardboard, heading implacably through deep space towards the galaxy of crumpled stars. Seven years into the voyage, only four of us remain from the original manifest of twenty. There is my captain, o my captain, Pilbrow, a hirsute, raving martinet. We have tied him with cords and confined him to a cupboard, for he has become impossibly dangerous. His spittle is sulphurous, it burns that which it touches, and as he raves, he spits, and he is never not raving, not any more. Ever since we passed through the belt of [illegible] Pilbrow seems no longer human. Being the science officer, I tried to study him, at first. Wearing big protective gloves I transferred flecks of his spittle into my alembic, and ignited my bunsen burners, and peered intently at Pilbrow's burning spittle, hoping to learn something. I learned nothing. We have travelled far, far beyond the belt of [illegible], and still I have learned nothing. Thus the binding with cords, and thus the cupboard. Also surviving is Pilbrow Two, a half-size version of my captain, o my captain, made of cardboard, wax and string and animated with life by sparks of something akin to, but not quite, electricity. Pilbrow Two is indubitably alive, a pulsating, rustling, thinking, breathing thing, but it has nothing in common with the raving martinet tied by cords in the cupboard. At the beginning of the voyage, we considered changing its name, we even spent a few days calling it Unpilbrow or Antipilbrow, but neither of these caught on, possibly because Pilbrow Two would boom "My name is Pilbrow Two!" in its deafening voice. Our cardboard, wax and string crewmate has been invaluable in keeping our spirits up. I do not think we would still be heading for the galaxy of crumpled and destitute stars, and for the tiny pink planet, if it were not for his--her? its?--determination. Lumpen would have had us turn back, I am sure of it. Lumpen is the other survivor. He has been morose and sullen since we ran out of breakfast cereal two years ago, after missing the supply depot on the Planet of Grocery Provisions Epsilon Six where we were due to collect a consignment of Kellogg's Fruit 'n' Fibre. He keeps to his bunk now, head buried in a metalback copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, his pipe clenched in his teeth, the fumes of his untreated Serbian tobacco hanging in the pseudo-air of the cabin. At least it kills the flies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-04-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:08 Tenth Anniversary (IV) 07:56 Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From the Stars, Chapter Thirteen 15:43 Dietary News 20:32 Blazing Excelsior Saturated With Turpentine 27:14 Certain Aspects of Plastic Baubles and Plastic Sheeting TENTH ANNIVERSARY (IV) It is day four of our tenth anniversary celebrations. Here is a piece entitled Far, Far Away, originally posted on Monday 4 September 2006. It is one of Mr Key's own favourites. Far, far away, there is a galaxy of shattered stars, stars crumpled and curdled and destitute, and there is a planet tucked in among these sorry stars, a tiny pink planet of gas and water and thick foliage, and tucked in among the fronds and creepers and enormous leaves of this foliage lie millions of unhatched eggs, and when they hatch they will hatch millions of magnetic mute blind love monkeys. I am a crew member of the starship Corrugated Cardboard, heading implacably through deep space towards the galaxy of crumpled stars. Seven years into the voyage, only four of us remain from the original manifest of twenty. There is my captain, o my captain, Pilbrow, a hirsute, raving martinet. We have tied him with cords and confined him to a cupboard, for he has become impossibly dangerous. His spittle is sulphurous, it burns that which it touches, and as he raves, he spits, and he is never not raving, not any more. Ever since we passed through the belt of [illegible] Pilbrow seems no longer human. Being the science officer, I tried to study him, at first. Wearing big protective gloves I transferred flecks of his spittle into my alembic, and ignited my bunsen burners, and peered intently at Pilbrow's burning spittle, hoping to learn something. I learned nothing. We have travelled far, far beyond the belt of [illegible], and still I have learned nothing. Thus the binding with cords, and thus the cupboard. Also surviving is Pilbrow Two, a half-size version of my captain, o my captain, made of cardboard, wax and string and animated with life by sparks of something akin to, but not quite, electricity. Pilbrow Two is indubitably alive, a pulsating, rustling, thinking, breathing thing, but it has nothing in common with the raving martinet tied by cords in the cupboard. At the beginning of the voyage, we considered changing its name, we even spent a few days calling it Unpilbrow or Antipilbrow, but neither of these caught on, possibly because Pilbrow Two would boom "My name is Pilbrow Two!" in its deafening voice. Our cardboard, wax and string crewmate has been invaluable in keeping our spirits up. I do not think we would still be heading for the galaxy of crumpled and destitute stars, and for the tiny pink planet, if it were not for his--her? its?--determination. Lumpen would have had us turn back, I am sure of it. Lumpen is the other survivor. He has been morose and sullen since we ran out of breakfast cereal two years ago, after missing the supply depot on the Planet of Grocery Provisions Epsilon Six where we were due to collect a consignment of Kellogg's Fruit 'n' Fibre. He keeps to his bunk now, head buried in a metalback copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, his pipe clenched in his teeth, the fumes of his untreated Serbian tobacco hanging in the pseudo-air of the cabin. At least it kills the flies. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-04-1129:41fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-04-04Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:15 Old Farmer Frack 10:38 "He Which Is Filthy, Let Him Be Filthy Still" 13:54 Dabbling With Gumption 14:19 EggPal 14:39 True Adventures Of The Child Of Gumption 16:51 Found At A Jumble Sale 19:17 Actual Size 26:17 Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From the Stars, Chapter Thirteen OLD FARMER FRACK I have received a number of letters asking me to give some account of Old Farmer Frack. It is true that he was a mad old man, probably due to ergot poisoning. But he could be surprisingly lucid, too. For a time he employed a professional voice coach, more used to working with thespians, to help him develop exciting new roars and bellows. His cows were much given to bellowing, and Old Farmer Frack wanted to be able to bellow back in a way they would understand. The voice coach was Satnav Gobgag, scion of the Bulgarian aeroplane manufacturing dynasty, whose huge hangars on the outskirts of Plovdiv were the site of tremendous aeronautical innovation during the interwar years. Satnav was a great disappointment to his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, for despite receiving a first class education in the kinds of things that would make anyone fit to head an aeroplane-building business, he turned his back on the family firm and devoted himself to the questionable career--questionable in Bulgaria at that time, anyway--of drilling drama-struck misters and misses in the art of projecting their voices, be they dulcet or stentorian. It has been said that no one took to the stage of the Plovdiv Theatricum in the middle years of the last century who had not learned their stuff from Satnav Gobgag. Exiled after the war to the country where Old Farmer Frack herded his tubercular cows, and by now grey and stooped and often covered in crumbs and dust, Satnav Gobgag fetched up at a ruined hotel on the seafront at Cack. He was only thirty-four, but looked to be twice that age, such had been his privations. It is well worth avoiding such privations if one can, but Satnav did not have the benefit of hindsight. Cut off without a penny by the Gobgag clan, accompanied in his exile by his pet coot, Satnav was on the point of starvation when into his hotel one day wandered Old Farmer Frack. Q--What was the mad old man doing there, so far away from his cows? A--He was in Cack to collect bags of sand, and stopped in at the hotel for a greasy breakfast, for he was fond of greasy breakfasts, but back at the farm usually made do with a dish of cowfeed. Q--For what purpose did Old Farmer Frack need bags of sand from the beach at Cack? A--To forestall, or avert, the flooding of his barns. The pair struck up a conversation in the breakfast room of the hotel. And of what did they speak, this ill-matched duo? Why, they chattered away about the single topic that was convulsing the citizenry of Cack in those dark days, namely the invasion of an army of killer moorhens which was sweeping through the town in wave after wave of destructive mayhem. Satnav's poor coot was cooped up in his hotel room for its own protection, and the penniless voice coach was frantic with fear what would happen to it when, as must surely soon happen, he and his coot were tossed out on their ears for non-payment. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-04-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:15 Old Farmer Frack 10:38 "He Which Is Filthy, Let Him Be Filthy Still" 13:54 Dabbling With Gumption 14:19 EggPal 14:39 True Adventures Of The Child Of Gumption 16:51 Found At A Jumble Sale 19:17 Actual Size 26:17 Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From the Stars, Chapter Thirteen OLD FARMER FRACK I have received a number of letters asking me to give some account of Old Farmer Frack. It is true that he was a mad old man, probably due to ergot poisoning. But he could be surprisingly lucid, too. For a time he employed a professional voice coach, more used to working with thespians, to help him develop exciting new roars and bellows. His cows were much given to bellowing, and Old Farmer Frack wanted to be able to bellow back in a way they would understand. The voice coach was Satnav Gobgag, scion of the Bulgarian aeroplane manufacturing dynasty, whose huge hangars on the outskirts of Plovdiv were the site of tremendous aeronautical innovation during the interwar years. Satnav was a great disappointment to his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, for despite receiving a first class education in the kinds of things that would make anyone fit to head an aeroplane-building business, he turned his back on the family firm and devoted himself to the questionable career--questionable in Bulgaria at that time, anyway--of drilling drama-struck misters and misses in the art of projecting their voices, be they dulcet or stentorian. It has been said that no one took to the stage of the Plovdiv Theatricum in the middle years of the last century who had not learned their stuff from Satnav Gobgag. Exiled after the war to the country where Old Farmer Frack herded his tubercular cows, and by now grey and stooped and often covered in crumbs and dust, Satnav Gobgag fetched up at a ruined hotel on the seafront at Cack. He was only thirty-four, but looked to be twice that age, such had been his privations. It is well worth avoiding such privations if one can, but Satnav did not have the benefit of hindsight. Cut off without a penny by the Gobgag clan, accompanied in his exile by his pet coot, Satnav was on the point of starvation when into his hotel one day wandered Old Farmer Frack. Q--What was the mad old man doing there, so far away from his cows? A--He was in Cack to collect bags of sand, and stopped in at the hotel for a greasy breakfast, for he was fond of greasy breakfasts, but back at the farm usually made do with a dish of cowfeed. Q--For what purpose did Old Farmer Frack need bags of sand from the beach at Cack? A--To forestall, or avert, the flooding of his barns. The pair struck up a conversation in the breakfast room of the hotel. And of what did they speak, this ill-matched duo? Why, they chattered away about the single topic that was convulsing the citizenry of Cack in those dark days, namely the invasion of an army of killer moorhens which was sweeping through the town in wave after wave of destructive mayhem. Satnav's poor coot was cooped up in his hotel room for its own protection, and the penniless voice coach was frantic with fear what would happen to it when, as must surely soon happen, he and his coot were tossed out on their ears for non-payment. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-04-0427:56fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-03-28Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Balsa Wood Crow 09:34 Sappensopp Days 25:26 They've Stolen Dobson's Brain! BALSA WOOD CROW Here is an exciting craft project for young and old alike. Follow the instructions carefully and you will be the proud and happy owner of a toy crow made out of balsa wood. Imagine the flabbergasted looks of family and friends as they admire your handiwork, and resolve to become better, more productive citizens by following your example. Imagine them gnashing their teeth in despair as it becomes apparent that they are cack-handed nincompoops whereas you are the very opposite of a butterfingers. Incidentally, if you are by chance a butterfingers, do not be deterred. All you need is self-belief, sometimes in the teeth of the evidence. Just go and read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and stop snivelling. First of all, obviously, you will need some balsa wood. I'm afraid that you will probably have to pay for it. If you are a mendicant, and cannot countenance frittering your paltry beggings on something as inessential as balsa wood, you may have to resort to theft. I cannot condone even the most measly purloinment, of craft materials or indeed of anything else, so we would seem to have reached an impasse. Help may be at hand, however, from various charitable institutions or even from wealthy individuals who share a passion for balsa wood work. You could try writing letters to such as Yoko Ono, the Duke of Norfolk, or Lyn Cheney. The latter is the wife of the Vice President of the United States, not to be confused with Lon Chaney, the deceased film actor. Here is a model letter you can use to ask for assistance: Dear [insert name here]. Like you, I am an enthusiastic balsa wood craftsperson. Unlike you, I am poverty-stricken. Please send me some of your spare balsa wood so I can make a toy crow. Yours sincerely [insert your name here]. That should do the trick, and keep you away from a life of crime, the consequences of which can be disastrous. Only last week, a ne'er-do-well was apprehended while trying to steal a tube of modelling paste from Hubermann's, and he is due to be hanged imminently. He will certainly not be the envy of his friends and the possessor of a crow made out of balsa wood, so do not even think about emulating him. So you now have your balsa wood. Next you will need adhesive. There is a range of glues and gums available, from Hubermann's and elsewhere, and I think I can leave it to you to make the right choice. It really doesn't matter whether the glue is clear or cloudy or white, whether the method of delivery is via a nozzle or a squeezy pad or a spatula, whether it comes in a tube or a tub or a jar. The only thing you need to keep an eye on is whether or not it is sticky enough to fuse two pieces of balsa wood so decisively that they cannot be prised apart even by wild beasts. You may want to test the adhesiveness of your chosen adhesive before cementing the purchase. If you are in Hubermann's, you can go to the little cupboard near the fire escape to do so, and I am sure other retailers have similar facilities, although there may be a fee involved. I will assume that you have returned home safely with a suitable adhesive and that your pile of bought or donated balsa wood awaits you on your kitchen table. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-03-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Balsa Wood Crow 09:34 Sappensopp Days 25:26 They've Stolen Dobson's Brain! BALSA WOOD CROW Here is an exciting craft project for young and old alike. Follow the instructions carefully and you will be the proud and happy owner of a toy crow made out of balsa wood. Imagine the flabbergasted looks of family and friends as they admire your handiwork, and resolve to become better, more productive citizens by following your example. Imagine them gnashing their teeth in despair as it becomes apparent that they are cack-handed nincompoops whereas you are the very opposite of a butterfingers. Incidentally, if you are by chance a butterfingers, do not be deterred. All you need is self-belief, sometimes in the teeth of the evidence. Just go and read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and stop snivelling. First of all, obviously, you will need some balsa wood. I'm afraid that you will probably have to pay for it. If you are a mendicant, and cannot countenance frittering your paltry beggings on something as inessential as balsa wood, you may have to resort to theft. I cannot condone even the most measly purloinment, of craft materials or indeed of anything else, so we would seem to have reached an impasse. Help may be at hand, however, from various charitable institutions or even from wealthy individuals who share a passion for balsa wood work. You could try writing letters to such as Yoko Ono, the Duke of Norfolk, or Lyn Cheney. The latter is the wife of the Vice President of the United States, not to be confused with Lon Chaney, the deceased film actor. Here is a model letter you can use to ask for assistance: Dear [insert name here]. Like you, I am an enthusiastic balsa wood craftsperson. Unlike you, I am poverty-stricken. Please send me some of your spare balsa wood so I can make a toy crow. Yours sincerely [insert your name here]. That should do the trick, and keep you away from a life of crime, the consequences of which can be disastrous. Only last week, a ne'er-do-well was apprehended while trying to steal a tube of modelling paste from Hubermann's, and he is due to be hanged imminently. He will certainly not be the envy of his friends and the possessor of a crow made out of balsa wood, so do not even think about emulating him. So you now have your balsa wood. Next you will need adhesive. There is a range of glues and gums available, from Hubermann's and elsewhere, and I think I can leave it to you to make the right choice. It really doesn't matter whether the glue is clear or cloudy or white, whether the method of delivery is via a nozzle or a squeezy pad or a spatula, whether it comes in a tube or a tub or a jar. The only thing you need to keep an eye on is whether or not it is sticky enough to fuse two pieces of balsa wood so decisively that they cannot be prised apart even by wild beasts. You may want to test the adhesiveness of your chosen adhesive before cementing the purchase. If you are in Hubermann's, you can go to the little cupboard near the fire escape to do so, and I am sure other retailers have similar facilities, although there may be a fee involved. I will assume that you have returned home safely with a suitable adhesive and that your pile of bought or donated balsa wood awaits you on your kitchen table. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-03-2829:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-03-14Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Celebrity Flibbertigibbet Attic 04:37 Six Lectures On Fruit 11:08 Where Eagles Dare 15:06 Emboldened, In Gumboots 24:36 My Brother's Cistern And My Sister's Cistern 29:09 At Long Last, An Answer To The Blodgett Duffel Bag Query CELEBRITY FLIBBERTIGIBBET ATTIC Dobson could be a very prescient man. Imagine for a moment a world where the magazine racks in newsagent's shops contain titles like Nunc Dimitis and Look, Cogitate & Learn and The Weekly Cranium, rather than Pap! and Fluffyhead! and Tat! It was like that once, in the middle of the last century. And it was in such a world that Dobson woke up one morning, went downstairs and ate bloaters for breakfast, and polished his Montenegrin hunting boots, and walked out into the rain with a surprising sense of purpose. He had had one of his bright ideas, and he was going to act on it without delay. He did not pause by the illegal butcher's shop, nor by the Tundist Owl Library, nor at the lido nor the pie shop nor the allotments, but strode onwards to a pond at the very edge of town where a fledging television programme making unit had set up cameras to record a documentary about swans. A Quaint, Black And White Look At Some Swans Near A Pond was planned as a primetime series for later that year, and would prove to be the most popular show of the decade. It was that sort of world. Elbowing his way through a security cordon, Dobson identified the producer, seized him by the collar, and dragged him off to one side. "I have an idea for a television series," he shouted at the pipe-smoking, cardigan-wearing weakling who crumpled in awe of the out of print pamphleteer. "I suggest," continued Dobson, "That you immediately stop filming these confounded swans and instead take up my brilliant idea, which is as follows. You gather together roughly a dozen well-known persons, all of whom tend to be flibbertigibbets by nature, and you lock them in an attic for two months. You then film them, being flibbertigibbets in an attic. The programme would be called Celebrity Flibbertigibbet Attic, and I have absolutely no doubt that it will be a hit, a palpable hit!" The scrawny television producer squirmed free from Dobson's importunate grasp, and thumped back through the mud towards where his team was filming over one hundred and twenty hours of swan footage. He paused only to re-light his pipe, which had gone out after a fleck of Dobson's spittle landed slap in the middle of the bowl. At this point several swans who had wandered away from their allotted places set upon Dobson, whooping at him and pecking at his trousers, and he fled. On his way home, he stopped in at the early morning skiffle club milk bar, and became obsessed with the rhythmic bashing of washboards, an interest which utterly consumed him for several weeks, by the end of which time he had completely forgotten about his ground-breaking television concept. He could be, as I said, a very prescient man, but he was far too easily distracted. Further reading : inadvisable. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-03-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Celebrity Flibbertigibbet Attic 04:37 Six Lectures On Fruit 11:08 Where Eagles Dare 15:06 Emboldened, In Gumboots 24:36 My Brother's Cistern And My Sister's Cistern 29:09 At Long Last, An Answer To The Blodgett Duffel Bag Query CELEBRITY FLIBBERTIGIBBET ATTIC Dobson could be a very prescient man. Imagine for a moment a world where the magazine racks in newsagent's shops contain titles like Nunc Dimitis and Look, Cogitate & Learn and The Weekly Cranium, rather than Pap! and Fluffyhead! and Tat! It was like that once, in the middle of the last century. And it was in such a world that Dobson woke up one morning, went downstairs and ate bloaters for breakfast, and polished his Montenegrin hunting boots, and walked out into the rain with a surprising sense of purpose. He had had one of his bright ideas, and he was going to act on it without delay. He did not pause by the illegal butcher's shop, nor by the Tundist Owl Library, nor at the lido nor the pie shop nor the allotments, but strode onwards to a pond at the very edge of town where a fledging television programme making unit had set up cameras to record a documentary about swans. A Quaint, Black And White Look At Some Swans Near A Pond was planned as a primetime series for later that year, and would prove to be the most popular show of the decade. It was that sort of world. Elbowing his way through a security cordon, Dobson identified the producer, seized him by the collar, and dragged him off to one side. "I have an idea for a television series," he shouted at the pipe-smoking, cardigan-wearing weakling who crumpled in awe of the out of print pamphleteer. "I suggest," continued Dobson, "That you immediately stop filming these confounded swans and instead take up my brilliant idea, which is as follows. You gather together roughly a dozen well-known persons, all of whom tend to be flibbertigibbets by nature, and you lock them in an attic for two months. You then film them, being flibbertigibbets in an attic. The programme would be called Celebrity Flibbertigibbet Attic, and I have absolutely no doubt that it will be a hit, a palpable hit!" The scrawny television producer squirmed free from Dobson's importunate grasp, and thumped back through the mud towards where his team was filming over one hundred and twenty hours of swan footage. He paused only to re-light his pipe, which had gone out after a fleck of Dobson's spittle landed slap in the middle of the bowl. At this point several swans who had wandered away from their allotted places set upon Dobson, whooping at him and pecking at his trousers, and he fled. On his way home, he stopped in at the early morning skiffle club milk bar, and became obsessed with the rhythmic bashing of washboards, an interest which utterly consumed him for several weeks, by the end of which time he had completely forgotten about his ground-breaking television concept. He could be, as I said, a very prescient man, but he was far too easily distracted. Further reading : inadvisable. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-03-1431:10fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-03-07Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 The Horrible Cave--I 12:11 The Horrible Cave : Part Two 25:19 The Horrible Cave : Part Four THE HORRIBLE CAVE--I Talk to any spelunker and you will soon learn that nobody who strays into the horrible cave emerges with their wits intact. Sometimes their hair turns white, they shake and gibber, they have to be fed with slops. Others retire to farmyards and spend the rest of their lives among pot-bellied pigs. Yet still the reckless and the foolhardy risk their sanity by ignoring the big signpost I hammered into the ground at the approach to the horrible cave. This is the horrible cave, reads my notice, If you have a shred of sense you will durst not enter. I spent quite some time on that wording, and ended up in hospital because I chewed the end of my pencil so fretfully that I contracted lead poisoning. It is by no means a pretty ailment, but I would much rather suffer that than the terrible derangements of those who step but once into the horrible cave. While I was in the hospital, I was visited by a government agent who was curious about my signpost. I suspected he was from some secret agency, for he was dressed in a trim black suit and did not remove his sunglasses. He had a very close-cropped haircut, carried an attache case which I noticed was chained to his wrist, and he seemed to exude the scent of frangipani or dogbane, which is often a telltale sign of covert operatives in my country. Standing beside the bed on which I lay splayed out, he introduced himself as Christopher Plummer. "Not to be confused with the actor who played Atahualpa in The Royal Hunt Of The Sun," he added hurriedly, although at that time the name was new to me. I have since followed the agent's namesake's career with growing interest. I was subjected to a series of questions about the signpost I had placed near the horrible cave, and answered as best as I could, given my fevered state. The agent made notes on a little hand-held pneumatic turbonotepad of ingenious design. I often find myself wondering why they never caught on. These days you are lucky to find one at a jumble sale or in a junk shop, luckier still if all the notes made on it are still readable. When Christopher Plummer had finished interrogating me in his strangely stiff manner, he depressed a knob on the turbopad and, with a surprisingly loud hiss, it clunked into hibernation mode. I watched the jet of escaping steam. Years later, sitting in a cafe in a tremendous town, flicking idly through an intelligence journal, I learned that Agent Plummer had been exposed as an alien life-form from some far planet riddled with horrible caves. I thought how fortunate we were to have only one horrible cave, terrible as it was. Last week I hiked out that way to see if my signpost was still there. Prancing majestically along the path, I encountered dozens of terrified people being attacked by cows. Sorry, that was a typing error. I should have said being attacked by crows. One poor wretch who had been pecked at was slumped beside his makeshift tent, fruitlessly trying to wrap a bandage around his head. I knelt down beside him and gave him a hand, and could not resist asking what was happening, but he was unable to speak. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-03-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 The Horrible Cave--I 12:11 The Horrible Cave : Part Two 25:19 The Horrible Cave : Part Four THE HORRIBLE CAVE--I Talk to any spelunker and you will soon learn that nobody who strays into the horrible cave emerges with their wits intact. Sometimes their hair turns white, they shake and gibber, they have to be fed with slops. Others retire to farmyards and spend the rest of their lives among pot-bellied pigs. Yet still the reckless and the foolhardy risk their sanity by ignoring the big signpost I hammered into the ground at the approach to the horrible cave. This is the horrible cave, reads my notice, If you have a shred of sense you will durst not enter. I spent quite some time on that wording, and ended up in hospital because I chewed the end of my pencil so fretfully that I contracted lead poisoning. It is by no means a pretty ailment, but I would much rather suffer that than the terrible derangements of those who step but once into the horrible cave. While I was in the hospital, I was visited by a government agent who was curious about my signpost. I suspected he was from some secret agency, for he was dressed in a trim black suit and did not remove his sunglasses. He had a very close-cropped haircut, carried an attache case which I noticed was chained to his wrist, and he seemed to exude the scent of frangipani or dogbane, which is often a telltale sign of covert operatives in my country. Standing beside the bed on which I lay splayed out, he introduced himself as Christopher Plummer. "Not to be confused with the actor who played Atahualpa in The Royal Hunt Of The Sun," he added hurriedly, although at that time the name was new to me. I have since followed the agent's namesake's career with growing interest. I was subjected to a series of questions about the signpost I had placed near the horrible cave, and answered as best as I could, given my fevered state. The agent made notes on a little hand-held pneumatic turbonotepad of ingenious design. I often find myself wondering why they never caught on. These days you are lucky to find one at a jumble sale or in a junk shop, luckier still if all the notes made on it are still readable. When Christopher Plummer had finished interrogating me in his strangely stiff manner, he depressed a knob on the turbopad and, with a surprisingly loud hiss, it clunked into hibernation mode. I watched the jet of escaping steam. Years later, sitting in a cafe in a tremendous town, flicking idly through an intelligence journal, I learned that Agent Plummer had been exposed as an alien life-form from some far planet riddled with horrible caves. I thought how fortunate we were to have only one horrible cave, terrible as it was. Last week I hiked out that way to see if my signpost was still there. Prancing majestically along the path, I encountered dozens of terrified people being attacked by cows. Sorry, that was a typing error. I should have said being attacked by crows. One poor wretch who had been pecked at was slumped beside his makeshift tent, fruitlessly trying to wrap a bandage around his head. I knelt down beside him and gave him a hand, and could not resist asking what was happening, but he was unable to speak. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-03-0730:35fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-28Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:45 The Heroic Bus Driver Of Pointy Town 04:28 On The Ebbing Away Of The Age Of Gilded Tin Baths 11:27 A Weekend With An Owl God 16:40 Aztec Fundamentalism 19:04 The Central Lever 24:50 Old Halob : A Biographical Note THE HEROIC BUS DRIVER OF POINTY TOWN There was a heroic bus driver, and his name was Kim Fat Goo. He drove his bus through puddles. He drove it straight and true, though he swerved if he saw a duck or a pig or an infant human tiny or a succubus or an incubus as he steered towards the briny. He drove his bus across Pointy Town, heading for the sea. At the beach he stopped to let passengers off and he drank a flask of tea. Oh, Kim Fat Goo he drained his flask and he tipped the dregs in the sand, and he idled awhile on the promenade and he watched a spaceship land. Out poured a gaggle of alien beings with flippers and antennae and claws and flagrant disregard for the rubric of Pointy Town laws. "We are an invasion force from the Planet of Contaminated Wheat. We are starveling spacemen and we need something to eat." "I will drive you to the pie shop," said fearless Kim Fat Goo, "Get on the bus and sit quietly till we reach the pie shop queue." But he drove his bus up into the hills to a hermit's abandoned hut, and he lured the invading spacemen in and sealed the doorway shut. So Kim Fat Goo the bus driver was the saviour of Pointy Town, and that is why his name rings out with imperishable renown. ON THE EBBING AWAY OF THE AGE OF GILDED TIN BATHS [The vacancy between my ears shows no sign of being filled, so here is another blast from the past (February 2007).] There is no one left alive who witnessed the ebbing away of the age of gilded tin baths, nor do we have any written records of that time. The pitiful smidgen of information we do have has come down to us in the form of incomprehensible pictograms and a pair of 78 rpm shellac discs, and these are locked away in a concrete bunker far, far underground, beneath the Museum At-Or-Near Ack. The bunker is only accessible through a heavily padlocked orrin hatch, one of very few such hatches ever manufactured, based upon a patented hatch design which, despite what you may have read in the sorts of magazines beloved of the conspiracy-fixated, has absolutely no connection with US Senator Orrin Hatch (Rep., Utah). Those of you with even a smattering of knowledge about hatches and bunkers will understand how hard it is to get anywhere near those pictograms, those 78s. When last one of our investigators examined the hatch, she reported back that it showed no signs of having been opened since the notorious Blotzmann Incident (1956). The reckless idiocy of Blotzmann's intervention has been thoroughly dissected in Pebblehead's bestselling paperback A Man And His Shovels, so I need not rehearse it here. Our investigator--codename Hortense--reported something else. She said that the metal ladder which forms the final stage of the approach to the bunker was rife with scratches and dents and had buckled in a few places. This is new. The ladder has until now been kept in pristine condition by the maintenance team at-or-near Ack, whose rigorous training is well-attested. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:45 The Heroic Bus Driver Of Pointy Town 04:28 On The Ebbing Away Of The Age Of Gilded Tin Baths 11:27 A Weekend With An Owl God 16:40 Aztec Fundamentalism 19:04 The Central Lever 24:50 Old Halob : A Biographical Note THE HEROIC BUS DRIVER OF POINTY TOWN There was a heroic bus driver, and his name was Kim Fat Goo. He drove his bus through puddles. He drove it straight and true, though he swerved if he saw a duck or a pig or an infant human tiny or a succubus or an incubus as he steered towards the briny. He drove his bus across Pointy Town, heading for the sea. At the beach he stopped to let passengers off and he drank a flask of tea. Oh, Kim Fat Goo he drained his flask and he tipped the dregs in the sand, and he idled awhile on the promenade and he watched a spaceship land. Out poured a gaggle of alien beings with flippers and antennae and claws and flagrant disregard for the rubric of Pointy Town laws. "We are an invasion force from the Planet of Contaminated Wheat. We are starveling spacemen and we need something to eat." "I will drive you to the pie shop," said fearless Kim Fat Goo, "Get on the bus and sit quietly till we reach the pie shop queue." But he drove his bus up into the hills to a hermit's abandoned hut, and he lured the invading spacemen in and sealed the doorway shut. So Kim Fat Goo the bus driver was the saviour of Pointy Town, and that is why his name rings out with imperishable renown. ON THE EBBING AWAY OF THE AGE OF GILDED TIN BATHS [The vacancy between my ears shows no sign of being filled, so here is another blast from the past (February 2007).] There is no one left alive who witnessed the ebbing away of the age of gilded tin baths, nor do we have any written records of that time. The pitiful smidgen of information we do have has come down to us in the form of incomprehensible pictograms and a pair of 78 rpm shellac discs, and these are locked away in a concrete bunker far, far underground, beneath the Museum At-Or-Near Ack. The bunker is only accessible through a heavily padlocked orrin hatch, one of very few such hatches ever manufactured, based upon a patented hatch design which, despite what you may have read in the sorts of magazines beloved of the conspiracy-fixated, has absolutely no connection with US Senator Orrin Hatch (Rep., Utah). Those of you with even a smattering of knowledge about hatches and bunkers will understand how hard it is to get anywhere near those pictograms, those 78s. When last one of our investigators examined the hatch, she reported back that it showed no signs of having been opened since the notorious Blotzmann Incident (1956). The reckless idiocy of Blotzmann's intervention has been thoroughly dissected in Pebblehead's bestselling paperback A Man And His Shovels, so I need not rehearse it here. Our investigator--codename Hortense--reported something else. She said that the metal ladder which forms the final stage of the approach to the bunker was rife with scratches and dents and had buckled in a few places. This is new. The ladder has until now been kept in pristine condition by the maintenance team at-or-near Ack, whose rigorous training is well-attested. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-2832:17fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-21Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 Cow Byre Tsar 04:55 Satan's Spa 08:13 Tremendous Potato Urgency 14:03 Hiking Pickle Revisited 23:29 Gubbins Music 26:30 Strictly Pamphleteering COW BYRE TSAR Old Russia had only one tsar at a time, but now of course we have many of them, each with their own speciality, like patron saints. Traffic tsars, drugs tsars, respect tsars... every week some bug-eyed government wonk creates yet another tsardom. Such power! Apparently, Blodgett used to be a tsar, for a few weeks. It was a gorgeous summer afternoon, and he was putting the finishing touches to his sleek gas-powered uberpod when one of those bug-eyed government wonks came prancing up the path, out of nowhere. Blodgett put down his rag on a pile of other rags, dipped his hairy hands into a tub of swarfega, and wiped them on one of the other rags from the pile, or perhaps on the one he had just dropped. He adjusted his lorgnette with exquisite daintiness and looked the wonk over, as if he were examining a beetle. Blodgett had history with wonks, as they say, and he was prepared for anything. "You are Blodgett?" asked the wonk, in a wonky monotone. Blodgett was tempted to curl his lip, but he was still wearing a protective cotton dimity thing over his nose and mouth, so instead he nodded his assent. "We need to appoint a cow byre tsar," announced the wonk, without preamble, "And your name has been put forward. There is a modest stipend and an armband. Congratulations." If the wonk said anything else, his words were wasted, for he was drowned out by the sudden appearance of swooping corncrakes. Blodgett ushered him into his hut and put the kettle on. "What does the job involve?" he asked, his booming voice only slightly muffled by the dimity thing. "Oh, you know, just go and hang around cow byres being sort of tsary," replied the wonk. What Blodgett was not told was that he was expected to send in daily reports, including the Latin names of the cows in each byre he fell upon, looming in his fierce Blodgettian way in the shadows. An added difficulty was that all the cows he visited seemed to twinkle, like stars in the heavens. His first report was sent back to him, his lovely handwriting virtually obliterated by comments and corrections scribbled with an impossibly thick black magic marker pen. Blodgett wept that night, huge convulsive sobs wracking his frame as he crouched next to the uberpod. His second and third reports fared no better, so he stopped sending them. And nothing happened. Each morning, as dawn broke, he would don his cow byre tsar armband and stride out towards yet another cow byre of twinkling cows, and loom, tsarily, for hours upon end, before returning home to his soup and his fireside. No word came from the wonk, for the wonk wed his sweetheart and fled to a city of curious puddles and gigantic towers of granite, and he never again thought much about cows, twinkling or otherwise. And after a few weeks, nor did Blodgett. He put his cow byre tsar armband on his pile of rags, and soon it was smeared with swarfega, just another Blodgett rag. Postscript. Six months later, Blodgett's hut was crushed by a stampede of twinkling cows. He was out at the time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 Cow Byre Tsar 04:55 Satan's Spa 08:13 Tremendous Potato Urgency 14:03 Hiking Pickle Revisited 23:29 Gubbins Music 26:30 Strictly Pamphleteering COW BYRE TSAR Old Russia had only one tsar at a time, but now of course we have many of them, each with their own speciality, like patron saints. Traffic tsars, drugs tsars, respect tsars... every week some bug-eyed government wonk creates yet another tsardom. Such power! Apparently, Blodgett used to be a tsar, for a few weeks. It was a gorgeous summer afternoon, and he was putting the finishing touches to his sleek gas-powered uberpod when one of those bug-eyed government wonks came prancing up the path, out of nowhere. Blodgett put down his rag on a pile of other rags, dipped his hairy hands into a tub of swarfega, and wiped them on one of the other rags from the pile, or perhaps on the one he had just dropped. He adjusted his lorgnette with exquisite daintiness and looked the wonk over, as if he were examining a beetle. Blodgett had history with wonks, as they say, and he was prepared for anything. "You are Blodgett?" asked the wonk, in a wonky monotone. Blodgett was tempted to curl his lip, but he was still wearing a protective cotton dimity thing over his nose and mouth, so instead he nodded his assent. "We need to appoint a cow byre tsar," announced the wonk, without preamble, "And your name has been put forward. There is a modest stipend and an armband. Congratulations." If the wonk said anything else, his words were wasted, for he was drowned out by the sudden appearance of swooping corncrakes. Blodgett ushered him into his hut and put the kettle on. "What does the job involve?" he asked, his booming voice only slightly muffled by the dimity thing. "Oh, you know, just go and hang around cow byres being sort of tsary," replied the wonk. What Blodgett was not told was that he was expected to send in daily reports, including the Latin names of the cows in each byre he fell upon, looming in his fierce Blodgettian way in the shadows. An added difficulty was that all the cows he visited seemed to twinkle, like stars in the heavens. His first report was sent back to him, his lovely handwriting virtually obliterated by comments and corrections scribbled with an impossibly thick black magic marker pen. Blodgett wept that night, huge convulsive sobs wracking his frame as he crouched next to the uberpod. His second and third reports fared no better, so he stopped sending them. And nothing happened. Each morning, as dawn broke, he would don his cow byre tsar armband and stride out towards yet another cow byre of twinkling cows, and loom, tsarily, for hours upon end, before returning home to his soup and his fireside. No word came from the wonk, for the wonk wed his sweetheart and fled to a city of curious puddles and gigantic towers of granite, and he never again thought much about cows, twinkling or otherwise. And after a few weeks, nor did Blodgett. He put his cow byre tsar armband on his pile of rags, and soon it was smeared with swarfega, just another Blodgett rag. Postscript. Six months later, Blodgett's hut was crushed by a stampede of twinkling cows. He was out at the time. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-2129:32fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-14Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Ice Chaos 14:03 The Parish Wolf 20:28 Dobson's Chartreuse Weskit 24:57 He Preened, Eating Bloaters ICE CHAOS [This story was written as part of a fundraising drive for ResonanceFM, and broadcast today on Hooting Yard On The Air. Listeners were invited, in return for a donation, to provide a sentence, a phrase, a string of words or a name which was then incorporated into the text. A list of those who so generously handed over their cash follows at the end.] "Ice Chaos" was the headline in one of the newspapers last week. This followed a day when the unthinkable happened. A flurry of snow, that settled for about twenty four hours, in the winter, in Britain (a country in the northern hemisphere)! Chaos indeed. Or perhaps just a cold snap. It's true, though, that extreme or freakish weather conditions seem to be on the increase. There were tornadoes in London, Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami... (Incidentally, let us take this opportunity to recall the name of a seismologist involved in lack-of-tsunami warnings, Waverly Person.) Now, it has been pointed out to me more than once that I am hardly qualified to talk about extreme weather conditions, as the only weather we get at Hooting Yard is rain, sometimes torrential, sometimes a drizzle, and this is true. What my critics fail to note is that, ensconced in a cabin somewhere over by Blister Lane Bypass, we have a superb forecaster. I speak, of course, of Little Severin, the Mystic Badger. When it comes to predicting the weather, Little Severin is second to none, not even to the BBC's magnificent Dan Corbett. If you have not watched Dan, visit That's The Weather For Now and be amazed. Little Severin the Mystic Badger has not yet been blessed with a fan site all his own, but it can only be a matter of time. Before we go on, I want to make it absolutely plain that there is neither a jot nor scintilla of truth in the rumours that have been flying around. Little Severin did not pass through the catflap to the afterlife. In any case, he would have eschewed a catflap and sought a more appropriate badgerflap. Flaps for badgers, and indeed for stoats, pigs, wild hogs, otters and curlews, some of which are flaps to the afterlife and some not, are easily available, for example from Zip Nolan's Flappery in Basoonclotshire. (That spelling is correct, as the name of the shire derives from basins, not from bassoons.) Little Severin's method of weather divination is simple yet brilliant. He is not known as the Mystic Badger for nothing. At various times of day or night, he emerges from his cabin and scrubbles around in the muck, like badgers do. Then he goes back indoors. Voila! Those able to read the omens and portents of his scrubbling know whether tomorrow will bring rain, downpour, or drizzle, and not only that, for Little Severin can predict more than just the weather. Few people are aware that he forecast both the Cod Wars between Britain and Iceland, which lasted for seventeen years, and the Corned Beef Wars between Ireland and Argentina, which lasted thirty, among many other world-shaking events. As far as I am aware there have not yet been any Oregano Wars. Bear in mind that a number of Little Severin's predictions are retrospective, for as his name implies, he is only little. And mystic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Ice Chaos 14:03 The Parish Wolf 20:28 Dobson's Chartreuse Weskit 24:57 He Preened, Eating Bloaters ICE CHAOS [This story was written as part of a fundraising drive for ResonanceFM, and broadcast today on Hooting Yard On The Air. Listeners were invited, in return for a donation, to provide a sentence, a phrase, a string of words or a name which was then incorporated into the text. A list of those who so generously handed over their cash follows at the end.] "Ice Chaos" was the headline in one of the newspapers last week. This followed a day when the unthinkable happened. A flurry of snow, that settled for about twenty four hours, in the winter, in Britain (a country in the northern hemisphere)! Chaos indeed. Or perhaps just a cold snap. It's true, though, that extreme or freakish weather conditions seem to be on the increase. There were tornadoes in London, Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami... (Incidentally, let us take this opportunity to recall the name of a seismologist involved in lack-of-tsunami warnings, Waverly Person.) Now, it has been pointed out to me more than once that I am hardly qualified to talk about extreme weather conditions, as the only weather we get at Hooting Yard is rain, sometimes torrential, sometimes a drizzle, and this is true. What my critics fail to note is that, ensconced in a cabin somewhere over by Blister Lane Bypass, we have a superb forecaster. I speak, of course, of Little Severin, the Mystic Badger. When it comes to predicting the weather, Little Severin is second to none, not even to the BBC's magnificent Dan Corbett. If you have not watched Dan, visit That's The Weather For Now and be amazed. Little Severin the Mystic Badger has not yet been blessed with a fan site all his own, but it can only be a matter of time. Before we go on, I want to make it absolutely plain that there is neither a jot nor scintilla of truth in the rumours that have been flying around. Little Severin did not pass through the catflap to the afterlife. In any case, he would have eschewed a catflap and sought a more appropriate badgerflap. Flaps for badgers, and indeed for stoats, pigs, wild hogs, otters and curlews, some of which are flaps to the afterlife and some not, are easily available, for example from Zip Nolan's Flappery in Basoonclotshire. (That spelling is correct, as the name of the shire derives from basins, not from bassoons.) Little Severin's method of weather divination is simple yet brilliant. He is not known as the Mystic Badger for nothing. At various times of day or night, he emerges from his cabin and scrubbles around in the muck, like badgers do. Then he goes back indoors. Voila! Those able to read the omens and portents of his scrubbling know whether tomorrow will bring rain, downpour, or drizzle, and not only that, for Little Severin can predict more than just the weather. Few people are aware that he forecast both the Cod Wars between Britain and Iceland, which lasted for seventeen years, and the Corned Beef Wars between Ireland and Argentina, which lasted thirty, among many other world-shaking events. As far as I am aware there have not yet been any Oregano Wars. Bear in mind that a number of Little Severin's predictions are retrospective, for as his name implies, he is only little. And mystic. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-1430:06fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-07Wed, 07 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:03 Chump And Flapper 04:20 Good King Wenceslas Impersonation Incident 15:36 The Socks Of Pepintude 18:10 Bronchitis Person's Helicopter Journey 24:24 Murder in the Murk CHUMP AND FLAPPER There was a chump and there was a flapper, and they sat in a rowing boat in the middle of a vast, vast lake. The lake was so big it might as well have been a sea, for neither the chump nor the flapper could see the shore. The chump thought he was fop, but the flapper knew she was a flapper. "I am a flapper," said the flapper, "and you are a chump." "I am not a chump," said the chump, insulted, "I am a fop." "Either way," said the flapper, "Hand me that oar. It is time we rowed home, for look!, the sun is setting, and if we do not row home we will be plunged into darkness out here in the middle of the vast, vast lake. Such a prospect gives me the collywobbles." Now you might protest that a world-weary demimondaine flapper is the last person in the world to get the collywobbles, and you would probably be correct. Be that as it may, the chump, being a chump, took her at her word, and handed her the oar, and grabbed hold of the other oar himself, and together they began to row. The flapper rowed with insouciant ease, and the chump rowed like a chump, that is to say, ineptly, so ineptly that instead of rowing home they rowed to the wrong side of the vast, vast lake. That is how the chump and the flapper found themselves, at nightfall, surrounded by a gaggle of murderous thugs lumbering about on the jetty of an ill-starred fishing village. There was much grunting from the thugs, most of whom were wielding clubs, and the clubs were spattered with blood and brains and the Lord knows what else. "I think it would be a good idea for you to essay a tad of chumpery to distract the thugs," said the flapper to the chump. "Surely you mean a tad of foppery?" protested the chump. "I mean what I say," snapped the flapper, "And be quick about it, or we will be bashed by brutes!" Wiping his hands on his plus-fours, the chump was about to engage in diverting chumpery when a police car screeched into view behind the murderous thugs, and out stepped Detective Inspector Cargpan! Yes, the so-called "spindly copper" had not, after all, plummeted to his doom over a waterfall in some Ruritanian princedom, for he was here, in this godforsaken fishing village, accompanied as usual by his troika of deceptively diffident bloodhounds, Bim, Bam, and Ubuntu! Thus, on a moonlit jetty, ended the criminal careers of the chump and the flapper. Cargpan placed them in manacles and bundled them into the boot of his car, before driving off at inhuman speed up into the hills, leaving the thugs to smash the rowing boat, and the rowing boat's oars, to smithereens. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:03 Chump And Flapper 04:20 Good King Wenceslas Impersonation Incident 15:36 The Socks Of Pepintude 18:10 Bronchitis Person's Helicopter Journey 24:24 Murder in the Murk CHUMP AND FLAPPER There was a chump and there was a flapper, and they sat in a rowing boat in the middle of a vast, vast lake. The lake was so big it might as well have been a sea, for neither the chump nor the flapper could see the shore. The chump thought he was fop, but the flapper knew she was a flapper. "I am a flapper," said the flapper, "and you are a chump." "I am not a chump," said the chump, insulted, "I am a fop." "Either way," said the flapper, "Hand me that oar. It is time we rowed home, for look!, the sun is setting, and if we do not row home we will be plunged into darkness out here in the middle of the vast, vast lake. Such a prospect gives me the collywobbles." Now you might protest that a world-weary demimondaine flapper is the last person in the world to get the collywobbles, and you would probably be correct. Be that as it may, the chump, being a chump, took her at her word, and handed her the oar, and grabbed hold of the other oar himself, and together they began to row. The flapper rowed with insouciant ease, and the chump rowed like a chump, that is to say, ineptly, so ineptly that instead of rowing home they rowed to the wrong side of the vast, vast lake. That is how the chump and the flapper found themselves, at nightfall, surrounded by a gaggle of murderous thugs lumbering about on the jetty of an ill-starred fishing village. There was much grunting from the thugs, most of whom were wielding clubs, and the clubs were spattered with blood and brains and the Lord knows what else. "I think it would be a good idea for you to essay a tad of chumpery to distract the thugs," said the flapper to the chump. "Surely you mean a tad of foppery?" protested the chump. "I mean what I say," snapped the flapper, "And be quick about it, or we will be bashed by brutes!" Wiping his hands on his plus-fours, the chump was about to engage in diverting chumpery when a police car screeched into view behind the murderous thugs, and out stepped Detective Inspector Cargpan! Yes, the so-called "spindly copper" had not, after all, plummeted to his doom over a waterfall in some Ruritanian princedom, for he was here, in this godforsaken fishing village, accompanied as usual by his troika of deceptively diffident bloodhounds, Bim, Bam, and Ubuntu! Thus, on a moonlit jetty, ended the criminal careers of the chump and the flapper. Cargpan placed them in manacles and bundled them into the boot of his car, before driving off at inhuman speed up into the hills, leaving the thugs to smash the rowing boat, and the rowing boat's oars, to smithereens. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-02-0729:34fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-31Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 The New Goat 14:50 It Was Dusk 21:50 Tenth Anniversary (III) THE NEW GOAT It is a very long time since I last mentioned Blasphemous Ted Cargpan. Readers with long memories will recall that his dog won the Ayn Rand Household Pet Of The Week award back in March 2004. Shockingly, just two days after the prize-giving, the hound was abducted by paid fiends. Even more shockingly, Blasphemous Ted Cargpan announced that he did not care two pins nor a jot for the dog, and in any case he was bent on obtaining a goat. Before examining in detail the thrilling story of how Blasphemous Ted got himself a goat, I should explain why he is never referred to as plain old Ted Cargpan. Both his father and his paternal grandfather, and several of his nephews, were called Ted Cargpan, though not one of them was blasphemous. But Ted, on the cold blustery morning of his eighth birthday, climbed a hillside bleak, and when he reached the top he bellowed out a volley of curses and imprecations at dozens and dozens of gods, shouting at the sky. Half an hour later he was sat in the back room of his parents' cottage, unwrapping his birthday gifts, a picture of piety. But the wind had carried his words far and wide, and it soon became known what he had done, and thereafter he was always known as Blasphemous Ted Cargpan. Now, about this goat. Contumely was heaped upon Ted's head after he expressed a callous disregard for his abducted prize-winning dog--that is one reason he began to wear a grotesque sponge hood--but it was nonetheless true that his sights were already trained upon a goat. He had grown tired of his pooch, and even when it was returned to him after a daring night-time rescue operation carried out by the Ayn Rand Household Pet Rescue Squadron, he refused to go back on his word. It was at around this time, that is, around the time of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, that Cargpan placed an advertisement in the Pang Hill Bugle. Will swap dog for goat, it read, Toggenberg preferred. Seven words only, but seven words that had global repercussions. Busy anagrammatists in the Pentagon, convinced that it was a coded message, worked tirelessly to crack it. George, George, rotate a slop bin! Dwf lrf wgr pd! was one of their earlier, and baffling, efforts. With hindsight, it easy to laugh at the paranoia of the military, mistaking an innocent dog-goat exchange for something of more sinister intent. Blasphemous Ted Cargpan was not laughing, however, when, traced as the author of the advertisement, he was bundled into a jeep one morning and ferried to a compound deep below the earth's surface, where he was interrogated by interrogators for days on end. Weirdly, each of the interrogators shared their name with a Hollywood star, so Cargpan found himself questioned by Lionel Barrymore, Claude Rains, Vilma Banky, Tyrone Power, Edna Purviance, Dorothy Lamour and Burgess Meredith. Seven interrogators, one for each word of the fateful text. It was Dorothy Lamour, allocated the word "Toggenberg", who discovered on day twelve that Blasphemous Ted Cargpan was not Vietnamese, nor had any connection with the Vietcong. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 The New Goat 14:50 It Was Dusk 21:50 Tenth Anniversary (III) THE NEW GOAT It is a very long time since I last mentioned Blasphemous Ted Cargpan. Readers with long memories will recall that his dog won the Ayn Rand Household Pet Of The Week award back in March 2004. Shockingly, just two days after the prize-giving, the hound was abducted by paid fiends. Even more shockingly, Blasphemous Ted Cargpan announced that he did not care two pins nor a jot for the dog, and in any case he was bent on obtaining a goat. Before examining in detail the thrilling story of how Blasphemous Ted got himself a goat, I should explain why he is never referred to as plain old Ted Cargpan. Both his father and his paternal grandfather, and several of his nephews, were called Ted Cargpan, though not one of them was blasphemous. But Ted, on the cold blustery morning of his eighth birthday, climbed a hillside bleak, and when he reached the top he bellowed out a volley of curses and imprecations at dozens and dozens of gods, shouting at the sky. Half an hour later he was sat in the back room of his parents' cottage, unwrapping his birthday gifts, a picture of piety. But the wind had carried his words far and wide, and it soon became known what he had done, and thereafter he was always known as Blasphemous Ted Cargpan. Now, about this goat. Contumely was heaped upon Ted's head after he expressed a callous disregard for his abducted prize-winning dog--that is one reason he began to wear a grotesque sponge hood--but it was nonetheless true that his sights were already trained upon a goat. He had grown tired of his pooch, and even when it was returned to him after a daring night-time rescue operation carried out by the Ayn Rand Household Pet Rescue Squadron, he refused to go back on his word. It was at around this time, that is, around the time of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, that Cargpan placed an advertisement in the Pang Hill Bugle. Will swap dog for goat, it read, Toggenberg preferred. Seven words only, but seven words that had global repercussions. Busy anagrammatists in the Pentagon, convinced that it was a coded message, worked tirelessly to crack it. George, George, rotate a slop bin! Dwf lrf wgr pd! was one of their earlier, and baffling, efforts. With hindsight, it easy to laugh at the paranoia of the military, mistaking an innocent dog-goat exchange for something of more sinister intent. Blasphemous Ted Cargpan was not laughing, however, when, traced as the author of the advertisement, he was bundled into a jeep one morning and ferried to a compound deep below the earth's surface, where he was interrogated by interrogators for days on end. Weirdly, each of the interrogators shared their name with a Hollywood star, so Cargpan found himself questioned by Lionel Barrymore, Claude Rains, Vilma Banky, Tyrone Power, Edna Purviance, Dorothy Lamour and Burgess Meredith. Seven interrogators, one for each word of the fateful text. It was Dorothy Lamour, allocated the word "Toggenberg", who discovered on day twelve that Blasphemous Ted Cargpan was not Vietnamese, nor had any connection with the Vietcong. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-3130:05fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-28Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Balsa Wood Crow 09:33 Sappensopp Days 25:26 They've Stolen Dobson's Brain! BALSA WOOD CROW Here is an exciting craft project for young and old alike. Follow the instructions carefully and you will be the proud and happy owner of a toy crow made out of balsa wood. Imagine the flabbergasted looks of family and friends as they admire your handiwork, and resolve to become better, more productive citizens by following your example. Imagine them gnashing their teeth in despair as it becomes apparent that they are cack-handed nincompoops whereas you are the very opposite of a butterfingers. Incidentally, if you are by chance a butterfingers, do not be deterred. All you need is self-belief, sometimes in the teeth of the evidence. Just go and read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and stop snivelling. First of all, obviously, you will need some balsa wood. I'm afraid that you will probably have to pay for it. If you are a mendicant, and cannot countenance frittering your paltry beggings on something as inessential as balsa wood, you may have to resort to theft. I cannot condone even the most measly purloinment, of craft materials or indeed of anything else, so we would seem to have reached an impasse. Help may be at hand, however, from various charitable institutions or even from wealthy individuals who share a passion for balsa wood work. You could try writing letters to such as Yoko Ono, the Duke of Norfolk, or Lyn Cheney. The latter is the wife of the Vice President of the United States, not to be confused with Lon Chaney, the deceased film actor. Here is a model letter you can use to ask for assistance: Dear [insert name here]. Like you, I am an enthusiastic balsa wood craftsperson. Unlike you, I am poverty-stricken. Please send me some of your spare balsa wood so I can make a toy crow. Yours sincerely [insert your name here]. That should do the trick, and keep you away from a life of crime, the consequences of which can be disastrous. Only last week, a ne'er-do-well was apprehended while trying to steal a tube of modelling paste from Hubermann's, and he is due to be hanged imminently. He will certainly not be the envy of his friends and the possessor of a crow made out of balsa wood, so do not even think about emulating him. So you now have your balsa wood. Next you will need adhesive. There is a range of glues and gums available, from Hubermann's and elsewhere, and I think I can leave it to you to make the right choice. It really doesn't matter whether the glue is clear or cloudy or white, whether the method of delivery is via a nozzle or a squeezy pad or a spatula, whether it comes in a tube or a tub or a jar. The only thing you need to keep an eye on is whether or not it is sticky enough to fuse two pieces of balsa wood so decisively that they cannot be prised apart even by wild beasts. You may want to test the adhesiveness of your chosen adhesive before cementing the purchase. If you are in Hubermann's, you can go to the little cupboard near the fire escape to do so, and I am sure other retailers have similar facilities, although there may be a fee involved. I will assume that you have returned home safely with a suitable adhesive and that your pile of bought or donated balsa wood awaits you on your kitchen table. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Balsa Wood Crow 09:33 Sappensopp Days 25:26 They've Stolen Dobson's Brain! BALSA WOOD CROW Here is an exciting craft project for young and old alike. Follow the instructions carefully and you will be the proud and happy owner of a toy crow made out of balsa wood. Imagine the flabbergasted looks of family and friends as they admire your handiwork, and resolve to become better, more productive citizens by following your example. Imagine them gnashing their teeth in despair as it becomes apparent that they are cack-handed nincompoops whereas you are the very opposite of a butterfingers. Incidentally, if you are by chance a butterfingers, do not be deterred. All you need is self-belief, sometimes in the teeth of the evidence. Just go and read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and stop snivelling. First of all, obviously, you will need some balsa wood. I'm afraid that you will probably have to pay for it. If you are a mendicant, and cannot countenance frittering your paltry beggings on something as inessential as balsa wood, you may have to resort to theft. I cannot condone even the most measly purloinment, of craft materials or indeed of anything else, so we would seem to have reached an impasse. Help may be at hand, however, from various charitable institutions or even from wealthy individuals who share a passion for balsa wood work. You could try writing letters to such as Yoko Ono, the Duke of Norfolk, or Lyn Cheney. The latter is the wife of the Vice President of the United States, not to be confused with Lon Chaney, the deceased film actor. Here is a model letter you can use to ask for assistance: Dear [insert name here]. Like you, I am an enthusiastic balsa wood craftsperson. Unlike you, I am poverty-stricken. Please send me some of your spare balsa wood so I can make a toy crow. Yours sincerely [insert your name here]. That should do the trick, and keep you away from a life of crime, the consequences of which can be disastrous. Only last week, a ne'er-do-well was apprehended while trying to steal a tube of modelling paste from Hubermann's, and he is due to be hanged imminently. He will certainly not be the envy of his friends and the possessor of a crow made out of balsa wood, so do not even think about emulating him. So you now have your balsa wood. Next you will need adhesive. There is a range of glues and gums available, from Hubermann's and elsewhere, and I think I can leave it to you to make the right choice. It really doesn't matter whether the glue is clear or cloudy or white, whether the method of delivery is via a nozzle or a squeezy pad or a spatula, whether it comes in a tube or a tub or a jar. The only thing you need to keep an eye on is whether or not it is sticky enough to fuse two pieces of balsa wood so decisively that they cannot be prised apart even by wild beasts. You may want to test the adhesiveness of your chosen adhesive before cementing the purchase. If you are in Hubermann's, you can go to the little cupboard near the fire escape to do so, and I am sure other retailers have similar facilities, although there may be a fee involved. I will assume that you have returned home safely with a suitable adhesive and that your pile of bought or donated balsa wood awaits you on your kitchen table. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-2829:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-17Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 Total Eclipse 05:04 Claude 09:13 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon 18:44 Vaporetto or Bus? 23:40 Then the Boisterous Man 25:54 And No Birds Sing TOTAL ECLIPSE One day, after a huge breakfast, Ignapfando had a total eclipse of the heart, just like that songstress whose name escapes me. He did not look as if it was happening. Indeed to the untrained eye Ignapfando looked as if he was asleep, rather than in the throes of convulsive emotional turmoil accompanied by strident rock music. Adding to the disjuncture was the fact that Ignapfando resembled Clement Attlee, down to the finicky moustache and an inadvisable line in hats. Nevertheless, when he went to his priest for confession the following Sunday, there could be no doubt about the upheavals of his passion. "Bless me father for I have sinned," he pleaded as he knelt facing the grille behind which the priest sat clutching his rosary beads and wishing he was Montgomery Clift in I Confess. "I have had a total eclipse of the heart." "Let me stop you there, my child," murmured the priest, "I have heard enough. Say three Our Fathers, four Hail Marys, and one An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan. Now get you gone." Ignapfando left the confessional. Soon afterwards, so did the priest, his own heart not so much in total eclipse as heavy with the weight of the fat black sins he had had to listen to all morning. Terrible, terrible sins, of impiety and vainglory and greed, of abandonment and lust, of twiddly Moog synthesiser solos, rapine, pillage and wrack. He imagined each sin as a lump of lead, and he stuffed them all into a sack. It was a burlap sack, tied up with a knot, and he hoisted it onto his back. His back was broad, and his shoulders were strong, and he carried the sack through all the day long, the sack of sins as black as his heart, and at nightfall he tossed it onto a cart. He reined up his horse in the milky moon's glow, and off he rode with the sack on the cart. Ignapfando tossed and turned in his attic of sin with his total eclipse of the heart. Dawn came. Ignapfando awoke refreshed, all sin washed away, a man who now was pure. Far, far away on the road to the lime kilns, the priest with his horse and cart and sack full of sin had stopped to drink water from a stream. It was a pretty rill. As if in a dream, the songstress appeared, standing in the long grass, dressed in no longer fashionable glam finery. There was a sudden din. Was it the music of the spheres as conceived in the Mind of Brian May? The priest clapped his hands over his ears, his horse reared up in terror, and the burlap sack exploded, its incandescence vapourising the sun, the blast almost as loud as the songstress and her band, belting out her anthem. This much have I seen. This much have I heard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 Total Eclipse 05:04 Claude 09:13 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon 18:44 Vaporetto or Bus? 23:40 Then the Boisterous Man 25:54 And No Birds Sing TOTAL ECLIPSE One day, after a huge breakfast, Ignapfando had a total eclipse of the heart, just like that songstress whose name escapes me. He did not look as if it was happening. Indeed to the untrained eye Ignapfando looked as if he was asleep, rather than in the throes of convulsive emotional turmoil accompanied by strident rock music. Adding to the disjuncture was the fact that Ignapfando resembled Clement Attlee, down to the finicky moustache and an inadvisable line in hats. Nevertheless, when he went to his priest for confession the following Sunday, there could be no doubt about the upheavals of his passion. "Bless me father for I have sinned," he pleaded as he knelt facing the grille behind which the priest sat clutching his rosary beads and wishing he was Montgomery Clift in I Confess. "I have had a total eclipse of the heart." "Let me stop you there, my child," murmured the priest, "I have heard enough. Say three Our Fathers, four Hail Marys, and one An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan. Now get you gone." Ignapfando left the confessional. Soon afterwards, so did the priest, his own heart not so much in total eclipse as heavy with the weight of the fat black sins he had had to listen to all morning. Terrible, terrible sins, of impiety and vainglory and greed, of abandonment and lust, of twiddly Moog synthesiser solos, rapine, pillage and wrack. He imagined each sin as a lump of lead, and he stuffed them all into a sack. It was a burlap sack, tied up with a knot, and he hoisted it onto his back. His back was broad, and his shoulders were strong, and he carried the sack through all the day long, the sack of sins as black as his heart, and at nightfall he tossed it onto a cart. He reined up his horse in the milky moon's glow, and off he rode with the sack on the cart. Ignapfando tossed and turned in his attic of sin with his total eclipse of the heart. Dawn came. Ignapfando awoke refreshed, all sin washed away, a man who now was pure. Far, far away on the road to the lime kilns, the priest with his horse and cart and sack full of sin had stopped to drink water from a stream. It was a pretty rill. As if in a dream, the songstress appeared, standing in the long grass, dressed in no longer fashionable glam finery. There was a sudden din. Was it the music of the spheres as conceived in the Mind of Brian May? The priest clapped his hands over his ears, his horse reared up in terror, and the burlap sack exploded, its incandescence vapourising the sun, the blast almost as loud as the songstress and her band, belting out her anthem. This much have I seen. This much have I heard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-1730:01fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-10Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Saint Mungo : Read and Learn 06:22 In a Cabin, on a Ship 12:49 In a Bog 15:21 About Enchatons 21:41 Norwegian Wool 24:43 Jarvis and Cubbit SAINT MUNGO : READ AND LEARN A couple of days ago we noted, as we do, the feast day of Saint Mungo. You ought to know that Saint Mungo's mother, Tenew, was thrown from the top of Traprain Law, a large hill outside Edinburgh, by her father Loth. Because she survived the plunge, it was thought she was a witch, so she was cast adrift in a coracle. Fetching up at Saint Serf's religious establishment on Culross, she gave birth to Mungo on the beach. This happened in the sixth century. Mungo had a bell. He is a very important saint to robins. Saint Serf had a pet robin which was slaughtered by Mungo's jealous classmates, who hoped to pin the blame on him. But Mungo restored the bird to life. Later on, he swapped his pastoral stave with Saint Columba. There is a special mass for Saint Mungo, dating from the thirteenth century, which has been printed by the Bollandists. The Bollandists are an association of ecclesiastical scholars engaged in editing the Acta Sanctorum, a great hagiographical collection begun during the first years of the seventeenth century, and continued to our own day. The work was conceived by Heribert Rosweyde (1569-1629). Under the title Fasti sanctorum quorum vitae in belgicis bibliothecis manuscriptiae, he gave in a little volume, published by the Plantin press at Antwerp, an alphabetical list of the names of the saints whose acts had been either found by him or called to his attention in old manuscript collections. This list filled fifty pages; the prefatory notice in which he indicates the character and arrangement of his work takes up fourteen. Finally, the work contains an appendix of twenty-six pages containing the unpublished acts of the passion of the holy Cilician martyrs, Tharsacus, Probus, and Andronicus, but not Mungo, who was not, in any case, a holy Cilician martyr. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Saint Mungo : Read and Learn 06:22 In a Cabin, on a Ship 12:49 In a Bog 15:21 About Enchatons 21:41 Norwegian Wool 24:43 Jarvis and Cubbit SAINT MUNGO : READ AND LEARN A couple of days ago we noted, as we do, the feast day of Saint Mungo. You ought to know that Saint Mungo's mother, Tenew, was thrown from the top of Traprain Law, a large hill outside Edinburgh, by her father Loth. Because she survived the plunge, it was thought she was a witch, so she was cast adrift in a coracle. Fetching up at Saint Serf's religious establishment on Culross, she gave birth to Mungo on the beach. This happened in the sixth century. Mungo had a bell. He is a very important saint to robins. Saint Serf had a pet robin which was slaughtered by Mungo's jealous classmates, who hoped to pin the blame on him. But Mungo restored the bird to life. Later on, he swapped his pastoral stave with Saint Columba. There is a special mass for Saint Mungo, dating from the thirteenth century, which has been printed by the Bollandists. The Bollandists are an association of ecclesiastical scholars engaged in editing the Acta Sanctorum, a great hagiographical collection begun during the first years of the seventeenth century, and continued to our own day. The work was conceived by Heribert Rosweyde (1569-1629). Under the title Fasti sanctorum quorum vitae in belgicis bibliothecis manuscriptiae, he gave in a little volume, published by the Plantin press at Antwerp, an alphabetical list of the names of the saints whose acts had been either found by him or called to his attention in old manuscript collections. This list filled fifty pages; the prefatory notice in which he indicates the character and arrangement of his work takes up fourteen. Finally, the work contains an appendix of twenty-six pages containing the unpublished acts of the passion of the holy Cilician martyrs, Tharsacus, Probus, and Andronicus, but not Mungo, who was not, in any case, a holy Cilician martyr. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-1029:19fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-03Wed, 03 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 How I Plunged Into the Bottomless Viper-pit of Gaar 07:21 Misprints 12:15 Frustum, Tang, Sluice 16:14 On Gods HOW I PLUNGED INTO THE BOTTOMLESS VIPER-PIT OF GAAR For too many years to count I travelled the world visiting bottomless viper-pits. I studied them, sketched them, photographed them, and wrote up lengthy and detailed descriptions of each and every one. My patience is almost inhuman, and it needed to be, because sooner or later some well-meaning numbskull would ask, in relation to this or that bottomless viper-pit, "Tell me, Professor Bindweed, if the viper-pit is bottomless, where in heaven's name are the vipers?" And each time I would sigh, and give my interlocutor a look of saintly forebearance, and reply, "On ledges, of course, from very near the top and then at intervals of a few feet all the way down!" For in my experience this was invariably the case, from the bottomless viper-pit of O'Houlihan's Wharf to the bottomless viper-pit of San Christoboole. Then, one day, armed only with the shreds of a map and a flask of brackish water, I came upon the bottomless viper-pit of Gaar. One thing you must understand is that I had been at this work for so long that very little surprised me anymore. So please do not think I am exaggerating when I say that I was thunderstruck, bedazzled, giddy and incredulous, for I was all those things and more. The amazing thing about the bottomless viper-pit of Gaar was that it had been turned into a sort of tourist attraction. A fence had been placed around it, gigantic gaudy signs flashed on and off, and fairground music blared out of stacks of loudspeakers. To exploit one of the remotest bottomless viper-pits in the world for commercial gain seemed wrong to me, and, suddenly drained of my inhuman patience, I marched up to the person standing behind the counter of the ticket booth. I ranted and raved at him for at least five minutes, shouting my head off and flailing my arms, and do you know what? He took absolutely no notice of me. This enraged me even further, and I was about to give him a clean, decent sock on the jaw when I heard running footsteps behind me and a withered voice croaking "Wait! Wait!" I turned to see an unkempt beanpole of a fellow hastening towards me. He slowed up, wheezing, and staggered the last few steps. "Don't harm the lad, please, sir. He's a good worker, takes the cash and hands out the tickets. His name is Tommy. He's a deaf, dumb and blind kid, sure plays a mean pinball." I looked back at the urchin and, sure enough, he bore a striking resemblance to Roger Daltrey circa 1969. I harrumphed. "Would you be wanting to buy a ticket then, sir?" asked the beanpole. I think my reply, a speech based on a lecture I had given at the Bottomless Viper-Pit Club Of Helsinki a decade ago, took about an hour to deliver. I am not sure how much of what I said got through to the lanky ingrate. I do know that he sat down on a nearby tuffet as exhaustion set in, that Tommy packed up and went home, that I inserted some new rhetorical tricks into my tirade, that clouds scudded across the sun and that the sun itself set before I had finished. My listener had now fallen into a deep sleep asprawl his tuffet. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 How I Plunged Into the Bottomless Viper-pit of Gaar 07:21 Misprints 12:15 Frustum, Tang, Sluice 16:14 On Gods HOW I PLUNGED INTO THE BOTTOMLESS VIPER-PIT OF GAAR For too many years to count I travelled the world visiting bottomless viper-pits. I studied them, sketched them, photographed them, and wrote up lengthy and detailed descriptions of each and every one. My patience is almost inhuman, and it needed to be, because sooner or later some well-meaning numbskull would ask, in relation to this or that bottomless viper-pit, "Tell me, Professor Bindweed, if the viper-pit is bottomless, where in heaven's name are the vipers?" And each time I would sigh, and give my interlocutor a look of saintly forebearance, and reply, "On ledges, of course, from very near the top and then at intervals of a few feet all the way down!" For in my experience this was invariably the case, from the bottomless viper-pit of O'Houlihan's Wharf to the bottomless viper-pit of San Christoboole. Then, one day, armed only with the shreds of a map and a flask of brackish water, I came upon the bottomless viper-pit of Gaar. One thing you must understand is that I had been at this work for so long that very little surprised me anymore. So please do not think I am exaggerating when I say that I was thunderstruck, bedazzled, giddy and incredulous, for I was all those things and more. The amazing thing about the bottomless viper-pit of Gaar was that it had been turned into a sort of tourist attraction. A fence had been placed around it, gigantic gaudy signs flashed on and off, and fairground music blared out of stacks of loudspeakers. To exploit one of the remotest bottomless viper-pits in the world for commercial gain seemed wrong to me, and, suddenly drained of my inhuman patience, I marched up to the person standing behind the counter of the ticket booth. I ranted and raved at him for at least five minutes, shouting my head off and flailing my arms, and do you know what? He took absolutely no notice of me. This enraged me even further, and I was about to give him a clean, decent sock on the jaw when I heard running footsteps behind me and a withered voice croaking "Wait! Wait!" I turned to see an unkempt beanpole of a fellow hastening towards me. He slowed up, wheezing, and staggered the last few steps. "Don't harm the lad, please, sir. He's a good worker, takes the cash and hands out the tickets. His name is Tommy. He's a deaf, dumb and blind kid, sure plays a mean pinball." I looked back at the urchin and, sure enough, he bore a striking resemblance to Roger Daltrey circa 1969. I harrumphed. "Would you be wanting to buy a ticket then, sir?" asked the beanpole. I think my reply, a speech based on a lecture I had given at the Bottomless Viper-Pit Club Of Helsinki a decade ago, took about an hour to deliver. I am not sure how much of what I said got through to the lanky ingrate. I do know that he sat down on a nearby tuffet as exhaustion set in, that Tommy packed up and went home, that I inserted some new rhetorical tricks into my tirade, that clouds scudded across the sun and that the sun itself set before I had finished. My listener had now fallen into a deep sleep asprawl his tuffet. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2007-01-0329:11fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-12-20Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Pansy the Adept 04:58 In the Bleak Midwinter 15:07 Christmas Dinner 21:55 A Pedant's Righteous Nostrums PANSY THE ADEPT Here, for your edification and instruction, is a translation of the War Song of the Huitznahuac, taken from Rig Veda Americanus, Sacred Songs of the Ancient Mexicans, number eight in Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature, edited by D G Brinton (1890): 1. What ho! my work is in the hall of arms, I listen to no mortal, nor can any put me to shame, I know none such, I am the Terror, I know none other, I am where war is, my work is said to be in the hall of arms, let no one curse my children. 2. Our adornment comes from out the south, it is varied in colour as the clothing of the eagle. 3. Ho! ho! abundance of youths doubly clothed, arrayed in feathers, are my captives, I deliver them up, I deliver them up, my captives arrayed in feathers. 4. Ho! youths for the Huitznahuac, arrayed in feathers, these are my captives, I deliver them up, I deliver them up, arrayed in feathers, my captives. 5. Youths from the south, arrayed in feathers, my captives, I deliver them up, I deliver them up, arrayed in feathers, my captives. 6. The god enters, the Huitznahuac, he descends as an example, he shines forth, he shines forth, descending as an example. 7. Adorned like us he enters as a god, he descends as an example, he shines forth, he shines forth, descending as an example. An adaptation of this song, with slightly amended words, wassailed to the tune of Carry On, Wayward Son by stadium rockers Kansas, has been heard around Hooting Yard every day for the past couple of months, ever since Pansy Cradledew became an Adept of Goon Fang. Often confused with the traditional martial arts of the East, Goon Fang is--as David Bowie once said so regrettably--"a completely different kettle of poisson". I asked Pansy to explain for readers what it means to be an Adept of this ancient mystic art. She scribbled a few words on the discarded wrapper of a toffee apple, as follows: It is not without reason that Goon Fang is shrouded in mystery, for when the powers of both Goon and Fang are combined, the Adept enters the Plane of VerEecke, a state of being both terrifying and a bit frightening. If I tell you anything more, my Goon energy will be dissipated and my Fang plasma will curdle. The plasma is of course invisible, and mighty, but should it curdle the very stars in their heavens will explode, so I am keeping mum for the time being. Pansy agreed, however, to share with us this photograph of a Goon Fang workshop held in a secret location: […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-12-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Pansy the Adept 04:58 In the Bleak Midwinter 15:07 Christmas Dinner 21:55 A Pedant's Righteous Nostrums PANSY THE ADEPT Here, for your edification and instruction, is a translation of the War Song of the Huitznahuac, taken from Rig Veda Americanus, Sacred Songs of the Ancient Mexicans, number eight in Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature, edited by D G Brinton (1890): 1. What ho! my work is in the hall of arms, I listen to no mortal, nor can any put me to shame, I know none such, I am the Terror, I know none other, I am where war is, my work is said to be in the hall of arms, let no one curse my children. 2. Our adornment comes from out the south, it is varied in colour as the clothing of the eagle. 3. Ho! ho! abundance of youths doubly clothed, arrayed in feathers, are my captives, I deliver them up, I deliver them up, my captives arrayed in feathers. 4. Ho! youths for the Huitznahuac, arrayed in feathers, these are my captives, I deliver them up, I deliver them up, arrayed in feathers, my captives. 5. Youths from the south, arrayed in feathers, my captives, I deliver them up, I deliver them up, arrayed in feathers, my captives. 6. The god enters, the Huitznahuac, he descends as an example, he shines forth, he shines forth, descending as an example. 7. Adorned like us he enters as a god, he descends as an example, he shines forth, he shines forth, descending as an example. An adaptation of this song, with slightly amended words, wassailed to the tune of Carry On, Wayward Son by stadium rockers Kansas, has been heard around Hooting Yard every day for the past couple of months, ever since Pansy Cradledew became an Adept of Goon Fang. Often confused with the traditional martial arts of the East, Goon Fang is--as David Bowie once said so regrettably--"a completely different kettle of poisson". I asked Pansy to explain for readers what it means to be an Adept of this ancient mystic art. She scribbled a few words on the discarded wrapper of a toffee apple, as follows: It is not without reason that Goon Fang is shrouded in mystery, for when the powers of both Goon and Fang are combined, the Adept enters the Plane of VerEecke, a state of being both terrifying and a bit frightening. If I tell you anything more, my Goon energy will be dissipated and my Fang plasma will curdle. The plasma is of course invisible, and mighty, but should it curdle the very stars in their heavens will explode, so I am keeping mum for the time being. Pansy agreed, however, to share with us this photograph of a Goon Fang workshop held in a secret location: […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-12-2029:57fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-12-13Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Quayside Harpy 18:31 Paupers' Drool 25:19 Becoming More Like God QUAYSIDE HARPY Ordinarily, when we think of harpies we think of Aello, Ocypete, and Celaeno, or as she is sometimes known, Podarge, the three sisters of Greek myth, bird-women who kept stealing, and befouling, food from Phineus and were generally vicious, violent and cruel. Tennyson called them "These prodigies of myriad nakednesses, / And twisted shapes of lust, unspeakable, / Abominable, strangers at my hearth / Not welcome, harpies miring every dish" but that may be more a reflection of the poet's fevered mental state than of the destructive wind-spirits themselves. It would certainly be a calumny upon the character of Beatrix Cambodge, the so-called Quayside Harpy who haunted the harbour of O'Houlihan's Wharf, that benighted, sludgesome seaside town a day's horse ride away from Haemoglobin Towers, if of course you point your horse due south, and if of course your horse is vimmy and fit, and not lame nor tubercular nor otherwise incapacitated. You might think it a simple matter to keep your horse healthy, but no! Our equine pals are subject to a host of terrible, terrible diseases! Lockjaw, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Equine Colic, Foal Pneumonia, Summer Seasonal Recurrent Dermatitis, and Equine Wobbler Syndrome are among the ones to look out for, next time you're hanging around at the stables, and there is a very helpful website with the admirably informative address www.horse-diseases.com to which you can refer. Don't forget to insert a hyphen between 'horse' and 'diseases', by the way, or you will go astray. As indeed, you will go astray if you point your healthy horse in any direction other than south when riding from Haemoglobin Towers to O'Houlihan's Wharf, in order to seek out Beatrix Cambodge, the Quayside Harpy, who of course I am meant to be talking about. Allow me just to prick the back of my hand with a long pin. That will help to concentrate my mind. I usually use a ladies' antique hatpin for what some think a melodramatic practice, but believe me, a tiny amount of bloodshed is well worth it to keep awake and alert when one might otherwise nod off into snoozeworld, particularly embarrassing when babbling into a microphone in the middle of a live radio show. There. I can read and dab at the puncture in my hand with a disinfected rag at the same time, so let us move on. Beatrix Cambodge wanted to be a harpy from girlhood, after she read about the mythical bird-women in a little book entitled Harpies, And Other Things That Fluttered At The Rim Of Cooking Vessels In Ancient Greece, by Dax Blib, the notorious children's writer and historian who wrote from his cell in a big forbidding prison perched on a promontory, where he was incarcerated for life after causing a series of railway disasters. The book spurred the tiny girl's imagination, but it was not as if hers was a humdrum childhood. Both of her parents were vampires, albeit of a fairly nondescript variety. Not for them remote castles and sweeping black capes and glistening crystal decanters from which to pour the blood they drank. Mr and Mrs Cambodge were lowly sorts, reduced on occasion to squeezing the last drop of gore from a fly or bluebottle thwacked with a rolled-up periodical. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-12-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 Quayside Harpy 18:31 Paupers' Drool 25:19 Becoming More Like God QUAYSIDE HARPY Ordinarily, when we think of harpies we think of Aello, Ocypete, and Celaeno, or as she is sometimes known, Podarge, the three sisters of Greek myth, bird-women who kept stealing, and befouling, food from Phineus and were generally vicious, violent and cruel. Tennyson called them "These prodigies of myriad nakednesses, / And twisted shapes of lust, unspeakable, / Abominable, strangers at my hearth / Not welcome, harpies miring every dish" but that may be more a reflection of the poet's fevered mental state than of the destructive wind-spirits themselves. It would certainly be a calumny upon the character of Beatrix Cambodge, the so-called Quayside Harpy who haunted the harbour of O'Houlihan's Wharf, that benighted, sludgesome seaside town a day's horse ride away from Haemoglobin Towers, if of course you point your horse due south, and if of course your horse is vimmy and fit, and not lame nor tubercular nor otherwise incapacitated. You might think it a simple matter to keep your horse healthy, but no! Our equine pals are subject to a host of terrible, terrible diseases! Lockjaw, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Equine Colic, Foal Pneumonia, Summer Seasonal Recurrent Dermatitis, and Equine Wobbler Syndrome are among the ones to look out for, next time you're hanging around at the stables, and there is a very helpful website with the admirably informative address www.horse-diseases.com to which you can refer. Don't forget to insert a hyphen between 'horse' and 'diseases', by the way, or you will go astray. As indeed, you will go astray if you point your healthy horse in any direction other than south when riding from Haemoglobin Towers to O'Houlihan's Wharf, in order to seek out Beatrix Cambodge, the Quayside Harpy, who of course I am meant to be talking about. Allow me just to prick the back of my hand with a long pin. That will help to concentrate my mind. I usually use a ladies' antique hatpin for what some think a melodramatic practice, but believe me, a tiny amount of bloodshed is well worth it to keep awake and alert when one might otherwise nod off into snoozeworld, particularly embarrassing when babbling into a microphone in the middle of a live radio show. There. I can read and dab at the puncture in my hand with a disinfected rag at the same time, so let us move on. Beatrix Cambodge wanted to be a harpy from girlhood, after she read about the mythical bird-women in a little book entitled Harpies, And Other Things That Fluttered At The Rim Of Cooking Vessels In Ancient Greece, by Dax Blib, the notorious children's writer and historian who wrote from his cell in a big forbidding prison perched on a promontory, where he was incarcerated for life after causing a series of railway disasters. The book spurred the tiny girl's imagination, but it was not as if hers was a humdrum childhood. Both of her parents were vampires, albeit of a fairly nondescript variety. Not for them remote castles and sweeping black capes and glistening crystal decanters from which to pour the blood they drank. Mr and Mrs Cambodge were lowly sorts, reduced on occasion to squeezing the last drop of gore from a fly or bluebottle thwacked with a rolled-up periodical. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-12-1330:51fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-12-06Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Dobson and Longevity 24:21 About Belt, Bong & Yaw 28:08 Tales Of The Riverbank And The Marshes DOBSON AND LONGEVITY As I was preparing for yesterday's edition of Hooting Yard On The Air, I received an email from listener Jonathan Coleclough. Actually, Jonathan just forwarded an email to me, adding a note: "The subject line of the email below promised so much. But of course it was just spam. [Sigh]" The subject line of the forwarded email was "Dobson and longevity" and, indeed, what followed was twaddle. I wrote back to Jonathan as follows... "I find it disconcerting that Dobson is haunting the less salubrious corners of the world wide interweb, e'en from beyond the grave. That ... and longevity seems to betrying to tell us something... something spooky and almost Lovecraftian. I may have to investigate." Of course I have not yet had time to make a full investigation, to send agents from Haemoglobin Towers fanning out across the globe, with their ponderous briefcases, beaver fur headgear, badger badges, and piercing eyesight, but I have been able to give the matter some thought. Could it really be true that the out of print pamphleteer cheated death? That beneath the funeral shroud, that uncanny yellow festoonment cut from a bolt of cheap tarpaulin from a chandlery in the brine-soaked hellhole of O'Houlihan's Wharf, a tarp stitched with cack-handed embroidery of piddocks and toredos and winkles and periwinkles and strombuses and whelks and loligos, that wrapped in it was not the dead Dobson but an imposter or simulacrum? If so, if Dobson lived, where was he? He would be impossibly old by now, creaking and crumbling. Was he trudging along alien pathways, anonymous, in some distant land, his eyes--one beady, the other milky--fixed straight ahead, an undead dead man plodding ever forward towards he knew not what? We had all thought our dear pamphleteer a wisp, a fume borne upon the luminiferous aether, the spindly frame he once inhabited discarded, hurled enwrapped in its hideous tarpaulin from the worm-eaten jetty outside O'Houlihan's Wharf post office into the boiling sea. Dobson and longevity, indeed. But perhaps, ill tempered and hateful, he skulked in a booth somewhere, in the outskirts, feeding on biscuits and berries and birds plucked in mid-flight from the air, sucking drops of rainwater from the toggles of his duffel coat. Wherever he was, the undead Dobson remained invisible to all who had known him, yet he somehow had the ability to seed the world wide interweb with texts that none would ever read. Was he making some skewed commentary upon all those unread out of print pamphlets that poured out of him during the years before that thunder-wracked gathering in the bracken- and bindweed-choked churchyard of St Bibblydibdib's when bells clanged lamentations, and salt tears ran down the cheeks of even the most grizzled countenance? Where was Dobson then? Did he scuttle from beneath the shroud when backs were turned? Were there conspirators who replaced him with an effigy of felt and excelsior and cardboard and rags? Who could such conspirators have been? Certainly Marigold Chew cannot have been among them, for who could ever question the bleak desolation with which she sported her widow's weeds? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-12-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Dobson and Longevity 24:21 About Belt, Bong & Yaw 28:08 Tales Of The Riverbank And The Marshes DOBSON AND LONGEVITY As I was preparing for yesterday's edition of Hooting Yard On The Air, I received an email from listener Jonathan Coleclough. Actually, Jonathan just forwarded an email to me, adding a note: "The subject line of the email below promised so much. But of course it was just spam. [Sigh]" The subject line of the forwarded email was "Dobson and longevity" and, indeed, what followed was twaddle. I wrote back to Jonathan as follows... "I find it disconcerting that Dobson is haunting the less salubrious corners of the world wide interweb, e'en from beyond the grave. That ... and longevity seems to betrying to tell us something... something spooky and almost Lovecraftian. I may have to investigate." Of course I have not yet had time to make a full investigation, to send agents from Haemoglobin Towers fanning out across the globe, with their ponderous briefcases, beaver fur headgear, badger badges, and piercing eyesight, but I have been able to give the matter some thought. Could it really be true that the out of print pamphleteer cheated death? That beneath the funeral shroud, that uncanny yellow festoonment cut from a bolt of cheap tarpaulin from a chandlery in the brine-soaked hellhole of O'Houlihan's Wharf, a tarp stitched with cack-handed embroidery of piddocks and toredos and winkles and periwinkles and strombuses and whelks and loligos, that wrapped in it was not the dead Dobson but an imposter or simulacrum? If so, if Dobson lived, where was he? He would be impossibly old by now, creaking and crumbling. Was he trudging along alien pathways, anonymous, in some distant land, his eyes--one beady, the other milky--fixed straight ahead, an undead dead man plodding ever forward towards he knew not what? We had all thought our dear pamphleteer a wisp, a fume borne upon the luminiferous aether, the spindly frame he once inhabited discarded, hurled enwrapped in its hideous tarpaulin from the worm-eaten jetty outside O'Houlihan's Wharf post office into the boiling sea. Dobson and longevity, indeed. But perhaps, ill tempered and hateful, he skulked in a booth somewhere, in the outskirts, feeding on biscuits and berries and birds plucked in mid-flight from the air, sucking drops of rainwater from the toggles of his duffel coat. Wherever he was, the undead Dobson remained invisible to all who had known him, yet he somehow had the ability to seed the world wide interweb with texts that none would ever read. Was he making some skewed commentary upon all those unread out of print pamphlets that poured out of him during the years before that thunder-wracked gathering in the bracken- and bindweed-choked churchyard of St Bibblydibdib's when bells clanged lamentations, and salt tears ran down the cheeks of even the most grizzled countenance? Where was Dobson then? Did he scuttle from beneath the shroud when backs were turned? Were there conspirators who replaced him with an effigy of felt and excelsior and cardboard and rags? Who could such conspirators have been? Certainly Marigold Chew cannot have been among them, for who could ever question the bleak desolation with which she sported her widow's weeds? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-12-0629:33fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-29Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Shrivelled 09:57 On the Air 14:06 Once Upon a Time 16:23 Glue : Some Do's and Don'ts 19:20 The Potatoes of Potatovag 24:44 Since You've Been Gone 27:38 Tex-mex Jiffy Bag Sprites SHRIVELLED When I removed the shrivelled human head from the burlap sack, my first thought was that there must have been foul play, as detectives like to call it. But I am not a detective, and foul play seemed incongruous in this sun-dappled meadow splattered with buttercups, tansy and wild hollyhocks, under a gorgeous blue sky. Just before stumbling upon the sack I had been singing at the top of my voice, singing a happy song, one of my own devising, a paean of praise to bees, extolling the virtues of these splendid buzzy insects, and I was dressed like a bee, sort of, in a black and yellow hooped jumper, and black leggings, and a black cap upon my head. There was no cap or hat of any sort on the shrivelled head I took from the sack, just a few strands of filthy matted hair. I sat on the grass and took a pair of snippy butcher's scissors out of my pocket and gave the shrivelled head a much needed haircut, and I made a little pile of the clippings on a patch of bare soil, and set fire to it with a match, and it blazed oh so briefly, sparking and crackling, and then all that was left was a trace of ash. I plopped the shrivelled head back into the burlap sack, swung it over my shoulder, and headed off towards Old Farmer Frack's pig farm, singing lustily. No one knew how old Old Farmer Frack was, and no one could remember a time when he was not squelching about in the mud, at all hours of the day and night, raising his pigs. As farms go, it was a tiny farm, but Old Farmer Frack was a giant of a man, by the standards of that land, and his pigs grew to giants too, under his care. It was a mystery how he made his living, for he never took his pigs to market to sell them. When they reached a size that made them too big for the tiny farm, he drove them up into the hills and let them loose. That is why dutiful parents warn their children against going a-wandering alone in the hills, and tell terrifying tales of giant rampaging pigs which capture and carry off misbehaved infants in their big chomping jaws. I found Old Farmer Frack engulfed in a fug of culinary fumes in his kitchen. He was preparing his lunch, a concoction of jugged hare, devilled kidneys, and blancmange, and he was cursing like a sailor, for he had inadvertently jugged the kidneys and devilled the hare. One of his pigs--not yet titanic in stature--was rooting around the skirting boards, looking perhaps for beetles or other creeping things. I patted the pig on its shanks, if pigs have shanks, and placed my sack on the table. "This might interest you, Old Farmer Frack," I said, helping myself to a tumbler's worth of water from the spigot. Except for his maritime curses, learned when he was but a boy, Old Farmer Frack was a man of few words. He eyed the sack, and he eyed me, and he eyed his spigot. Then he put down his jug full of kidneys and opened the sack with unnecessary vigour, causing the shrivelled human head to roll across the table and topple to the floor. To its credit, the pig ignored it. Old Farmer Frack stared at the shrivelled head and immediately made the sign of the cross. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Shrivelled 09:57 On the Air 14:06 Once Upon a Time 16:23 Glue : Some Do's and Don'ts 19:20 The Potatoes of Potatovag 24:44 Since You've Been Gone 27:38 Tex-mex Jiffy Bag Sprites SHRIVELLED When I removed the shrivelled human head from the burlap sack, my first thought was that there must have been foul play, as detectives like to call it. But I am not a detective, and foul play seemed incongruous in this sun-dappled meadow splattered with buttercups, tansy and wild hollyhocks, under a gorgeous blue sky. Just before stumbling upon the sack I had been singing at the top of my voice, singing a happy song, one of my own devising, a paean of praise to bees, extolling the virtues of these splendid buzzy insects, and I was dressed like a bee, sort of, in a black and yellow hooped jumper, and black leggings, and a black cap upon my head. There was no cap or hat of any sort on the shrivelled head I took from the sack, just a few strands of filthy matted hair. I sat on the grass and took a pair of snippy butcher's scissors out of my pocket and gave the shrivelled head a much needed haircut, and I made a little pile of the clippings on a patch of bare soil, and set fire to it with a match, and it blazed oh so briefly, sparking and crackling, and then all that was left was a trace of ash. I plopped the shrivelled head back into the burlap sack, swung it over my shoulder, and headed off towards Old Farmer Frack's pig farm, singing lustily. No one knew how old Old Farmer Frack was, and no one could remember a time when he was not squelching about in the mud, at all hours of the day and night, raising his pigs. As farms go, it was a tiny farm, but Old Farmer Frack was a giant of a man, by the standards of that land, and his pigs grew to giants too, under his care. It was a mystery how he made his living, for he never took his pigs to market to sell them. When they reached a size that made them too big for the tiny farm, he drove them up into the hills and let them loose. That is why dutiful parents warn their children against going a-wandering alone in the hills, and tell terrifying tales of giant rampaging pigs which capture and carry off misbehaved infants in their big chomping jaws. I found Old Farmer Frack engulfed in a fug of culinary fumes in his kitchen. He was preparing his lunch, a concoction of jugged hare, devilled kidneys, and blancmange, and he was cursing like a sailor, for he had inadvertently jugged the kidneys and devilled the hare. One of his pigs--not yet titanic in stature--was rooting around the skirting boards, looking perhaps for beetles or other creeping things. I patted the pig on its shanks, if pigs have shanks, and placed my sack on the table. "This might interest you, Old Farmer Frack," I said, helping myself to a tumbler's worth of water from the spigot. Except for his maritime curses, learned when he was but a boy, Old Farmer Frack was a man of few words. He eyed the sack, and he eyed me, and he eyed his spigot. Then he put down his jug full of kidneys and opened the sack with unnecessary vigour, causing the shrivelled human head to roll across the table and topple to the floor. To its credit, the pig ignored it. Old Farmer Frack stared at the shrivelled head and immediately made the sign of the cross. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-2929:36fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-15Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 30:20 Cost O' Cows & Horses COST O' COWS & HORSES John Fernely, a successful Victorian dauber who lived in Melton Mowbray, charged ten pounds to paint a portrait of a horse, but only seven pounds for a portrait of a cow. Were these costs fair? Would you have been prepared to pay more for a cow picture than a horse painting? If not, why not? What do you think was going on in Fernely's head when he set these prices? Comments please. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 30:20 Cost O' Cows & Horses COST O' COWS & HORSES John Fernely, a successful Victorian dauber who lived in Melton Mowbray, charged ten pounds to paint a portrait of a horse, but only seven pounds for a portrait of a cow. Were these costs fair? Would you have been prepared to pay more for a cow picture than a horse painting? If not, why not? What do you think was going on in Fernely's head when he set these prices? Comments please. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-1530:21fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-08Wed, 08 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Untitled Work in Progress 12:51 A Refutation of Some of the Less Plausible Claims Made by Dennis Cargpan in His Woeful Lecture Delivered From the Balcony of the Civic Hall at Bodger's Spinney on Thursday Last During a Hailstorm to a Gathering of Ingrates and Orphans 17:05 Fictional Substance of the Week 20:18 A Series of Unfortunate Cows 25:29 Train Your Brain UNTITLED WORK IN PROGRESS Look at this man coming up the path, the waterlogged path. They call him the district line dentist. He has dentistry in his blood. He has blood on his shoes. Blood on his shoes, talc in his hair, and as he walks along the waterlogged path he is shouting and shouting and shouting. The blood on his shoes is still wet and warm from the slaughtering he has been engaged in, up in the hills, where the district line never goes. It is not the blood of humans. There are no humans in those hills, only cardboard figures, and hardboard figures, and balsa wood figures, and an enormous colony of very, very frightening birds, like savage and pitiless birds from an ancient myth, except that these birds are real, fat with feathers, and absolutely terrifying. You may have seen their like on the sides of buses in Pointy Town, for it was images of similar birds that were used in that ill-conceived advertising campaign for a brand new type of fizzy and frothing detergent pill which, it was claimed, would put more pep into your pots and pans. We know that banging pots and pans is a traditional method of scarifying birds, but it would not work with these birds, the ones that perch on the cardboard and hardboard and balsa wood figures in the hills from which the man they call the district line dentist has just descended, with blood on his shoes and a song in his heart. That is why he is shouting. He has a song in his heart but he cannot sing. His song is about the sad final days of Edgar Allan Poe, and the chorus replicates that neurasthenic writer's dying words... "Reynolds! Reynolds! Reynolds!" That is what the district line dentist is shouting as he clumps along the path in his blood-soaked shoes. He clumps with a limp, for his legs are of uneven length, only just, but decisively so. He was not born that way. When he was a cherubic bonny baby both his legs were measured, and they were found by several independent authorities to be identical in length. Something happened to him between then and now to mar his symmetry, something he has always blamed on the ferocious birds up in the hills. That is why he is such a bitter man and a bird hater. He hated birds, but he was fond of moles. He had a little toy mole made of cambric and string, a puppet you could call it, which sat on a china plate on the dresser in the parlour of the boarding house by the seaside where he lived. Seeing a mole on a plate, many people chided the district line dentist that it looked as if he wanted the mole for his dinner, albeit that it was only a cambric and string toy. The presence of a knife and fork alongside the plate served only to emphasise this misapprehension, but that was part of his plan, or I should say part of one of his many plans. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:18 Untitled Work in Progress 12:51 A Refutation of Some of the Less Plausible Claims Made by Dennis Cargpan in His Woeful Lecture Delivered From the Balcony of the Civic Hall at Bodger's Spinney on Thursday Last During a Hailstorm to a Gathering of Ingrates and Orphans 17:05 Fictional Substance of the Week 20:18 A Series of Unfortunate Cows 25:29 Train Your Brain UNTITLED WORK IN PROGRESS Look at this man coming up the path, the waterlogged path. They call him the district line dentist. He has dentistry in his blood. He has blood on his shoes. Blood on his shoes, talc in his hair, and as he walks along the waterlogged path he is shouting and shouting and shouting. The blood on his shoes is still wet and warm from the slaughtering he has been engaged in, up in the hills, where the district line never goes. It is not the blood of humans. There are no humans in those hills, only cardboard figures, and hardboard figures, and balsa wood figures, and an enormous colony of very, very frightening birds, like savage and pitiless birds from an ancient myth, except that these birds are real, fat with feathers, and absolutely terrifying. You may have seen their like on the sides of buses in Pointy Town, for it was images of similar birds that were used in that ill-conceived advertising campaign for a brand new type of fizzy and frothing detergent pill which, it was claimed, would put more pep into your pots and pans. We know that banging pots and pans is a traditional method of scarifying birds, but it would not work with these birds, the ones that perch on the cardboard and hardboard and balsa wood figures in the hills from which the man they call the district line dentist has just descended, with blood on his shoes and a song in his heart. That is why he is shouting. He has a song in his heart but he cannot sing. His song is about the sad final days of Edgar Allan Poe, and the chorus replicates that neurasthenic writer's dying words... "Reynolds! Reynolds! Reynolds!" That is what the district line dentist is shouting as he clumps along the path in his blood-soaked shoes. He clumps with a limp, for his legs are of uneven length, only just, but decisively so. He was not born that way. When he was a cherubic bonny baby both his legs were measured, and they were found by several independent authorities to be identical in length. Something happened to him between then and now to mar his symmetry, something he has always blamed on the ferocious birds up in the hills. That is why he is such a bitter man and a bird hater. He hated birds, but he was fond of moles. He had a little toy mole made of cambric and string, a puppet you could call it, which sat on a china plate on the dresser in the parlour of the boarding house by the seaside where he lived. Seeing a mole on a plate, many people chided the district line dentist that it looked as if he wanted the mole for his dinner, albeit that it was only a cambric and string toy. The presence of a knife and fork alongside the plate served only to emphasise this misapprehension, but that was part of his plan, or I should say part of one of his many plans. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-0829:33fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-01Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 Sieves and Basins 09:16 The Story of the Lame Dog, the Caged Bird, the Drowned Cat, the Gold Watch, the Whisky Boy and the Insane Boy 12:48 Me and My Homunculus 17:31 An Outing 21:41 So You Want to Become a Haruspex? 25:41 Docking Hack 28:22 Orrery Sleuth SIEVES AND BASINS I have long been promising a definitive series of articles on basins, and am well aware that readers are champing at the bit. Is there anything else, other than a bit, at which one champs? I wish Dobson had written a pamphlet listing other items suitable for champing at, but alas!, he never did, to my knowledge. Even had he done so, it would be out of print, and I would have the devil of a job tracking it down. By the way, word reaches me that a complete listing of every single Dobson pamphlet has been posted on the internet, but I have yet to track it down. Google gives about two and a half million pages for "Dobson" and nearly twenty thousand for "Dobson+pamphlet", and finding time to look at that amount of information dizzies my tiny curdled brain, I'm afraid. It would help if we knew Dobson's first name, of course, but I am not sure he had one. Aloysius Nestingbird once spent a whole winter trying to find out if Dobson's parents ever called him anything except Dobson. He was working from the questionable premise that "everyone has a first name", and as a result his health was ruined. They took him to hospital in a wheelbarrow, because he was unable to walk, and the ambulance persons were unable to get a stretcher into the hayloft where the scholar was holed up. He had taken refuge there, covered in straw, as the neurasthenic fits brought on by overwork became more pronounced. Nestingbird's mental state was always fragile, as were his shinbones. As a youth he had been an enthusiastic, if incompetent, player of hockey, ice hockey, water polo, and other games involving hefty wooden sticks capable, when wielded with sufficient force, of smashing his bones to bits, as they did, regularly. "It is a bitter irony," he wrote, "that I acquired a second first name, being known as Aloysius Splinterbones, whereas I was unable to ever find just the one name for Dobson." Of course, Splinterbones was not the only nickname that Nestingbird picked up in a career that spanned more decades than I can recall with certainty. Whereas the provenance of Splinterbones is easily explained, some of the others are mysterious, while yet others are highly mysterious. Why, for example, did a little gang of infant banditti who roamed the canal towpaths always refer to Nestingbird as Tab Hunter, when he bore no resemblance to that celebrated actor? We do not know. I have not forgotten that you are champing at the bit for an essay about basins. It would have been written by now had I not received a letter from a reader asking a deceptively simple question. Dear Mr Key, wrote someone signing himself Chris De Burhg [sic], When you write your long-awaited and no doubt superb piece about basins, will you be addressing the related issue of sieves? After all, surely a sieve is just a basin with holes in it? As soon as I read this, I rent my garments and let out a shrill cry, like the Wild Boy of Aveyron. My dejection was immense. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:34 Sieves and Basins 09:16 The Story of the Lame Dog, the Caged Bird, the Drowned Cat, the Gold Watch, the Whisky Boy and the Insane Boy 12:48 Me and My Homunculus 17:31 An Outing 21:41 So You Want to Become a Haruspex? 25:41 Docking Hack 28:22 Orrery Sleuth SIEVES AND BASINS I have long been promising a definitive series of articles on basins, and am well aware that readers are champing at the bit. Is there anything else, other than a bit, at which one champs? I wish Dobson had written a pamphlet listing other items suitable for champing at, but alas!, he never did, to my knowledge. Even had he done so, it would be out of print, and I would have the devil of a job tracking it down. By the way, word reaches me that a complete listing of every single Dobson pamphlet has been posted on the internet, but I have yet to track it down. Google gives about two and a half million pages for "Dobson" and nearly twenty thousand for "Dobson+pamphlet", and finding time to look at that amount of information dizzies my tiny curdled brain, I'm afraid. It would help if we knew Dobson's first name, of course, but I am not sure he had one. Aloysius Nestingbird once spent a whole winter trying to find out if Dobson's parents ever called him anything except Dobson. He was working from the questionable premise that "everyone has a first name", and as a result his health was ruined. They took him to hospital in a wheelbarrow, because he was unable to walk, and the ambulance persons were unable to get a stretcher into the hayloft where the scholar was holed up. He had taken refuge there, covered in straw, as the neurasthenic fits brought on by overwork became more pronounced. Nestingbird's mental state was always fragile, as were his shinbones. As a youth he had been an enthusiastic, if incompetent, player of hockey, ice hockey, water polo, and other games involving hefty wooden sticks capable, when wielded with sufficient force, of smashing his bones to bits, as they did, regularly. "It is a bitter irony," he wrote, "that I acquired a second first name, being known as Aloysius Splinterbones, whereas I was unable to ever find just the one name for Dobson." Of course, Splinterbones was not the only nickname that Nestingbird picked up in a career that spanned more decades than I can recall with certainty. Whereas the provenance of Splinterbones is easily explained, some of the others are mysterious, while yet others are highly mysterious. Why, for example, did a little gang of infant banditti who roamed the canal towpaths always refer to Nestingbird as Tab Hunter, when he bore no resemblance to that celebrated actor? We do not know. I have not forgotten that you are champing at the bit for an essay about basins. It would have been written by now had I not received a letter from a reader asking a deceptively simple question. Dear Mr Key, wrote someone signing himself Chris De Burhg [sic], When you write your long-awaited and no doubt superb piece about basins, will you be addressing the related issue of sieves? After all, surely a sieve is just a basin with holes in it? As soon as I read this, I rent my garments and let out a shrill cry, like the Wild Boy of Aveyron. My dejection was immense. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-11-0131:16fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-10-04Wed, 04 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 "How To..." With Fatima Gilliblat 03:31 Tiny Enid Extinguishes a Volcano 08:09 Those Gubernatorial Bells 12:53 In Loopy Copse 14:50 Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind? 19:36 Pageantry 23:32 The Taxonomy of Ducks, Swans and Geese Is in a State of Flux "HOW TO..." WITH FATIMA GILLIBLAT Our correspondent Fatima Gilliblat has been hospitalised following an accident involving a heron, some boot polish and a mudslide, but has nevertheless managed to send in her latest column. Get well soon, Fatima! Hello readers. This week I am going to tell you How To Eat Mashed Potatoes Next To A Lighthouse. First, parboil your potatoes, then parboil them a second time, then mash them. Add a little butter and seasoning. Spoon your mash onto a pre-heated plate, and cover thoroughly in tin foil. This will ensure your mashed potato stays piping hot while you are travelling to your nearest lighthouse. Before leaving the house, pop a fork and a napkin into your pocket. Catch a bus to the coast. There should be a rowing boat tied up to a painter on the shore. Carefully place the plate of mashed potato into the boat, then clamber in, and row with all your might to that lighthouse over there. In case you are wondering, this is what a lighthouse looks like: Tie up the boat to a post embedded in the rocks on which the lighthouse stands. Some of the rocks may be razor sharp, so be careful! Disembark from the rowing boat, not forgetting to carry your plate of mashed potatoes. Find a reasonably comfortable spot in which to crouch, and remove the tin foil. Scrunch it up into a ball and put it in the same pocket from which you should now remove the fork and napkin. Tuck the napkin under your chin, making it secure so that it does not blow away in the howling gale. Using the fork, devour every last mouthful of your mashed potatoes. If the lighthouse keeper appears, share your food, for no lighthouse keeper likes to be deprived of mashed potatoes. You would, of course, know that if you had paid attention and learned your proverbs instead of being a feckless guttersnipe. Rinse your plate and fork in the broiling sea, then row back to the mainland, having given a hearty wave to the lighthouse keeper. Don't forget to tie the rowing boat to the painter where you found it. Place your soiled napkin and balled-up tin foil in the municipal waste bin at the bus depot. If you have missed the last bus, you will either have to walk home or spend a sleepless night cowering under threadbare blankets in a haunted manse riddled with poltergeists. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-10-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 "How To..." With Fatima Gilliblat 03:31 Tiny Enid Extinguishes a Volcano 08:09 Those Gubernatorial Bells 12:53 In Loopy Copse 14:50 Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind? 19:36 Pageantry 23:32 The Taxonomy of Ducks, Swans and Geese Is in a State of Flux "HOW TO..." WITH FATIMA GILLIBLAT Our correspondent Fatima Gilliblat has been hospitalised following an accident involving a heron, some boot polish and a mudslide, but has nevertheless managed to send in her latest column. Get well soon, Fatima! Hello readers. This week I am going to tell you How To Eat Mashed Potatoes Next To A Lighthouse. First, parboil your potatoes, then parboil them a second time, then mash them. Add a little butter and seasoning. Spoon your mash onto a pre-heated plate, and cover thoroughly in tin foil. This will ensure your mashed potato stays piping hot while you are travelling to your nearest lighthouse. Before leaving the house, pop a fork and a napkin into your pocket. Catch a bus to the coast. There should be a rowing boat tied up to a painter on the shore. Carefully place the plate of mashed potato into the boat, then clamber in, and row with all your might to that lighthouse over there. In case you are wondering, this is what a lighthouse looks like: Tie up the boat to a post embedded in the rocks on which the lighthouse stands. Some of the rocks may be razor sharp, so be careful! Disembark from the rowing boat, not forgetting to carry your plate of mashed potatoes. Find a reasonably comfortable spot in which to crouch, and remove the tin foil. Scrunch it up into a ball and put it in the same pocket from which you should now remove the fork and napkin. Tuck the napkin under your chin, making it secure so that it does not blow away in the howling gale. Using the fork, devour every last mouthful of your mashed potatoes. If the lighthouse keeper appears, share your food, for no lighthouse keeper likes to be deprived of mashed potatoes. You would, of course, know that if you had paid attention and learned your proverbs instead of being a feckless guttersnipe. Rinse your plate and fork in the broiling sea, then row back to the mainland, having given a hearty wave to the lighthouse keeper. Don't forget to tie the rowing boat to the painter where you found it. Place your soiled napkin and balled-up tin foil in the municipal waste bin at the bus depot. If you have missed the last bus, you will either have to walk home or spend a sleepless night cowering under threadbare blankets in a haunted manse riddled with poltergeists. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-10-0429:18fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-09-27Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 On Blodgett's Jihad 10:46 WWDD 14:23 The Agony in the Garden 22:03 Through Clenched Teeth 25:47 Railway Forecast ON BLODGETT'S JIHAD Given the latest act of lethal stupidity by the homicidal barbarian community, it seemed timely to repost this piece, which first appeared exactly six years ago today. Bad Blodgett! One Tuesday in spring, he went a-roaming among the Perspex Caves of Lamont, part of that magnificent artificial coastline immortalised in mezzotints by the mezzotintist Rex Tint. Sheltering in one of the caves from a sudden downpour, Blodgett took his sketchbook out of his satchel and passed the time making a series of cartoon drawings of historical figures. The pictures were imaginary likenesses, of course, for Blodgett was ignorant of many things, and he had no idea what Blind Jack of Knaresborough looked like. Nor was he at all sure that his double cartoon of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray bore any resemblance to the stars of Double Indemnity. The rain showed no sign of ceasing, so Blodgett filled page after page, scribbling drawings of Marcus Aurelius, Christopher Smart, Mary Baker Eddy, Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley, and the Prophet Mohammed, among others. It was this last cartoon that caused ructions which were to have so decisive an effect on Blodgett's life. Later that day, on his way home from the Perspex Caves of Lamont, Blodgett inadvertently left his sketchbook on the bus. A week or so later, a bus company employee was checking through the lost property and took a few moments to leaf through the book. Turning the fateful page, this employee--an adherent of the Islamic faith--was by turns outraged, humiliated, mortally offended and infuriated when he saw Blodgett's cartoon. As is the way with such matters, he immediately arranged for copies to be distributed to mullahs and imams around the world, so that they too could share his outrage, humiliation, mortal offence and fury. Soon there were calls for Blodgett to be beheaded or otherwise put to death, and he went into hiding. Let's take a look at the picture, so that we can understand what all the fuss was about. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-09-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 On Blodgett's Jihad 10:46 WWDD 14:23 The Agony in the Garden 22:03 Through Clenched Teeth 25:47 Railway Forecast ON BLODGETT'S JIHAD Given the latest act of lethal stupidity by the homicidal barbarian community, it seemed timely to repost this piece, which first appeared exactly six years ago today. Bad Blodgett! One Tuesday in spring, he went a-roaming among the Perspex Caves of Lamont, part of that magnificent artificial coastline immortalised in mezzotints by the mezzotintist Rex Tint. Sheltering in one of the caves from a sudden downpour, Blodgett took his sketchbook out of his satchel and passed the time making a series of cartoon drawings of historical figures. The pictures were imaginary likenesses, of course, for Blodgett was ignorant of many things, and he had no idea what Blind Jack of Knaresborough looked like. Nor was he at all sure that his double cartoon of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray bore any resemblance to the stars of Double Indemnity. The rain showed no sign of ceasing, so Blodgett filled page after page, scribbling drawings of Marcus Aurelius, Christopher Smart, Mary Baker Eddy, Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley, and the Prophet Mohammed, among others. It was this last cartoon that caused ructions which were to have so decisive an effect on Blodgett's life. Later that day, on his way home from the Perspex Caves of Lamont, Blodgett inadvertently left his sketchbook on the bus. A week or so later, a bus company employee was checking through the lost property and took a few moments to leaf through the book. Turning the fateful page, this employee--an adherent of the Islamic faith--was by turns outraged, humiliated, mortally offended and infuriated when he saw Blodgett's cartoon. As is the way with such matters, he immediately arranged for copies to be distributed to mullahs and imams around the world, so that they too could share his outrage, humiliation, mortal offence and fury. Soon there were calls for Blodgett to be beheaded or otherwise put to death, and he went into hiding. Let's take a look at the picture, so that we can understand what all the fuss was about. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-09-2729:32fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-09-06Wed, 06 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 Rose Garden 06:12 Epoch of Snares 12:52 Tenth Anniversary (IV) 22:23 Fear Eats the Soul ROSE GARDEN I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden. Go and look at the paperwork, where it is clearly stated that I promised you a ditch rife with puddles and nettles, teeming with tiny creatures, worms, flatworms, things with hundreds of legs and vibrating antennae, things with bulbous globular eyes and things with no eyes at all. It is also made crystal clear that this ditch is designed to surround your chalet, like a moat, and that no roses will grow in it. A towering hollyhock or two, yes, but not a single rose. Why on earth do you think that I promised you a rose garden? How dare you accuse me of tampering with the papers! Are you seriously suggesting that I tippexed out whole paragraphs of the original and used a scratchy nib to insert a completely different schedule of works? You are casting aspersions upon my skills as a landscape designer of note and inferring that I am but a brute armed with a spade. I travelled the length and breadth of the country to find you specimens of the creepy crawlies you requested, rare maggots, weird blind wriggling transparent night crawlers, slithering horrors, and all the rest. There was no rainfall for weeks on end, so I created those puddles with my bare hands, carting bucket after bucket of duckpond water from the brackish duckpond over yonder beyond the municipal bandstand. It would have been a lot easier to plant a few roses in the ground, believe me. Yes, I know you did not call me a brute with a spade, those were my words, but that is what you would have said were you a man of plain speech rather than a pompous puffed up milksop given to Jesuitical circumlocution. Has it occurred to you that your very verbosity may have contributed to you getting a ditch dug around your chalet instead of a rose garden? You could have said to me "I'd like a rose garden, please," and I would have taken that on board, but oh no, such simple language is not your style. You did not say "I'd like a rose garden, please". I refute that utterly. If you had said that, why would I be clutching three files of paperwork which clearly show that you asked for a moat-like ditch rife with puddles and nettles and creeping creatures to be dug to a depth of six feet around your chalet, without any provision for a drawbridge? Do you think I just made that up off the top of my head? Why would I do that? Ditch digging is back-breaking work, especially when you only have one old rusty dented bent and battered spade to work with. Try it yourself. There is no drawbridge straddling the ditch because you clearly specified that you did not require one. Yes, that did perplex me, but I assumed you were planning to vault the ditch on those long spidery legs of yours. It is preposterous to argue now that you did not ask for a drawbridge because you would not need one to gain access to this putative rose garden you keep harping on about. Will you stop banging your fists on that portcullis? Well... I will grant you that. It is indeed unusual to find a portcullis blocking the door of a chalet where there is no accompanying drawbridge. The two usually go together, I agree. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-09-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:01 Rose Garden 06:12 Epoch of Snares 12:52 Tenth Anniversary (IV) 22:23 Fear Eats the Soul ROSE GARDEN I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden. Go and look at the paperwork, where it is clearly stated that I promised you a ditch rife with puddles and nettles, teeming with tiny creatures, worms, flatworms, things with hundreds of legs and vibrating antennae, things with bulbous globular eyes and things with no eyes at all. It is also made crystal clear that this ditch is designed to surround your chalet, like a moat, and that no roses will grow in it. A towering hollyhock or two, yes, but not a single rose. Why on earth do you think that I promised you a rose garden? How dare you accuse me of tampering with the papers! Are you seriously suggesting that I tippexed out whole paragraphs of the original and used a scratchy nib to insert a completely different schedule of works? You are casting aspersions upon my skills as a landscape designer of note and inferring that I am but a brute armed with a spade. I travelled the length and breadth of the country to find you specimens of the creepy crawlies you requested, rare maggots, weird blind wriggling transparent night crawlers, slithering horrors, and all the rest. There was no rainfall for weeks on end, so I created those puddles with my bare hands, carting bucket after bucket of duckpond water from the brackish duckpond over yonder beyond the municipal bandstand. It would have been a lot easier to plant a few roses in the ground, believe me. Yes, I know you did not call me a brute with a spade, those were my words, but that is what you would have said were you a man of plain speech rather than a pompous puffed up milksop given to Jesuitical circumlocution. Has it occurred to you that your very verbosity may have contributed to you getting a ditch dug around your chalet instead of a rose garden? You could have said to me "I'd like a rose garden, please," and I would have taken that on board, but oh no, such simple language is not your style. You did not say "I'd like a rose garden, please". I refute that utterly. If you had said that, why would I be clutching three files of paperwork which clearly show that you asked for a moat-like ditch rife with puddles and nettles and creeping creatures to be dug to a depth of six feet around your chalet, without any provision for a drawbridge? Do you think I just made that up off the top of my head? Why would I do that? Ditch digging is back-breaking work, especially when you only have one old rusty dented bent and battered spade to work with. Try it yourself. There is no drawbridge straddling the ditch because you clearly specified that you did not require one. Yes, that did perplex me, but I assumed you were planning to vault the ditch on those long spidery legs of yours. It is preposterous to argue now that you did not ask for a drawbridge because you would not need one to gain access to this putative rose garden you keep harping on about. Will you stop banging your fists on that portcullis? Well... I will grant you that. It is indeed unusual to find a portcullis blocking the door of a chalet where there is no accompanying drawbridge. The two usually go together, I agree. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-09-0630:38fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-08-30Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:01 Radio Transcript 16:27 Constance, Bereft 20:24 Picnic for Detectives 28:30 A Note on Bags RADIO TRANSCRIPT Here is a transcript of part of yesterday's Hooting Yard On The Air radio show. When the podcast becomes available, I shall add a link to it. Regular listeners to Hooting Yard On The Air will know that I have been away for a couple of weeks. I wish I could say that I have been somewhere interesting--Aztec ruins, say, or the magic mountain, or even a chalet on the shingle beach at Pointy Town--but alas, I have been a pallid sickly wretch, suffering from risings in the spleen and the ague and black bile and the bloody flux and vapours in the cranial integuments. At times like these I tend to rely on the regular infusion of Baxter's Terrible Fluid, or Dr Gillespie's Vital Nerve Powders. The latter, sprinkled on to a plum or a conference pear, can work wonders on even the puniest constitution, and indeed, here I am back behind the microphone on a Wednesday afternoon, bringing the show to you live from the gleaming skyscraper which houses the ResonanceFM studio. Yes, I struggled my way through the weird pneumatic doors, I panted for breath as I staggered on to the moving walkway, there was a ringing in my ears as I slumped on the floor of the turbo-elevator which shot me to the top of the building in just four seconds, and I needed a bowl of energising vitamin soup before I could speak... but here I am, ready to provide you with half an hour of instructive prose to inspire your moral sentiments. Excuse me for a moment while I mop my still fevered brow. There. Now, one consequence of lying abed groaning and whimpering in the throes of neurasthenic horrors is a disinclination to write. Some might choose to call this writer's block, or even idleness, but they know not whereof they speak. At least one acquaintance made this accusation in the past fortnight. As I tossed and turned in an agony of twitching fits, I became aware of a message on my metal tapping machine. Weakly, I reached for it, nearly falling from my rumpled pallet as I did so. And when I read the message, I was convulsed anew, as if ten thousand demons with ten thousand forks were pricking me ten thousand times. "For crying out loud, Key!" I read through my tears, "Stop being such a milquetoast whinger. There is nothing wrong with you that a brisk walk around the duckpond in a hailstorm won't fix. Put on your boots and seize the day!" I tossed my metal tapping machine on to the floor among the piles of rags, and sobbed. Some hours later, when I had stopped sobbing, I did indeed clamber from my sickbed, put on my boots, and I launched myself towards the duckpond. I got as far as the garden gate before collapsing in a mewling heap. I shuddered and shook, twitching and shattered, and hideous visions swam in my brain. I knew they were visions, because there are no giant golden poisonous toads in this neck of the woods, but still... […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-08-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 03:01 Radio Transcript 16:27 Constance, Bereft 20:24 Picnic for Detectives 28:30 A Note on Bags RADIO TRANSCRIPT Here is a transcript of part of yesterday's Hooting Yard On The Air radio show. When the podcast becomes available, I shall add a link to it. Regular listeners to Hooting Yard On The Air will know that I have been away for a couple of weeks. I wish I could say that I have been somewhere interesting--Aztec ruins, say, or the magic mountain, or even a chalet on the shingle beach at Pointy Town--but alas, I have been a pallid sickly wretch, suffering from risings in the spleen and the ague and black bile and the bloody flux and vapours in the cranial integuments. At times like these I tend to rely on the regular infusion of Baxter's Terrible Fluid, or Dr Gillespie's Vital Nerve Powders. The latter, sprinkled on to a plum or a conference pear, can work wonders on even the puniest constitution, and indeed, here I am back behind the microphone on a Wednesday afternoon, bringing the show to you live from the gleaming skyscraper which houses the ResonanceFM studio. Yes, I struggled my way through the weird pneumatic doors, I panted for breath as I staggered on to the moving walkway, there was a ringing in my ears as I slumped on the floor of the turbo-elevator which shot me to the top of the building in just four seconds, and I needed a bowl of energising vitamin soup before I could speak... but here I am, ready to provide you with half an hour of instructive prose to inspire your moral sentiments. Excuse me for a moment while I mop my still fevered brow. There. Now, one consequence of lying abed groaning and whimpering in the throes of neurasthenic horrors is a disinclination to write. Some might choose to call this writer's block, or even idleness, but they know not whereof they speak. At least one acquaintance made this accusation in the past fortnight. As I tossed and turned in an agony of twitching fits, I became aware of a message on my metal tapping machine. Weakly, I reached for it, nearly falling from my rumpled pallet as I did so. And when I read the message, I was convulsed anew, as if ten thousand demons with ten thousand forks were pricking me ten thousand times. "For crying out loud, Key!" I read through my tears, "Stop being such a milquetoast whinger. There is nothing wrong with you that a brisk walk around the duckpond in a hailstorm won't fix. Put on your boots and seize the day!" I tossed my metal tapping machine on to the floor among the piles of rags, and sobbed. Some hours later, when I had stopped sobbing, I did indeed clamber from my sickbed, put on my boots, and I launched myself towards the duckpond. I got as far as the garden gate before collapsing in a mewling heap. I shuddered and shook, twitching and shattered, and hideous visions swam in my brain. I knew they were visions, because there are no giant golden poisonous toads in this neck of the woods, but still... […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-08-3032:46fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-08-09Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 On The Song Of The Grunty Man 07:38 Days O' Bootpolish 17:27 A Further Note on Pigs ON THE SONG OF THE GRUNTY MAN Apparently, the Grunty Man, that figure of childhood nightmares, has a song. It begins: I grunt at the sun, I grunt at the moon, my grunts do not follow a tune. I grunt at the stars, I grunt at the sky, my grunting makes household pets die. One day in March 1967, the Grunty Man went into a recording studio. He was accompanied by a hand-picked gaggle of musicians who later became some of the biggest names in prog rock, including future members of Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and Spooky Tooth. Also present was the youthful Gordon Sumner, now known to the world as 'Stig' [sic], who was drafted in for his ability to whine in a high-pitched caterwaul. I say they were hand-picked, but in fact the Grunty Man arranged for each muso to be plucked from their mundane doldrums by the Claw of Gack. It was an experience none of them ever forgot. Eschewing the use of a producer or sound engineer, the Grunty Man barred and bolted the studio doors and whirled about in a grunting frenzy until all the musicians were suitably cowed. It would be unkind to state which of the ELP trio was so frightened that he hid in a cupboard and piddled in his loon pants until coaxed out with the promise of Garibaldi biscuits. Ten thousand years old and covered in sores, the Grunty Man had recently started to use a guide dog. This dog, Alan, was some kind of beagle, and was hopelessly inadequate for its task. It was blind itself, in one eye, suffered from muscle spasms and liver failure, and harboured a doggy desire to take part in the space programme rather than have to drag around with the Grunty Man. It spent most of the recording session curled up inside Carl Palmer's bass drum, dreaming of the stars. The Grunty Man decided to call his one-off band Ruddiman's Rudiments, after the Latin primer used by generations of schoolchildren. With such a name, he thought, he would not be dismissed merely as a grotesque grunting ogre from the earth's primeval past, but as a somewhat more sophisticated being. Having a hit record would give him even more charisma, and his long-cherished desire to win social acceptance would be fulfilled. Perhaps he wanted too much. Certainly the auspices were not good, as the band huddled in a corner of the studio quaking with terror, Alan snoozed, and no one bothered to locate the light switches. When little Sumner whimpered that they would need at least some light to work by, the Grunty Man unleashed great bellows of his sulphurous, phosphorescent breath. The studio was lit by a dim green mist which hung in the air, and the band stumbled reluctantly to their positions.They ran through the music a few times, but never to the Grunty Man's satisfaction. "Less Herman's Hermits! More Scriabin!" he shouted, and as they could not understand his grunts, he clawed the words onto the walls with his talons. But none of the band, not even the bombastically-inclined future Emerson Lake & Palmer, were familiar with the works of the Russian composer*, and they stuck to a toothsome sort of pop pap. The Grunty Man kept bellowing to maintain the phosphorescent light levels. Alan woke up briefly and savaged Carl Palmer's piddle-stained loon pants. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-08-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 On The Song Of The Grunty Man 07:38 Days O' Bootpolish 17:27 A Further Note on Pigs ON THE SONG OF THE GRUNTY MAN Apparently, the Grunty Man, that figure of childhood nightmares, has a song. It begins: I grunt at the sun, I grunt at the moon, my grunts do not follow a tune. I grunt at the stars, I grunt at the sky, my grunting makes household pets die. One day in March 1967, the Grunty Man went into a recording studio. He was accompanied by a hand-picked gaggle of musicians who later became some of the biggest names in prog rock, including future members of Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and Spooky Tooth. Also present was the youthful Gordon Sumner, now known to the world as 'Stig' [sic], who was drafted in for his ability to whine in a high-pitched caterwaul. I say they were hand-picked, but in fact the Grunty Man arranged for each muso to be plucked from their mundane doldrums by the Claw of Gack. It was an experience none of them ever forgot. Eschewing the use of a producer or sound engineer, the Grunty Man barred and bolted the studio doors and whirled about in a grunting frenzy until all the musicians were suitably cowed. It would be unkind to state which of the ELP trio was so frightened that he hid in a cupboard and piddled in his loon pants until coaxed out with the promise of Garibaldi biscuits. Ten thousand years old and covered in sores, the Grunty Man had recently started to use a guide dog. This dog, Alan, was some kind of beagle, and was hopelessly inadequate for its task. It was blind itself, in one eye, suffered from muscle spasms and liver failure, and harboured a doggy desire to take part in the space programme rather than have to drag around with the Grunty Man. It spent most of the recording session curled up inside Carl Palmer's bass drum, dreaming of the stars. The Grunty Man decided to call his one-off band Ruddiman's Rudiments, after the Latin primer used by generations of schoolchildren. With such a name, he thought, he would not be dismissed merely as a grotesque grunting ogre from the earth's primeval past, but as a somewhat more sophisticated being. Having a hit record would give him even more charisma, and his long-cherished desire to win social acceptance would be fulfilled. Perhaps he wanted too much. Certainly the auspices were not good, as the band huddled in a corner of the studio quaking with terror, Alan snoozed, and no one bothered to locate the light switches. When little Sumner whimpered that they would need at least some light to work by, the Grunty Man unleashed great bellows of his sulphurous, phosphorescent breath. The studio was lit by a dim green mist which hung in the air, and the band stumbled reluctantly to their positions.They ran through the music a few times, but never to the Grunty Man's satisfaction. "Less Herman's Hermits! More Scriabin!" he shouted, and as they could not understand his grunts, he clawed the words onto the walls with his talons. But none of the band, not even the bombastically-inclined future Emerson Lake & Palmer, were familiar with the works of the Russian composer*, and they stuck to a toothsome sort of pop pap. The Grunty Man kept bellowing to maintain the phosphorescent light levels. Alan woke up briefly and savaged Carl Palmer's piddle-stained loon pants. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-08-0929:15fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-08-02Wed, 02 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Note on Pigs 16:48 Trumpets and Banners 19:31 Mansfield 28:20 "The wind was howling like a thousand..." A NOTE ON PIGS "From the grossness of his feeding, from the large amount of aliment he consumes, his gluttonous way of eating it, from his slothful habits, laziness, and indulgence in sleep, the pig is particularly liable to disease, and especially indigestion, heartburn and affections of the skin," wrote Isaballa Beeton in her Book Of Household Management (1861), continuing to note "To counteract the consequence of a violation of the physical laws, a powerful monitor in the brain of a pig teaches him to seek for relief and medicine." When he read these words, exactly one hundred years after their publication, a firestorm convulsed Dobson's brain. He had never given much thought to pigs, but now he became obsessed with discovering the precise nature of that "powerful monitor". If he could harness its power, who knew what wonders might be achieved? "I am going to devote the rest of my life to what Mrs Beeton calls the 'powerful monitor in the brain of a pig'" he announced to Marigold Chew one rainy Wednesday morning in 1961, as they walked across the sodden fields towards the old kiosk for their breakfast crackers, "And I will harness it!" he added, shouting. "You are going to become half man, half pig?" asked Marigold Chew. "Of course not," countered the out of print pamphleteer, and went into one of his sulks. Marigold Chew assumed that this latest fad of Dobson's would fizzle out within hours or days, and was disconcerted a week later to find dozens of pigs lolling around in the back garden. Standing in their midst was Dobson, holding a large metal cone from which wires and other gubbins trailed. "Where did all these pigs come from and what's that your holding?" asked Marigold Chew. "I borrowed the pigs from Old Farmer Geistigenacht, and this is a rudimentary brain scanning machine with which I intend to locate the powerful monitor contained in the brain of each and every pig. Isn't that obvious?" So saying, Dobson approached the pig nearest him, a plump and dappled creature of I know not what breed of hog, and tried to affix one of the lengths of trailing wire to its head. Being a butterfingers, the pamphleteer-turned-pigman failed at even his umpteenth attempt, for the pig defied all attempts to be forcibly attached to the metal cone. Marigold Chew did not offer to help, instead returning to the house to make a cup of cocoa and to play a recording by the Bodger's Spinney Dance Orchestra at deafening volume to drown out the grunting and squealing noises from the garden. Dobson came in about half an hour later, fractious and dishevelled, his hair in a frenzy and his cone dented. "The monitors in the brains of these pigs," he said, "Are more powerful than Mrs Beeton realised. Even though my splendid metal cone has been dented, and its trailing wires and other gubbins frayed, rent, or in some cases detached, initial readings indicate to me that extremely interesting vibrations are being emitted, especially by the plumpest and most dappled pigs. Not just vibrations, but rays!" He took a hammer from a cupboard and began beating out the dents in the cone. "Readings?" asked Marigold Chew. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-08-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 A Note on Pigs 16:48 Trumpets and Banners 19:31 Mansfield 28:20 "The wind was howling like a thousand..." A NOTE ON PIGS "From the grossness of his feeding, from the large amount of aliment he consumes, his gluttonous way of eating it, from his slothful habits, laziness, and indulgence in sleep, the pig is particularly liable to disease, and especially indigestion, heartburn and affections of the skin," wrote Isaballa Beeton in her Book Of Household Management (1861), continuing to note "To counteract the consequence of a violation of the physical laws, a powerful monitor in the brain of a pig teaches him to seek for relief and medicine." When he read these words, exactly one hundred years after their publication, a firestorm convulsed Dobson's brain. He had never given much thought to pigs, but now he became obsessed with discovering the precise nature of that "powerful monitor". If he could harness its power, who knew what wonders might be achieved? "I am going to devote the rest of my life to what Mrs Beeton calls the 'powerful monitor in the brain of a pig'" he announced to Marigold Chew one rainy Wednesday morning in 1961, as they walked across the sodden fields towards the old kiosk for their breakfast crackers, "And I will harness it!" he added, shouting. "You are going to become half man, half pig?" asked Marigold Chew. "Of course not," countered the out of print pamphleteer, and went into one of his sulks. Marigold Chew assumed that this latest fad of Dobson's would fizzle out within hours or days, and was disconcerted a week later to find dozens of pigs lolling around in the back garden. Standing in their midst was Dobson, holding a large metal cone from which wires and other gubbins trailed. "Where did all these pigs come from and what's that your holding?" asked Marigold Chew. "I borrowed the pigs from Old Farmer Geistigenacht, and this is a rudimentary brain scanning machine with which I intend to locate the powerful monitor contained in the brain of each and every pig. Isn't that obvious?" So saying, Dobson approached the pig nearest him, a plump and dappled creature of I know not what breed of hog, and tried to affix one of the lengths of trailing wire to its head. Being a butterfingers, the pamphleteer-turned-pigman failed at even his umpteenth attempt, for the pig defied all attempts to be forcibly attached to the metal cone. Marigold Chew did not offer to help, instead returning to the house to make a cup of cocoa and to play a recording by the Bodger's Spinney Dance Orchestra at deafening volume to drown out the grunting and squealing noises from the garden. Dobson came in about half an hour later, fractious and dishevelled, his hair in a frenzy and his cone dented. "The monitors in the brains of these pigs," he said, "Are more powerful than Mrs Beeton realised. Even though my splendid metal cone has been dented, and its trailing wires and other gubbins frayed, rent, or in some cases detached, initial readings indicate to me that extremely interesting vibrations are being emitted, especially by the plumpest and most dappled pigs. Not just vibrations, but rays!" He took a hammer from a cupboard and began beating out the dents in the cone. "Readings?" asked Marigold Chew. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-08-0230:03fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-07-26Wed, 26 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 The Weird Spinney 04:11 Reader Profile 10:51 Becoming More Like God 16:57 Shem, Ham, Japheth and Minnie Crunlop 28:28 God News THE WEIRD SPINNEY There is something very weird about this spinney, but I have a toothache, so I am oblivious to the weirdness. I have come to the spinney at the suggestion of my dentist. She is a so-called "new dentist", one of a growing band of revolutionary tooth interventionists who have torn up the rule book. "Go home," she said, ushering me out of her waiting room none too gently, "Boil up a paste of sorghum, goat's milk and raspberry jam, sprinkle with hundreds and thousands, mould it into a brazil nut sized blob, and tuck it into a tiny muslin bag tied at the top with butcher's string. Go to the weird spinney and put the bag on the ground near one of the beech or sycamore trees, then go and conceal yourself behind shrubbery. In due time a squirrel will come to get the bag to add to its winter store. Oh, I forgot to tell you to have your camera with you. Grab a snapshot of the squirrel as it frisks away with your bag of paste. When you have developed the photo, make it the centrepiece of a shrine in your living room. You may add to the shrine whatever festoonments take your fancy. Four times a day, prostrate yourself before the squirrel-shrine and plead to have your toothache taken away. I have written down on this card the recommended form of words for your pleading. Now off you go." With that, she propelled me out into the street. Now here I am in the weird spinney, and a squirrel has taken away the bag of paste I prepared exactly as my "new dentist" prescribed. I have taken the photograph, but rather than sprinting home, I am somehow compelled to stay here, squatting in the shrubs. Perhaps that is why it is called 'the weird spinney', because of this overpowering sense that I am rooted to the spot, unable to leave, that somehow great peril is in store should I try to stride away across the heath to home. I take my portable metal tapping machine from my jacket pocket and try to make contact with my dentist, but all I am able to receive are eerie howling noises, like a mighty wind announcing the apocalypse. I am about to try again when I notice that I am surrounded by squirrels, hundreds upon hundreds of them, savage squirrels with sharpened claws, ghost squirrels from an unimaginable past, phantoms in a phantom spinney, and the aching in my tooth redoubles, and the sun is blotted out and the sky is black. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-07-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 The Weird Spinney 04:11 Reader Profile 10:51 Becoming More Like God 16:57 Shem, Ham, Japheth and Minnie Crunlop 28:28 God News THE WEIRD SPINNEY There is something very weird about this spinney, but I have a toothache, so I am oblivious to the weirdness. I have come to the spinney at the suggestion of my dentist. She is a so-called "new dentist", one of a growing band of revolutionary tooth interventionists who have torn up the rule book. "Go home," she said, ushering me out of her waiting room none too gently, "Boil up a paste of sorghum, goat's milk and raspberry jam, sprinkle with hundreds and thousands, mould it into a brazil nut sized blob, and tuck it into a tiny muslin bag tied at the top with butcher's string. Go to the weird spinney and put the bag on the ground near one of the beech or sycamore trees, then go and conceal yourself behind shrubbery. In due time a squirrel will come to get the bag to add to its winter store. Oh, I forgot to tell you to have your camera with you. Grab a snapshot of the squirrel as it frisks away with your bag of paste. When you have developed the photo, make it the centrepiece of a shrine in your living room. You may add to the shrine whatever festoonments take your fancy. Four times a day, prostrate yourself before the squirrel-shrine and plead to have your toothache taken away. I have written down on this card the recommended form of words for your pleading. Now off you go." With that, she propelled me out into the street. Now here I am in the weird spinney, and a squirrel has taken away the bag of paste I prepared exactly as my "new dentist" prescribed. I have taken the photograph, but rather than sprinting home, I am somehow compelled to stay here, squatting in the shrubs. Perhaps that is why it is called 'the weird spinney', because of this overpowering sense that I am rooted to the spot, unable to leave, that somehow great peril is in store should I try to stride away across the heath to home. I take my portable metal tapping machine from my jacket pocket and try to make contact with my dentist, but all I am able to receive are eerie howling noises, like a mighty wind announcing the apocalypse. I am about to try again when I notice that I am surrounded by squirrels, hundreds upon hundreds of them, savage squirrels with sharpened claws, ghost squirrels from an unimaginable past, phantoms in a phantom spinney, and the aching in my tooth redoubles, and the sun is blotted out and the sky is black. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-07-2630:22fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-07-19Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 World of Birds 08:02 Where Are They Now? No. 12 : Tad Wensleydale 13:27 On The Thing That Smelled Of Birds 20:57 Splendidly Useful Definition 22:59 Docent With a Speech Impediment WORLD OF BIRDS Dear Mr Key, writes one of the cast members of Lost, who does not wish to be identified further, I am a keen listener to your radio show on Resonance FM, and I could not help noticing that for the past two weeks you have been talking about birds, to the exclusion of virtually all other topics. A fortnight ago you regaled listeners with A Catalogue Of Fifty Three Birds, and this week you devoted your entire allotment of half an hour to the recitation of a list of over six hundred birds*. Are you a top ornithologist, or are you trying to pull the wool over our eyes by pretending knowledge where there is only a stagnant pond of ignorance? It is always nice to receive letters from the cast members of Lost, even when--as here--there seems to be an inference that I don't know what I'm talking about. And I have to say that this is not the first time my ornithological credentials have been called into question. It is an accusation I am getting used to, sadly. Many writers of an avian bent would throw in the towel if they faced this sort of needling, day in, day out, but I am a man of almost saintly forbearance, and I shrug off such pinpricks--especially, it has to be said, when they come from people who spend their time pretending to be members of a frankly unbelievable fictional rock & roll band called something like Crankshaft, and whose guitar strumming is tuneless and vapid. Perhaps I can end the malicious gossip once and for all by summarising my ornithological experience. My first paid job, after leaving school--it was still called a 'school' in those days, rather than a 'community education hub'--was as a filing clerk for the Pointy Town Seabird Rescue Service. Pointy Town is, of course, a long, long way from the sea, so during my three exciting years there only a handful of seabird rescues took place. I remember--oh, vividly, vividly!--a guillemot that became entangled in many bright crepe paper ribbons and was set free by judicious snipping with a pair of embroidery scissors. (Incidentally, speaking of guillemots, I certainly know more about them than the Guardian writer who seems unaware that they are a type of bird. Does the paper employ anyone over the age of twelve these days?) As a filing clerk I became familiar with all sorts of seabirds, not just guillemots. Terns, auks, skuas, kittiwakes and hundreds of different types of gulls came within my purview. Then, I am ashamed to say, I fell in with a low crowd and rapidly became a denizen of the underworld. Luckily, this did not put a stop to my ornithological education, as I became involved in a numbers racket. Eh?, you ask, isn't that a non sequitur? It would be, of course, except that the numbers in our numbers racket were based on bird populations. Every morning I was bidden to go out and about counting starlings, wrens, linnets, and what have you, thus arriving at that day's numbers for the racket. After a brush with some very tough coppers, I decided to go straight. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-07-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 World of Birds 08:02 Where Are They Now? No. 12 : Tad Wensleydale 13:27 On The Thing That Smelled Of Birds 20:57 Splendidly Useful Definition 22:59 Docent With a Speech Impediment WORLD OF BIRDS Dear Mr Key, writes one of the cast members of Lost, who does not wish to be identified further, I am a keen listener to your radio show on Resonance FM, and I could not help noticing that for the past two weeks you have been talking about birds, to the exclusion of virtually all other topics. A fortnight ago you regaled listeners with A Catalogue Of Fifty Three Birds, and this week you devoted your entire allotment of half an hour to the recitation of a list of over six hundred birds*. Are you a top ornithologist, or are you trying to pull the wool over our eyes by pretending knowledge where there is only a stagnant pond of ignorance? It is always nice to receive letters from the cast members of Lost, even when--as here--there seems to be an inference that I don't know what I'm talking about. And I have to say that this is not the first time my ornithological credentials have been called into question. It is an accusation I am getting used to, sadly. Many writers of an avian bent would throw in the towel if they faced this sort of needling, day in, day out, but I am a man of almost saintly forbearance, and I shrug off such pinpricks--especially, it has to be said, when they come from people who spend their time pretending to be members of a frankly unbelievable fictional rock & roll band called something like Crankshaft, and whose guitar strumming is tuneless and vapid. Perhaps I can end the malicious gossip once and for all by summarising my ornithological experience. My first paid job, after leaving school--it was still called a 'school' in those days, rather than a 'community education hub'--was as a filing clerk for the Pointy Town Seabird Rescue Service. Pointy Town is, of course, a long, long way from the sea, so during my three exciting years there only a handful of seabird rescues took place. I remember--oh, vividly, vividly!--a guillemot that became entangled in many bright crepe paper ribbons and was set free by judicious snipping with a pair of embroidery scissors. (Incidentally, speaking of guillemots, I certainly know more about them than the Guardian writer who seems unaware that they are a type of bird. Does the paper employ anyone over the age of twelve these days?) As a filing clerk I became familiar with all sorts of seabirds, not just guillemots. Terns, auks, skuas, kittiwakes and hundreds of different types of gulls came within my purview. Then, I am ashamed to say, I fell in with a low crowd and rapidly became a denizen of the underworld. Luckily, this did not put a stop to my ornithological education, as I became involved in a numbers racket. Eh?, you ask, isn't that a non sequitur? It would be, of course, except that the numbers in our numbers racket were based on bird populations. Every morning I was bidden to go out and about counting starlings, wrens, linnets, and what have you, thus arriving at that day's numbers for the racket. After a brush with some very tough coppers, I decided to go straight. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-07-1930:21fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-07-12Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-07-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-07-1229:20fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-06-14Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 On Fiends Of The Farmyard 07:41 The Big Metal Fence ON FIENDS OF THE FARMYARD [A slightly shorter version of this piece appeared in June 2006.] There is, or may have been, an old superstition that every farmyard has its own fiend. It is said that Beelzebub personally allotted each fiend to its farmyard, and ratcheted up the fiendishness of his dastardly plan by making the fiends extremely hard to identify. So, for example, neighbouring farmyards may have very, very different resident fiends--a pig here, an old rusty iron pail there, a one-legged hen in one farmyard and a big bright red tractor belching smoke in another. Exorcising a farmyard of its fiend is thus fraught with difficulty, for the average countryside exorcist, stepping through the gate of a farmyard for the first time, does not know where to begin to look. There is great disparity in the fiendishness of farmyard fiends, and some diabolists have argued that Beelzebub treated the whole matter with an uncharacteristic lack of diabolic concentration. For every farmyard that is stricken by an energetic fiend, there are many more that can pass for years, even decades, in untroubled bucolic peace. But of course it is the former that gain attention. Who can forget the ruination visited upon Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard in the 1930s, all those crop failures, diseases, fires, murders, contaminations and inexplicable barn collapses, which ceased only when a marauding night-time squirrel was captured in a net by Father Dermot Boggis and subjected to the full rigour of his holy wrath? It took six months for the exorcist to expel every last vestige of fiendishness from the squirrel, leaving the poor bushy-tailed mammal thin and shrivelled and exhausted and close to death. And yet, as it was slowly revived by the coddling of Old Ma Purgative at her verdant squirrel sanctuary, so too did the farmyard flourish anew, with majestic fields of golden wheat, gleaming new buckets replacing the old rusty pails, and happy, happy pigs. You would be forgiven for thinking that the taxonomy of farmyard fiends is precisely the kind of subject to which Dobson would have devoted a pamphlet or two. Indeed, Marigold Chew often pressed him to tackle the topic, supplying the out of print pamphleteer with a constant stream of newspaper cuttings about hideous devastations of an agricultural kidney. She was a subscriber to the once popular monthly magazine Glimpses Of Farmyard Ruin, and wrote many letters to the editor, some of which were published and one of which (October 1954) was selected as 'Letter of the Month', for which Marigold received a prize. Unfortunately, the prize was a very large hog with a brain disease which went on wild rampages through the house. Mischievously, the editor of the magazine, who had his own farmyard, regularly used the monthly prize to rid himself of his farmyard fiends. Ah yes, note the plural. What happens, you will ask, when a fiend of the farmyard is identified and destroyed, whether by slaughter, exorcism, or being given away as a prize in a raffle, tombola, or by some other means, as happened with Marigold Chew? Did Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard stay fiend-free once its sinister squirrel had its demons cast out? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-06-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 On Fiends Of The Farmyard 07:41 The Big Metal Fence ON FIENDS OF THE FARMYARD [A slightly shorter version of this piece appeared in June 2006.] There is, or may have been, an old superstition that every farmyard has its own fiend. It is said that Beelzebub personally allotted each fiend to its farmyard, and ratcheted up the fiendishness of his dastardly plan by making the fiends extremely hard to identify. So, for example, neighbouring farmyards may have very, very different resident fiends--a pig here, an old rusty iron pail there, a one-legged hen in one farmyard and a big bright red tractor belching smoke in another. Exorcising a farmyard of its fiend is thus fraught with difficulty, for the average countryside exorcist, stepping through the gate of a farmyard for the first time, does not know where to begin to look. There is great disparity in the fiendishness of farmyard fiends, and some diabolists have argued that Beelzebub treated the whole matter with an uncharacteristic lack of diabolic concentration. For every farmyard that is stricken by an energetic fiend, there are many more that can pass for years, even decades, in untroubled bucolic peace. But of course it is the former that gain attention. Who can forget the ruination visited upon Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard in the 1930s, all those crop failures, diseases, fires, murders, contaminations and inexplicable barn collapses, which ceased only when a marauding night-time squirrel was captured in a net by Father Dermot Boggis and subjected to the full rigour of his holy wrath? It took six months for the exorcist to expel every last vestige of fiendishness from the squirrel, leaving the poor bushy-tailed mammal thin and shrivelled and exhausted and close to death. And yet, as it was slowly revived by the coddling of Old Ma Purgative at her verdant squirrel sanctuary, so too did the farmyard flourish anew, with majestic fields of golden wheat, gleaming new buckets replacing the old rusty pails, and happy, happy pigs. You would be forgiven for thinking that the taxonomy of farmyard fiends is precisely the kind of subject to which Dobson would have devoted a pamphlet or two. Indeed, Marigold Chew often pressed him to tackle the topic, supplying the out of print pamphleteer with a constant stream of newspaper cuttings about hideous devastations of an agricultural kidney. She was a subscriber to the once popular monthly magazine Glimpses Of Farmyard Ruin, and wrote many letters to the editor, some of which were published and one of which (October 1954) was selected as 'Letter of the Month', for which Marigold received a prize. Unfortunately, the prize was a very large hog with a brain disease which went on wild rampages through the house. Mischievously, the editor of the magazine, who had his own farmyard, regularly used the monthly prize to rid himself of his farmyard fiends. Ah yes, note the plural. What happens, you will ask, when a fiend of the farmyard is identified and destroyed, whether by slaughter, exorcism, or being given away as a prize in a raffle, tombola, or by some other means, as happened with Marigold Chew? Did Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard stay fiend-free once its sinister squirrel had its demons cast out? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-06-1429:55fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-06-07Wed, 07 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 20:24 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon ON THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS AT HOON And while we are on the subject of Hoon ... Splattered with seagull droppings, the Woman of Twigs stood at the very edge of the cliff, her back to the sea. Barefoot, she rocked gently back and forth on her impromptu podium. The villagers were gathered about her, wretched and snivelling. Some carried pitchforks, or dainty little tin boxes full of bip. They were all ears as they waited for the Woman of Twigs to speak. She had blindfolded herself with a threadbare bandage, bound her hair into tufts with flaxen yarn and roots, and held in her hands a ribbon of bloody silk. Precisely at the moment that the thousandth wave of the day crashed against the rocks below, the Woman of Twigs ceased her rocking, cast the ribbon to the winds, and, shouting to make herself heard over the screeching gulls, began: "You asked me to save the village from Doom. I have communed with a variety of weird and tiresome shades to seek guidance. You are correct, your village is imperilled. There is only one way to rescue it from the coming agony. Three of your number must travel many miles distant, to the town of Hoon. There, they must find a churn, possibly broken, the churn of Hoon, which has had engraved upon it a rather fetching likeness of myself. Do not ask why. Having scoured Hoon for this churn, and found in Hoon this churn of Hoon, it must be brought back here, with due haste, and hurled into the boiling sea from this very spot on the cliff's edge. That task complete, your village will once again know glee. I have left unmentioned one crucial point. The three who will venture to Hoon, there to find and return the Hoon-churn, must all be called Ned. That is all." Work began at once on building the chariot. In the kitchens, the villagers boiled up huge iron pans full of mud and silt dredged from the riverbed. Trees were felled in the spinney. The smithy at his anvil beat out a goodly number of nails, spikes, and very sharp hooks. Within a week, the foul-smelling but indestructible vehicle was ready. Volunteers fanned out across the countryside to trap a suitable beast of burden. Horses, oxen, even a crippled reindeer of great elegance, were sighted and stalked, but another week elapsed without success. Eventually it was decided that the three Neds would have to travel under their own steam, pulling the chariot by themselves. Ned, Ned and Ned agreed, drooling with excitement in their eagerness to set out on so glorious a journey, one that would save the village and bring them renown. They left the village at a gallop, in the middle of the night. Without maps, they relied entirely on local lore and superstition. From infancy, each Ned had been imbued with a long catechism of saws and proverbs. Now, each had engraved upon his skull a different couplet, handed down through the generations: If you wish to go to Hoon / Spit three times and follow the moon Hoon's beyond yon crumpled hedge / Hemmed around by gorse and sedge When you see eight pebbles strewn / You're eight days and nights from Hoon They travelled without pause, two dragging the stinking chariot while the third lay bundled in it, sleeping or feeding from a polythene bag full of curdled slops. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-06-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 20:24 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon ON THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS AT HOON And while we are on the subject of Hoon ... Splattered with seagull droppings, the Woman of Twigs stood at the very edge of the cliff, her back to the sea. Barefoot, she rocked gently back and forth on her impromptu podium. The villagers were gathered about her, wretched and snivelling. Some carried pitchforks, or dainty little tin boxes full of bip. They were all ears as they waited for the Woman of Twigs to speak. She had blindfolded herself with a threadbare bandage, bound her hair into tufts with flaxen yarn and roots, and held in her hands a ribbon of bloody silk. Precisely at the moment that the thousandth wave of the day crashed against the rocks below, the Woman of Twigs ceased her rocking, cast the ribbon to the winds, and, shouting to make herself heard over the screeching gulls, began: "You asked me to save the village from Doom. I have communed with a variety of weird and tiresome shades to seek guidance. You are correct, your village is imperilled. There is only one way to rescue it from the coming agony. Three of your number must travel many miles distant, to the town of Hoon. There, they must find a churn, possibly broken, the churn of Hoon, which has had engraved upon it a rather fetching likeness of myself. Do not ask why. Having scoured Hoon for this churn, and found in Hoon this churn of Hoon, it must be brought back here, with due haste, and hurled into the boiling sea from this very spot on the cliff's edge. That task complete, your village will once again know glee. I have left unmentioned one crucial point. The three who will venture to Hoon, there to find and return the Hoon-churn, must all be called Ned. That is all." Work began at once on building the chariot. In the kitchens, the villagers boiled up huge iron pans full of mud and silt dredged from the riverbed. Trees were felled in the spinney. The smithy at his anvil beat out a goodly number of nails, spikes, and very sharp hooks. Within a week, the foul-smelling but indestructible vehicle was ready. Volunteers fanned out across the countryside to trap a suitable beast of burden. Horses, oxen, even a crippled reindeer of great elegance, were sighted and stalked, but another week elapsed without success. Eventually it was decided that the three Neds would have to travel under their own steam, pulling the chariot by themselves. Ned, Ned and Ned agreed, drooling with excitement in their eagerness to set out on so glorious a journey, one that would save the village and bring them renown. They left the village at a gallop, in the middle of the night. Without maps, they relied entirely on local lore and superstition. From infancy, each Ned had been imbued with a long catechism of saws and proverbs. Now, each had engraved upon his skull a different couplet, handed down through the generations: If you wish to go to Hoon / Spit three times and follow the moon Hoon's beyond yon crumpled hedge / Hemmed around by gorse and sedge When you see eight pebbles strewn / You're eight days and nights from Hoon They travelled without pause, two dragging the stinking chariot while the third lay bundled in it, sleeping or feeding from a polythene bag full of curdled slops. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-06-0730:09fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-31Wed, 31 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:14 Hooting Yard Music Prize 2006 09:03 A Hymn 11:38 Fort Hoity 20:57 The Might of Patience HOOTING YARD MUSIC PRIZE 2006 Last week, outside a semi-derelict tin kiosk perched on the brow of Pang Hill, our favourite octogenarian crone Mrs Gubbins announced the Hooting Yard Music Prize 2006. Here is a transcript of her speech, from which various interruptions (hacking cough, drooling, unexplained shrieks) have been excised: The rules for the Hooting Yard Music Prize this year are so simple that even the snivelling infants chained up in Pang Hill Orphanage will be able to understand them. Rule One is that the entries should be musical settings of words taken from anywhere on the Hooting Yard website. That includes all the quotations from other writers with which each bulletin begins. Rule Two is that entries should aspire to sound like the piece of music described by Marie Corelli in The Sorrows Of Satan (1895). I quote: Marie Corelli "The music swelled into passionate cadence--melodies crossed and re-crossed each other like rays of light glittering among green leaves--voices of birds and streams and tossing waterfalls chimed in with songs of love and playful merriment; anon came wilder strains of grief and angry clamour; cries of despair were heard echoing through the thunderous noise of some relentless storm, farewells everlastingly shrieked amid sobs of reluctant shuddering agony; and then, as I listened, before my eyes a black mist gathered slowly, and I thought I saw great rocks bursting asunder into flame, and drifting islands in a sea of fire--faces, wonderful, hideous, beautiful, peered at me out of a darkness denser than night, and in the midst of this there came a tune, complete in sweetness and suggestion--a piercing, sword-like tune that plunged into my very heart and rankled there--my breath failed me, my senses swam, I felt that I must move, speak, cry out, and implore that this music, this horribly insidious music should cease ere I swooned with the voluptuous poison of it--when, with a full chord of splendid harmony that rolled out upon the air like a breaking wave, the intoxicating sounds ebbed away into silence. No one spoke--our hearts were yet beating too wildly with the pulsations roused by that wondrous lyric storm. Diana Chesney was the first to break the spell. 'Well, that beats everything I've ever heard!' she murmured tremulously." Before you start to complain that one can hardly affix an exclamation mark to a murmur, tremulous or otherwise, I want you to reread those two rules. That is all you need to know. So pick up your viol or banjo or sackbut or what have you, choose some words from the Hooting Yard website, and set to work as if your life depended upon it! Insignificant details such as closing date, judging panel, prize etc will follow. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:14 Hooting Yard Music Prize 2006 09:03 A Hymn 11:38 Fort Hoity 20:57 The Might of Patience HOOTING YARD MUSIC PRIZE 2006 Last week, outside a semi-derelict tin kiosk perched on the brow of Pang Hill, our favourite octogenarian crone Mrs Gubbins announced the Hooting Yard Music Prize 2006. Here is a transcript of her speech, from which various interruptions (hacking cough, drooling, unexplained shrieks) have been excised: The rules for the Hooting Yard Music Prize this year are so simple that even the snivelling infants chained up in Pang Hill Orphanage will be able to understand them. Rule One is that the entries should be musical settings of words taken from anywhere on the Hooting Yard website. That includes all the quotations from other writers with which each bulletin begins. Rule Two is that entries should aspire to sound like the piece of music described by Marie Corelli in The Sorrows Of Satan (1895). I quote: Marie Corelli "The music swelled into passionate cadence--melodies crossed and re-crossed each other like rays of light glittering among green leaves--voices of birds and streams and tossing waterfalls chimed in with songs of love and playful merriment; anon came wilder strains of grief and angry clamour; cries of despair were heard echoing through the thunderous noise of some relentless storm, farewells everlastingly shrieked amid sobs of reluctant shuddering agony; and then, as I listened, before my eyes a black mist gathered slowly, and I thought I saw great rocks bursting asunder into flame, and drifting islands in a sea of fire--faces, wonderful, hideous, beautiful, peered at me out of a darkness denser than night, and in the midst of this there came a tune, complete in sweetness and suggestion--a piercing, sword-like tune that plunged into my very heart and rankled there--my breath failed me, my senses swam, I felt that I must move, speak, cry out, and implore that this music, this horribly insidious music should cease ere I swooned with the voluptuous poison of it--when, with a full chord of splendid harmony that rolled out upon the air like a breaking wave, the intoxicating sounds ebbed away into silence. No one spoke--our hearts were yet beating too wildly with the pulsations roused by that wondrous lyric storm. Diana Chesney was the first to break the spell. 'Well, that beats everything I've ever heard!' she murmured tremulously." Before you start to complain that one can hardly affix an exclamation mark to a murmur, tremulous or otherwise, I want you to reread those two rules. That is all you need to know. So pick up your viol or banjo or sackbut or what have you, choose some words from the Hooting Yard website, and set to work as if your life depended upon it! Insignificant details such as closing date, judging panel, prize etc will follow. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-3124:05fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-24Wed, 24 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 12:44 The Hapless Bivalve! THE HAPLESS BIVALVE! Here is another example of the Incoherent Twaddle Generation Method. This also dates from 1987, and is again from a decisively out of print Malice Aforethought Press pamphlet, Forty Visits To The Worm Farm, a story which also appears in Twitching And Shattered (1989) and in This Fish Is Loaded : The Book Of Surreal And Bizarre Humour, edited by Richard Glyn Jones (Xanadu, 1991). The glands of the investing tissue secrete lime and deposit it always submerged. These arrest the spat at the moment of emission. They detach with a hook the piles covered with fascines and branches, if we can use the term, buried in the sands or mud, their polypiferous portion sallying into the water. The raches, roughened and furrowed down the middle with pointed spiculae, or tubercular ramifications prolonged in a straight canal, the columellar edge sometimes callous--this is the critical moment for the hapless bivalve! He seizes it with a three-pronged fork, aiding also the functions of the stomach, filled with villainous green matter, which is conical, swollen in the middle, diminished, and tapers off, producing new beings, covered with vibratile cilia, furnished with two fins, limited only by the length of the stem, but in a moment beginning to dissolve its corporation, a soft reticulated crust, or bark, full of little cavities. The hinder ones loosen their hold, with four or six rows of ambulacral pieces designated by the names compass, plumula, bristling envelope, levelled bayonets, smothered. Last come the terrible and multiplied engines of calcareous immovable thread-like cirrhi with transverse bands, many of which crumble. Sometimes they are dredged. ADDENDUM : I note that Amazon has copies of This Fish Is Loaded for sale from $0.47. Alongside Mr Key, the book includes work by Woody Allen, Mervyn Peake, Vivian Stanshall, Alfred Jarry, Bob Dylan, and the great, great Leonora Carrington (and many more, not least Yoko Ono's late husband). Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 12:44 The Hapless Bivalve! THE HAPLESS BIVALVE! Here is another example of the Incoherent Twaddle Generation Method. This also dates from 1987, and is again from a decisively out of print Malice Aforethought Press pamphlet, Forty Visits To The Worm Farm, a story which also appears in Twitching And Shattered (1989) and in This Fish Is Loaded : The Book Of Surreal And Bizarre Humour, edited by Richard Glyn Jones (Xanadu, 1991). The glands of the investing tissue secrete lime and deposit it always submerged. These arrest the spat at the moment of emission. They detach with a hook the piles covered with fascines and branches, if we can use the term, buried in the sands or mud, their polypiferous portion sallying into the water. The raches, roughened and furrowed down the middle with pointed spiculae, or tubercular ramifications prolonged in a straight canal, the columellar edge sometimes callous--this is the critical moment for the hapless bivalve! He seizes it with a three-pronged fork, aiding also the functions of the stomach, filled with villainous green matter, which is conical, swollen in the middle, diminished, and tapers off, producing new beings, covered with vibratile cilia, furnished with two fins, limited only by the length of the stem, but in a moment beginning to dissolve its corporation, a soft reticulated crust, or bark, full of little cavities. The hinder ones loosen their hold, with four or six rows of ambulacral pieces designated by the names compass, plumula, bristling envelope, levelled bayonets, smothered. Last come the terrible and multiplied engines of calcareous immovable thread-like cirrhi with transverse bands, many of which crumble. Sometimes they are dredged. ADDENDUM : I note that Amazon has copies of This Fish Is Loaded for sale from $0.47. Alongside Mr Key, the book includes work by Woody Allen, Mervyn Peake, Vivian Stanshall, Alfred Jarry, Bob Dylan, and the great, great Leonora Carrington (and many more, not least Yoko Ono's late husband). Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-2430:04fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-10Wed, 10 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:28 The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet 26:35 Answers to Readers' Questions THE IMMENSE DUCKPOND PAMPHLET A Hooting Yard serial story by Frank Key Like Hitler, he took seven sugars in his tea. This had caused some embarrassment on his first day at the House. They had to send an urchin scurrying down to the cellars to fetch up a fresh tub of sugar. The urchin returned empty-handed, explaining that the sugar larder was heavily padlocked. Blodgett was furious. His face growing purple, he apologised to Aminadab, rummaged in the cupboard for a stout pick-axe and--commanding the urchin to dog his every footstep--he thundered down the stairs to the cellar. Shortly afterwards, Aminadab heard the noise of a wooden door being smashed to pieces with a metal pick-axe. By the time he was able to drop seven lumps of sugar into his cup, the tea was stewed and cold. Blodgett affected not to notice, and busied himself with a new trap for flying insect beings. Blodgett had been at the House since infancy. He was dyspeptic and cruel. Like Madame Rousseau, he had never learned to tell the time and rarely knew what day of the week it was. This was surprising for a man in his position, charged as he was with running the lower floors of the House. His bailiwick included the frightening rooms on the first floor, the whole of the ground floor, the cellars and underground passages (except for the secret ones), and various ill-defined sections of the grounds, possibly including the boneyards, the engine room, and the pointless hut. The arrival of Aminadab dismayed him. He had not been told what on earth to do with this lopsided person, which meant he would have to seek instructions from Doctor Cack or one of his cronies. He could barely bring himself to speak to them, with their supercilious manners, spotless frock-coats, and knot-tying expertise. Blodgett's blood boiled. Without bothering to tell Aminadab where he was going, he shoved the trap for flying insect beings back in the kitchen drawer, slammed the door shut behind him, and headed off for Doctor Cack's headquarters. Oh dear! Hidden behind an iron chest in the pointless hut, bundled up in sacking, there is a dead body. The cause of death is not immediately apparent. In a few weeks time, an inquest will be told that the oesophagus contains three or four small items of ironmongery. The sacking is mostly burlap. Doctor Cack was the foremost potato scientist of his day. He rented a disused Leaking Building in the grounds of the House, together with a number of surrounding huts, in which he and his team of top flight tuberologists lived and worked. Most of their unbearably exciting scientific equipment was located in the Leaking Building, through the door of which Blodgett now crashed, breathing heavily through his purple nose. "Cack!" he shouted, pronouncing the good Doctor's name as if he were a chocolate swiss roll, or a Battenburg. Towards the back of the Leaking Building stood an enormous table on which were stacked flasks, test tubes, scientific hammers, awls, retorts, dye buckets, cruet sets, trunnions, shards of propylite, alembics, jars, lenses, and a burnt quintain. From behind this agglomeration of rubbish, Ruhugu's head appeared, then the rest of his body. He peered at Blodgett with distaste. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 04:28 The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet 26:35 Answers to Readers' Questions THE IMMENSE DUCKPOND PAMPHLET A Hooting Yard serial story by Frank Key Like Hitler, he took seven sugars in his tea. This had caused some embarrassment on his first day at the House. They had to send an urchin scurrying down to the cellars to fetch up a fresh tub of sugar. The urchin returned empty-handed, explaining that the sugar larder was heavily padlocked. Blodgett was furious. His face growing purple, he apologised to Aminadab, rummaged in the cupboard for a stout pick-axe and--commanding the urchin to dog his every footstep--he thundered down the stairs to the cellar. Shortly afterwards, Aminadab heard the noise of a wooden door being smashed to pieces with a metal pick-axe. By the time he was able to drop seven lumps of sugar into his cup, the tea was stewed and cold. Blodgett affected not to notice, and busied himself with a new trap for flying insect beings. Blodgett had been at the House since infancy. He was dyspeptic and cruel. Like Madame Rousseau, he had never learned to tell the time and rarely knew what day of the week it was. This was surprising for a man in his position, charged as he was with running the lower floors of the House. His bailiwick included the frightening rooms on the first floor, the whole of the ground floor, the cellars and underground passages (except for the secret ones), and various ill-defined sections of the grounds, possibly including the boneyards, the engine room, and the pointless hut. The arrival of Aminadab dismayed him. He had not been told what on earth to do with this lopsided person, which meant he would have to seek instructions from Doctor Cack or one of his cronies. He could barely bring himself to speak to them, with their supercilious manners, spotless frock-coats, and knot-tying expertise. Blodgett's blood boiled. Without bothering to tell Aminadab where he was going, he shoved the trap for flying insect beings back in the kitchen drawer, slammed the door shut behind him, and headed off for Doctor Cack's headquarters. Oh dear! Hidden behind an iron chest in the pointless hut, bundled up in sacking, there is a dead body. The cause of death is not immediately apparent. In a few weeks time, an inquest will be told that the oesophagus contains three or four small items of ironmongery. The sacking is mostly burlap. Doctor Cack was the foremost potato scientist of his day. He rented a disused Leaking Building in the grounds of the House, together with a number of surrounding huts, in which he and his team of top flight tuberologists lived and worked. Most of their unbearably exciting scientific equipment was located in the Leaking Building, through the door of which Blodgett now crashed, breathing heavily through his purple nose. "Cack!" he shouted, pronouncing the good Doctor's name as if he were a chocolate swiss roll, or a Battenburg. Towards the back of the Leaking Building stood an enormous table on which were stacked flasks, test tubes, scientific hammers, awls, retorts, dye buckets, cruet sets, trunnions, shards of propylite, alembics, jars, lenses, and a burnt quintain. From behind this agglomeration of rubbish, Ruhugu's head appeared, then the rest of his body. He peered at Blodgett with distaste. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-1029:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-03Wed, 03 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet THE IMMENSE DUCKPOND PAMPHLET A Hooting Yard serial story by Frank Key Like Hitler, he took seven sugars in his tea. This had caused some embarrassment on his first day at the House. They had to send an urchin scurrying down to the cellars to fetch up a fresh tub of sugar. The urchin returned empty-handed, explaining that the sugar larder was heavily padlocked. Blodgett was furious. His face growing purple, he apologised to Aminadab, rummaged in the cupboard for a stout pick-axe and--commanding the urchin to dog his every footstep--he thundered down the stairs to the cellar. Shortly afterwards, Aminadab heard the noise of a wooden door being smashed to pieces with a metal pick-axe. By the time he was able to drop seven lumps of sugar into his cup, the tea was stewed and cold. Blodgett affected not to notice, and busied himself with a new trap for flying insect beings. Blodgett had been at the House since infancy. He was dyspeptic and cruel. Like Madame Rousseau, he had never learned to tell the time and rarely knew what day of the week it was. This was surprising for a man in his position, charged as he was with running the lower floors of the House. His bailiwick included the frightening rooms on the first floor, the whole of the ground floor, the cellars and underground passages (except for the secret ones), and various ill-defined sections of the grounds, possibly including the boneyards, the engine room, and the pointless hut. The arrival of Aminadab dismayed him. He had not been told what on earth to do with this lopsided person, which meant he would have to seek instructions from Doctor Cack or one of his cronies. He could barely bring himself to speak to them, with their supercilious manners, spotless frock-coats, and knot-tying expertise. Blodgett's blood boiled. Without bothering to tell Aminadab where he was going, he shoved the trap for flying insect beings back in the kitchen drawer, slammed the door shut behind him, and headed off for Doctor Cack's headquarters. Oh dear! Hidden behind an iron chest in the pointless hut, bundled up in sacking, there is a dead body. The cause of death is not immediately apparent. In a few weeks time, an inquest will be told that the oesophagus contains three or four small items of ironmongery. The sacking is mostly burlap. Doctor Cack was the foremost potato scientist of his day. He rented a disused Leaking Building in the grounds of the House, together with a number of surrounding huts, in which he and his team of top flight tuberologists lived and worked. Most of their unbearably exciting scientific equipment was located in the Leaking Building, through the door of which Blodgett now crashed, breathing heavily through his purple nose. "Cack!" he shouted, pronouncing the good Doctor's name as if he were a chocolate swiss roll, or a Battenburg. Towards the back of the Leaking Building stood an enormous table on which were stacked flasks, test tubes, scientific hammers, awls, retorts, dye buckets, cruet sets, trunnions, shards of propylite, alembics, jars, lenses, and a burnt quintain. From behind this agglomeration of rubbish, Ruhugu's head appeared, then the rest of his body. He peered at Blodgett with distaste. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet THE IMMENSE DUCKPOND PAMPHLET A Hooting Yard serial story by Frank Key Like Hitler, he took seven sugars in his tea. This had caused some embarrassment on his first day at the House. They had to send an urchin scurrying down to the cellars to fetch up a fresh tub of sugar. The urchin returned empty-handed, explaining that the sugar larder was heavily padlocked. Blodgett was furious. His face growing purple, he apologised to Aminadab, rummaged in the cupboard for a stout pick-axe and--commanding the urchin to dog his every footstep--he thundered down the stairs to the cellar. Shortly afterwards, Aminadab heard the noise of a wooden door being smashed to pieces with a metal pick-axe. By the time he was able to drop seven lumps of sugar into his cup, the tea was stewed and cold. Blodgett affected not to notice, and busied himself with a new trap for flying insect beings. Blodgett had been at the House since infancy. He was dyspeptic and cruel. Like Madame Rousseau, he had never learned to tell the time and rarely knew what day of the week it was. This was surprising for a man in his position, charged as he was with running the lower floors of the House. His bailiwick included the frightening rooms on the first floor, the whole of the ground floor, the cellars and underground passages (except for the secret ones), and various ill-defined sections of the grounds, possibly including the boneyards, the engine room, and the pointless hut. The arrival of Aminadab dismayed him. He had not been told what on earth to do with this lopsided person, which meant he would have to seek instructions from Doctor Cack or one of his cronies. He could barely bring himself to speak to them, with their supercilious manners, spotless frock-coats, and knot-tying expertise. Blodgett's blood boiled. Without bothering to tell Aminadab where he was going, he shoved the trap for flying insect beings back in the kitchen drawer, slammed the door shut behind him, and headed off for Doctor Cack's headquarters. Oh dear! Hidden behind an iron chest in the pointless hut, bundled up in sacking, there is a dead body. The cause of death is not immediately apparent. In a few weeks time, an inquest will be told that the oesophagus contains three or four small items of ironmongery. The sacking is mostly burlap. Doctor Cack was the foremost potato scientist of his day. He rented a disused Leaking Building in the grounds of the House, together with a number of surrounding huts, in which he and his team of top flight tuberologists lived and worked. Most of their unbearably exciting scientific equipment was located in the Leaking Building, through the door of which Blodgett now crashed, breathing heavily through his purple nose. "Cack!" he shouted, pronouncing the good Doctor's name as if he were a chocolate swiss roll, or a Battenburg. Towards the back of the Leaking Building stood an enormous table on which were stacked flasks, test tubes, scientific hammers, awls, retorts, dye buckets, cruet sets, trunnions, shards of propylite, alembics, jars, lenses, and a burnt quintain. From behind this agglomeration of rubbish, Ruhugu's head appeared, then the rest of his body. He peered at Blodgett with distaste. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-05-0330:04fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-04-26Wed, 26 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Grots 06:26 Chaps Oozing Charm 09:26 Revelations Regarding Old Halob 12:13 Dark Star Crashes 14:41 Medical Notes on a Mezzotintist 20:49 Pindar Widgery, the Pint-sized Provocateur 27:07 "It is a little curious, considering the..." 28:47 "Were it not for the lower order..." GROTS Keats had his elfin grot, and we learned last week that Owen Barfield had a foldured grot (see 27th August). There are a number of other grots deserving of attention, poetic and otherwise. Gervase Beerpint's "fuming, hapless grot" springs to mind--at least, to my mind--as an example of a so-called poetic grot that we really could have done without. It is the setting for one of his earliest poems, included in Crouton As Exemplar, the collection of Beerpint's teenage drivel which is mercifully out of print. A more appealing poetic grot is Scrimgeour's "ten-inch-tall toy plastic grot", the abiding image from his astonishing narrative tour de force How I Lost My Bus Pass And Found It Again Last Tuesday, Not Without Certain Hazards. For me this is one of the greatest poems of the late 20th century, and its annual recitation at the Hooting Yard Festival Of Texts Related To Bus Travel never fails to warm the cockles of my heart. As for non-poetic grots, who can fail to be excited by Dobson's grot? Aloysius Nestingbird tells us: Dobson went on one of his "walks", taking with him a copy of Cliff Castles And Cave Dwellings Of Europe by Sabine Baring-Gould, which was at the time his favourite reading. Upon his return, his brain was awash with it. "I must leave this building and find a grot in which to live out the rest of my days," he shouted, and began poring over geological maps of the coast. All attempts to divert him from this mania were fruitless. He thought he had identified a suitable grot, one which was flooded by the violent incoming tide for only a few hours each day, and began moving his belongings thither, employing a local peasant who had a pony and trap. Only after four trips did this man demand payment from the impoverished pamphleteer, who thrust a spare bottle of vinaigrette dressing into his paws and begged him to continue. The peasant was understandably enraged, and threw the bottle back at Dobson. Dobson's next ploy was to try to convince the railway authorities to build a new terminus within yards of his grot. They laughed in his face. He made one attempt to make the journey by bicycle, with a few kitchen utensils stuffed into his panniers, but his knees gave out before he was halfway there, and he abandoned the idea as hopeless. What to do? Everything beginning with the letters A to J that Dobson owned was stacked in cardboard cartons in the faraway grot, subject to the relentless destructive power of the crashing waves which, twice a day, engulfed what he still thought of as his future home, for the peasant had ignored the instructions to suspend the cartons by chains from several handy stalactites. Dobson calculated how much cash he would need to take cab rides from his building to his grot, and was appalled. Indefatigable as ever, he decided to publish a new series of tracts on popular subjects, deluding himself that he would make enough sales to cover the cost of regular taxi fares. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-04-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:22 Grots 06:26 Chaps Oozing Charm 09:26 Revelations Regarding Old Halob 12:13 Dark Star Crashes 14:41 Medical Notes on a Mezzotintist 20:49 Pindar Widgery, the Pint-sized Provocateur 27:07 "It is a little curious, considering the..." 28:47 "Were it not for the lower order..." GROTS Keats had his elfin grot, and we learned last week that Owen Barfield had a foldured grot (see 27th August). There are a number of other grots deserving of attention, poetic and otherwise. Gervase Beerpint's "fuming, hapless grot" springs to mind--at least, to my mind--as an example of a so-called poetic grot that we really could have done without. It is the setting for one of his earliest poems, included in Crouton As Exemplar, the collection of Beerpint's teenage drivel which is mercifully out of print. A more appealing poetic grot is Scrimgeour's "ten-inch-tall toy plastic grot", the abiding image from his astonishing narrative tour de force How I Lost My Bus Pass And Found It Again Last Tuesday, Not Without Certain Hazards. For me this is one of the greatest poems of the late 20th century, and its annual recitation at the Hooting Yard Festival Of Texts Related To Bus Travel never fails to warm the cockles of my heart. As for non-poetic grots, who can fail to be excited by Dobson's grot? Aloysius Nestingbird tells us: Dobson went on one of his "walks", taking with him a copy of Cliff Castles And Cave Dwellings Of Europe by Sabine Baring-Gould, which was at the time his favourite reading. Upon his return, his brain was awash with it. "I must leave this building and find a grot in which to live out the rest of my days," he shouted, and began poring over geological maps of the coast. All attempts to divert him from this mania were fruitless. He thought he had identified a suitable grot, one which was flooded by the violent incoming tide for only a few hours each day, and began moving his belongings thither, employing a local peasant who had a pony and trap. Only after four trips did this man demand payment from the impoverished pamphleteer, who thrust a spare bottle of vinaigrette dressing into his paws and begged him to continue. The peasant was understandably enraged, and threw the bottle back at Dobson. Dobson's next ploy was to try to convince the railway authorities to build a new terminus within yards of his grot. They laughed in his face. He made one attempt to make the journey by bicycle, with a few kitchen utensils stuffed into his panniers, but his knees gave out before he was halfway there, and he abandoned the idea as hopeless. What to do? Everything beginning with the letters A to J that Dobson owned was stacked in cardboard cartons in the faraway grot, subject to the relentless destructive power of the crashing waves which, twice a day, engulfed what he still thought of as his future home, for the peasant had ignored the instructions to suspend the cartons by chains from several handy stalactites. Dobson calculated how much cash he would need to take cab rides from his building to his grot, and was appalled. Indefatigable as ever, he decided to publish a new series of tracts on popular subjects, deluding himself that he would make enough sales to cover the cost of regular taxi fares. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-04-2630:53fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-03-22Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:02 Squirrels : Emissaries From the Beyond? 05:39 On The Crooked Timber Of Humanity 19:16 Potted Autobiography 22:22 Was Dobson a Visionary? 25:59 Shipshape SQUIRRELS : EMISSARIES FROM THE BEYOND? In the latest issue of the superb Chat! magazine, Ruth The Truth (the "psychic agony aunt") has this advice for Janice from Pembroke: "the squirrel in your garden has a message"*. Skeptics, nay-sayers and other blighters will retort that the squirrel's message is likely to be "Give me some nuts" or "Give me some more nuts", but Ruth The Truth--and the squirrel-fanciers among us at Hooting Yard--know better. I can speak only from my own experience, but it has long been apparent to me that squirrels are in fact emissaries from The Beyond. All that hectic twitching and scampering is evidence not merely of a high metabolic rate but of the fact that their tiny squirrel brains are jam-packed with pulsating psychic energy. I do not deny that they want nuts, either to nibble right away or to put in storage for a long hard winter, but that is not the whole story. Consider those bushy tails. Have you ever wondered why they stick upwards, rather than thumping along the ground, like the tails of so many other animals? It is because each hair of a squirrel's tail ends in a minuscule receptor, designed by nature to pick up and capture some of the billions of psychic messages swirling around the ether. These spooky thought-phenomena are invisible, fugitive and volatile, unnoticed by us humans with our puny minds, but they are the very atmosphere of the squirrels' world. Those quivering psychic nodes in their tails strain to pick up signals from those who have passed over to the Other Side, be they other squirrels, stoats, weasels, birds, insects, or indeed humans. Ruth The Truth, in Chat!, does not divulge what message the squirrel in her garden has for Janice from Pembroke, and it would be no doubt foolish to try to guess. But I am foolish sometimes. Perhaps Janice is a widow, and her departed husband has sent reassuring news from Heaven, or, more worryingly, a stricken plea from the Pit of Doom and Desolation. Maybe Janice had a pet swan which succumbed to bird flu** and it has sent, via the squirrel in the garden, news from that place to which perished swans are consigned when they leave the mortal world. It could even be that Janice from Pembroke trod accidentally upon a dozing bee on her garden path last summer, and the bee is telling her she is forgiven. It is unlikely that Janice from Pembroke is a keen reader of both Chat! and Hooting Yard, but if she is, I would like to invite her to share with us the message she has received from the squirrel in her garden. It may be, indeed, that she is unable to translate the message from the argot of squirrels in which it is couched, and here we can help, for Mrs Gubbins is a skilled interpreter of these things. *NOTE : I am indebted to Charlie Brooker of The Guardian for alerting me to this important matter, in a piece entitled Supposing ... The mainstream's as mad as it seems to be. **NOTE : Janice from Pembroke could have avoided her swan's bird flu death had she paid careful attention to Saving Your Swan (see 20th February 2006). […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-03-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:02 Squirrels : Emissaries From the Beyond? 05:39 On The Crooked Timber Of Humanity 19:16 Potted Autobiography 22:22 Was Dobson a Visionary? 25:59 Shipshape SQUIRRELS : EMISSARIES FROM THE BEYOND? In the latest issue of the superb Chat! magazine, Ruth The Truth (the "psychic agony aunt") has this advice for Janice from Pembroke: "the squirrel in your garden has a message"*. Skeptics, nay-sayers and other blighters will retort that the squirrel's message is likely to be "Give me some nuts" or "Give me some more nuts", but Ruth The Truth--and the squirrel-fanciers among us at Hooting Yard--know better. I can speak only from my own experience, but it has long been apparent to me that squirrels are in fact emissaries from The Beyond. All that hectic twitching and scampering is evidence not merely of a high metabolic rate but of the fact that their tiny squirrel brains are jam-packed with pulsating psychic energy. I do not deny that they want nuts, either to nibble right away or to put in storage for a long hard winter, but that is not the whole story. Consider those bushy tails. Have you ever wondered why they stick upwards, rather than thumping along the ground, like the tails of so many other animals? It is because each hair of a squirrel's tail ends in a minuscule receptor, designed by nature to pick up and capture some of the billions of psychic messages swirling around the ether. These spooky thought-phenomena are invisible, fugitive and volatile, unnoticed by us humans with our puny minds, but they are the very atmosphere of the squirrels' world. Those quivering psychic nodes in their tails strain to pick up signals from those who have passed over to the Other Side, be they other squirrels, stoats, weasels, birds, insects, or indeed humans. Ruth The Truth, in Chat!, does not divulge what message the squirrel in her garden has for Janice from Pembroke, and it would be no doubt foolish to try to guess. But I am foolish sometimes. Perhaps Janice is a widow, and her departed husband has sent reassuring news from Heaven, or, more worryingly, a stricken plea from the Pit of Doom and Desolation. Maybe Janice had a pet swan which succumbed to bird flu** and it has sent, via the squirrel in the garden, news from that place to which perished swans are consigned when they leave the mortal world. It could even be that Janice from Pembroke trod accidentally upon a dozing bee on her garden path last summer, and the bee is telling her she is forgiven. It is unlikely that Janice from Pembroke is a keen reader of both Chat! and Hooting Yard, but if she is, I would like to invite her to share with us the message she has received from the squirrel in her garden. It may be, indeed, that she is unable to translate the message from the argot of squirrels in which it is couched, and here we can help, for Mrs Gubbins is a skilled interpreter of these things. *NOTE : I am indebted to Charlie Brooker of The Guardian for alerting me to this important matter, in a piece entitled Supposing ... The mainstream's as mad as it seems to be. **NOTE : Janice from Pembroke could have avoided her swan's bird flu death had she paid careful attention to Saving Your Swan (see 20th February 2006). […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-03-2227:41fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-03-15Wed, 15 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 He Preened, Eating Bloaters 08:19 Epoch of Snares 16:14 O Cure Me 21:01 Specks In The Sky HE PREENED, EATING BLOATERS Task: describe a typical Dobson breakfast scene. On the face of it, this sounds like a simple enough assignment. It is, of course, anything but. Those who have even a passing acquaintance with the titanic out-of-print pamphleteer Dobson know that the words typical and breakfast can never be crammed together. It is an understatement to say that he had mixed feelings about breakfast. There were times when he was up and about before dawn, gobbling down a huge bowl of porridge. Thereagain, he sometimes stumbled downstairs at noon, bleary and fractious, waving his arms in dismissal of a proffered slice of toast. From one day to the next, there was no knowing how Dobson would greet the day, and howsoever he did greet it, no knowing with what foodstuffs, if any, the day would commence. I cannot in all honesty, then, describe a typical Dobson breakfast scene, as is required of me. Instead, I propose to examine two Dobsonian breakfasts, from different stages in his life, to which I will add some observations on a pamphlet he planned, but never wrote, on this important topic. Will that do? The first breakfast scene I wish to evoke is one that took place when Dobson was living around the corner from the notorious flapper Popsie Shadrach. Popsie's well-kept secret at the height of her flapperdom was that she was the devoted mother of an infant. Her daughter grew up to become the daredevil adventuress Tiny Enid. At the time of this breakfast, however, Tiny Enid was not even a twinkle in her mother's eye. Popsie was returning from a gin joint at dawn, and crashed her jalopy into Dobson's hedge, waking the pamphleteer, who leapt out of bed, thundered out into his front garden, carried the stunned demimondaine into his parlour, and sought to revive her by winding up his gramophone and playing the Adagio from Bohuslav Martinu's Concerto for string quartet and orchestra at ear-splitting volume. With Popsie sprawled on the couch and the music moving inexorably towards its sonorous B minor climax, Dobson busied himself in the kitchen. Outside it began to pour with rain, and steam hissed from the jalopy's smashed-up engine, so much steam that the hedge was obscured. This was the inspiration for Dobson's tremendous pamphlet Hedges Hidden From Sight By Steam (out of print), the only one of his works to be illustrated with watercolours. When the music stopped, Dobson bid the groggy but only slightly injured flapper to join him at the breakfast table. He preened, and ate bloaters. Popsie contented herself with a tumbler of gin, sucked from a straw, for her wrist was sprained and she could not hold the glass. We move forward four decades to consider a second Dobson breakfast scene. Bloaters have their place here, too, but there is no gin, no Popsie Shadrach, no Tiny Enid (by now an adult famed wherever people speak of daredevil adventuresses) and no hedge hidden by steam. In fact there is no hedge at all, for Dobson has moved on, as we all must, sooner or later. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-03-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 He Preened, Eating Bloaters 08:19 Epoch of Snares 16:14 O Cure Me 21:01 Specks In The Sky HE PREENED, EATING BLOATERS Task: describe a typical Dobson breakfast scene. On the face of it, this sounds like a simple enough assignment. It is, of course, anything but. Those who have even a passing acquaintance with the titanic out-of-print pamphleteer Dobson know that the words typical and breakfast can never be crammed together. It is an understatement to say that he had mixed feelings about breakfast. There were times when he was up and about before dawn, gobbling down a huge bowl of porridge. Thereagain, he sometimes stumbled downstairs at noon, bleary and fractious, waving his arms in dismissal of a proffered slice of toast. From one day to the next, there was no knowing how Dobson would greet the day, and howsoever he did greet it, no knowing with what foodstuffs, if any, the day would commence. I cannot in all honesty, then, describe a typical Dobson breakfast scene, as is required of me. Instead, I propose to examine two Dobsonian breakfasts, from different stages in his life, to which I will add some observations on a pamphlet he planned, but never wrote, on this important topic. Will that do? The first breakfast scene I wish to evoke is one that took place when Dobson was living around the corner from the notorious flapper Popsie Shadrach. Popsie's well-kept secret at the height of her flapperdom was that she was the devoted mother of an infant. Her daughter grew up to become the daredevil adventuress Tiny Enid. At the time of this breakfast, however, Tiny Enid was not even a twinkle in her mother's eye. Popsie was returning from a gin joint at dawn, and crashed her jalopy into Dobson's hedge, waking the pamphleteer, who leapt out of bed, thundered out into his front garden, carried the stunned demimondaine into his parlour, and sought to revive her by winding up his gramophone and playing the Adagio from Bohuslav Martinu's Concerto for string quartet and orchestra at ear-splitting volume. With Popsie sprawled on the couch and the music moving inexorably towards its sonorous B minor climax, Dobson busied himself in the kitchen. Outside it began to pour with rain, and steam hissed from the jalopy's smashed-up engine, so much steam that the hedge was obscured. This was the inspiration for Dobson's tremendous pamphlet Hedges Hidden From Sight By Steam (out of print), the only one of his works to be illustrated with watercolours. When the music stopped, Dobson bid the groggy but only slightly injured flapper to join him at the breakfast table. He preened, and ate bloaters. Popsie contented herself with a tumbler of gin, sucked from a straw, for her wrist was sprained and she could not hold the glass. We move forward four decades to consider a second Dobson breakfast scene. Bloaters have their place here, too, but there is no gin, no Popsie Shadrach, no Tiny Enid (by now an adult famed wherever people speak of daredevil adventuresses) and no hedge hidden by steam. In fact there is no hedge at all, for Dobson has moved on, as we all must, sooner or later. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-03-1527:10fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-03-01Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Bucephalus and the Cephalopods in the Bosphorus 07:13 Rainer Werner Ringbinder 10:48 Hooting Yard on the Air : The Podcasts 17:47 Colossus 23:08 Dispense, Dispense! 24:43 Certain Aspects of Plastic Baubles and Plastic Sheeting BUCEPHALUS AND THE CEPHALOPODS IN THE BOSPHORUS The weather was foul on that day in the Ancient World, that Thursday when an unaccompanied horse cantered to a halt at the bank of a mighty waterway. The horse was Alexander the Great's steed Bucephalus, sent by the Macedonian hero for a recuperative holiday. The river was the Bosphorus, the strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Alexander was a firm believer in horse holidays. When young, Bucephalus had been skittish and temperamental, frightened of his own shadow, and Alexander's ministrations had becalmed him, but even as the mature horse he was now, there were times when he needed a break from campaigning and battle. Thus it was that Alexander had waved him off to--as he put it--"enjoy the mysteriously sultry atmosphere of a few nights by the Bosphorus"*. Bucephalus But it was not night-time, sultry or otherwise, when Bucephalus arrived at his destination. It was day, bleak, grey, and wretched, and the majestic horse stood still at the river's edge, snorting. Alexander the Great did not expect him back in Macedonia for a week. Remember this is the Ancient World, so such landmarks as line the Bosphorus as the Galata tower, the palaces of Dolmabahce, Ciragan, Yildiz, and Beylerbeyi, the Rumeli and Anatolian Fortresses, and the Kuleli Military High School had not yet been built. Bucephalus began to trot, following the river's course, hoping to find a field where he could have a restful time munching nutritious foliage. It was late afternoon on that Thursday when the horse decided to rest, and planted his hooves in the mud at the edge of the Bosphorus where today one finds the Bogazici suspension toll bridge. He noticed a churning in the waters of the mighty river, and turned his horse-head to look more intently. He was astonished to see a tangle of cephalopods thrashing around in the river, cephalopods large and small, octopuses, squids, cuttlefish and chambered nautiluses, emitting clouds of ink, tentacles flailing. What were they doing upriver, rather than in the dark, cold abysses of the sea? Were they lost, and did this explain their frantic activity? Cephalopods are probably the most intelligent of invertebrates, with huge pulsating brains, and it is easy to imagine that the realisation of being lost in the Bosphorus could induce panic among them. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-03-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:27 Bucephalus and the Cephalopods in the Bosphorus 07:13 Rainer Werner Ringbinder 10:48 Hooting Yard on the Air : The Podcasts 17:47 Colossus 23:08 Dispense, Dispense! 24:43 Certain Aspects of Plastic Baubles and Plastic Sheeting BUCEPHALUS AND THE CEPHALOPODS IN THE BOSPHORUS The weather was foul on that day in the Ancient World, that Thursday when an unaccompanied horse cantered to a halt at the bank of a mighty waterway. The horse was Alexander the Great's steed Bucephalus, sent by the Macedonian hero for a recuperative holiday. The river was the Bosphorus, the strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Alexander was a firm believer in horse holidays. When young, Bucephalus had been skittish and temperamental, frightened of his own shadow, and Alexander's ministrations had becalmed him, but even as the mature horse he was now, there were times when he needed a break from campaigning and battle. Thus it was that Alexander had waved him off to--as he put it--"enjoy the mysteriously sultry atmosphere of a few nights by the Bosphorus"*. Bucephalus But it was not night-time, sultry or otherwise, when Bucephalus arrived at his destination. It was day, bleak, grey, and wretched, and the majestic horse stood still at the river's edge, snorting. Alexander the Great did not expect him back in Macedonia for a week. Remember this is the Ancient World, so such landmarks as line the Bosphorus as the Galata tower, the palaces of Dolmabahce, Ciragan, Yildiz, and Beylerbeyi, the Rumeli and Anatolian Fortresses, and the Kuleli Military High School had not yet been built. Bucephalus began to trot, following the river's course, hoping to find a field where he could have a restful time munching nutritious foliage. It was late afternoon on that Thursday when the horse decided to rest, and planted his hooves in the mud at the edge of the Bosphorus where today one finds the Bogazici suspension toll bridge. He noticed a churning in the waters of the mighty river, and turned his horse-head to look more intently. He was astonished to see a tangle of cephalopods thrashing around in the river, cephalopods large and small, octopuses, squids, cuttlefish and chambered nautiluses, emitting clouds of ink, tentacles flailing. What were they doing upriver, rather than in the dark, cold abysses of the sea? Were they lost, and did this explain their frantic activity? Cephalopods are probably the most intelligent of invertebrates, with huge pulsating brains, and it is easy to imagine that the realisation of being lost in the Bosphorus could induce panic among them. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-03-0126:57fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-02-22Wed, 22 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 The Ogsby Steering Panel 10:03 Saving Your Swan 15:48 Gluten-free Jabbering Man 18:23 "I am a buttercup golden and free..." 19:37 Identification With Buttercups 20:42 Custard THE OGSBY STEERING PANEL Last week I had an extraordinary stroke of good fortune. Ever since the afternoon of Friday last, I have been engulfed in a flood of memories, and I am discombobulated and a-dither, quite unlike my usual self. I was wandering the streets of Pointy Town, somewhat aimlessly, and as I turned a particular corner I felt compelled--there is no other word for it--to head off down a dark, narrow alleyway where lurked a strange little shop. Do you remember the scene towards the end of Random Harvest (1942), where Charles Rainier, played by Ronald Colman, turns down a side-street to go to a tobacconist, and then wonders how he knew it was there, this being a town he has never knowingly visited before, and how his consternation is the spur to his gradual recollection of the life that a traffic accident has wiped from his memory, leading, within a few minutes of film-time, to the tear-stained scene where he and Paula (Greer Garson) are reunited at the gates of their idyllic country cottage? Well, as I entered the shop in that Pointy Town alleyway, I had a very similar jolt to my memory, although I am not a veteran of the First World War whose shell shock had led to total amnesia and a reluctance to speak, like Charles Rainier. Readers who have no idea what I am gabbling on about should take steps to see this magnificent film at the earliest opportunity. I guarantee that even those with the flintiest of hearts will be sobbing copiously by the end, not that Hooting Yard readers tend to be flinty-hearted, as a general rule, according to the latest readership profiles gathered by Fatima Gilliblat and her team of wastrels. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-02-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 The Ogsby Steering Panel 10:03 Saving Your Swan 15:48 Gluten-free Jabbering Man 18:23 "I am a buttercup golden and free..." 19:37 Identification With Buttercups 20:42 Custard THE OGSBY STEERING PANEL Last week I had an extraordinary stroke of good fortune. Ever since the afternoon of Friday last, I have been engulfed in a flood of memories, and I am discombobulated and a-dither, quite unlike my usual self. I was wandering the streets of Pointy Town, somewhat aimlessly, and as I turned a particular corner I felt compelled--there is no other word for it--to head off down a dark, narrow alleyway where lurked a strange little shop. Do you remember the scene towards the end of Random Harvest (1942), where Charles Rainier, played by Ronald Colman, turns down a side-street to go to a tobacconist, and then wonders how he knew it was there, this being a town he has never knowingly visited before, and how his consternation is the spur to his gradual recollection of the life that a traffic accident has wiped from his memory, leading, within a few minutes of film-time, to the tear-stained scene where he and Paula (Greer Garson) are reunited at the gates of their idyllic country cottage? Well, as I entered the shop in that Pointy Town alleyway, I had a very similar jolt to my memory, although I am not a veteran of the First World War whose shell shock had led to total amnesia and a reluctance to speak, like Charles Rainier. Readers who have no idea what I am gabbling on about should take steps to see this magnificent film at the earliest opportunity. I guarantee that even those with the flintiest of hearts will be sobbing copiously by the end, not that Hooting Yard readers tend to be flinty-hearted, as a general rule, according to the latest readership profiles gathered by Fatima Gilliblat and her team of wastrels. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-02-2230:11fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-02-15Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:02 Bonkers Alibis 05:09 Blazing Excelsior Saturated With Turpentine 12:37 Elegant Smudges 18:05 Ten Days in a Ditch 26:19 "For convenience the following list is inserted..." BONKERS ALIBIS If you are suspected of having committed a crime, and are placed under arrest by law enforcement officers, never provide an alibi which is bonkers. This advice holds true whether you are innocent or guilty, or even in that grey area between the two, like a Kafka character. Let us assume, for the purposes of our argument, that you were indeed the shady, limping figure eye-witnesses recalled seeing emerging from the pastry shop clutching a handful of banknotes fresh from the opened till over which is now slumped the grievously but not fatally wounded pastry shop proprietor. The pastry shop is a couple of miles north of Bodger's Spinney, in that little arcade known as the One-Time Haunt Of Flappers. You motored away in the sidecar of your accomplice's getaway motorbike, and just twenty minutes later you were sat in the snug of the Cow & Pins squandering your dishonestly-obtained banknotes on bottled stout. When the police come to arrest you, whether it be that very day or weeks, months, or years hence, do not say: "At the time of the pastry shop robbery I was clambering up a mountainside in the Himalayas carrying a crate of exotic perfumes in preparation for a long-overdue performance of Scriabin's unfinished Mysterium*, officer". This is what we call a bonkers alibi, in that it is needlessly embroidered, easily disproved, and demonstrably untrue. Also many tavern-goers will have seen you swilling stout in the Cow & Pins within half an hour of the pastry shop robbery, and you could not have been in the Himalayan mountain range at that time unless you had access to an exciting space-age mode of transport which does not yet exist. I know that we were all promised our own personal booster-jet backpacks by about 1967, but it didn't happen. Equally, you should beware of using a bonkers alibi if you are accused of a crime of which you are wholly innocent. In these cases, telling the truth is by far the best option. Imagine you are sitting at home one day, feet up, reading Celebrity Pap! to find out the latest doings of Stig and Fulgencio and Agamemnon and Nobo, or perhaps other, lesser-known celebrities, ones with besmirched careers or no careers at all. Suddenly, smashing their way through your window comes a heavily-armed SWAT team descending on rope ladders from a sinister black helicopter. A hood is pulled over your head, and by the time it is removed you are sitting on a chair in a basement you know not where, being interrogated about your participation in the slaying of President John F Kennedy in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Now remember, you were not there. At the time of the shooting, forty-three years ago, you were paddling in the brackish water of Fiendish Inky-Black Pond with other tots from the orphanage. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-02-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:02 Bonkers Alibis 05:09 Blazing Excelsior Saturated With Turpentine 12:37 Elegant Smudges 18:05 Ten Days in a Ditch 26:19 "For convenience the following list is inserted..." BONKERS ALIBIS If you are suspected of having committed a crime, and are placed under arrest by law enforcement officers, never provide an alibi which is bonkers. This advice holds true whether you are innocent or guilty, or even in that grey area between the two, like a Kafka character. Let us assume, for the purposes of our argument, that you were indeed the shady, limping figure eye-witnesses recalled seeing emerging from the pastry shop clutching a handful of banknotes fresh from the opened till over which is now slumped the grievously but not fatally wounded pastry shop proprietor. The pastry shop is a couple of miles north of Bodger's Spinney, in that little arcade known as the One-Time Haunt Of Flappers. You motored away in the sidecar of your accomplice's getaway motorbike, and just twenty minutes later you were sat in the snug of the Cow & Pins squandering your dishonestly-obtained banknotes on bottled stout. When the police come to arrest you, whether it be that very day or weeks, months, or years hence, do not say: "At the time of the pastry shop robbery I was clambering up a mountainside in the Himalayas carrying a crate of exotic perfumes in preparation for a long-overdue performance of Scriabin's unfinished Mysterium*, officer". This is what we call a bonkers alibi, in that it is needlessly embroidered, easily disproved, and demonstrably untrue. Also many tavern-goers will have seen you swilling stout in the Cow & Pins within half an hour of the pastry shop robbery, and you could not have been in the Himalayan mountain range at that time unless you had access to an exciting space-age mode of transport which does not yet exist. I know that we were all promised our own personal booster-jet backpacks by about 1967, but it didn't happen. Equally, you should beware of using a bonkers alibi if you are accused of a crime of which you are wholly innocent. In these cases, telling the truth is by far the best option. Imagine you are sitting at home one day, feet up, reading Celebrity Pap! to find out the latest doings of Stig and Fulgencio and Agamemnon and Nobo, or perhaps other, lesser-known celebrities, ones with besmirched careers or no careers at all. Suddenly, smashing their way through your window comes a heavily-armed SWAT team descending on rope ladders from a sinister black helicopter. A hood is pulled over your head, and by the time it is removed you are sitting on a chair in a basement you know not where, being interrogated about your participation in the slaying of President John F Kennedy in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Now remember, you were not there. At the time of the shooting, forty-three years ago, you were paddling in the brackish water of Fiendish Inky-Black Pond with other tots from the orphanage. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-02-1528:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-02-01Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Some Notes on Compartments 06:29 Vox Pop : A Pang Hill Orphan Speaks 09:37 Tiny Little Hands, Decisive Mustachios 12:56 Another Vlasto 19:15 Surgeon's Biscuit 25:08 Fifty Years Ago SOME NOTES ON COMPARTMENTS Dear Mr Key, writes the ever-curious Tim Thurn, In last Thursday's piece entitled Google News (26 January, see below) you make passing mention of the Blotzmann Compartments controversy of 1934. I confess that I have no idea what a Blotzmann Compartment is, or was, and would be extremely grateful if you could enlighten me. Well, Tim, I will do my best, but I warn you that getting to grips with Blotzmann Compartments is no easy matter. Have you ever looked into the fathomless black pools of an owl's eyes? If you have, you will know that eerie sense of confronting an unutterably alien, cold, unyielding energy. It was this sense of otherness that motivated Blotzmann when he built the first of the notorious Compartments. We still have some of his working notes, but they help us little, couched as they are in a dense academic (or pseudoacademic) language which may have made no sense even to Blotzmann. Phrases such as "by extension, most advanced peristomal border plating is noted for an unusual hydropore/gonopore in the axismal interray and the position of juvenile, summit-mounted proximal tegmens and theca" flummox the best of brains. We do know that whenever Blotzmann constructed a Compartment, he made sure a fully functioning Thanatophore was primed and ready in the corner of his workshop. As he learned to manipulate the Compartments, Blotzmann became more open about his intentions. He introduced a swivelling panel on the top of each Compartment, allowing viewers the opportunity for a fleeting glimpse of activity within. The panels were attached to a small motor fixed to the side of the Compartment, powered from a source which Blotzmann always refused to divulge, though it is likely to have been a simple dry cell battery. It may even have been a wet cell battery, if such a thing exists. Knowing nothing of batteries and their workings, I am reluctant to say any more about this for the time being. Arriving at the optimal size of the Compartments was a hit and miss affair, which usually found Blotzmann gritting his teeth. A study by Howl and Flapper determined that the smallest Compartment could fit inside a standard pastry carton, while the largest one known to exist blotted out the moon and the stars. This reminds us of Blotzmann's insistence that his Compartments were never exposed to daylight, leading to absurd accusations in the gutter press that there was vampiric intent behind the entire project. Fire and flood destroyed all the Blotzmann Compartments one by one, over a period of seventeen years. Blotzmann was sanguine. He himself had the black eyes of an owl, and hair that resembled feathers. Make of that what you will. You would not be the first to posit a madcap theory. VOX POP : A PANG HILL ORPHAN SPEAKS […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-02-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Some Notes on Compartments 06:29 Vox Pop : A Pang Hill Orphan Speaks 09:37 Tiny Little Hands, Decisive Mustachios 12:56 Another Vlasto 19:15 Surgeon's Biscuit 25:08 Fifty Years Ago SOME NOTES ON COMPARTMENTS Dear Mr Key, writes the ever-curious Tim Thurn, In last Thursday's piece entitled Google News (26 January, see below) you make passing mention of the Blotzmann Compartments controversy of 1934. I confess that I have no idea what a Blotzmann Compartment is, or was, and would be extremely grateful if you could enlighten me. Well, Tim, I will do my best, but I warn you that getting to grips with Blotzmann Compartments is no easy matter. Have you ever looked into the fathomless black pools of an owl's eyes? If you have, you will know that eerie sense of confronting an unutterably alien, cold, unyielding energy. It was this sense of otherness that motivated Blotzmann when he built the first of the notorious Compartments. We still have some of his working notes, but they help us little, couched as they are in a dense academic (or pseudoacademic) language which may have made no sense even to Blotzmann. Phrases such as "by extension, most advanced peristomal border plating is noted for an unusual hydropore/gonopore in the axismal interray and the position of juvenile, summit-mounted proximal tegmens and theca" flummox the best of brains. We do know that whenever Blotzmann constructed a Compartment, he made sure a fully functioning Thanatophore was primed and ready in the corner of his workshop. As he learned to manipulate the Compartments, Blotzmann became more open about his intentions. He introduced a swivelling panel on the top of each Compartment, allowing viewers the opportunity for a fleeting glimpse of activity within. The panels were attached to a small motor fixed to the side of the Compartment, powered from a source which Blotzmann always refused to divulge, though it is likely to have been a simple dry cell battery. It may even have been a wet cell battery, if such a thing exists. Knowing nothing of batteries and their workings, I am reluctant to say any more about this for the time being. Arriving at the optimal size of the Compartments was a hit and miss affair, which usually found Blotzmann gritting his teeth. A study by Howl and Flapper determined that the smallest Compartment could fit inside a standard pastry carton, while the largest one known to exist blotted out the moon and the stars. This reminds us of Blotzmann's insistence that his Compartments were never exposed to daylight, leading to absurd accusations in the gutter press that there was vampiric intent behind the entire project. Fire and flood destroyed all the Blotzmann Compartments one by one, over a period of seventeen years. Blotzmann was sanguine. He himself had the black eyes of an owl, and hair that resembled feathers. Make of that what you will. You would not be the first to posit a madcap theory. VOX POP : A PANG HILL ORPHAN SPEAKS […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-02-0129:56fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-01-25Wed, 25 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 A Series of Unfortunate Cows 06:09 The Gnawed and the Chewed 14:31 The Glove of Ib 16:53 Stunned Starlings 24:12 Four Uncanny Tales 27:05 Nidor A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE COWS Misfortune can strike a cow out of the blue. To give but one example, the field in which it is standing may become flooded after heavy rainfall or, if not flooded exactly, then pitted with many, many puddles. No cow likes to stand in water, so such a circumstance must be counted a misfortune. The cow in the puddle, however, is une jolie vache compared to the cow which inattentively wanders onto some railway tracks and then comes to a halt. Continuing across the tracks would be the wiser option, for as long as the cow remains where it is, it is an imperilled cow. But unlike owls, cows are not noted for wisdom. The imperilled cow on the railway tracks may suffer the misfortune of being killed by a runaway locomotive without a cow-conscious driver at the helm. I am not sure helm is the correct word for the little cabin in which a train driver, cow-conscious or otherwise, sits or stands, but let that pass. What we can say with certainty is that a motionless cow in the path of a runaway train will suffer the greatest of misfortunes, that is, a violent death. By comparison, the previous cow, the one standing in the puddle, is almost as happy a cow as the laughing one that mysteriously appears on the wrappers of a brand of processed cheese triangles in this country, and perhaps in other countries too. If my memory serves, that laughing cow is red and white. If a real cow was red and white, it too would probably suffer misfortune, for its colouration would make it an easy target for predators. Larger, more savage beasts, ones with vision alert to bright primary colours, in this case red, would be far more likely to attack the laughing cow than a neighbouring cow that was, say, beige or dun or even dappled. Such being the case, one wonders why the red and white cow is laughing. The fourth in our series of unfortunate cows is the one that is stricken by disease. In the popular mind, the most notable cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. I, for one, can never read the technical phrase without visualising a cow with a brain that has turned to sponge. That may be because I am mispronouncing the word spongiform. Either way, I think we can agree that this is the least fortunate cow we have encountered so far. Next week we will be taking a stroll down a pathway that leads to four more cows assailed by misfortune. Until then, your homework is as follows. Answer the following questions to the best of your ability, and with a certain dash. 1. If, through some eldritch soul-transfer conjured by a warlock, you swapped places with one of the four unfortunate cows above, which one would it be, and why? 2. Would you follow the example of the red and white cow, and laugh in the face of misfortune, or would you take steps to avert it? If so, how? 3. What tips would you give to a cow standing in a puddle? 4. Imagine you are a train driver. Would you be cow-conscious? If so, list six examples of your cow-consciousness. An unfortunate cow […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-01-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 A Series of Unfortunate Cows 06:09 The Gnawed and the Chewed 14:31 The Glove of Ib 16:53 Stunned Starlings 24:12 Four Uncanny Tales 27:05 Nidor A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE COWS Misfortune can strike a cow out of the blue. To give but one example, the field in which it is standing may become flooded after heavy rainfall or, if not flooded exactly, then pitted with many, many puddles. No cow likes to stand in water, so such a circumstance must be counted a misfortune. The cow in the puddle, however, is une jolie vache compared to the cow which inattentively wanders onto some railway tracks and then comes to a halt. Continuing across the tracks would be the wiser option, for as long as the cow remains where it is, it is an imperilled cow. But unlike owls, cows are not noted for wisdom. The imperilled cow on the railway tracks may suffer the misfortune of being killed by a runaway locomotive without a cow-conscious driver at the helm. I am not sure helm is the correct word for the little cabin in which a train driver, cow-conscious or otherwise, sits or stands, but let that pass. What we can say with certainty is that a motionless cow in the path of a runaway train will suffer the greatest of misfortunes, that is, a violent death. By comparison, the previous cow, the one standing in the puddle, is almost as happy a cow as the laughing one that mysteriously appears on the wrappers of a brand of processed cheese triangles in this country, and perhaps in other countries too. If my memory serves, that laughing cow is red and white. If a real cow was red and white, it too would probably suffer misfortune, for its colouration would make it an easy target for predators. Larger, more savage beasts, ones with vision alert to bright primary colours, in this case red, would be far more likely to attack the laughing cow than a neighbouring cow that was, say, beige or dun or even dappled. Such being the case, one wonders why the red and white cow is laughing. The fourth in our series of unfortunate cows is the one that is stricken by disease. In the popular mind, the most notable cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. I, for one, can never read the technical phrase without visualising a cow with a brain that has turned to sponge. That may be because I am mispronouncing the word spongiform. Either way, I think we can agree that this is the least fortunate cow we have encountered so far. Next week we will be taking a stroll down a pathway that leads to four more cows assailed by misfortune. Until then, your homework is as follows. Answer the following questions to the best of your ability, and with a certain dash. 1. If, through some eldritch soul-transfer conjured by a warlock, you swapped places with one of the four unfortunate cows above, which one would it be, and why? 2. Would you follow the example of the red and white cow, and laugh in the face of misfortune, or would you take steps to avert it? If so, how? 3. What tips would you give to a cow standing in a puddle? 4. Imagine you are a train driver. Would you be cow-conscious? If so, list six examples of your cow-consciousness. An unfortunate cow […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-01-2530:18fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2006-01-11Wed, 11 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:07 A Third Episode of Blodgett Island 11:43 The Evil Bakery 15:13 Blodgett Island : The Adventure Continues 24:34 What to Do on a Winter's Day in Tantarabim 28:05 Ten Years Ago Too A THIRD EPISODE OF BLODGETT ISLAND Normal Hooting Yard service will be resumed in the very near future. Meanwhile, here is another episode of the exciting series Blodgett And His Pals Hanging Around On A Mysterious Island After Surviving A Plane Crash. Flashback. A car drives up to a motel in the middle of nowhere. It is not as spooky-looking as the Bates Motel, but will something spooky occur? A woman seen from behind opens the boot of the car. It is full of lots of different number plates. She goes into her motel room and gets undressed for a shower. We still cannot see her face. In the shower, we see blonde dye running out of her hair. Aha! It's Marigold Chew.Next we see her going into a post office to collect a letter that's waiting for her. She reads it and begins to weep. Now, Marigold Chew is sitting on the beach holding a toy aeroplane. Pabstus Tack joins her, strumming his guitar. He thinks that his band's record sales will increase because the world thinks he's dead. "When the helicopters come to rescue us, we'll be ridiculously and eternally famous!" Blasphemous Ted Cargpan is a science teacher who understands meteorology. He explains that the raft cannot be launched because the monsoon season is about to descend upon them and the raft will be forced in the wrong direction. The last possible day to leave was yesterday. Old Halob says they will take a chance and leave tomorrow. Marigold Chew says she wants to go on the raft. (During the advert break there is a warning about a new film that contains "emotional intensity". Would that it were so.) Old Halob says there are no spare places on the raft. Marigold Chew says she can sail and that fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol knows nothing about maritime matters. Flashback. Marigold Chew is walking through a hospital corridor carrying a bouquet of flowers. She is heading for room 208. There is a police officer sitting outside one of the rooms and she passes him nervously. One of the hospital doctors is getting into his car in the garage. His name is Doctor Fang. Marigold Chew is sitting in his car. She tells Doctor Fang she has come to see her mother who is dying of cancer, and she needs Doctor Fang's help. The Grunty Man is fishing. Tiny Enid says "Please talk to me". "I am going on the raft," grunts The Grunty Man. Lothar Preen and Dobson are trudging through the forest. They meet up with Blodgett and go to the hatch. Dobson : "What is this thing?" Blodgett : "Exactly. It's time we talked about this." The Grunty Man is packing salted fish on to the raft. Old Halob asks fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol if he has any knowledge of maritime matters. "Are you voting me off?" shouts fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol. He heads off angrily to see Marigold Chew. He tells her he knows she is a fugitive from justice. "Your secret's safe with me but you're not getting my spot on the raft!" Marigold Chew : "If I want your spot I'll get it" Dennis Beerpint asks Old Halob if they will come back for everyone else once they are rescued. Old Halob says it might be hard to find the island again. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-01-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:07 A Third Episode of Blodgett Island 11:43 The Evil Bakery 15:13 Blodgett Island : The Adventure Continues 24:34 What to Do on a Winter's Day in Tantarabim 28:05 Ten Years Ago Too A THIRD EPISODE OF BLODGETT ISLAND Normal Hooting Yard service will be resumed in the very near future. Meanwhile, here is another episode of the exciting series Blodgett And His Pals Hanging Around On A Mysterious Island After Surviving A Plane Crash. Flashback. A car drives up to a motel in the middle of nowhere. It is not as spooky-looking as the Bates Motel, but will something spooky occur? A woman seen from behind opens the boot of the car. It is full of lots of different number plates. She goes into her motel room and gets undressed for a shower. We still cannot see her face. In the shower, we see blonde dye running out of her hair. Aha! It's Marigold Chew.Next we see her going into a post office to collect a letter that's waiting for her. She reads it and begins to weep. Now, Marigold Chew is sitting on the beach holding a toy aeroplane. Pabstus Tack joins her, strumming his guitar. He thinks that his band's record sales will increase because the world thinks he's dead. "When the helicopters come to rescue us, we'll be ridiculously and eternally famous!" Blasphemous Ted Cargpan is a science teacher who understands meteorology. He explains that the raft cannot be launched because the monsoon season is about to descend upon them and the raft will be forced in the wrong direction. The last possible day to leave was yesterday. Old Halob says they will take a chance and leave tomorrow. Marigold Chew says she wants to go on the raft. (During the advert break there is a warning about a new film that contains "emotional intensity". Would that it were so.) Old Halob says there are no spare places on the raft. Marigold Chew says she can sail and that fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol knows nothing about maritime matters. Flashback. Marigold Chew is walking through a hospital corridor carrying a bouquet of flowers. She is heading for room 208. There is a police officer sitting outside one of the rooms and she passes him nervously. One of the hospital doctors is getting into his car in the garage. His name is Doctor Fang. Marigold Chew is sitting in his car. She tells Doctor Fang she has come to see her mother who is dying of cancer, and she needs Doctor Fang's help. The Grunty Man is fishing. Tiny Enid says "Please talk to me". "I am going on the raft," grunts The Grunty Man. Lothar Preen and Dobson are trudging through the forest. They meet up with Blodgett and go to the hatch. Dobson : "What is this thing?" Blodgett : "Exactly. It's time we talked about this." The Grunty Man is packing salted fish on to the raft. Old Halob asks fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol if he has any knowledge of maritime matters. "Are you voting me off?" shouts fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol. He heads off angrily to see Marigold Chew. He tells her he knows she is a fugitive from justice. "Your secret's safe with me but you're not getting my spot on the raft!" Marigold Chew : "If I want your spot I'll get it" Dennis Beerpint asks Old Halob if they will come back for everyone else once they are rescued. Old Halob says it might be hard to find the island again. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2006-01-1130:04fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-28Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 A Special Christmas Treat for All Our Readers 12:54 What You Should Know About the Carpenters 18:35 A Special Christmas Treat, Part Two A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS TREAT FOR ALL OUR READERS Hooting Yard has been eerily quiet for the past two months, during which time Mr Key has been plotting all sorts of exciting bagatelles for the coming year. But to assure readers that he has not succumbed to the living death of zombiedom, Frank is presenting as a Christmas treat the working drafts of two episodes of an exciting new television series. The show is provisionally entitled Blodgett And His Pals Hanging Around On A Mysterious Island After Surviving A Plane Crash. Here is the first, which takes place somewhere around the middle of the story. The notes for a second episode will appear tomorrow. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is covered in blood. Dobson and Marigold Chew do medical stuff. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is croaking. Marigold Chew: "What's happening, Dobson?" Dobson: "His lung just collapsed." Tense music. Tracheotomy. Tiny Enid winces. Dobson tells Marigold Chew to go to the beach and ransack fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's stuff for rubbing alcohol. Flashback. Dobson is tying a bowtie on a young mystic badger named Little Severin, who says "You can still back out, Dobson". Wedding preparations? Possibly. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is still croaking and bloody. Dobson says: "I'm going to save you." Daytime on the beach. Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, his spectacles nowhere in sight, offers Minnie Crunlop a fish. The raft should be ready in about a week. Old Halob offers The Grunty Man a fish. Neither Minnie Crunlop nor The Grunty Man want fish. Marigold Chew arrives and demands all of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's alcohol. Dobson is stitching Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp's chest up. He's still groaning. He needs a blood transfusion. Pabstus Tack asks Dobson where Blodgett is. Flashback. Pre-wedding party. "The future Mrs Dobson" makes a speech. A year ago she broke her back. (A bit like Blodgett's sister breaking her neck as a child, though this is not made explicit.) They said it was inoperable. "But there was Dobson. And he promised to fix me. He's the most committed man I have ever known. I will dance at our wedding." Dobson looks soulful. Tiny Enid puts a twig in Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp's mouth, which is not a herbal remedy despite Dobson's protestations. They pull him about and he makes very loud groaning noises. Marigold Chew trips over in the forest carrying her rucksack full of alcohol. Something is lurking in the trees. It's Minnie Crunlop, going into labour. Marigold Chew: "You're having contractions, Minnie Crunlop!" Minnie Crunlop: "No I'm bloody not!" Marigold Chew: "Help! Somebody help!" The Grunty Man hears the yelling and runs into the forest. Marigold Chew tells The Grunty Man to go and get Dobson. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp has stopped groaning and is now quivering, in shock. Tiny Enid asks him what blood type he is. He eventually groans, "A negative". Dobson tells Tiny Enid to go and find someone with A negative blood, and to find Mrs Gubbins too. Mrs Gubbins and Lothar Preen are out walking. Lothar Preen has made a picnic for them on a secluded beach. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:19 A Special Christmas Treat for All Our Readers 12:54 What You Should Know About the Carpenters 18:35 A Special Christmas Treat, Part Two A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS TREAT FOR ALL OUR READERS Hooting Yard has been eerily quiet for the past two months, during which time Mr Key has been plotting all sorts of exciting bagatelles for the coming year. But to assure readers that he has not succumbed to the living death of zombiedom, Frank is presenting as a Christmas treat the working drafts of two episodes of an exciting new television series. The show is provisionally entitled Blodgett And His Pals Hanging Around On A Mysterious Island After Surviving A Plane Crash. Here is the first, which takes place somewhere around the middle of the story. The notes for a second episode will appear tomorrow. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is covered in blood. Dobson and Marigold Chew do medical stuff. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is croaking. Marigold Chew: "What's happening, Dobson?" Dobson: "His lung just collapsed." Tense music. Tracheotomy. Tiny Enid winces. Dobson tells Marigold Chew to go to the beach and ransack fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's stuff for rubbing alcohol. Flashback. Dobson is tying a bowtie on a young mystic badger named Little Severin, who says "You can still back out, Dobson". Wedding preparations? Possibly. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp is still croaking and bloody. Dobson says: "I'm going to save you." Daytime on the beach. Fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, his spectacles nowhere in sight, offers Minnie Crunlop a fish. The raft should be ready in about a week. Old Halob offers The Grunty Man a fish. Neither Minnie Crunlop nor The Grunty Man want fish. Marigold Chew arrives and demands all of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol's alcohol. Dobson is stitching Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp's chest up. He's still groaning. He needs a blood transfusion. Pabstus Tack asks Dobson where Blodgett is. Flashback. Pre-wedding party. "The future Mrs Dobson" makes a speech. A year ago she broke her back. (A bit like Blodgett's sister breaking her neck as a child, though this is not made explicit.) They said it was inoperable. "But there was Dobson. And he promised to fix me. He's the most committed man I have ever known. I will dance at our wedding." Dobson looks soulful. Tiny Enid puts a twig in Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp's mouth, which is not a herbal remedy despite Dobson's protestations. They pull him about and he makes very loud groaning noises. Marigold Chew trips over in the forest carrying her rucksack full of alcohol. Something is lurking in the trees. It's Minnie Crunlop, going into labour. Marigold Chew: "You're having contractions, Minnie Crunlop!" Minnie Crunlop: "No I'm bloody not!" Marigold Chew: "Help! Somebody help!" The Grunty Man hears the yelling and runs into the forest. Marigold Chew tells The Grunty Man to go and get Dobson. Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp has stopped groaning and is now quivering, in shock. Tiny Enid asks him what blood type he is. He eventually groans, "A negative". Dobson tells Tiny Enid to go and find someone with A negative blood, and to find Mrs Gubbins too. Mrs Gubbins and Lothar Preen are out walking. Lothar Preen has made a picnic for them on a secluded beach. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-2829:54fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-21Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:38 Superstitions Concerning Birds 28:35 The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet SUPERSTITIONS CONCERNING BIRDS AMONGST the most remarkable of natural occurrences must be included many of the phenomena connected with the behaviour of birds. Undoubtedly numerous species of birds are susceptible to atmospheric changes (of an electrical and barometric nature) too slight to be observed by man's unaided senses; thus only is to be explained the phenomenon of migration and also the many other peculiarities in the behaviour of birds whereby approaching changes in the weather may be foretold. Probably, also, this fact has much to do with the extraordinary homing instinct of pigeons. But, of course, in the days when meteorological science had yet to be born, no such explanation as this could be known. The ancients observed that birds by their migrations or by other peculiarities in their behaviour prognosticated coming changes in the seasons of the year and other changes connected with the weather (such as storms, etc.); they saw, too, in the homing instincts of pigeons an apparent exhibition of intelligence exceeding that of man. What more natural, then, for them to attribute foresight to birds, and to suppose that all sorts of coming events (other than those of an atmospheric nature) might be foretold by careful observation of their flight and song? Augury--that is, the art of divination by observing the behaviour of birds--was extensively cultivated by the Etrurians and Romans.[1] It is still used, I believe, by the natives of Samoa. The Romans had an official college of augurs, the members of which were originally three patricians. About 300 B.C. the number of patrician augurs was increased by one, and five plebeian augurs were added. Later the number was again increased to fifteen. The object of augury was not so much to foretell the future as to indicate what line of action should be followed, in any given circumstances, by the nation. The augurs were consulted on all matters of importance, and the position of augur was thus one of great consequence. In what appears to be the oldest method, the augur, arrayed in a special costume, and carrying a staff with which to mark out the visible heavens into houses, proceeded to an elevated piece of ground, where a sacrifice was made and a prayer repeated. Then, gazing towards the sky, he waited until a bird appeared. The point in the heavens where it first made its appearance was carefully noted, also the manner and direction of its flight, and the point where it was lost sight of. From these particulars an augury was derived, but, in order to be of effect, it had to be confirmed by a further one. [1]This is not quite an accurate definition, as "auguries" were also obtained from other animals and from celestial phenomena (e.g. lightning), etc. Auguries were also drawn from the notes of birds, birds being divided by the augurs into two classes: (i) oscines, "those which give omens by their note," and (ii) alites, "those which afford presages by their flight."[1] Another method of augury was performed by the feeding of chickens specially kept for this purpose. This was done just before sunrise by the pullarius or feeder, strict silence being observed. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:38 Superstitions Concerning Birds 28:35 The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet SUPERSTITIONS CONCERNING BIRDS AMONGST the most remarkable of natural occurrences must be included many of the phenomena connected with the behaviour of birds. Undoubtedly numerous species of birds are susceptible to atmospheric changes (of an electrical and barometric nature) too slight to be observed by man's unaided senses; thus only is to be explained the phenomenon of migration and also the many other peculiarities in the behaviour of birds whereby approaching changes in the weather may be foretold. Probably, also, this fact has much to do with the extraordinary homing instinct of pigeons. But, of course, in the days when meteorological science had yet to be born, no such explanation as this could be known. The ancients observed that birds by their migrations or by other peculiarities in their behaviour prognosticated coming changes in the seasons of the year and other changes connected with the weather (such as storms, etc.); they saw, too, in the homing instincts of pigeons an apparent exhibition of intelligence exceeding that of man. What more natural, then, for them to attribute foresight to birds, and to suppose that all sorts of coming events (other than those of an atmospheric nature) might be foretold by careful observation of their flight and song? Augury--that is, the art of divination by observing the behaviour of birds--was extensively cultivated by the Etrurians and Romans.[1] It is still used, I believe, by the natives of Samoa. The Romans had an official college of augurs, the members of which were originally three patricians. About 300 B.C. the number of patrician augurs was increased by one, and five plebeian augurs were added. Later the number was again increased to fifteen. The object of augury was not so much to foretell the future as to indicate what line of action should be followed, in any given circumstances, by the nation. The augurs were consulted on all matters of importance, and the position of augur was thus one of great consequence. In what appears to be the oldest method, the augur, arrayed in a special costume, and carrying a staff with which to mark out the visible heavens into houses, proceeded to an elevated piece of ground, where a sacrifice was made and a prayer repeated. Then, gazing towards the sky, he waited until a bird appeared. The point in the heavens where it first made its appearance was carefully noted, also the manner and direction of its flight, and the point where it was lost sight of. From these particulars an augury was derived, but, in order to be of effect, it had to be confirmed by a further one. [1]This is not quite an accurate definition, as "auguries" were also obtained from other animals and from celestial phenomena (e.g. lightning), etc. Auguries were also drawn from the notes of birds, birds being divided by the augurs into two classes: (i) oscines, "those which give omens by their note," and (ii) alites, "those which afford presages by their flight."[1] Another method of augury was performed by the feeding of chickens specially kept for this purpose. This was done just before sunrise by the pullarius or feeder, strict silence being observed. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-2130:31fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-14Wed, 14 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Some Hotels, a Hollyhock, the Ponds 09:30 Dobson's Uncanny Time Pod 24:14 Bees in Bonnets 26:03 Istvan & Zoltan 29:10 "It is bad luck to carry a..." SOME HOTELS, A HOLLYHOCK, THE PONDS I--Some Hotels. There are seven hotels. Their names are Crone, Crustacean, Flask, Infection, Miasma, Unbearable and Vagabond. Each is built of cheap and rusty metal and perched on the edge of a precipice. There are seven precipices, over each of which a scientist of note has plunged to a watery death during the past two weeks. In chronological order, those who plummeted were a botanist, a physicist, a phrenologist, an horologist, a laboratory git, a bacteriologist, and an uproariously-moustachioed vivisectionist. Each had been a paying guest at one of the hotels, though none of them hurtled over the precipice upon which their own hotel teetered. The phrenologist, for example, breakfasted upon porridge in the Hotel Miasma, then threw herself from the pocked and crumbling cliff-face adjacent to the Crone Hotel. Or was she pushed? It is in hope of answering this question that the indefatigable Hungarian detective Bulent Hellbag has trudged on to the scene. He is seven feet tall, sports a raffish windcheater, and has booked in to all seven hotels within the space of half an hour, using a variety of aliases and disguises. At the Infection Hotel, he is known to the desk staff as Mr B McGrewge, a Scottish safety engineer of sober mien and modest wealth, his only luggage a small orange tote bag. At the Hotel Vagabond, he has them convinced that he is Baron Glubb Von Glubb, a fanatical winter sports enthusiast, lewd and boisterous, who displays a fine array of bobsleigh championship medals upon his turquoise tunic. For these, and for his five other identities, Detective Hellbag has all the required documentation: forged passports and letters of transit, doctored photographs, beetle diagrams, and other seemingly personal paperwork. At four p.m., firmly established in all seven hotels, he is to be found pasting a piece of blotting paper at head height to the outside wall of the Crustacean Hotel laundry room. Such attention to detail is the mark of the great detective, and Hellbag is in no doubt as to the sheer magnitude of his ratiocinative genius. As ever, he has imposed upon himself a strict timetable for solving this case. He is confident that he can wrap it up within forty-eight hours. Indeed, such is his arrogance that he has overlooked one startling fact. The major domo at the Hotel Unbearable is Hellbag's brother Rolf, whom he has not seen for ten years. The last time they met, in vegetation and in awe, they made a handshake last for hours. Then, two days later, Rolf was sentenced to hang for the brutal slaying of a Loopy Copse ship's captain, whose skull he smashed to pieces with a stolen windigo. II--A Hollyhock. The most luxurious of the hotels is the one beginning with B. Its tremendous gardens, festooned with foliage, were until recently tended by a retired cake person whose glaucoma and rickets gave him increasing gyp. Following a series of incidents involving his shark or his cardigan, he was [None of the hotels has a name beginning with B. Discard and resume.] The least repugnant of the hotels is the one beginning with F. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:25 Some Hotels, a Hollyhock, the Ponds 09:30 Dobson's Uncanny Time Pod 24:14 Bees in Bonnets 26:03 Istvan & Zoltan 29:10 "It is bad luck to carry a..." SOME HOTELS, A HOLLYHOCK, THE PONDS I--Some Hotels. There are seven hotels. Their names are Crone, Crustacean, Flask, Infection, Miasma, Unbearable and Vagabond. Each is built of cheap and rusty metal and perched on the edge of a precipice. There are seven precipices, over each of which a scientist of note has plunged to a watery death during the past two weeks. In chronological order, those who plummeted were a botanist, a physicist, a phrenologist, an horologist, a laboratory git, a bacteriologist, and an uproariously-moustachioed vivisectionist. Each had been a paying guest at one of the hotels, though none of them hurtled over the precipice upon which their own hotel teetered. The phrenologist, for example, breakfasted upon porridge in the Hotel Miasma, then threw herself from the pocked and crumbling cliff-face adjacent to the Crone Hotel. Or was she pushed? It is in hope of answering this question that the indefatigable Hungarian detective Bulent Hellbag has trudged on to the scene. He is seven feet tall, sports a raffish windcheater, and has booked in to all seven hotels within the space of half an hour, using a variety of aliases and disguises. At the Infection Hotel, he is known to the desk staff as Mr B McGrewge, a Scottish safety engineer of sober mien and modest wealth, his only luggage a small orange tote bag. At the Hotel Vagabond, he has them convinced that he is Baron Glubb Von Glubb, a fanatical winter sports enthusiast, lewd and boisterous, who displays a fine array of bobsleigh championship medals upon his turquoise tunic. For these, and for his five other identities, Detective Hellbag has all the required documentation: forged passports and letters of transit, doctored photographs, beetle diagrams, and other seemingly personal paperwork. At four p.m., firmly established in all seven hotels, he is to be found pasting a piece of blotting paper at head height to the outside wall of the Crustacean Hotel laundry room. Such attention to detail is the mark of the great detective, and Hellbag is in no doubt as to the sheer magnitude of his ratiocinative genius. As ever, he has imposed upon himself a strict timetable for solving this case. He is confident that he can wrap it up within forty-eight hours. Indeed, such is his arrogance that he has overlooked one startling fact. The major domo at the Hotel Unbearable is Hellbag's brother Rolf, whom he has not seen for ten years. The last time they met, in vegetation and in awe, they made a handshake last for hours. Then, two days later, Rolf was sentenced to hang for the brutal slaying of a Loopy Copse ship's captain, whose skull he smashed to pieces with a stolen windigo. II--A Hollyhock. The most luxurious of the hotels is the one beginning with B. Its tremendous gardens, festooned with foliage, were until recently tended by a retired cake person whose glaucoma and rickets gave him increasing gyp. Following a series of incidents involving his shark or his cardigan, he was [None of the hotels has a name beginning with B. Discard and resume.] The least repugnant of the hotels is the one beginning with F. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-1430:24fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-07Wed, 07 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Wisps and Clumps 06:12 On The Administration Of Lighthouses 15:54 Cemetery Birds 25:16 Ukrainian Postage Stamp Bees WISPS AND CLUMPS Today I am going to talk to you--at you--about wisps and clumps. Gaining an insight into wisps and clumps will not give you a complete understanding of the physical universe in all its matchless wonder, but it is a start. Indeed I can think of few subjects which prove a better introduction. Some might talk to you of toads or gazelles or coconut matting, perhaps, or of strange irrefragible lights in the maritime skies, but I stick to wisps and clumps, with occasional forays into bee world. So, then, what is a wisp and what is a clump? We shall look at each in turn. A wisp might be made of smoke or some other fume, for there are countless fumes, gaseous and otherwise. One guaranteed way of seeing a wisp with your very own eyes is to stand next to a dying bonfire. If you go and stand there too early, while the bonfire is still blazing, perhaps with an effigy of Roman Catholic martyr Guy Fawkes engulfed in the flames, you will not be able to see any wisps, or much else, because the smoke will be billowing, making your eyes water, and if some scamp has placed any noxious substances on the bonfire, such as anything made of rubber or plastic, things will be even worse, and you may feel like choking, indeed you may even choke uncontrollably, and topple to the ground, helpless, helpless, helpless, as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were wont to sing, long ago, on the west coast of America. They say that David Crosby's moustache is to be preserved as a national monument, but I digress. Basically, what I am saying is: keep away from the bonfire while it is at its height. You want to go and stand next to it as the last embers are dying, for it is then that you will be able to see wisps of smoke. What are their characteristics, these wisps? They are light, delicate, and fugitive. You will see a wisp rising from the glowing ashes, and it will slink upon the breeze for a few moments, and then it will be gone. All that is solid melts into air, according to Marx and Engels in The Manifesto Of The Communist Party (1848), and this is certainly true of wisps, which are hardly solid in the first place. Some substances take longer to melt into air than others, of course, and this brings us neatly to clumps. Clumps can be made of all sorts of things, and for the moment I want you to direct your attention to clumps of earth, or soil, or mud. Such clumps are often called clods (particularly by the visionary poet William Blake, who wrote The Clod And The Pebble) but I am sticking with clumps for the purpose of this diverting talk. At least I hope it is diverting. Now, there you were, standing next to the bonfire while it blazed, having arrived far too early for the wisps, and your eyes were streaming with tears and you were coughing and choking, helplessly, remember, and the next thing that happened was that you toppled over and fell to the ground, perhaps even rolling into a nearby ditch. Let us assume you are sprawled there, on your front, face down in the muck. At some point in the next few minutes, the effects of smoke inhalation wear off, and you open your stinging eyes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Wisps and Clumps 06:12 On The Administration Of Lighthouses 15:54 Cemetery Birds 25:16 Ukrainian Postage Stamp Bees WISPS AND CLUMPS Today I am going to talk to you--at you--about wisps and clumps. Gaining an insight into wisps and clumps will not give you a complete understanding of the physical universe in all its matchless wonder, but it is a start. Indeed I can think of few subjects which prove a better introduction. Some might talk to you of toads or gazelles or coconut matting, perhaps, or of strange irrefragible lights in the maritime skies, but I stick to wisps and clumps, with occasional forays into bee world. So, then, what is a wisp and what is a clump? We shall look at each in turn. A wisp might be made of smoke or some other fume, for there are countless fumes, gaseous and otherwise. One guaranteed way of seeing a wisp with your very own eyes is to stand next to a dying bonfire. If you go and stand there too early, while the bonfire is still blazing, perhaps with an effigy of Roman Catholic martyr Guy Fawkes engulfed in the flames, you will not be able to see any wisps, or much else, because the smoke will be billowing, making your eyes water, and if some scamp has placed any noxious substances on the bonfire, such as anything made of rubber or plastic, things will be even worse, and you may feel like choking, indeed you may even choke uncontrollably, and topple to the ground, helpless, helpless, helpless, as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were wont to sing, long ago, on the west coast of America. They say that David Crosby's moustache is to be preserved as a national monument, but I digress. Basically, what I am saying is: keep away from the bonfire while it is at its height. You want to go and stand next to it as the last embers are dying, for it is then that you will be able to see wisps of smoke. What are their characteristics, these wisps? They are light, delicate, and fugitive. You will see a wisp rising from the glowing ashes, and it will slink upon the breeze for a few moments, and then it will be gone. All that is solid melts into air, according to Marx and Engels in The Manifesto Of The Communist Party (1848), and this is certainly true of wisps, which are hardly solid in the first place. Some substances take longer to melt into air than others, of course, and this brings us neatly to clumps. Clumps can be made of all sorts of things, and for the moment I want you to direct your attention to clumps of earth, or soil, or mud. Such clumps are often called clods (particularly by the visionary poet William Blake, who wrote The Clod And The Pebble) but I am sticking with clumps for the purpose of this diverting talk. At least I hope it is diverting. Now, there you were, standing next to the bonfire while it blazed, having arrived far too early for the wisps, and your eyes were streaming with tears and you were coughing and choking, helplessly, remember, and the next thing that happened was that you toppled over and fell to the ground, perhaps even rolling into a nearby ditch. Let us assume you are sprawled there, on your front, face down in the muck. At some point in the next few minutes, the effects of smoke inhalation wear off, and you open your stinging eyes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-12-0729:01fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-30Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 The Novels of Lothar Preen 19:33 Some Ponds, a Hotel, the Hollyhocks 27:10 The Tale of Gaspard THE NOVELS OF LOTHAR PREEN originally issued as a special edition of Crunlop! : A Splendid Periodical in 2003 Lothar Preen Just 99 pages long, Lothar Preen's first novel is slim, even throwaway, and was completely ignored by both reviewers and the reading public. It is a particularly hackneyed example of the "looking-for-cormorants" genre. The hero, Paler Hornet (an obvious anagram of the author), is a young explorer charged by his father with going in search of cormorants. In a series of supposed journal entries, Hornet describes his failure in prose that is listless, turgid, and littered with innumerable misuses of the prepositions by and with. Although he was characteristically contemptuous of his detractors, it is no surprise that Lothar Preen waited nearly two decades to publish again. But when he did, what a revelation! Unleashed upon the world at the height of les evenements of May 1968, Preen's second novel casts a glowering eye upon bourgeois society. By turns caustic, pitiless & scathing--and superbly comic--Preen lashes out at sacred cows and shibboleths in a manner described by one critic at the time as "like something written by the idiot bastard offspring of Ford Madox Ford and Veronica Lake during the final gasps of Stalinism". At 1,844 pages, it is one of the longest novels of the 20th century. Cunningly--and Preen can be the most artful of writers--this matchless stream of invective is disguised as a series of letters home from a peripatetic ornithologist engaged in a study of the nesting habits of the curlew. Preen uses the narrator's witlessness, myopia, and inability to tell one bird from another as a metaphor for a society in chains. An abridged version for children, with four lovely colour plates by Preen's acolyte Marigold Chew, was issued in 1983. As if to confound those who saw him as a radical, Lothar Preen's next book was a delicate, miniaturist evocation of domesticity set in an idyllic barnyard. Full of countryside wisdom and bosky charm, it was condemned as trash, and rightly so. Loathsome! Ach, loathsome is the man whose flesh is the colour of spinach, whose hat stinks, who sharpens pencils by daylight and whose nights are beset by dreams of eerie albino hens The opening lines of Preen's fourth novel have been quoted so widely & so often that it comes as a shock to learn that they are absent from all but the very final draft of this majestic tour de force which won the Groot, Pang, Fledgling, Gobbo & Musty Spillage awards, to name only a few, for if I were to list all the honours lavished on this mighty tome we would be here all day and even you, gentle reader, even you would begin to yawn and scratch your head, from which no doubt beetles would fall. Wherein lies the peculiar genius of Befuddled By Linnets? At first glance it is a simple tale--indeed, the Korean critic Park No Lip dismissed it as "cretinous", although he later wrote a lengthy retraction before swallowing poison in the laundry room of a shabby hotel. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 The Novels of Lothar Preen 19:33 Some Ponds, a Hotel, the Hollyhocks 27:10 The Tale of Gaspard THE NOVELS OF LOTHAR PREEN originally issued as a special edition of Crunlop! : A Splendid Periodical in 2003 Lothar Preen Just 99 pages long, Lothar Preen's first novel is slim, even throwaway, and was completely ignored by both reviewers and the reading public. It is a particularly hackneyed example of the "looking-for-cormorants" genre. The hero, Paler Hornet (an obvious anagram of the author), is a young explorer charged by his father with going in search of cormorants. In a series of supposed journal entries, Hornet describes his failure in prose that is listless, turgid, and littered with innumerable misuses of the prepositions by and with. Although he was characteristically contemptuous of his detractors, it is no surprise that Lothar Preen waited nearly two decades to publish again. But when he did, what a revelation! Unleashed upon the world at the height of les evenements of May 1968, Preen's second novel casts a glowering eye upon bourgeois society. By turns caustic, pitiless & scathing--and superbly comic--Preen lashes out at sacred cows and shibboleths in a manner described by one critic at the time as "like something written by the idiot bastard offspring of Ford Madox Ford and Veronica Lake during the final gasps of Stalinism". At 1,844 pages, it is one of the longest novels of the 20th century. Cunningly--and Preen can be the most artful of writers--this matchless stream of invective is disguised as a series of letters home from a peripatetic ornithologist engaged in a study of the nesting habits of the curlew. Preen uses the narrator's witlessness, myopia, and inability to tell one bird from another as a metaphor for a society in chains. An abridged version for children, with four lovely colour plates by Preen's acolyte Marigold Chew, was issued in 1983. As if to confound those who saw him as a radical, Lothar Preen's next book was a delicate, miniaturist evocation of domesticity set in an idyllic barnyard. Full of countryside wisdom and bosky charm, it was condemned as trash, and rightly so. Loathsome! Ach, loathsome is the man whose flesh is the colour of spinach, whose hat stinks, who sharpens pencils by daylight and whose nights are beset by dreams of eerie albino hens The opening lines of Preen's fourth novel have been quoted so widely & so often that it comes as a shock to learn that they are absent from all but the very final draft of this majestic tour de force which won the Groot, Pang, Fledgling, Gobbo & Musty Spillage awards, to name only a few, for if I were to list all the honours lavished on this mighty tome we would be here all day and even you, gentle reader, even you would begin to yawn and scratch your head, from which no doubt beetles would fall. Wherein lies the peculiar genius of Befuddled By Linnets? At first glance it is a simple tale--indeed, the Korean critic Park No Lip dismissed it as "cretinous", although he later wrote a lengthy retraction before swallowing poison in the laundry room of a shabby hotel. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-3030:26fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-23Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 11:13 Bosanquet 26:49 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 29:07 Epitaph For A Quack BOSANQUET Pansy Cradledew has recently become enamoured of the computer game Bosanquet, which she will play for hours at a time, seemingly removed from an earthly plane. Though I do not share her enthusiasm for this so-called "game of skill, tactics, problem-solving and strategy", Pansy assures me that she is but one among a legion of devotees. She also says that, as an expert player, she wants to reach out to those less adept than herself, and has asked me to publish a few little hints and tips. "These should not be considered as something so vulgar as 'cheats'," she writes, "but as advisory notes for those Bosanquetistas (as we dub ourselves) who have not yet reached the exalted level in which I bask." Here, then, is an edited version of the dozens upon dozens of pages of scribbled jottings Pansy sent in: Tranche 6 : The Rushdie can be placated by moving the cursor over the red squares next to the pond. There is a squirrel hidden under the canopy. Press CTRL-SHIFT repeatedly to capture the goat. Tranche 11 : To avoid the bees, hold down all the numeric keys and move your avatar to the square beside the pillows. Tranche 43 : The ice-field is really a devil's pit. Get past it by collecting all sixteen nougat-bags. Tranche 49 : My fastest time at this tranche is a whopping four hours thirty six minutes. Remember that to pass the crepuscular nozzles you have to bring your sack of V S Naipaul novels from the previous tranche. Tranche 60 : Martin Amis can only be beheaded by using the cursor to drag the sword across the blobs. Tranche 144 : Hit the arrow keys in this order :UP-UP-UP-LEFT-LEFT-UP-RIGHT-DOWN. This will take you to the lair of the savage brontosaurus and you will be able to swallow the magic potion. Be careful of the magnetic locusts. If Pansy's "advisory notes" are to be believed, there are at least two hundred more tranches to complete, but that is quite enough of this nonsense. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 11:13 Bosanquet 26:49 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 29:07 Epitaph For A Quack BOSANQUET Pansy Cradledew has recently become enamoured of the computer game Bosanquet, which she will play for hours at a time, seemingly removed from an earthly plane. Though I do not share her enthusiasm for this so-called "game of skill, tactics, problem-solving and strategy", Pansy assures me that she is but one among a legion of devotees. She also says that, as an expert player, she wants to reach out to those less adept than herself, and has asked me to publish a few little hints and tips. "These should not be considered as something so vulgar as 'cheats'," she writes, "but as advisory notes for those Bosanquetistas (as we dub ourselves) who have not yet reached the exalted level in which I bask." Here, then, is an edited version of the dozens upon dozens of pages of scribbled jottings Pansy sent in: Tranche 6 : The Rushdie can be placated by moving the cursor over the red squares next to the pond. There is a squirrel hidden under the canopy. Press CTRL-SHIFT repeatedly to capture the goat. Tranche 11 : To avoid the bees, hold down all the numeric keys and move your avatar to the square beside the pillows. Tranche 43 : The ice-field is really a devil's pit. Get past it by collecting all sixteen nougat-bags. Tranche 49 : My fastest time at this tranche is a whopping four hours thirty six minutes. Remember that to pass the crepuscular nozzles you have to bring your sack of V S Naipaul novels from the previous tranche. Tranche 60 : Martin Amis can only be beheaded by using the cursor to drag the sword across the blobs. Tranche 144 : Hit the arrow keys in this order :UP-UP-UP-LEFT-LEFT-UP-RIGHT-DOWN. This will take you to the lair of the savage brontosaurus and you will be able to swallow the magic potion. Be careful of the magnetic locusts. If Pansy's "advisory notes" are to be believed, there are at least two hundred more tranches to complete, but that is quite enough of this nonsense. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-2330:11fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-16Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-1629:41fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-02Wed, 02 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:08 Once Upon a Time 04:15 Life and Loves of the Immersion Man 14:19 Dobson's Leech Mishap 17:42 Films on Television 21:49 Eleven Years Ago ONCE UPON A TIME You dressed so fine. You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? Well no, you didn't. You should have. Mister Compton at the Tweezer Factory told you to, but you ignored him. You did worse than ignore him. You tipped his hat off his head and trod on it until it was crushed. And what did you do then? You kicked the crushed hat into the gutter, with a sneer on your lips. And, oh! how that sneer disfigured your face. It was an ugly sneer, and made of you an ugly person, something nobody had recognised until then. You, who had won the hearts of a multitude through your good works in the field of bird welfare, you who had cradled crows in your arms, who had nursed an injured starling through three long days and nights, who had fed droplets of rainwater to a hummingbird, who so delicately brushed the feathers of an ostrich which had food poisoning, you whose eyes lit up with glee when a flock of little bitterns soared across the blue, blue sky, you--the so-called "Cassowary Man"... for you to betray the faith so many had in you, to reveal your sinful heart by kicking Mister Compton's crushed hat into the gutter, and not just any gutter, but a foul, filthy, stinking gutter, greasy with slime... for you to do that shocked us all. Now you languish in a prison cell, accused of feckless acts and nincompoopery, and Mister Compton lies buried in a distant windswept graveyard. Oh Cassowary Man, Cassowary Man... we can never forgive you. LIFE AND LOVES OF THE IMMERSION MAN The man with the hammers, the man with the flags. He has a second pair of shoes. He bought them in Blister Lane, he had them repaired. His head is the same size as two of anyone else's head, or a few pounds of oranges, plums, or other fruit. It will take years. Once he had decided to paint his ship with stolen paint, he could not look back. The ship, when painted, would be burnt sienna in colour, stains apart. What a long ship it was, and is, and will be. It had sailed from shore to shore. He held sway at the helm, and on deck. He spat plum stones into his flask. Much later, he knew, they would be crushed, liquefied, in his blender, in his kitchen, in his other hut, the hut he had built at the docks, for those mornings when he did not set sail on his ship to reach some other shore, where he had other huts. In weather so suitable for breakfast on a lawn, eighteen bowls of Special K and a jellied, jellied eel, he would ram the oars home, force them into the muck, so they were perpendicular, not far away from the tallest of the six trees, which were poplars, or larches, or even yews. Oars fixed in place, he will paint them, the oars, with the delicate bristles of his Coddington brush. Its wooden handle has seen better days, particularly the days in Jutland, Scheveningen, Reykjavik, other landmarks of or near Scandinavia. Those were the days before he was pulled towards the seas. Who pulled him to the seas? Who made his flag? Who made his shoes? Ah, that I cannot say, not yet. The kettle maps were stacked in a rough wooden crate. The crate had been painted. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:08 Once Upon a Time 04:15 Life and Loves of the Immersion Man 14:19 Dobson's Leech Mishap 17:42 Films on Television 21:49 Eleven Years Ago ONCE UPON A TIME You dressed so fine. You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? Well no, you didn't. You should have. Mister Compton at the Tweezer Factory told you to, but you ignored him. You did worse than ignore him. You tipped his hat off his head and trod on it until it was crushed. And what did you do then? You kicked the crushed hat into the gutter, with a sneer on your lips. And, oh! how that sneer disfigured your face. It was an ugly sneer, and made of you an ugly person, something nobody had recognised until then. You, who had won the hearts of a multitude through your good works in the field of bird welfare, you who had cradled crows in your arms, who had nursed an injured starling through three long days and nights, who had fed droplets of rainwater to a hummingbird, who so delicately brushed the feathers of an ostrich which had food poisoning, you whose eyes lit up with glee when a flock of little bitterns soared across the blue, blue sky, you--the so-called "Cassowary Man"... for you to betray the faith so many had in you, to reveal your sinful heart by kicking Mister Compton's crushed hat into the gutter, and not just any gutter, but a foul, filthy, stinking gutter, greasy with slime... for you to do that shocked us all. Now you languish in a prison cell, accused of feckless acts and nincompoopery, and Mister Compton lies buried in a distant windswept graveyard. Oh Cassowary Man, Cassowary Man... we can never forgive you. LIFE AND LOVES OF THE IMMERSION MAN The man with the hammers, the man with the flags. He has a second pair of shoes. He bought them in Blister Lane, he had them repaired. His head is the same size as two of anyone else's head, or a few pounds of oranges, plums, or other fruit. It will take years. Once he had decided to paint his ship with stolen paint, he could not look back. The ship, when painted, would be burnt sienna in colour, stains apart. What a long ship it was, and is, and will be. It had sailed from shore to shore. He held sway at the helm, and on deck. He spat plum stones into his flask. Much later, he knew, they would be crushed, liquefied, in his blender, in his kitchen, in his other hut, the hut he had built at the docks, for those mornings when he did not set sail on his ship to reach some other shore, where he had other huts. In weather so suitable for breakfast on a lawn, eighteen bowls of Special K and a jellied, jellied eel, he would ram the oars home, force them into the muck, so they were perpendicular, not far away from the tallest of the six trees, which were poplars, or larches, or even yews. Oars fixed in place, he will paint them, the oars, with the delicate bristles of his Coddington brush. Its wooden handle has seen better days, particularly the days in Jutland, Scheveningen, Reykjavik, other landmarks of or near Scandinavia. Those were the days before he was pulled towards the seas. Who pulled him to the seas? Who made his flag? Who made his shoes? Ah, that I cannot say, not yet. The kettle maps were stacked in a rough wooden crate. The crate had been painted. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-11-0229:25fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-26Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 My Little Blind Crow 02:21 The Windows in the Villa 04:52 Museology 07:03 Chrononhotonthologos 09:46 Hoon Hing Boom Bang a Bang 15:02 The Glass Man 17:38 Today's Recipe 20:31 Poppy Nisbet's Music Tips 23:03 A Sad Story 28:40 Hooting Yard Archive, March 2005 MY LITTLE BLIND CROW So there I was, kneading dough, thinking about Edgar Allan Poe, and my heart fit to burst about my little blind crow. The moon was full and it cast a glow. Santa in the chimney said "Ho ho ho". I wept hot tears for my little blind crow. The wind doth howl, the gale doth blow. They used to call Stalin "Uncle Joe", but Stalin never sobbed all night for my little blind crow. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Brother, can you spare a dime? Sister, are you too crumpled with woe when you think about my little blind crow? They say that Stalin's five-year plans made Russia strong. But that has nothing to do with my song. I want it set to music by Status Quo. A sad, sad song for my little blind crow. THE WINDOWS IN THE VILLA ...the wind in the willows, the wind in the windows, the will in the windows, the wills in the window, Goop, the executor, saw that the will had been lodged in the casement window, it was hidden behind the curtain, although he was not certain, the will in the window, the lady in the lake, the lake like the lady, the lake in the la di da, the break in the lake, the Beak Keepsake, for a keepsake, in her locket, the lady in the lake kept a beak, the beak of a bird, the third bird, the first bird was a chaffinch, the second was a vulture, the third bird was dead, its beak had been detached and she kept it as a keepsake in her locket in her pocket, the quick and the dead, the dead and the sick, the sick and the sad, the sick man was sad, he wrote his will, he plighted his troth, he was as sick as a dog, he was sick in the trough, the tooth of the truth, those shoes of his, his shoes, the truth of boots and shoes, a boot is a shoe, the beauty of boots, the mutiny on the Bounty, a bountiful feast, the test of the best, deceit is a crime, the crime of the tooth, the truth of the crime, in Much Hadham, is that true? I've not checked, the check and the stripe, the striped and the hooped, the patterned and plain, the brain drain, the drain at the kerb, the kerb of the path, the path of life, the death of earth, the dearth of crime, the crime of passion, the scarlet pimpernel, the pimpled and sick, the sickness unto death, rude health, untold wealth, pelf, filthy lucre, Lord Lucan, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the raid of the brigade, the raid was made, the maid was late, the tale was told, as bold as brass, the caste system, a Shropshire Lad, baize, the toll of bells, the bells of hell, Beelzebub's bells, that swelling brogue, that broken shell, a-wassailing we will go... […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 My Little Blind Crow 02:21 The Windows in the Villa 04:52 Museology 07:03 Chrononhotonthologos 09:46 Hoon Hing Boom Bang a Bang 15:02 The Glass Man 17:38 Today's Recipe 20:31 Poppy Nisbet's Music Tips 23:03 A Sad Story 28:40 Hooting Yard Archive, March 2005 MY LITTLE BLIND CROW So there I was, kneading dough, thinking about Edgar Allan Poe, and my heart fit to burst about my little blind crow. The moon was full and it cast a glow. Santa in the chimney said "Ho ho ho". I wept hot tears for my little blind crow. The wind doth howl, the gale doth blow. They used to call Stalin "Uncle Joe", but Stalin never sobbed all night for my little blind crow. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Brother, can you spare a dime? Sister, are you too crumpled with woe when you think about my little blind crow? They say that Stalin's five-year plans made Russia strong. But that has nothing to do with my song. I want it set to music by Status Quo. A sad, sad song for my little blind crow. THE WINDOWS IN THE VILLA ...the wind in the willows, the wind in the windows, the will in the windows, the wills in the window, Goop, the executor, saw that the will had been lodged in the casement window, it was hidden behind the curtain, although he was not certain, the will in the window, the lady in the lake, the lake like the lady, the lake in the la di da, the break in the lake, the Beak Keepsake, for a keepsake, in her locket, the lady in the lake kept a beak, the beak of a bird, the third bird, the first bird was a chaffinch, the second was a vulture, the third bird was dead, its beak had been detached and she kept it as a keepsake in her locket in her pocket, the quick and the dead, the dead and the sick, the sick and the sad, the sick man was sad, he wrote his will, he plighted his troth, he was as sick as a dog, he was sick in the trough, the tooth of the truth, those shoes of his, his shoes, the truth of boots and shoes, a boot is a shoe, the beauty of boots, the mutiny on the Bounty, a bountiful feast, the test of the best, deceit is a crime, the crime of the tooth, the truth of the crime, in Much Hadham, is that true? I've not checked, the check and the stripe, the striped and the hooped, the patterned and plain, the brain drain, the drain at the kerb, the kerb of the path, the path of life, the death of earth, the dearth of crime, the crime of passion, the scarlet pimpernel, the pimpled and sick, the sickness unto death, rude health, untold wealth, pelf, filthy lucre, Lord Lucan, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the raid of the brigade, the raid was made, the maid was late, the tale was told, as bold as brass, the caste system, a Shropshire Lad, baize, the toll of bells, the bells of hell, Beelzebub's bells, that swelling brogue, that broken shell, a-wassailing we will go... […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-2629:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-19Wed, 19 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 A Thrilling Yarn 05:46 Pabstus Tack 11:16 Max 17:06 Dispatches From the Nib of Van Dongelbraacke 20:55 How to Think of Things Other Than Juggling 25:54 King Wenceslas 27:05 "The kam, as if approaching the Yarta..." 30:09 On Why I Should Be The Next Director General Of The BBC 30:16 Tiles 31:51 On The Krummhorn Man 32:06 Dabbler Dad 33:33 Unhinged By Cream Crackers A THRILLING YARN I was invited to tour the sheds, so I wore a pair of gloves. Have you got that so far? Sheds, gloves. The snow was thick so we were preceded by a snowplough the engine of which ran on a fuel of uncertain origin. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel. Make a note. When I say that the origin or provenance of the fuel was uncertain, I mean that I did not know of it, not that it was unclear to those people who know their snowploughs and other vehicles. Of course they knew where their fuel came from. I did not need to know. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles. Are you beginning to see where this leads? As soon as we got inside the first shed on the tour I removed my gloves and put them on a shelf above a gas heater. How they managed to pipe gas out here was something else I did not know. We were meant to have a picnic in this first shed but no one had remembered to bring the hamper. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper. Bursting with inhuman courage I volunteered to return to the biddyhouse alone, to fetch the hamper. Various half-hearted attempts were made to dissuade me, but I waved them aside with my now ungloved hands. It has to be said that my waves were theatrical, even melodramatic, but I enjoyed the sensation. I could feel my blood pumping through my veins. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood. Stop me when you've cottoned on. I left my gloves on the shelf above the gas heater and went out into the snow. Without a compass, I strode off in what proved to be completely the wrong direction. Instead of reaching the biddyhouse where I would find the hamper and heave it on to my shoulder and take it back to shed number one for the picnic, I found myself lost, and not only lost, but encircled by wolves. The wolves each had a dusting of fresh snow on their backs. I took this to mean that they had been standing around for a while, waiting for me. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves. I counted seventeen snow-covered wolves. They remained perfectly still, looking at me. Nursery rhymes are a godsend in such circumstances, at least that has been my experience. I began with Ring a ring a roses and then did Little Jack Horner. Not a single wolf moved a muscle. It then dawned on me that they were all blind. Blind wolves in the snow! And me lost, and without my gloves, and ignorant of fuel sources! And further than ever from the picnic hamper! What a predicament! Or was it? You be the judge. Now listen, just once more... Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves, roses, muscles, dawn, blind. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 A Thrilling Yarn 05:46 Pabstus Tack 11:16 Max 17:06 Dispatches From the Nib of Van Dongelbraacke 20:55 How to Think of Things Other Than Juggling 25:54 King Wenceslas 27:05 "The kam, as if approaching the Yarta..." 30:09 On Why I Should Be The Next Director General Of The BBC 30:16 Tiles 31:51 On The Krummhorn Man 32:06 Dabbler Dad 33:33 Unhinged By Cream Crackers A THRILLING YARN I was invited to tour the sheds, so I wore a pair of gloves. Have you got that so far? Sheds, gloves. The snow was thick so we were preceded by a snowplough the engine of which ran on a fuel of uncertain origin. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel. Make a note. When I say that the origin or provenance of the fuel was uncertain, I mean that I did not know of it, not that it was unclear to those people who know their snowploughs and other vehicles. Of course they knew where their fuel came from. I did not need to know. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles. Are you beginning to see where this leads? As soon as we got inside the first shed on the tour I removed my gloves and put them on a shelf above a gas heater. How they managed to pipe gas out here was something else I did not know. We were meant to have a picnic in this first shed but no one had remembered to bring the hamper. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper. Bursting with inhuman courage I volunteered to return to the biddyhouse alone, to fetch the hamper. Various half-hearted attempts were made to dissuade me, but I waved them aside with my now ungloved hands. It has to be said that my waves were theatrical, even melodramatic, but I enjoyed the sensation. I could feel my blood pumping through my veins. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood. Stop me when you've cottoned on. I left my gloves on the shelf above the gas heater and went out into the snow. Without a compass, I strode off in what proved to be completely the wrong direction. Instead of reaching the biddyhouse where I would find the hamper and heave it on to my shoulder and take it back to shed number one for the picnic, I found myself lost, and not only lost, but encircled by wolves. The wolves each had a dusting of fresh snow on their backs. I took this to mean that they had been standing around for a while, waiting for me. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves. I counted seventeen snow-covered wolves. They remained perfectly still, looking at me. Nursery rhymes are a godsend in such circumstances, at least that has been my experience. I began with Ring a ring a roses and then did Little Jack Horner. Not a single wolf moved a muscle. It then dawned on me that they were all blind. Blind wolves in the snow! And me lost, and without my gloves, and ignorant of fuel sources! And further than ever from the picnic hamper! What a predicament! Or was it? You be the judge. Now listen, just once more... Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves, roses, muscles, dawn, blind. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-1943:43fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-12Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Peas 09:10 Jeanette Winterson Please Note 10:50 The Magic Mountain 20:06 Crisis in the Sedge 22:55 My Little Blind Dolly 27:23 "The Humane Voice is Air, impregnated, and..." PEAS They're small, green, solid, edible spheres, and you eke them from pods. I am talking about peas, of course! Let us sing their praises: At the dinner tables of Hooting Yard / There's a food we hold in high regard / Oh I wonder what can it be? / It's the little green edible sphere called the pea! The shelling of peas has long been recognised as a therapeutic activity on a par with pig observation. Some doctors of the brain recommend that neurasthenic patients should spend an hour each day shelling peas and another hour leaning over the fence of a sty watching pigs. The experimental psychiatrist Tarpin Paltrow suggested doing both at the same time, with results that have been hotly debated ever since. It was Paltrow's student P K Spaceman who coined the term PQ, for pea quotient. Your PQ is easily calculated. Take the number of peas you have eaten in your lifetime, and divide it by your age. This figure can be plotted on a grid against, for example, your body mass index, rotundity of head, shoe size, and various phrenological data. Dr Spaceman was fond of citing Lloyd George's view that Neville Chamberlain had "a wrong-shaped head" and put this down to a lack of peas in the latter's diet. Sometimes he attributed it to a lack of peas in the former's diet, too. In desperate circumstances, for example when one's life is at risk, peas can become useful tools, or at least adjuncts to tools. There is the story of the Antarctic explorer, clinging by his frostbitten fingertips to the edge of a crevasse down which he was about to plunge, who managed to clamber up on to the ice by fashioning a harness using ribbons, elastic bands and frozen peas. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 Peas 09:10 Jeanette Winterson Please Note 10:50 The Magic Mountain 20:06 Crisis in the Sedge 22:55 My Little Blind Dolly 27:23 "The Humane Voice is Air, impregnated, and..." PEAS They're small, green, solid, edible spheres, and you eke them from pods. I am talking about peas, of course! Let us sing their praises: At the dinner tables of Hooting Yard / There's a food we hold in high regard / Oh I wonder what can it be? / It's the little green edible sphere called the pea! The shelling of peas has long been recognised as a therapeutic activity on a par with pig observation. Some doctors of the brain recommend that neurasthenic patients should spend an hour each day shelling peas and another hour leaning over the fence of a sty watching pigs. The experimental psychiatrist Tarpin Paltrow suggested doing both at the same time, with results that have been hotly debated ever since. It was Paltrow's student P K Spaceman who coined the term PQ, for pea quotient. Your PQ is easily calculated. Take the number of peas you have eaten in your lifetime, and divide it by your age. This figure can be plotted on a grid against, for example, your body mass index, rotundity of head, shoe size, and various phrenological data. Dr Spaceman was fond of citing Lloyd George's view that Neville Chamberlain had "a wrong-shaped head" and put this down to a lack of peas in the latter's diet. Sometimes he attributed it to a lack of peas in the former's diet, too. In desperate circumstances, for example when one's life is at risk, peas can become useful tools, or at least adjuncts to tools. There is the story of the Antarctic explorer, clinging by his frostbitten fingertips to the edge of a crevasse down which he was about to plunge, who managed to clamber up on to the ice by fashioning a harness using ribbons, elastic bands and frozen peas. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-1229:20fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-05Wed, 05 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Wisps and Clumps 06:13 On The Administration Of Lighthouses 15:55 Cemetery Birds 25:16 Ukrainian Postage Stamp Bees WISPS AND CLUMPS Today I am going to talk to you--at you--about wisps and clumps. Gaining an insight into wisps and clumps will not give you a complete understanding of the physical universe in all its matchless wonder, but it is a start. Indeed I can think of few subjects which prove a better introduction. Some might talk to you of toads or gazelles or coconut matting, perhaps, or of strange irrefragible lights in the maritime skies, but I stick to wisps and clumps, with occasional forays into bee world. So, then, what is a wisp and what is a clump? We shall look at each in turn. A wisp might be made of smoke or some other fume, for there are countless fumes, gaseous and otherwise. One guaranteed way of seeing a wisp with your very own eyes is to stand next to a dying bonfire. If you go and stand there too early, while the bonfire is still blazing, perhaps with an effigy of Roman Catholic martyr Guy Fawkes engulfed in the flames, you will not be able to see any wisps, or much else, because the smoke will be billowing, making your eyes water, and if some scamp has placed any noxious substances on the bonfire, such as anything made of rubber or plastic, things will be even worse, and you may feel like choking, indeed you may even choke uncontrollably, and topple to the ground, helpless, helpless, helpless, as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were wont to sing, long ago, on the west coast of America. They say that David Crosby's moustache is to be preserved as a national monument, but I digress. Basically, what I am saying is: keep away from the bonfire while it is at its height. You want to go and stand next to it as the last embers are dying, for it is then that you will be able to see wisps of smoke. What are their characteristics, these wisps? They are light, delicate, and fugitive. You will see a wisp rising from the glowing ashes, and it will slink upon the breeze for a few moments, and then it will be gone. All that is solid melts into air, according to Marx and Engels in The Manifesto Of The Communist Party (1848), and this is certainly true of wisps, which are hardly solid in the first place. Some substances take longer to melt into air than others, of course, and this brings us neatly to clumps. Clumps can be made of all sorts of things, and for the moment I want you to direct your attention to clumps of earth, or soil, or mud. Such clumps are often called clods (particularly by the visionary poet William Blake, who wrote The Clod And The Pebble) but I am sticking with clumps for the purpose of this diverting talk. At least I hope it is diverting. Now, there you were, standing next to the bonfire while it blazed, having arrived far too early for the wisps, and your eyes were streaming with tears and you were coughing and choking, helplessly, remember, and the next thing that happened was that you toppled over and fell to the ground, perhaps even rolling into a nearby ditch. Let us assume you are sprawled there, on your front, face down in the muck. At some point in the next few minutes, the effects of smoke inhalation wear off, and you open your stinging eyes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Wisps and Clumps 06:13 On The Administration Of Lighthouses 15:55 Cemetery Birds 25:16 Ukrainian Postage Stamp Bees WISPS AND CLUMPS Today I am going to talk to you--at you--about wisps and clumps. Gaining an insight into wisps and clumps will not give you a complete understanding of the physical universe in all its matchless wonder, but it is a start. Indeed I can think of few subjects which prove a better introduction. Some might talk to you of toads or gazelles or coconut matting, perhaps, or of strange irrefragible lights in the maritime skies, but I stick to wisps and clumps, with occasional forays into bee world. So, then, what is a wisp and what is a clump? We shall look at each in turn. A wisp might be made of smoke or some other fume, for there are countless fumes, gaseous and otherwise. One guaranteed way of seeing a wisp with your very own eyes is to stand next to a dying bonfire. If you go and stand there too early, while the bonfire is still blazing, perhaps with an effigy of Roman Catholic martyr Guy Fawkes engulfed in the flames, you will not be able to see any wisps, or much else, because the smoke will be billowing, making your eyes water, and if some scamp has placed any noxious substances on the bonfire, such as anything made of rubber or plastic, things will be even worse, and you may feel like choking, indeed you may even choke uncontrollably, and topple to the ground, helpless, helpless, helpless, as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were wont to sing, long ago, on the west coast of America. They say that David Crosby's moustache is to be preserved as a national monument, but I digress. Basically, what I am saying is: keep away from the bonfire while it is at its height. You want to go and stand next to it as the last embers are dying, for it is then that you will be able to see wisps of smoke. What are their characteristics, these wisps? They are light, delicate, and fugitive. You will see a wisp rising from the glowing ashes, and it will slink upon the breeze for a few moments, and then it will be gone. All that is solid melts into air, according to Marx and Engels in The Manifesto Of The Communist Party (1848), and this is certainly true of wisps, which are hardly solid in the first place. Some substances take longer to melt into air than others, of course, and this brings us neatly to clumps. Clumps can be made of all sorts of things, and for the moment I want you to direct your attention to clumps of earth, or soil, or mud. Such clumps are often called clods (particularly by the visionary poet William Blake, who wrote The Clod And The Pebble) but I am sticking with clumps for the purpose of this diverting talk. At least I hope it is diverting. Now, there you were, standing next to the bonfire while it blazed, having arrived far too early for the wisps, and your eyes were streaming with tears and you were coughing and choking, helplessly, remember, and the next thing that happened was that you toppled over and fell to the ground, perhaps even rolling into a nearby ditch. Let us assume you are sprawled there, on your front, face down in the muck. At some point in the next few minutes, the effects of smoke inhalation wear off, and you open your stinging eyes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-10-0529:10fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-09-28Wed, 28 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:44 A Thrilling Yarn 06:31 Pabstus Tack 12:01 Max 14:39 All Ears 17:50 Dispatches From the Nib of Van Dongelbraacke 21:39 How to Think of Things Other Than Juggling 27:50 "The kam, as if approaching the Yarta..." A THRILLING YARN I was invited to tour the sheds, so I wore a pair of gloves. Have you got that so far? Sheds, gloves. The snow was thick so we were preceded by a snowplough the engine of which ran on a fuel of uncertain origin. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel. Make a note. When I say that the origin or provenance of the fuel was uncertain, I mean that I did not know of it, not that it was unclear to those people who know their snowploughs and other vehicles. Of course they knew where their fuel came from. I did not need to know. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles. Are you beginning to see where this leads? As soon as we got inside the first shed on the tour I removed my gloves and put them on a shelf above a gas heater. How they managed to pipe gas out here was something else I did not know. We were meant to have a picnic in this first shed but no one had remembered to bring the hamper. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper. Bursting with inhuman courage I volunteered to return to the biddyhouse alone, to fetch the hamper. Various half-hearted attempts were made to dissuade me, but I waved them aside with my now ungloved hands. It has to be said that my waves were theatrical, even melodramatic, but I enjoyed the sensation. I could feel my blood pumping through my veins. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood. Stop me when you've cottoned on. I left my gloves on the shelf above the gas heater and went out into the snow. Without a compass, I strode off in what proved to be completely the wrong direction. Instead of reaching the biddyhouse where I would find the hamper and heave it on to my shoulder and take it back to shed number one for the picnic, I found myself lost, and not only lost, but encircled by wolves. The wolves each had a dusting of fresh snow on their backs. I took this to mean that they had been standing around for a while, waiting for me. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves. I counted seventeen snow-covered wolves. They remained perfectly still, looking at me. Nursery rhymes are a godsend in such circumstances, at least that has been my experience. I began with Ring a ring a roses and then did Little Jack Horner. Not a single wolf moved a muscle. It then dawned on me that they were all blind. Blind wolves in the snow! And me lost, and without my gloves, and ignorant of fuel sources! And further than ever from the picnic hamper! What a predicament! Or was it? You be the judge. Now listen, just once more... Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves, roses, muscles, dawn, blind. All should now be clear, as clear as the sky was on that cold bright morning in September, forty miles north of Helsinki, the capital city of Finland, founded as long ago as 1550 as a rival to the Hanseatic city of Tallinn. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-09-28Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:44 A Thrilling Yarn 06:31 Pabstus Tack 12:01 Max 14:39 All Ears 17:50 Dispatches From the Nib of Van Dongelbraacke 21:39 How to Think of Things Other Than Juggling 27:50 "The kam, as if approaching the Yarta..." A THRILLING YARN I was invited to tour the sheds, so I wore a pair of gloves. Have you got that so far? Sheds, gloves. The snow was thick so we were preceded by a snowplough the engine of which ran on a fuel of uncertain origin. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel. Make a note. When I say that the origin or provenance of the fuel was uncertain, I mean that I did not know of it, not that it was unclear to those people who know their snowploughs and other vehicles. Of course they knew where their fuel came from. I did not need to know. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles. Are you beginning to see where this leads? As soon as we got inside the first shed on the tour I removed my gloves and put them on a shelf above a gas heater. How they managed to pipe gas out here was something else I did not know. We were meant to have a picnic in this first shed but no one had remembered to bring the hamper. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper. Bursting with inhuman courage I volunteered to return to the biddyhouse alone, to fetch the hamper. Various half-hearted attempts were made to dissuade me, but I waved them aside with my now ungloved hands. It has to be said that my waves were theatrical, even melodramatic, but I enjoyed the sensation. I could feel my blood pumping through my veins. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood. Stop me when you've cottoned on. I left my gloves on the shelf above the gas heater and went out into the snow. Without a compass, I strode off in what proved to be completely the wrong direction. Instead of reaching the biddyhouse where I would find the hamper and heave it on to my shoulder and take it back to shed number one for the picnic, I found myself lost, and not only lost, but encircled by wolves. The wolves each had a dusting of fresh snow on their backs. I took this to mean that they had been standing around for a while, waiting for me. Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves. I counted seventeen snow-covered wolves. They remained perfectly still, looking at me. Nursery rhymes are a godsend in such circumstances, at least that has been my experience. I began with Ring a ring a roses and then did Little Jack Horner. Not a single wolf moved a muscle. It then dawned on me that they were all blind. Blind wolves in the snow! And me lost, and without my gloves, and ignorant of fuel sources! And further than ever from the picnic hamper! What a predicament! Or was it? You be the judge. Now listen, just once more... Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves, roses, muscles, dawn, blind. All should now be clear, as clear as the sky was on that cold bright morning in September, forty miles north of Helsinki, the capital city of Finland, founded as long ago as 1550 as a rival to the Hanseatic city of Tallinn. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-09-2830:32fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-09-07Wed, 07 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Horse Begone 02:07 On Tadeusz Kapisko And His Ears Of Wheat 07:20 With Dobson in the Land of Nod 10:49 Give Me a Glossary 17:30 Nomenclature of Diminutive Persons Who Plunge Down 150-ft Cliffs and Survive With Hardly a Scratch 20:20 Billy Parallelogram 23:52 Metal of the Week : Tin 28:58 Dietary News HORSE BEGONE I met her on a Monday and my heart stood still. "Da doo ron ron, horse begone!" she cried. It was an incantation, in a field, and sure enough, the horse to whom she addressed these words turned and cantered away, until it could no longer be seen in the mist and the drizzle. Somebody told me that her name was Jill, but before I could ask her, she was casting her spells again. "Hoo-di hoo-di woo, cow begone!" she yelled, at a cow, but this time without the desired effect. The cow just stared back at her, chewing its cud, the way cows do. "Hoo-di hoo-di woo, cow begone!" she repeated, a little desperately, I thought. If I'd been the cow, I would have sensed a moment of panic, of confidence drained. Jill--if Jill was her name--repeated her incantation too soon. The cow did not move. So I took the opportunity to stride purposefully across the field in my creaking black boots until I was face to face with her. "Somebody told me that your name is Jill," I said, essaying a bow as if I were some sort of Regency fop. "My name is not Jill," she hissed, "I am the Woohoohoodiwoodadooronron Woman. Fop begone!" and I found myself propelled by some eldritch force into a weird netherworld where I languish to this day, my only companion the horse. There is no sign of the cow. ON TADEUSZ KAPISKO AND HIS EARS OF WHEAT [The following piece, one of my own favourites, first appeared in Hooting Yard in September 2005. I find myself somewhat alarmed to think that is almost seven years ago. Where, where does the time go? Seven years is the length of time the Jesuits need to claim a child's soul for life. It is longer than the Second World War. Ay de mi! Ay de mi!, as Carlyle would say. For this reappearance, I have added some useful notes.] In certain parts of the world, people still sit around their fires at dusk and tell each other stories. In the wretched village where Marigold Chew grew up, there was one tale in particular that was told over and over again. This was the story of Tadeusz Kapisko and his ears of wheat. It was told so often--sometimes three or four times in a single evening--that it was embedded in Marigold's brain, and years later, she could recount it word for word, barely pausing for breath. Dobson always knew when she was about to launch into the yarn, because she sucked in her cheeks and puckered her lips in what he thought of as "that Kapisko way". Curiously, the tale of Tadeusz Kapisko and his ears of wheat was never written down, but if Marigold Chew's memory is accurate, there was a record of sorts. She remembered, as an infant, seeing pictorial representations of the main points of the story, richly painted in crimson, cerulean blue and orpiment. Later in life, she tried to describe them. I recall that the first picture was of Tadeusz Kapisko half hidden behind a cow. It was, decisively, a French cow, une vache. I remember thinking how significant this was, even as a tiny tot. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-09-07Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Horse Begone 02:07 On Tadeusz Kapisko And His Ears Of Wheat 07:20 With Dobson in the Land of Nod 10:49 Give Me a Glossary 17:30 Nomenclature of Diminutive Persons Who Plunge Down 150-ft Cliffs and Survive With Hardly a Scratch 20:20 Billy Parallelogram 23:52 Metal of the Week : Tin 28:58 Dietary News HORSE BEGONE I met her on a Monday and my heart stood still. "Da doo ron ron, horse begone!" she cried. It was an incantation, in a field, and sure enough, the horse to whom she addressed these words turned and cantered away, until it could no longer be seen in the mist and the drizzle. Somebody told me that her name was Jill, but before I could ask her, she was casting her spells again. "Hoo-di hoo-di woo, cow begone!" she yelled, at a cow, but this time without the desired effect. The cow just stared back at her, chewing its cud, the way cows do. "Hoo-di hoo-di woo, cow begone!" she repeated, a little desperately, I thought. If I'd been the cow, I would have sensed a moment of panic, of confidence drained. Jill--if Jill was her name--repeated her incantation too soon. The cow did not move. So I took the opportunity to stride purposefully across the field in my creaking black boots until I was face to face with her. "Somebody told me that your name is Jill," I said, essaying a bow as if I were some sort of Regency fop. "My name is not Jill," she hissed, "I am the Woohoohoodiwoodadooronron Woman. Fop begone!" and I found myself propelled by some eldritch force into a weird netherworld where I languish to this day, my only companion the horse. There is no sign of the cow. ON TADEUSZ KAPISKO AND HIS EARS OF WHEAT [The following piece, one of my own favourites, first appeared in Hooting Yard in September 2005. I find myself somewhat alarmed to think that is almost seven years ago. Where, where does the time go? Seven years is the length of time the Jesuits need to claim a child's soul for life. It is longer than the Second World War. Ay de mi! Ay de mi!, as Carlyle would say. For this reappearance, I have added some useful notes.] In certain parts of the world, people still sit around their fires at dusk and tell each other stories. In the wretched village where Marigold Chew grew up, there was one tale in particular that was told over and over again. This was the story of Tadeusz Kapisko and his ears of wheat. It was told so often--sometimes three or four times in a single evening--that it was embedded in Marigold's brain, and years later, she could recount it word for word, barely pausing for breath. Dobson always knew when she was about to launch into the yarn, because she sucked in her cheeks and puckered her lips in what he thought of as "that Kapisko way". Curiously, the tale of Tadeusz Kapisko and his ears of wheat was never written down, but if Marigold Chew's memory is accurate, there was a record of sorts. She remembered, as an infant, seeing pictorial representations of the main points of the story, richly painted in crimson, cerulean blue and orpiment. Later in life, she tried to describe them. I recall that the first picture was of Tadeusz Kapisko half hidden behind a cow. It was, decisively, a French cow, une vache. I remember thinking how significant this was, even as a tiny tot. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-09-0731:06fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-31Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:07 Bosanquet 05:33 The Smashed God 11:31 A Dobson Anecdote 15:34 And I Shall Walk 19:46 Murder in the Murk 23:59 Destiny's Darning-needle Pierced My Very Soul BOSANQUET Pansy Cradledew has recently become enamoured of the computer game Bosanquet, which she will play for hours at a time, seemingly removed from an earthly plane. Though I do not share her enthusiasm for this so-called "game of skill, tactics, problem-solving and strategy", Pansy assures me that she is but one among a legion of devotees. She also says that, as an expert player, she wants to reach out to those less adept than herself, and has asked me to publish a few little hints and tips. "These should not be considered as something so vulgar as 'cheats'," she writes, "but as advisory notes for those Bosanquetistas (as we dub ourselves) who have not yet reached the exalted level in which I bask." Here, then, is an edited version of the dozens upon dozens of pages of scribbled jottings Pansy sent in: Tranche 6 : The Rushdie can be placated by moving the cursor over the red squares next to the pond. There is a squirrel hidden under the canopy. Press CTRL-SHIFT repeatedly to capture the goat. Tranche 11 : To avoid the bees, hold down all the numeric keys and move your avatar to the square beside the pillows. Tranche 43 : The ice-field is really a devil's pit. Get past it by collecting all sixteen nougat-bags. Tranche 49 : My fastest time at this tranche is a whopping four hours thirty six minutes. Remember that to pass the crepuscular nozzles you have to bring your sack of V S Naipaul novels from the previous tranche. Tranche 60 : Martin Amis can only be beheaded by using the cursor to drag the sword across the blobs. Tranche 144 : Hit the arrow keys in this order :UP-UP-UP-LEFT-LEFT-UP-RIGHT-DOWN. This will take you to the lair of the savage brontosaurus and you will be able to swallow the magic potion. Be careful of the magnetic locusts. If Pansy's "advisory notes" are to be believed, there are at least two hundred more tranches to complete, but that is quite enough of this nonsense. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-31Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 02:07 Bosanquet 05:33 The Smashed God 11:31 A Dobson Anecdote 15:34 And I Shall Walk 19:46 Murder in the Murk 23:59 Destiny's Darning-needle Pierced My Very Soul BOSANQUET Pansy Cradledew has recently become enamoured of the computer game Bosanquet, which she will play for hours at a time, seemingly removed from an earthly plane. Though I do not share her enthusiasm for this so-called "game of skill, tactics, problem-solving and strategy", Pansy assures me that she is but one among a legion of devotees. She also says that, as an expert player, she wants to reach out to those less adept than herself, and has asked me to publish a few little hints and tips. "These should not be considered as something so vulgar as 'cheats'," she writes, "but as advisory notes for those Bosanquetistas (as we dub ourselves) who have not yet reached the exalted level in which I bask." Here, then, is an edited version of the dozens upon dozens of pages of scribbled jottings Pansy sent in: Tranche 6 : The Rushdie can be placated by moving the cursor over the red squares next to the pond. There is a squirrel hidden under the canopy. Press CTRL-SHIFT repeatedly to capture the goat. Tranche 11 : To avoid the bees, hold down all the numeric keys and move your avatar to the square beside the pillows. Tranche 43 : The ice-field is really a devil's pit. Get past it by collecting all sixteen nougat-bags. Tranche 49 : My fastest time at this tranche is a whopping four hours thirty six minutes. Remember that to pass the crepuscular nozzles you have to bring your sack of V S Naipaul novels from the previous tranche. Tranche 60 : Martin Amis can only be beheaded by using the cursor to drag the sword across the blobs. Tranche 144 : Hit the arrow keys in this order :UP-UP-UP-LEFT-LEFT-UP-RIGHT-DOWN. This will take you to the lair of the savage brontosaurus and you will be able to swallow the magic potion. Be careful of the magnetic locusts. If Pansy's "advisory notes" are to be believed, there are at least two hundred more tranches to complete, but that is quite enough of this nonsense. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-3130:31fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-17Wed, 17 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Railway Forecast 04:28 Hendiadys In Mudchute 09:05 Fan Fiction Fad 12:31 On Gods 25:50 Last Night's Dream 29:20 Cemetery Birds RAILWAY FORECAST Readers in the UK will know that the Met Office Shipping Forecast, broadcast on BBC radio four times a day to an audience composed mainly of landlubbers ignorant of its meaning, is one of our national treasures. Overseas readers who have no idea what I am talking about can read a splendidly detailed entry in the Wikipedia. A great part of the charm, of course, is those wonderful names--Cromarty, Dogger, German Bight--and the other day it struck me that an equally delightful list is to be found in the stations on the Docklands Light Railway in London. Here, then, is today's DLR Forecast. Shadwell : pining : locusts, bandage paste : 57, 12 Poplar : clattering : mordant starlings, catafalque : 6, 22 West India Quay : flapping : dirigible, Marmite : 82, 98 Canary Wharf : galumphing : peanuts, macadamia nuts : 6, 10 Heron Quays : pinging and grinding : coathanger, pot : 52, 11 Mudchute : looming : pagans, whirling things : 14, 14 All Saints : clucking : gas canisters, birdseed : 5, 36 Pudding Mill Lane : flickering : savagery, nesting habits : 8, 70 Custom House : abseiling : pomposity and flags and a cup : 16, 84 Cyprus : choking : Yoko Ono, farm buildings : 63, 71 Gallions Reach : muttering : plastic cutlery, monitor lizards : 43, 7 Cutty Sark : preening : bevels, creosote : 19, 90 Limehouse : mucking about : muck, night soil : 2, 107 HENDIADYS IN MUDCHUTE And further, let it be known, known and digested, known and digested and regurgitated, regurgitated in the form of words, that it be known better, that in the last century Mudchute was the home of a monomaniac. Actually, to call Caspian Sea Spanglebag a monomaniac is not strictly true, for he had not one but two abiding obsessions. The first, which is of little interest to us, was his conviction that the tyrant of the Soviet Union was called Josef Starling, while the heroine of Thomas Harris' The Silence Of The Lambs was named Clarice Stalin. Being bonkers, Spanglebag was unmoved by the facts that the moustachioed and heavily pockmarked dictator chose the pseudonym "Man of Steel" in preference to his real name of Djugashvili, and that the troubled FBI rookie is a fictional character. But it was the Mudchute man's belief that hendiadys is a disease afflicting poultry, rather than a figure of speech, which consumed most of his energies. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Spanglebag declared war on the makers of dictionaries, lexicons, grammars and encyclopaedias. Most of the major publishers of reference books have somewhere in their archives a fat file containing letters with that Mudchute postmark, all written by pencil in tiny, tiny handwriting, their tone varying from mild complaint to violent menace. One example will suffice. I purchased the latest edition of your wordbook, writes Spanglebag on 23rd June 1989, and was surprised to see you define hendiadys as "a figure of speech in which two words connected by a conjunction are used to express a single notion that would normally be expressed by an adjective and a substantive; the use of two conjoined nouns instead of a noun and modifier". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Railway Forecast 04:28 Hendiadys In Mudchute 09:05 Fan Fiction Fad 12:31 On Gods 25:50 Last Night's Dream 29:20 Cemetery Birds RAILWAY FORECAST Readers in the UK will know that the Met Office Shipping Forecast, broadcast on BBC radio four times a day to an audience composed mainly of landlubbers ignorant of its meaning, is one of our national treasures. Overseas readers who have no idea what I am talking about can read a splendidly detailed entry in the Wikipedia. A great part of the charm, of course, is those wonderful names--Cromarty, Dogger, German Bight--and the other day it struck me that an equally delightful list is to be found in the stations on the Docklands Light Railway in London. Here, then, is today's DLR Forecast. Shadwell : pining : locusts, bandage paste : 57, 12 Poplar : clattering : mordant starlings, catafalque : 6, 22 West India Quay : flapping : dirigible, Marmite : 82, 98 Canary Wharf : galumphing : peanuts, macadamia nuts : 6, 10 Heron Quays : pinging and grinding : coathanger, pot : 52, 11 Mudchute : looming : pagans, whirling things : 14, 14 All Saints : clucking : gas canisters, birdseed : 5, 36 Pudding Mill Lane : flickering : savagery, nesting habits : 8, 70 Custom House : abseiling : pomposity and flags and a cup : 16, 84 Cyprus : choking : Yoko Ono, farm buildings : 63, 71 Gallions Reach : muttering : plastic cutlery, monitor lizards : 43, 7 Cutty Sark : preening : bevels, creosote : 19, 90 Limehouse : mucking about : muck, night soil : 2, 107 HENDIADYS IN MUDCHUTE And further, let it be known, known and digested, known and digested and regurgitated, regurgitated in the form of words, that it be known better, that in the last century Mudchute was the home of a monomaniac. Actually, to call Caspian Sea Spanglebag a monomaniac is not strictly true, for he had not one but two abiding obsessions. The first, which is of little interest to us, was his conviction that the tyrant of the Soviet Union was called Josef Starling, while the heroine of Thomas Harris' The Silence Of The Lambs was named Clarice Stalin. Being bonkers, Spanglebag was unmoved by the facts that the moustachioed and heavily pockmarked dictator chose the pseudonym "Man of Steel" in preference to his real name of Djugashvili, and that the troubled FBI rookie is a fictional character. But it was the Mudchute man's belief that hendiadys is a disease afflicting poultry, rather than a figure of speech, which consumed most of his energies. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Spanglebag declared war on the makers of dictionaries, lexicons, grammars and encyclopaedias. Most of the major publishers of reference books have somewhere in their archives a fat file containing letters with that Mudchute postmark, all written by pencil in tiny, tiny handwriting, their tone varying from mild complaint to violent menace. One example will suffice. I purchased the latest edition of your wordbook, writes Spanglebag on 23rd June 1989, and was surprised to see you define hendiadys as "a figure of speech in which two words connected by a conjunction are used to express a single notion that would normally be expressed by an adjective and a substantive; the use of two conjoined nouns instead of a noun and modifier". […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-1730:31fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-10Wed, 10 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Impending Juxtaposition of Blubber and Tallow 03:45 It Was Dusk 08:44 Weathering the Storm 13:32 The Agony in the Garden 19:15 Through Clenched Teeth 22:28 Bird Recognition Skills 29:02 Witless Fabiola IMPENDING JUXTAPOSITION OF BLUBBER AND TALLOW On Thursday next Mister Taplow will be presenting a talk at Sawdust Bridge Salvation Hall. He has made private arrangements to rent the building for the evening, so the usual manicuring session will not take place. Mister Taplow intends to discuss the relative merits of blubber and tallow, with specific reference to the manufacture of candles. Most of you will know that Mister Taplow is blind. The talk is scheduled to begin at 7.30 p.m., after which there will be an opportunity to ask questions, although Mister Taplow has indicated that he may not have time to answer more than a couple, as he will have to dash off, on horseback, to a mountainous retreat by 9.45 p.m. The Trustees of Sawdust Bridge Salvation Hall have made arrangements for little snacks to be served to those attending, although no crockery will be provided. Mister Taplow's guide dog, Agamemnon, will be on hand to gobble up any spillages, such as cake-crumbs. Agamemnon will not be accompanying his master to the mountains, so if anyone can provide the hound with a comfortable place to sleep for the night, that would be appreciated. Mister Taplow says he will collect the dog within six working days. Those who know Mister Taplow only from his talks on ostriches, fog, the brains of geese, shoe polish and Crosby Stills & Nash will, we hope, be pleasantly surprised by his erudition in what is, for him, a brand new topic. As ever, state of the art technology will be used to make a recording of the talk, for future release as a compact disc with a cover design by noted local mezzotintist Rex Tint. Please note that all those attending are asked to bring either a blubber candle or a tallow candle, but not both. Stewards will allocate seats on the night. The attic of Sawdust Bridge Salvation Hall is still infested with weird bird-like life-forms which screech horribly, but rest assured they are quite harmless. Tickets for this exciting event are available from all those kiosks clustered around the market square, or by post from Mister Taplow's Exciting Talks, c/o Mister Taplow The Blind Man, The Strangely Mesmeric Building, Blister Lane. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Impending Juxtaposition of Blubber and Tallow 03:45 It Was Dusk 08:44 Weathering the Storm 13:32 The Agony in the Garden 19:15 Through Clenched Teeth 22:28 Bird Recognition Skills 29:02 Witless Fabiola IMPENDING JUXTAPOSITION OF BLUBBER AND TALLOW On Thursday next Mister Taplow will be presenting a talk at Sawdust Bridge Salvation Hall. He has made private arrangements to rent the building for the evening, so the usual manicuring session will not take place. Mister Taplow intends to discuss the relative merits of blubber and tallow, with specific reference to the manufacture of candles. Most of you will know that Mister Taplow is blind. The talk is scheduled to begin at 7.30 p.m., after which there will be an opportunity to ask questions, although Mister Taplow has indicated that he may not have time to answer more than a couple, as he will have to dash off, on horseback, to a mountainous retreat by 9.45 p.m. The Trustees of Sawdust Bridge Salvation Hall have made arrangements for little snacks to be served to those attending, although no crockery will be provided. Mister Taplow's guide dog, Agamemnon, will be on hand to gobble up any spillages, such as cake-crumbs. Agamemnon will not be accompanying his master to the mountains, so if anyone can provide the hound with a comfortable place to sleep for the night, that would be appreciated. Mister Taplow says he will collect the dog within six working days. Those who know Mister Taplow only from his talks on ostriches, fog, the brains of geese, shoe polish and Crosby Stills & Nash will, we hope, be pleasantly surprised by his erudition in what is, for him, a brand new topic. As ever, state of the art technology will be used to make a recording of the talk, for future release as a compact disc with a cover design by noted local mezzotintist Rex Tint. Please note that all those attending are asked to bring either a blubber candle or a tallow candle, but not both. Stewards will allocate seats on the night. The attic of Sawdust Bridge Salvation Hall is still infested with weird bird-like life-forms which screech horribly, but rest assured they are quite harmless. Tickets for this exciting event are available from all those kiosks clustered around the market square, or by post from Mister Taplow's Exciting Talks, c/o Mister Taplow The Blind Man, The Strangely Mesmeric Building, Blister Lane. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-1030:30fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-03Wed, 03 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:37 Vaporetto or Bus? 05:47 My Unknown Boswell 12:06 Important Lark Information 17:01 A Recipe for Gruel 23:41 Since You've Been Gone 27:11 Suzanne Takes You Down VAPORETTO OR BUS? A thumping great tome lands on the Reviews Editor's desk. It is nothing less than the Incredibly Detailed Report Of The Commission Of Enquiry Into The Provision Of Public Transport Services In And Around Hooting Yard As Requested By Civic Functionaries Many, Many Years Ago. It would, one feels, be a kindness simply to burn the thing. After all, is anyone ever going to read it, apart from your dutiful editor? Did it not occur to its compilers that decades-old research cannot simply be written up over the succeeding years, with agonising slowness, and retain any validity? One notes that the authors have opted to remain anonymous, or semi-anonymous, in that they have given their identities only in the form of cryptic crossword clues: thus we have Spigot in lane gets plank with Dutch cheese (4,8), General Editor; Dad's pie on hinge (6,9) and Peewit's churchgoer frantic with collapsed lung, says monster (8, 7), Associate Editors; Tenebrous elk, perhaps? (10, 12), Deputy Editor; Sounds like miasma of cloacal gruel hurled sideways (7, 7), Picture Editor; and not forgetting Large pig on holiday island (6, 9), Intern. As the great Terry-Thomas used to say, what an absolute shower! This enormous volume is basically a mishmash of risible twaddle. Take this, for example: "The gorgeous vaporettos which ply the canals of Hooting Yard are run by a forward-thinking company which emblazons all its vessels with a startling logo of a budgerigar." It is difficult to conceive of a sentence of similar length which contains so many errors. Or this: "The bus route between Blister Lane and the Dye Works at Chew Parva has won many awards for its revolutionary approach to timetabling, not least the employment of "Little Severin, the Mystic Badger", a real badger who predicts the timing of the buses by doing something or other with his paws. Little Severin is kept in a hutch at the Bus Depot and has become a star of local press and radio. He has also become the official sponsor of the Annual Cake Show." And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, how is this for blithering inanity? "The infrastructure of the pneumatic railway system, with its nerve centre on Yoko Ono Boulevard, was designed upon the territorial patterns of the funnelweb spider, hence the breathtaking beauty of the interchanges, sidings, and station tea-rooms." Dismissing the text with a groan of disgust, the reader turns to the maps, charts, statistical tables and appendices hoping that here, at least, some sense may be wrung from this preposterous book. All I can say is that it looks to me as if the work was farmed out to a gaggle of the younger inmates in the lunatic wing of Pang Hill Orphanage. What we have here--and it takes up over a third of the book as a whole--is a hideous collection of daubs, blobs and scribbling. Nor does it help that most of the pages appear to have been dusted with egg yolk and breadcrumbs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:37 Vaporetto or Bus? 05:47 My Unknown Boswell 12:06 Important Lark Information 17:01 A Recipe for Gruel 23:41 Since You've Been Gone 27:11 Suzanne Takes You Down VAPORETTO OR BUS? A thumping great tome lands on the Reviews Editor's desk. It is nothing less than the Incredibly Detailed Report Of The Commission Of Enquiry Into The Provision Of Public Transport Services In And Around Hooting Yard As Requested By Civic Functionaries Many, Many Years Ago. It would, one feels, be a kindness simply to burn the thing. After all, is anyone ever going to read it, apart from your dutiful editor? Did it not occur to its compilers that decades-old research cannot simply be written up over the succeeding years, with agonising slowness, and retain any validity? One notes that the authors have opted to remain anonymous, or semi-anonymous, in that they have given their identities only in the form of cryptic crossword clues: thus we have Spigot in lane gets plank with Dutch cheese (4,8), General Editor; Dad's pie on hinge (6,9) and Peewit's churchgoer frantic with collapsed lung, says monster (8, 7), Associate Editors; Tenebrous elk, perhaps? (10, 12), Deputy Editor; Sounds like miasma of cloacal gruel hurled sideways (7, 7), Picture Editor; and not forgetting Large pig on holiday island (6, 9), Intern. As the great Terry-Thomas used to say, what an absolute shower! This enormous volume is basically a mishmash of risible twaddle. Take this, for example: "The gorgeous vaporettos which ply the canals of Hooting Yard are run by a forward-thinking company which emblazons all its vessels with a startling logo of a budgerigar." It is difficult to conceive of a sentence of similar length which contains so many errors. Or this: "The bus route between Blister Lane and the Dye Works at Chew Parva has won many awards for its revolutionary approach to timetabling, not least the employment of "Little Severin, the Mystic Badger", a real badger who predicts the timing of the buses by doing something or other with his paws. Little Severin is kept in a hutch at the Bus Depot and has become a star of local press and radio. He has also become the official sponsor of the Annual Cake Show." And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, how is this for blithering inanity? "The infrastructure of the pneumatic railway system, with its nerve centre on Yoko Ono Boulevard, was designed upon the territorial patterns of the funnelweb spider, hence the breathtaking beauty of the interchanges, sidings, and station tea-rooms." Dismissing the text with a groan of disgust, the reader turns to the maps, charts, statistical tables and appendices hoping that here, at least, some sense may be wrung from this preposterous book. All I can say is that it looks to me as if the work was farmed out to a gaggle of the younger inmates in the lunatic wing of Pang Hill Orphanage. What we have here--and it takes up over a third of the book as a whole--is a hideous collection of daubs, blobs and scribbling. Nor does it help that most of the pages appear to have been dusted with egg yolk and breadcrumbs. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-08-0330:01fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-07-06Wed, 06 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 How to ... Festoon Yourself With Old Netting 03:16 Take Me Back To Old Plovdiv 07:09 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 09:02 Bronchitis Person's Helicopter Journey 15:07 The Groist 18:56 Bilingual Comintern Mocker 22:32 Two Days in the Life of Blodgett 26:51 How to Look After a Horse HOW TO ... FESTOON YOURSELF WITH OLD NETTING Serial Hooting Yard complainant Ruth Pastry writes : "The trouble with your website, Mr Key, is that, jam-packed as it is with arcane learning, those of us of a more practical bent are left short-changed. Apart from the occasional recipe, I find little here that teaches me how to actually do anything. Sort it out!" Well then. Here, especially for Ms Pastry, is the first in a series of How To... articles which have been written for us by the Barry Bucknell de nos jours, Fatima Gilliblat. Here is a surefire way to festoon yourself with old netting. First, buy a train ticket to the seaside, or more precisely to a fishing port, the more Lovecraftian the better. Innsmouth would be ideal, but anywhere faintly sinister and maritime will do. As soon as you arrive, sidle insouciantly down to the quayside, looking out for grizzled old fisherfolk. They may eye you with suspicion, but that is because you are a landlubber unfamiliar with the lore of the sea. Strike up a conversation. Ask questions about their "catch". At some point, while sucking on his clay pipe or picking the bones of sprats out of his matted hair, your interlocutor will mention his fishing net. This is your chance! Ask to see his net. Squelch across the sands with him when the tide is out, past the algae-smeared buoys and the rotting tugboats, and when you come to the old frayed net, slip the sea dog a fiver. He will trudge off to buy lugworms or maggots with this unexpected booty, and while he is gone, you can wrap yourself up in the net. Be sure to disentangle yourself and head back to the jetty before the tide comes in, or you will meet a watery doom, and miss the train home. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-07-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 How to ... Festoon Yourself With Old Netting 03:16 Take Me Back To Old Plovdiv 07:09 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 09:02 Bronchitis Person's Helicopter Journey 15:07 The Groist 18:56 Bilingual Comintern Mocker 22:32 Two Days in the Life of Blodgett 26:51 How to Look After a Horse HOW TO ... FESTOON YOURSELF WITH OLD NETTING Serial Hooting Yard complainant Ruth Pastry writes : "The trouble with your website, Mr Key, is that, jam-packed as it is with arcane learning, those of us of a more practical bent are left short-changed. Apart from the occasional recipe, I find little here that teaches me how to actually do anything. Sort it out!" Well then. Here, especially for Ms Pastry, is the first in a series of How To... articles which have been written for us by the Barry Bucknell de nos jours, Fatima Gilliblat. Here is a surefire way to festoon yourself with old netting. First, buy a train ticket to the seaside, or more precisely to a fishing port, the more Lovecraftian the better. Innsmouth would be ideal, but anywhere faintly sinister and maritime will do. As soon as you arrive, sidle insouciantly down to the quayside, looking out for grizzled old fisherfolk. They may eye you with suspicion, but that is because you are a landlubber unfamiliar with the lore of the sea. Strike up a conversation. Ask questions about their "catch". At some point, while sucking on his clay pipe or picking the bones of sprats out of his matted hair, your interlocutor will mention his fishing net. This is your chance! Ask to see his net. Squelch across the sands with him when the tide is out, past the algae-smeared buoys and the rotting tugboats, and when you come to the old frayed net, slip the sea dog a fiver. He will trudge off to buy lugworms or maggots with this unexpected booty, and while he is gone, you can wrap yourself up in the net. Be sure to disentangle yourself and head back to the jetty before the tide comes in, or you will meet a watery doom, and miss the train home. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-07-0629:15fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-29Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Shem, Ham, Japheth and Minnie Crunlop 11:56 Mrs Gubbins and Mr Smith 14:18 Picnic for Detectives 22:08 Me and My Homunculus 25:52 Blodgett's Fiendish X-ray Plot SHEM, HAM, JAPHETH AND MINNIE CRUNLOP Those two great modernists, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, were exact contemporaries, both born in 1882 and dying in 1941. Their reputations have survived, indeed prospered, in the twenty-first century. The same cannot be said of a third writer who shares those dates of birth and death, the now forgotten Minnie Crunlop. But was Minnie more modern than Jim and Ginny? Some critics think so. Here is Tadeusz Glob: "Crunlop was a monomaniac who stuck to a preposterously limited subject matter, but I am convinced that her name will ring down the ages, outlasting Homer, Beowulf and the Bible." Praise indeed, from the man who dismissed as "clots and nincompoops" nearly every writer of note from the seventeenth century onwards. Glob is certainly correct to refer to Crunlop's "preposterously limited" range. In fact, all she ever wrote were stories featuring the sons of Noah. It is true that she placed Shem, Ham and Japheth in an astonishing variety of settings, but no other characters feature in her work, except for occasional appearances by a fictionalised version of Suez Canal visionary Ferdinand De Lesseps (1805-1894). If her work is unconventional, so too her career. Minnie Crunlop only began to write in the last decade of her life, on the fourteenth of January 1931, to be precise. It was on the cold morning of this day that she wrote, from beginning to end, the famous story "Shem, Ham And Japheth Join A Knitting Circle" which appeared in the inaugural issue of Messbang's Popular Magazine Of Catastrophic Flood Fiction. Crunlop had met the self-styled delugeist Orthek Messbang a few months previously. They had a passionate yet enigmatically unconsummated affair. Among the sweet nothings he whispered into her ear was his plan to publish two periodicals devoted to his pet topic, one containing fiction and the other fact. After a stroll among the bougainvilleas and fountains, Crunlop promised to pen a story based vaguely on Noah's Ark. On her way home, she bought a Bible. She had never read it before. Locating the text she needed in Genesis, she tore it out and threw the handsome volume into a waste chute. Over the next week, she memorised the story of the Flood, and thus began her singular literary career. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Shem, Ham, Japheth and Minnie Crunlop 11:56 Mrs Gubbins and Mr Smith 14:18 Picnic for Detectives 22:08 Me and My Homunculus 25:52 Blodgett's Fiendish X-ray Plot SHEM, HAM, JAPHETH AND MINNIE CRUNLOP Those two great modernists, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, were exact contemporaries, both born in 1882 and dying in 1941. Their reputations have survived, indeed prospered, in the twenty-first century. The same cannot be said of a third writer who shares those dates of birth and death, the now forgotten Minnie Crunlop. But was Minnie more modern than Jim and Ginny? Some critics think so. Here is Tadeusz Glob: "Crunlop was a monomaniac who stuck to a preposterously limited subject matter, but I am convinced that her name will ring down the ages, outlasting Homer, Beowulf and the Bible." Praise indeed, from the man who dismissed as "clots and nincompoops" nearly every writer of note from the seventeenth century onwards. Glob is certainly correct to refer to Crunlop's "preposterously limited" range. In fact, all she ever wrote were stories featuring the sons of Noah. It is true that she placed Shem, Ham and Japheth in an astonishing variety of settings, but no other characters feature in her work, except for occasional appearances by a fictionalised version of Suez Canal visionary Ferdinand De Lesseps (1805-1894). If her work is unconventional, so too her career. Minnie Crunlop only began to write in the last decade of her life, on the fourteenth of January 1931, to be precise. It was on the cold morning of this day that she wrote, from beginning to end, the famous story "Shem, Ham And Japheth Join A Knitting Circle" which appeared in the inaugural issue of Messbang's Popular Magazine Of Catastrophic Flood Fiction. Crunlop had met the self-styled delugeist Orthek Messbang a few months previously. They had a passionate yet enigmatically unconsummated affair. Among the sweet nothings he whispered into her ear was his plan to publish two periodicals devoted to his pet topic, one containing fiction and the other fact. After a stroll among the bougainvilleas and fountains, Crunlop promised to pen a story based vaguely on Noah's Ark. On her way home, she bought a Bible. She had never read it before. Locating the text she needed in Genesis, she tore it out and threw the handsome volume into a waste chute. Over the next week, she memorised the story of the Flood, and thus began her singular literary career. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-2928:20fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-22Wed, 22 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:47 Sieves and Basins 06:38 Fictional Substance of the Week 09:41 Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind? 15:19 Hoon Hing Boom Bang a Bang 19:06 Mustard? Custard! 21:42 Ornamental Pond Guilt 26:41 Hold on to Your Hat SIEVES AND BASINS I have long been promising a definitive series of articles on basins, and am well aware that readers are champing at the bit. Is there anything else, other than a bit, at which one champs? I wish Dobson had written a pamphlet listing other items suitable for champing at, but alas!, he never did, to my knowledge. Even had he done so, it would be out of print, and I would have the devil of a job tracking it down. By the way, word reaches me that a complete listing of every single Dobson pamphlet has been posted on the internet, but I have yet to track it down. Google gives about two and a half million pages for "Dobson" and nearly twenty thousand for "Dobson+pamphlet", and finding time to look at that amount of information dizzies my tiny curdled brain, I'm afraid. It would help if we knew Dobson's first name, of course, but I am not sure he had one. Aloysius Nestingbird once spent a whole winter trying to find out if Dobson's parents ever called him anything except Dobson. He was working from the questionable premise that "everyone has a first name", and as a result his health was ruined. They took him to hospital in a wheelbarrow, because he was unable to walk, and the ambulance persons were unable to get a stretcher into the hayloft where the scholar was holed up. He had taken refuge there, covered in straw, as the neurasthenic fits brought on by overwork became more pronounced. Nestingbird's mental state was always fragile, as were his shinbones. As a youth he had been an enthusiastic, if incompetent, player of hockey, ice hockey, water polo, and other games involving hefty wooden sticks capable, when wielded with sufficient force, of smashing his bones to bits, as they did, regularly. "It is a bitter irony," he wrote, "that I acquired a second first name, being known as Aloysius Splinterbones, whereas I was unable to ever find just the one name for Dobson." Of course, Splinterbones was not the only nickname that Nestingbird picked up in a career that spanned more decades than I can recall with certainty. Whereas the provenance of Splinterbones is easily explained, some of the others are mysterious, while yet others are highly mysterious. Why, for example, did a little gang of infant banditti who roamed the canal towpaths always refer to Nestingbird as Tab Hunter, when he bore no resemblance to that celebrated actor? We do not know. I have not forgotten that you are champing at the bit for an essay about basins. It would have been written by now had I not received a letter from a reader asking a deceptively simple question. Dear Mr Key, wrote someone signing himself Chris De Burhg [sic], When you write your long-awaited and no doubt superb piece about basins, will you be addressing the related issue of sieves? After all, surely a sieve is just a basin with holes in it? As soon as I read this, I rent my garments and let out a shrill cry, like the Wild Boy of Aveyron. My dejection was immense. I picked up a handful of pebbles and hurled them through the open window at the crows perched on the fence. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:47 Sieves and Basins 06:38 Fictional Substance of the Week 09:41 Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind? 15:19 Hoon Hing Boom Bang a Bang 19:06 Mustard? Custard! 21:42 Ornamental Pond Guilt 26:41 Hold on to Your Hat SIEVES AND BASINS I have long been promising a definitive series of articles on basins, and am well aware that readers are champing at the bit. Is there anything else, other than a bit, at which one champs? I wish Dobson had written a pamphlet listing other items suitable for champing at, but alas!, he never did, to my knowledge. Even had he done so, it would be out of print, and I would have the devil of a job tracking it down. By the way, word reaches me that a complete listing of every single Dobson pamphlet has been posted on the internet, but I have yet to track it down. Google gives about two and a half million pages for "Dobson" and nearly twenty thousand for "Dobson+pamphlet", and finding time to look at that amount of information dizzies my tiny curdled brain, I'm afraid. It would help if we knew Dobson's first name, of course, but I am not sure he had one. Aloysius Nestingbird once spent a whole winter trying to find out if Dobson's parents ever called him anything except Dobson. He was working from the questionable premise that "everyone has a first name", and as a result his health was ruined. They took him to hospital in a wheelbarrow, because he was unable to walk, and the ambulance persons were unable to get a stretcher into the hayloft where the scholar was holed up. He had taken refuge there, covered in straw, as the neurasthenic fits brought on by overwork became more pronounced. Nestingbird's mental state was always fragile, as were his shinbones. As a youth he had been an enthusiastic, if incompetent, player of hockey, ice hockey, water polo, and other games involving hefty wooden sticks capable, when wielded with sufficient force, of smashing his bones to bits, as they did, regularly. "It is a bitter irony," he wrote, "that I acquired a second first name, being known as Aloysius Splinterbones, whereas I was unable to ever find just the one name for Dobson." Of course, Splinterbones was not the only nickname that Nestingbird picked up in a career that spanned more decades than I can recall with certainty. Whereas the provenance of Splinterbones is easily explained, some of the others are mysterious, while yet others are highly mysterious. Why, for example, did a little gang of infant banditti who roamed the canal towpaths always refer to Nestingbird as Tab Hunter, when he bore no resemblance to that celebrated actor? We do not know. I have not forgotten that you are champing at the bit for an essay about basins. It would have been written by now had I not received a letter from a reader asking a deceptively simple question. Dear Mr Key, wrote someone signing himself Chris De Burhg [sic], When you write your long-awaited and no doubt superb piece about basins, will you be addressing the related issue of sieves? After all, surely a sieve is just a basin with holes in it? As soon as I read this, I rent my garments and let out a shrill cry, like the Wild Boy of Aveyron. My dejection was immense. I picked up a handful of pebbles and hurled them through the open window at the crows perched on the fence. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-2229:15fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-15Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Story of the Lame Dog, the Caged Bird, the Drowned Cat, the Gold Watch, the Whisky Boy and the Insane Boy 04:58 The Taxonomy of Ducks, Swans and Geese Is in a State of Flux 10:27 Those Gubernatorial Bells 15:09 Titans of the Silver Screen 17:44 Killer Bees : The Mystery Solved 21:17 A Bag on Your Foot 25:58 Clot THE STORY OF THE LAME DOG, THE CAGED BIRD, THE DROWNED CAT, THE GOLD WATCH, THE WHISKY BOY AND THE INSANE BOY Once upon a time, there was an insane boy who could only be becalmed by listening to prog rock. On Monday, a Barclay James Harvest album was played to him. On Tuesday, there was a power cut, and in his mania the insane boy went out and attacked a lame dog. The dog's name was Hoo-Boo-Goo. It was a winter ghost dog. On Wednesday, electricity was restored and the insane boy listened over and over again to Pantagruel's Nativity by Gentle Giant. On Thursday the insane boy absconded from his deep dark dank cellar and headed for the hills. With one swift inhuman movement he plucked a starling from the sky and put it in a birdcage. On Friday his keepers forced the insane boy to listen to Atomic Rooster at an almost imperceptible volume. On Saturday the insane boy took advantage of a moment's inattention on the part of his guards to drown a cat in a puddle. The cat was called Fad-Fod-Flap and it was fourteen years old. On Sunday Carl Palmer of Emerson Lake And Palmer visited the insane boy and played a drum solo that lasted all day. On Monday the insane boy smashed a gold watch into a thousand bits with his terrifyingly pale fists. On Tuesday the insane boy had an iPod with only one track clamped to his head. The song was A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers by Van Der Graaf Generator. On Wednesday the insane boy managed to smuggle a bottle of spirits into his filthy cell. The warders wrote a report for Captain Jarvis in which they called the insane boy "the whisky boy", inaccurately, as the bottle contained turps. On Thursday the insane boy begged to hear Tales Of Topographic Oceans by Yes. On Friday he was pronounced incurable. That story was in words of more than one syllable. It has no moral. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Story of the Lame Dog, the Caged Bird, the Drowned Cat, the Gold Watch, the Whisky Boy and the Insane Boy 04:58 The Taxonomy of Ducks, Swans and Geese Is in a State of Flux 10:27 Those Gubernatorial Bells 15:09 Titans of the Silver Screen 17:44 Killer Bees : The Mystery Solved 21:17 A Bag on Your Foot 25:58 Clot THE STORY OF THE LAME DOG, THE CAGED BIRD, THE DROWNED CAT, THE GOLD WATCH, THE WHISKY BOY AND THE INSANE BOY Once upon a time, there was an insane boy who could only be becalmed by listening to prog rock. On Monday, a Barclay James Harvest album was played to him. On Tuesday, there was a power cut, and in his mania the insane boy went out and attacked a lame dog. The dog's name was Hoo-Boo-Goo. It was a winter ghost dog. On Wednesday, electricity was restored and the insane boy listened over and over again to Pantagruel's Nativity by Gentle Giant. On Thursday the insane boy absconded from his deep dark dank cellar and headed for the hills. With one swift inhuman movement he plucked a starling from the sky and put it in a birdcage. On Friday his keepers forced the insane boy to listen to Atomic Rooster at an almost imperceptible volume. On Saturday the insane boy took advantage of a moment's inattention on the part of his guards to drown a cat in a puddle. The cat was called Fad-Fod-Flap and it was fourteen years old. On Sunday Carl Palmer of Emerson Lake And Palmer visited the insane boy and played a drum solo that lasted all day. On Monday the insane boy smashed a gold watch into a thousand bits with his terrifyingly pale fists. On Tuesday the insane boy had an iPod with only one track clamped to his head. The song was A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers by Van Der Graaf Generator. On Wednesday the insane boy managed to smuggle a bottle of spirits into his filthy cell. The warders wrote a report for Captain Jarvis in which they called the insane boy "the whisky boy", inaccurately, as the bottle contained turps. On Thursday the insane boy begged to hear Tales Of Topographic Oceans by Yes. On Friday he was pronounced incurable. That story was in words of more than one syllable. It has no moral. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-1530:01fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-08Wed, 08 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Trumpets and Banners 03:56 How I Plunged Into the Bottomless Viper-pit of Gaar 10:08 Misprints 14:59 Wafers, Vile and Otherwise 23:41 A Pedant's Righteous Nostrums TRUMPETS AND BANNERS "Now and again, it will do you a power of good to spend a Wednesday morning tramping along a high ridge, blowing a trumpet and waving a banner. If you can persuade others to join you, so much the better. It will not matter if you are tuneless and raggle-taggle--the experience itself can pump vital energy into your blood, oxygenating your brain and feeding crucial nutriments into your integuments." That is the advice I was given by my mentor, or at least by a book handed to me by my mentor on the day I said farewell to him for the last time. It was not a day I am likely ever to forget. After the dawn calisthenics, we had sausages for breakfast. I have never tasted the like, before or since. God only knows what they were made of. Ambrosia, perhaps, or manna. My mentor was kind enough, for once, to overlook my disgusting table-manners, even going so far as to hand me several extra napkins from his precious supply. When I had finished mopping up my drool and spillages, he beckoned me with the Claw Of Gack, and we headed off up into the hills to that lair of his which until now had been forbidden to me. Had I not eaten such a gigantic breakfast, my heart would have been palpitating. As it was, my corporeal being was preoccupied with its digestive functions, freeing my brain to do the palpitations. Once inside the lair, or cave, my mentor handed me a trumpet and a banner and the book which I have already mentioned, and then he vanished in a puff of inexplicable roseate vapour. I was alone. I waited for the vapour to disperse and then I strode out of the cave... no, I must not lie, I minced out of the cave, and I tumbled down the hillside, battering my trumpet in the process, and I rummaged around in my mentor's pantry until I found more sausages, and while I cooked them I practiced a few toots on the trumpet, and I read the book--the passage quoted above comprises the complete text--and then I unfurled my banner. And when I had finished eating all of the sausages, I set out to make my own way in the world. My banner […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Trumpets and Banners 03:56 How I Plunged Into the Bottomless Viper-pit of Gaar 10:08 Misprints 14:59 Wafers, Vile and Otherwise 23:41 A Pedant's Righteous Nostrums TRUMPETS AND BANNERS "Now and again, it will do you a power of good to spend a Wednesday morning tramping along a high ridge, blowing a trumpet and waving a banner. If you can persuade others to join you, so much the better. It will not matter if you are tuneless and raggle-taggle--the experience itself can pump vital energy into your blood, oxygenating your brain and feeding crucial nutriments into your integuments." That is the advice I was given by my mentor, or at least by a book handed to me by my mentor on the day I said farewell to him for the last time. It was not a day I am likely ever to forget. After the dawn calisthenics, we had sausages for breakfast. I have never tasted the like, before or since. God only knows what they were made of. Ambrosia, perhaps, or manna. My mentor was kind enough, for once, to overlook my disgusting table-manners, even going so far as to hand me several extra napkins from his precious supply. When I had finished mopping up my drool and spillages, he beckoned me with the Claw Of Gack, and we headed off up into the hills to that lair of his which until now had been forbidden to me. Had I not eaten such a gigantic breakfast, my heart would have been palpitating. As it was, my corporeal being was preoccupied with its digestive functions, freeing my brain to do the palpitations. Once inside the lair, or cave, my mentor handed me a trumpet and a banner and the book which I have already mentioned, and then he vanished in a puff of inexplicable roseate vapour. I was alone. I waited for the vapour to disperse and then I strode out of the cave... no, I must not lie, I minced out of the cave, and I tumbled down the hillside, battering my trumpet in the process, and I rummaged around in my mentor's pantry until I found more sausages, and while I cooked them I practiced a few toots on the trumpet, and I read the book--the passage quoted above comprises the complete text--and then I unfurled my banner. And when I had finished eating all of the sausages, I set out to make my own way in the world. My banner […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-0830:16fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-01Wed, 01 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 An Outing 04:51 Swan News 08:13 Grebe 12:55 Dobson on Sport 17:00 A Shuddering Miasma Of Crepitant Dread 20:43 Glib Hatter 28:08 The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet AN OUTING Listen, tiny ones. If you are good I will take you on an outing. I will take you to the old balsa wood factory on the edge of the big blue lake. Every Thursday afternoon at two o clock, there is a tour of the factory especially for tots. The hooters sound and everyone lines up at a kiosk in the car park, and Mister Verdigris appears in his towering hat, with bells on his sleeves, and ribbons and bunting, and hamsters nestling in his pockets, and he takes the lucky people, the ones with tickets, on a tour of the factory. I was sent some tickets in the post yesterday, as a special treat. I know that Tim the radio meteorologist says that Thursday will be a day of driving rain and howling gales, and I know that it will be the fourth day of our fast, and we will be famished, but I am determined that we go. The alternative is that we spend yet another afternoon trying to tether the wild goats, and I am not sure I can take much more of that, so the balsa wood factory it will be. * * * First there was the grass verge of the car park, and then a lawn, some derelict outbuildings, including a shed wherein rotted the remains of the hanged janitor, and then the factory itself, its cavernous interior lit by thousands of gas jets, and eerily silent save for the occasional buzzing of a saw or the distant, insistent pounding of a pulper from the annexe over beyond the railway tracks, a sound borne in on the wind. After that, up the metal stairway to the offices, always deserted on Thursday afternoons, even tiny shoes making the floorboards creak, and shelves upon shelves stacked with higgledy-piggledy piles of files and papers and dockets, and Mister Verdigris took the hamsters from his pockets and placed them on a bed of straw next to an important-looking desk, its surface polished to such a gleam as left the children dumbfounded, and resting on it nothing but a fat, new fountain pen and the biggest bottle of ink you could imagine, and the pen had never been used and the bottle never opened, for the lids of both were jammed by dint of mischievous sprites that scampered in the rafters overhead. And it was up to the rafters now, up to the attic, past boxes and crates filled with rusty and inexplicable machines, redundant cash registers and forgotten magnetic recording devices, through a narrow corridor littered with broken brooms, and host to a mysterious gurgling noise, until we reached the chamber at the end, and our tour guide in his towering hat kicked open the door, so violently!, and we entered a room lit in a blue, blue glow, like heaven, and there in the corner, sprawled on a divan, we saw Pinocchio, dexterously plucking flies out of the blue air with his tiny fingers, and biting the tiny head off each tiny fly with his tiny teeth. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 An Outing 04:51 Swan News 08:13 Grebe 12:55 Dobson on Sport 17:00 A Shuddering Miasma Of Crepitant Dread 20:43 Glib Hatter 28:08 The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet AN OUTING Listen, tiny ones. If you are good I will take you on an outing. I will take you to the old balsa wood factory on the edge of the big blue lake. Every Thursday afternoon at two o clock, there is a tour of the factory especially for tots. The hooters sound and everyone lines up at a kiosk in the car park, and Mister Verdigris appears in his towering hat, with bells on his sleeves, and ribbons and bunting, and hamsters nestling in his pockets, and he takes the lucky people, the ones with tickets, on a tour of the factory. I was sent some tickets in the post yesterday, as a special treat. I know that Tim the radio meteorologist says that Thursday will be a day of driving rain and howling gales, and I know that it will be the fourth day of our fast, and we will be famished, but I am determined that we go. The alternative is that we spend yet another afternoon trying to tether the wild goats, and I am not sure I can take much more of that, so the balsa wood factory it will be. * * * First there was the grass verge of the car park, and then a lawn, some derelict outbuildings, including a shed wherein rotted the remains of the hanged janitor, and then the factory itself, its cavernous interior lit by thousands of gas jets, and eerily silent save for the occasional buzzing of a saw or the distant, insistent pounding of a pulper from the annexe over beyond the railway tracks, a sound borne in on the wind. After that, up the metal stairway to the offices, always deserted on Thursday afternoons, even tiny shoes making the floorboards creak, and shelves upon shelves stacked with higgledy-piggledy piles of files and papers and dockets, and Mister Verdigris took the hamsters from his pockets and placed them on a bed of straw next to an important-looking desk, its surface polished to such a gleam as left the children dumbfounded, and resting on it nothing but a fat, new fountain pen and the biggest bottle of ink you could imagine, and the pen had never been used and the bottle never opened, for the lids of both were jammed by dint of mischievous sprites that scampered in the rafters overhead. And it was up to the rafters now, up to the attic, past boxes and crates filled with rusty and inexplicable machines, redundant cash registers and forgotten magnetic recording devices, through a narrow corridor littered with broken brooms, and host to a mysterious gurgling noise, until we reached the chamber at the end, and our tour guide in his towering hat kicked open the door, so violently!, and we entered a room lit in a blue, blue glow, like heaven, and there in the corner, sprawled on a divan, we saw Pinocchio, dexterously plucking flies out of the blue air with his tiny fingers, and biting the tiny head off each tiny fly with his tiny teeth. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-06-0130:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-25Wed, 25 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Nine Years Ago 06:17 Max 11:24 Rules of the Game 23:03 Pansy the Adept NINE YEARS AGO I am afraid the Key head is an entirely empty thing at the moment. So here, to keep you entertained, is a piece that appeared nine years ago today, on 3 April 2004, though it was written--and published as a pamphlet--long long ago in the last decade of the previous century. It is entitled Sidney The Bat Is Awarded The Order Of Lenin. Like many bats, Sidney spent much of his time hanging upside down in a dark, damp cave. Both of his parents were still alive, and on Saturdays he would visit them. They lived in the attic of a museum, and enjoyed swooping, wings aflutter, around the heads of any museum employees who came up to the attic, which was used as a clutter-strewn storage area. The museum housed collections of electromagnetic apparatus, galvanometers, and cast iron mesmeric engines. It was the most renowned museum of its kind in the land, numbering among its exhibits not only Von Ick's Patent Trance Mechanism but also an archive of papers from the laboratory of the great celery scientist Kapisko. Figure 1 : One of the museum exhibits Professor Maud Dweb was the chief curator. Her in-tray was piled high with complaints about the bats in the attic. One young assistant janitor, on his first ever visit up there, had been literally frightened out of his wits. He had been removed to a sanatorium in remote mountainous country, and his family, despite most of them being brain-addled, had made known their intentions to prosecute the museum. One of the land's most relentless lawyers had been paid a retainer. Professor Dweb decided to act. One Saturday evening, after the museum had closed, when soon the full moon [would] swim up over the edge of the world and hang like a great golden cheese (in the words attributed to the shade of Oscar Wilde by the spirit medium Hester Travers Smith), the curator ascended the staircase to the gloomy attic. It was the work of minutes to set a number of bat-traps in the darkness. As she made to leave, Professor Dweb stumbled over a crate containing the world's only surviving example of Bickering's Superb New Hinge, banged her head on the wall, and dropped to the floor, unconscious. Sidney's parents swooped low, and perched--do bats perch?--on her back. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-25Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Nine Years Ago 06:17 Max 11:24 Rules of the Game 23:03 Pansy the Adept NINE YEARS AGO I am afraid the Key head is an entirely empty thing at the moment. So here, to keep you entertained, is a piece that appeared nine years ago today, on 3 April 2004, though it was written--and published as a pamphlet--long long ago in the last decade of the previous century. It is entitled Sidney The Bat Is Awarded The Order Of Lenin. Like many bats, Sidney spent much of his time hanging upside down in a dark, damp cave. Both of his parents were still alive, and on Saturdays he would visit them. They lived in the attic of a museum, and enjoyed swooping, wings aflutter, around the heads of any museum employees who came up to the attic, which was used as a clutter-strewn storage area. The museum housed collections of electromagnetic apparatus, galvanometers, and cast iron mesmeric engines. It was the most renowned museum of its kind in the land, numbering among its exhibits not only Von Ick's Patent Trance Mechanism but also an archive of papers from the laboratory of the great celery scientist Kapisko. Figure 1 : One of the museum exhibits Professor Maud Dweb was the chief curator. Her in-tray was piled high with complaints about the bats in the attic. One young assistant janitor, on his first ever visit up there, had been literally frightened out of his wits. He had been removed to a sanatorium in remote mountainous country, and his family, despite most of them being brain-addled, had made known their intentions to prosecute the museum. One of the land's most relentless lawyers had been paid a retainer. Professor Dweb decided to act. One Saturday evening, after the museum had closed, when soon the full moon [would] swim up over the edge of the world and hang like a great golden cheese (in the words attributed to the shade of Oscar Wilde by the spirit medium Hester Travers Smith), the curator ascended the staircase to the gloomy attic. It was the work of minutes to set a number of bat-traps in the darkness. As she made to leave, Professor Dweb stumbled over a crate containing the world's only surviving example of Bickering's Superb New Hinge, banged her head on the wall, and dropped to the floor, unconscious. Sidney's parents swooped low, and perched--do bats perch?--on her back. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-2529:17fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-18Wed, 18 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:10 The Book Of Gnats THE BOOK OF GNATS By request, or possibly cajoling, from a few readers, here is the complete text of The Book Of Gnats, first published in Massacre 4 : An Annual Anthology Of Anti-Naturalistic Writings (Indelible Inc, 1993), edited by the esteemed Roberta Mock. I have taken the opportunity to mop up a handful of infelicities in the text, but otherwise it's pretty much as written sixteen long and tempestuous years ago. I have mixed feelings about some of these old pieces, written before my Wilderness Years, and I can identify a difference in my method, given that then I was writing for the page, whereas now I am ever conscious that I will be reading aloud. Anyway, here it is. Make of it what you will. Oh, and please note that Dobson, the private detective who appears here, is by no means to be confused with his namesake, the titanic, albeit out of print, twentieth century pamphleteer. Originally published by Thwack & Rudder Ltd in 1926, The Book Of Gnats was written by the noted aviatrix and explorer Maud Glubb (1873-1958). Well-known for her countless newspaper articles, travelogues, and often indiscreet prefaces to other people's books, Glubb wrote this--her only work of fiction--by the sputtering light of blubber candles during the ill-starred Bilgegrew Antarctic Expedition of 1911. Captain Gervase Bilgegrew of the Royal Scrofulous Hussars was, according to the Dictionary Of National Biography, "perhaps the most incompetent person ever to lead a polar expedition". On the very day the explorers set out from the sprightly little port of Mobster, Bilgegrew burned all the charts, broke the compass, contaminated the pemmican supply, and blinded the medical officer. At the Commission of Enquiry held in 1913 upon the expedition's return, he first insisted that these were unfortunate accidents, later changing his story under cross-examination to plead that he was only trying to run a tight ship and to instil a sense of discipline into his crew. The full story of the disastrous expedition is told in Curwen's Polar Hebetude : To The End Of The Earth With A Halfwit, to which the reader is referred. Glubb herself did not return to her homeland until 1919, for reasons which remain shrouded in mystery. Some reports have her leading rebel troops in the Tantarabim Revolution of 1915, but they are unsubstantiated. Glubb herself never spoke of this missing period in her life. Her biographer Gravel Slobber, despite years of prodigious research, finally conceded that "we are unlikely ever to learn precisely what happened to Glubb during this period". Slobber notes that the great aviatrix never intended The Book Of Gnats for publication. The manuscript was stored in a huge mahogany casket in the belvedere of a country house in which Glubb's friend Laburnum Bails worked as a piano-tuner. Interviewed shortly before her death in 1968, Bails said that the text would have remained forever locked away had it not been for the intervention of Crocus Thwack, sister of the notorious publisher, toad-collector, and sot Wenceslas Thwack. Like her brother, Crocus was both an alcoholic and a kleptomaniac. At a weekend party hosted by Bails' employer, she jemmied open the casket in the mistaken assumption that it contained a hidden supply of negus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-18Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:10 The Book Of Gnats THE BOOK OF GNATS By request, or possibly cajoling, from a few readers, here is the complete text of The Book Of Gnats, first published in Massacre 4 : An Annual Anthology Of Anti-Naturalistic Writings (Indelible Inc, 1993), edited by the esteemed Roberta Mock. I have taken the opportunity to mop up a handful of infelicities in the text, but otherwise it's pretty much as written sixteen long and tempestuous years ago. I have mixed feelings about some of these old pieces, written before my Wilderness Years, and I can identify a difference in my method, given that then I was writing for the page, whereas now I am ever conscious that I will be reading aloud. Anyway, here it is. Make of it what you will. Oh, and please note that Dobson, the private detective who appears here, is by no means to be confused with his namesake, the titanic, albeit out of print, twentieth century pamphleteer. Originally published by Thwack & Rudder Ltd in 1926, The Book Of Gnats was written by the noted aviatrix and explorer Maud Glubb (1873-1958). Well-known for her countless newspaper articles, travelogues, and often indiscreet prefaces to other people's books, Glubb wrote this--her only work of fiction--by the sputtering light of blubber candles during the ill-starred Bilgegrew Antarctic Expedition of 1911. Captain Gervase Bilgegrew of the Royal Scrofulous Hussars was, according to the Dictionary Of National Biography, "perhaps the most incompetent person ever to lead a polar expedition". On the very day the explorers set out from the sprightly little port of Mobster, Bilgegrew burned all the charts, broke the compass, contaminated the pemmican supply, and blinded the medical officer. At the Commission of Enquiry held in 1913 upon the expedition's return, he first insisted that these were unfortunate accidents, later changing his story under cross-examination to plead that he was only trying to run a tight ship and to instil a sense of discipline into his crew. The full story of the disastrous expedition is told in Curwen's Polar Hebetude : To The End Of The Earth With A Halfwit, to which the reader is referred. Glubb herself did not return to her homeland until 1919, for reasons which remain shrouded in mystery. Some reports have her leading rebel troops in the Tantarabim Revolution of 1915, but they are unsubstantiated. Glubb herself never spoke of this missing period in her life. Her biographer Gravel Slobber, despite years of prodigious research, finally conceded that "we are unlikely ever to learn precisely what happened to Glubb during this period". Slobber notes that the great aviatrix never intended The Book Of Gnats for publication. The manuscript was stored in a huge mahogany casket in the belvedere of a country house in which Glubb's friend Laburnum Bails worked as a piano-tuner. Interviewed shortly before her death in 1968, Bails said that the text would have remained forever locked away had it not been for the intervention of Crocus Thwack, sister of the notorious publisher, toad-collector, and sot Wenceslas Thwack. Like her brother, Crocus was both an alcoholic and a kleptomaniac. At a weekend party hosted by Bails' employer, she jemmied open the casket in the mistaken assumption that it contained a hidden supply of negus. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-1829:24fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-11Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Barnyard Bulletin 03:57 Life and Loves of the Immersion Man 13:40 Dobsoniana 18:49 Petrochemical Shiver-me-timbers Conclave 23:04 At Home With Tanquod Shuddery 27:11 A Guide to Pointy Town : Part One BARNYARD BULLETIN Today it is of decisive importance that I tell you about Blodgettesque farming methods. The techniques pioneered by Blodgett in his heyday are breathtaking. Consider, for example, the uses to which a Blodgettian farmer will put hay. There are many, many diagrams in the manual which show bales of hay being commandeered for all sorts of inventive purposes, all over the farmyard, in all six seasons of the year. That's right, six seasons. One of Blodgett's most telling innovations was his calendrical recalibration, if I am using the word correctly. Out go winter, spring, summer and autumn, or fall, as they say in Pining & Pothorst Land; in come tally, spate, the time of mighty remonstrations, tack, hub and bolismus. So, come hub come the haywain, as the saying goes, with his big fat boots stuffed with straw... I mean hay. We ought not get diverted from this important essay by wandering down the byways of Blodgettian countryside parlance, but I cannot resist sharing with you the rhyme that goes Don't forget to shut the gate / On the forty-third of spate, the meaning of which is obvious, as you would realise had you seen, as I have, an implacable army of albino hens marching off into the sunset because little Vercingetorix the barnyard hobbledehoy was too busy chewing on a sheaf of fronds to remember to close the gate behind him. As it happened, the fronds were poisonous, and the miscreant was subject to convulsive fits for the next three weeks, bless him. As with hay, so with mulch. Blodgettesque mulch is a thing of beauty, even if it does stink. Have you ever seen asparagus grown in Blodgett's mulch? You would remember if you had, for it is to common everyday asparagus as a big shiny supersonic 26th century space rocket is to a shred of plankton. Preparation of mulch takes place mostly in bolismus, when the winds howl and thunderclaps shatter the eardrums of toiling farm workers, hardy folk with almost inhuman musculature as a result of regular doses of Blodgett's serum, the recipe for which appears in an appendix to the manual. To begin farming the Blodgett way, all you will need is a hoe, a shapeless hat, iron determination, and your own field, preferably one with a pond in it, and ducks in the pond, mergansers or teal, some of them real, some of them wood-carved decoy ducks, and some of them just vaporous spectres of your own imagining. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-11Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:12 Barnyard Bulletin 03:57 Life and Loves of the Immersion Man 13:40 Dobsoniana 18:49 Petrochemical Shiver-me-timbers Conclave 23:04 At Home With Tanquod Shuddery 27:11 A Guide to Pointy Town : Part One BARNYARD BULLETIN Today it is of decisive importance that I tell you about Blodgettesque farming methods. The techniques pioneered by Blodgett in his heyday are breathtaking. Consider, for example, the uses to which a Blodgettian farmer will put hay. There are many, many diagrams in the manual which show bales of hay being commandeered for all sorts of inventive purposes, all over the farmyard, in all six seasons of the year. That's right, six seasons. One of Blodgett's most telling innovations was his calendrical recalibration, if I am using the word correctly. Out go winter, spring, summer and autumn, or fall, as they say in Pining & Pothorst Land; in come tally, spate, the time of mighty remonstrations, tack, hub and bolismus. So, come hub come the haywain, as the saying goes, with his big fat boots stuffed with straw... I mean hay. We ought not get diverted from this important essay by wandering down the byways of Blodgettian countryside parlance, but I cannot resist sharing with you the rhyme that goes Don't forget to shut the gate / On the forty-third of spate, the meaning of which is obvious, as you would realise had you seen, as I have, an implacable army of albino hens marching off into the sunset because little Vercingetorix the barnyard hobbledehoy was too busy chewing on a sheaf of fronds to remember to close the gate behind him. As it happened, the fronds were poisonous, and the miscreant was subject to convulsive fits for the next three weeks, bless him. As with hay, so with mulch. Blodgettesque mulch is a thing of beauty, even if it does stink. Have you ever seen asparagus grown in Blodgett's mulch? You would remember if you had, for it is to common everyday asparagus as a big shiny supersonic 26th century space rocket is to a shred of plankton. Preparation of mulch takes place mostly in bolismus, when the winds howl and thunderclaps shatter the eardrums of toiling farm workers, hardy folk with almost inhuman musculature as a result of regular doses of Blodgett's serum, the recipe for which appears in an appendix to the manual. To begin farming the Blodgett way, all you will need is a hoe, a shapeless hat, iron determination, and your own field, preferably one with a pond in it, and ducks in the pond, mergansers or teal, some of them real, some of them wood-carved decoy ducks, and some of them just vaporous spectres of your own imagining. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-1128:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-04Wed, 04 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:55 Mr Bewg's Reference 14:27 Soup : A Chewist Text 19:40 Frustum, Tang, Sluice 23:09 Scenes From the Lives of the Poets : 1. Maud Abdab 25:24 Cuppid 28:24 The Hapless Bivalve! MR BEWG'S REFERENCE Here is a slightly revised version of a very old story, which first appeared in Twitching And Shattered two decades ago. I'm posting it here today for no reason other than mere whim. Dear Mr Corncrake, Re : MR B BEWG, 6 DISMAL TERRACE, HOON Thank you for your letter of 20th July regarding the above-named; I am happy to provide him with a reference. I have known Mr Bewg for ten years, ever since he took up the position of scrivener, dogsbody and wretch in my vast, gloomy factory perched on the hillside next to the lunatic asylum. At the time I engaged Mr Bewg I suspected that he had some connection with the latter institution, and in the decade since I have had no reason to alter my opinion. You ask me to comment on my impression of Mr Bewg's "suitability for the job". Forgive me if I find this difficult. I do not wish to do violence to our native language, but to use the word "suitability" in conjunction with Mr Bewg is to mock the Queen's English. Indeed, it is to make a mockery of sense itself. My problems with Mr Bewg began on his very first morning in my employ. To settle him in, I had instructed him to carry out a menial task, removing bits of goo from the interior walls of a vat. To facilitate his progress, he was supplied with a variety of tools, including a pencil-sharpener, a pin-cushion, and a decidedly ferocious blowtorch. No sooner had I turned my back than Mr Bewg became embroiled in a tussle with my pet panther, which--crazed with hunger--managed to slip its leash and embed its razor-sharp fangs in his left leg. For this impertinence I had no option but to dock Mr Bewg his first month's wages. It was not a good start, but I had had many a ne'er-do-well working for me in the past, and believed that I could yet mould Mr Bewg into a marginally less repellent specimen of human dregs. To this end, I assigned him to work in the filthiest, dankest wing of the factory, where he was expected to spend all day dragging sacks full of huge iron lumps backwards and forwards in infested tunnels for no apparent purpose. So ineptly did Mr Bewg execute his duties that I was forced to withhold his pay for a further year. I wrung my hands in frustration, but the man was impossible. Given a simple task, he would be utterly incapable of completing it with the requisite speed, good humour and fawning obeisance that one expects. To take just one example: Mr Bewg failed to budge one particularly heavy sack, containing a score of medium-sized anvils, a single inch, despite being given all of five minutes to drag it two hundred yards along a stinking tunnel in which small bonfires of sulphur had been ignited moments before. I set a wolfhound yapping at his heels, but to no avail. The man was purely and simply work-shy. But I am a fair employer, and I had no wish to consign him to the scrapheap of the unemployable and useless. Instead, I agreed with Mr Bewg that he could embark upon a training scheme. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-04Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:55 Mr Bewg's Reference 14:27 Soup : A Chewist Text 19:40 Frustum, Tang, Sluice 23:09 Scenes From the Lives of the Poets : 1. Maud Abdab 25:24 Cuppid 28:24 The Hapless Bivalve! MR BEWG'S REFERENCE Here is a slightly revised version of a very old story, which first appeared in Twitching And Shattered two decades ago. I'm posting it here today for no reason other than mere whim. Dear Mr Corncrake, Re : MR B BEWG, 6 DISMAL TERRACE, HOON Thank you for your letter of 20th July regarding the above-named; I am happy to provide him with a reference. I have known Mr Bewg for ten years, ever since he took up the position of scrivener, dogsbody and wretch in my vast, gloomy factory perched on the hillside next to the lunatic asylum. At the time I engaged Mr Bewg I suspected that he had some connection with the latter institution, and in the decade since I have had no reason to alter my opinion. You ask me to comment on my impression of Mr Bewg's "suitability for the job". Forgive me if I find this difficult. I do not wish to do violence to our native language, but to use the word "suitability" in conjunction with Mr Bewg is to mock the Queen's English. Indeed, it is to make a mockery of sense itself. My problems with Mr Bewg began on his very first morning in my employ. To settle him in, I had instructed him to carry out a menial task, removing bits of goo from the interior walls of a vat. To facilitate his progress, he was supplied with a variety of tools, including a pencil-sharpener, a pin-cushion, and a decidedly ferocious blowtorch. No sooner had I turned my back than Mr Bewg became embroiled in a tussle with my pet panther, which--crazed with hunger--managed to slip its leash and embed its razor-sharp fangs in his left leg. For this impertinence I had no option but to dock Mr Bewg his first month's wages. It was not a good start, but I had had many a ne'er-do-well working for me in the past, and believed that I could yet mould Mr Bewg into a marginally less repellent specimen of human dregs. To this end, I assigned him to work in the filthiest, dankest wing of the factory, where he was expected to spend all day dragging sacks full of huge iron lumps backwards and forwards in infested tunnels for no apparent purpose. So ineptly did Mr Bewg execute his duties that I was forced to withhold his pay for a further year. I wrung my hands in frustration, but the man was impossible. Given a simple task, he would be utterly incapable of completing it with the requisite speed, good humour and fawning obeisance that one expects. To take just one example: Mr Bewg failed to budge one particularly heavy sack, containing a score of medium-sized anvils, a single inch, despite being given all of five minutes to drag it two hundred yards along a stinking tunnel in which small bonfires of sulphur had been ignited moments before. I set a wolfhound yapping at his heels, but to no avail. The man was purely and simply work-shy. But I am a fair employer, and I had no wish to consign him to the scrapheap of the unemployable and useless. Instead, I agreed with Mr Bewg that he could embark upon a training scheme. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-05-0430:03fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-04-27Wed, 27 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Anaxagrotax 05:07 On the Bonny Bonny Banks 06:55 Pontiff Mnemonic 12:54 Pale Flapper : A Love Story 16:44 The Blot Family 19:05 A History of Starlings 21:06 Dobson in Residence 24:14 The Tale of Gaspard 27:29 Excessive Revolver Shooting & Related Matters ANAXAGROTAX My name is Anaxagrotax, and I am the last survivor of a vanquished horde. Like the rest of my horde, I am neither an smooth man nor an hairy man, but somewhere in between. Our vanquishment was bloody and violent, as you might imagine. It was also very, very noisy, what with the clash of steel and the roar of cannonades and the howling and wailing of the wounded. I pray to my strange gods that never again will I witness such carnage. To my chagrin, it took only a single morning to vanquish my previously unconquerable horde. As dawn broke on that terrible Thursday, there were thousands of us, hooting and whooping, daubed in the Paint of Ferocity, sharpening our implements and grunting a lot. We were well fed, tough, fearless and bent on conquest. By noon I was the only one left, hiding in a patch of bracken, and, I confess, shuddering in terror and grief. I was also bleeding from a contusion on my forehead and possibly slightly concussed. All around me the moorland was a scene of corpses and hacked-off limbs and blood. By mid-afternoon I was feeling a little more myself. A stray hen had wandered into the bracken, and it was good to know that I was not the last living thing on earth. Poultry can be consoling in such circumstances. I reflected that as a warrior in a barbaric and bloodthirsty horde I ought to have expected things to turn out this way sooner or later. I was quite certain that our vanquishers had now left the scene to go and vanquish elsewhere, so I stood up and, saying goodbye to the hen, began walking away from my dead and, in some cases, still dying comrades in the direction of the palace. Perhaps it was callous of me to ignore the groans of those who were still alive, whose souls had not yet been plucked from their bodies by the hideous bat-faced god Beb and placed in his capacious pouch. Try not to judge me by your own moral code, if you have one. By nightfall I had reached the stream that runs into a pool near the palace. I sat down on a tuffet and lit a cigarette. The moon was full and there were so many stars visible that they set my brain dizzy. I looked across the fields at the palace. Reassuringly, the usual bonfire was blazing on the roof. A bold water rat came to give me the once over, but soon scuttled away. I stubbed out my cigarette and made my way towards the palace at last. Gusts of wind dishevelled my hairstyle despite all the grease I had caked it with that morning. It seemed so long, long ago. As I took my final weary steps towards the gigantic wooden gates, my heart leapt when I saw that a great golden banner had been hung from the crenellations. "Welcome Home, Anaxagrotax!" it read, in letters of vermilion and blue. As I beat my great muscular fists on the palace gates, midnight struck. Thursday was over. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-04-27Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:16 Anaxagrotax 05:07 On the Bonny Bonny Banks 06:55 Pontiff Mnemonic 12:54 Pale Flapper : A Love Story 16:44 The Blot Family 19:05 A History of Starlings 21:06 Dobson in Residence 24:14 The Tale of Gaspard 27:29 Excessive Revolver Shooting & Related Matters ANAXAGROTAX My name is Anaxagrotax, and I am the last survivor of a vanquished horde. Like the rest of my horde, I am neither an smooth man nor an hairy man, but somewhere in between. Our vanquishment was bloody and violent, as you might imagine. It was also very, very noisy, what with the clash of steel and the roar of cannonades and the howling and wailing of the wounded. I pray to my strange gods that never again will I witness such carnage. To my chagrin, it took only a single morning to vanquish my previously unconquerable horde. As dawn broke on that terrible Thursday, there were thousands of us, hooting and whooping, daubed in the Paint of Ferocity, sharpening our implements and grunting a lot. We were well fed, tough, fearless and bent on conquest. By noon I was the only one left, hiding in a patch of bracken, and, I confess, shuddering in terror and grief. I was also bleeding from a contusion on my forehead and possibly slightly concussed. All around me the moorland was a scene of corpses and hacked-off limbs and blood. By mid-afternoon I was feeling a little more myself. A stray hen had wandered into the bracken, and it was good to know that I was not the last living thing on earth. Poultry can be consoling in such circumstances. I reflected that as a warrior in a barbaric and bloodthirsty horde I ought to have expected things to turn out this way sooner or later. I was quite certain that our vanquishers had now left the scene to go and vanquish elsewhere, so I stood up and, saying goodbye to the hen, began walking away from my dead and, in some cases, still dying comrades in the direction of the palace. Perhaps it was callous of me to ignore the groans of those who were still alive, whose souls had not yet been plucked from their bodies by the hideous bat-faced god Beb and placed in his capacious pouch. Try not to judge me by your own moral code, if you have one. By nightfall I had reached the stream that runs into a pool near the palace. I sat down on a tuffet and lit a cigarette. The moon was full and there were so many stars visible that they set my brain dizzy. I looked across the fields at the palace. Reassuringly, the usual bonfire was blazing on the roof. A bold water rat came to give me the once over, but soon scuttled away. I stubbed out my cigarette and made my way towards the palace at last. Gusts of wind dishevelled my hairstyle despite all the grease I had caked it with that morning. It seemed so long, long ago. As I took my final weary steps towards the gigantic wooden gates, my heart leapt when I saw that a great golden banner had been hung from the crenellations. "Welcome Home, Anaxagrotax!" it read, in letters of vermilion and blue. As I beat my great muscular fists on the palace gates, midnight struck. Thursday was over. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-04-2728:05fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-04-20Wed, 20 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Bird Recognition Skills 07:08 How to Think of Things Other Than Juggling 12:29 A Parlour Game 14:39 Potted Biographies of a Marine Hue, No. 1 17:03 Mister Scrimgeour's Aviary 21:34 Bats 25:13 On Astrology BIRD RECOGNITION SKILLS The Hooting Yard Educational Outreach Hub announces a brand new correspondence course in Bird Recognition Skills, and not before time. As a taster, we are posting Module One on the site. Note that participants who successfully complete the entire course will be presented with an embossed certificate which gives full accreditation for entry to our upcoming courses on Advanced Bird Recognition Skills and Locust And Killer Bee Recognition Skills. Module One : The Beak A surefire method of deciding whether the animal you are looking at is a bird is to check whether it has a beak. If it has, then nine times out of ten it will be a bird. The beak--otherwise known as the bill--is the only device a bird has for consuming food. Birds have no teeth so they must swallow their food whole. A bird's beak can vary in size and shape depending on the nature of their diet. Some birds such as falcons have evolved to have a cutting-type beak which allows them to tear through flesh with violent and blood-crazed savagery, whereas the hummingbird has a probe-like beak which allows it to drink the nectar from certain flowers, such as primroses, buttercups and elecampine, although you would be advised to check the accuracy of those examples in a botanical dictionary such as An Alphabetical Guide To What Every Infant Should Know About The Majesty Of Nature by Dobson. The beak is composed of an upper jaw called the maxilla, and a lower jaw called a mandible. From this the student can infer that all birds have two jaws. Remember that. Bird beaks are useful in other ways, for example woodcutters use theirs to cut wood, and parrots have sharp swivelled beaks to tear fruit, although their ripping and tearing is not quite as maniacal as those falcons mentioned earlier. Small mammals like hamsters and guinea pigs are quite safe from the average parrot, which is more likely to become ravenously ferocious in the presence of a grapefruit or a fig. Flamingos have long beaks to pull out fish from the water and ducks have flat beaks that allow them to retain all the fish and plants while draining out the water. Generally speaking, if it hasn't got a beak, it is unlikely to be a bird. Try not to confuse a beak with a beaker, which is a drinks container like a mug or a tumbler, often but not always made of plastic, or with the Beaker People, which refers to an archaeological culture present in prehistoric Europe, defined by a pottery style--a beaker with a distinctive bell-shaped profile--that many archaeologists believe spread across the western part of the continent during the third millennium BC. If you have been paying attention you should be able to differentiate between those long-dead people and present-day birds. In closing, remember that although they can fly, locusts do not have beaks, therefore they are not birds. Sample questions: 1. Complete the following sentence: That carbon-based living organism over there perched on a tree branch has a beak, so it must be a) a weasel, b) a big magnetic robot, c) a bird. 2. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-04-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Bird Recognition Skills 07:08 How to Think of Things Other Than Juggling 12:29 A Parlour Game 14:39 Potted Biographies of a Marine Hue, No. 1 17:03 Mister Scrimgeour's Aviary 21:34 Bats 25:13 On Astrology BIRD RECOGNITION SKILLS The Hooting Yard Educational Outreach Hub announces a brand new correspondence course in Bird Recognition Skills, and not before time. As a taster, we are posting Module One on the site. Note that participants who successfully complete the entire course will be presented with an embossed certificate which gives full accreditation for entry to our upcoming courses on Advanced Bird Recognition Skills and Locust And Killer Bee Recognition Skills. Module One : The Beak A surefire method of deciding whether the animal you are looking at is a bird is to check whether it has a beak. If it has, then nine times out of ten it will be a bird. The beak--otherwise known as the bill--is the only device a bird has for consuming food. Birds have no teeth so they must swallow their food whole. A bird's beak can vary in size and shape depending on the nature of their diet. Some birds such as falcons have evolved to have a cutting-type beak which allows them to tear through flesh with violent and blood-crazed savagery, whereas the hummingbird has a probe-like beak which allows it to drink the nectar from certain flowers, such as primroses, buttercups and elecampine, although you would be advised to check the accuracy of those examples in a botanical dictionary such as An Alphabetical Guide To What Every Infant Should Know About The Majesty Of Nature by Dobson. The beak is composed of an upper jaw called the maxilla, and a lower jaw called a mandible. From this the student can infer that all birds have two jaws. Remember that. Bird beaks are useful in other ways, for example woodcutters use theirs to cut wood, and parrots have sharp swivelled beaks to tear fruit, although their ripping and tearing is not quite as maniacal as those falcons mentioned earlier. Small mammals like hamsters and guinea pigs are quite safe from the average parrot, which is more likely to become ravenously ferocious in the presence of a grapefruit or a fig. Flamingos have long beaks to pull out fish from the water and ducks have flat beaks that allow them to retain all the fish and plants while draining out the water. Generally speaking, if it hasn't got a beak, it is unlikely to be a bird. Try not to confuse a beak with a beaker, which is a drinks container like a mug or a tumbler, often but not always made of plastic, or with the Beaker People, which refers to an archaeological culture present in prehistoric Europe, defined by a pottery style--a beaker with a distinctive bell-shaped profile--that many archaeologists believe spread across the western part of the continent during the third millennium BC. If you have been paying attention you should be able to differentiate between those long-dead people and present-day birds. In closing, remember that although they can fly, locusts do not have beaks, therefore they are not birds. Sample questions: 1. Complete the following sentence: That carbon-based living organism over there perched on a tree branch has a beak, so it must be a) a weasel, b) a big magnetic robot, c) a bird. 2. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-04-2030:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-04-13Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 In Loopy Copse 14:14 What You Should Know About the Carpenters 18:18 Plague-Infected Squirrel Of Doom 26:21 Practical Seagull Exercises IN LOOPY COPSE In Loopy Copse, when I was young, all golden were the shrubs and trees. All golden I remember them, and Bonkers Maisie from the farm. Maisie was unkempt and mad, just like her brother and her dad. Her sister left them long ago. She went to join a music hall. She made it as a chorus girl and then she graced the silent screen. She looked like Edna Purviance and had a hat named after her. But Bonkers Maisie never did, for she was always dressed in rags. The golden trees of Loopy Copse in those blue summers long ago, oh I remember them with woe as I sit here twirling my moustache. My woe is such that I may sob and mop my tears with my jacket cuff. But both my cuffs are smeared with grease, I dipped them in the soup tureen. I don't know why, I don't know when, I don't know who knocks at my door. This bombed hotel has stale air. The other guests are rakes and fops. I'm sitting in my rocking chair recalling the gold of Loopy Copse. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE CARPENTERS Karen played the drums and sang. Her brother Richard played keyboards and supplied backing vocals. Unfortunately, Karen died young. Richard is still alive, still active in music, but The Carpenters as a duo are no longer with us. These bare facts stated, astute readers will note the remarkable similarities between The Carpenters and the homonymic The Carpenters who were so successful during the 1970s with songs such as Close To You and Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft. Neither of these songs was recorded by The Carpenters of whom we speak, for their music was somewhat different, an outre blend of salsa, bluegrass, acid jazz, bell-ringing and caterwauling, often driven by motorised electric balalaikas programmed by Karen. Richard was known to be fond of factory hooters. Their debut album, The Carpenters Play The Music Of James Last From An Abandoned Salt Mine, included the astonishing sixteen-minute Dying Bee Music # 8, which featured guests including Blodgett, Blodgett's dentist, Blodgett's dentist's dentist, and a young, impressionable Scottish lad called Midge Ure. Sales were few, and a booking on a transatlantic cruise liner proved ill-advised. Neither Karen nor Richard could swim, and when the ship sank off the Auckland Islands they spent six weeks marooned in a dinghy, fighting. Some say Karen's health problems stemmed from this ordeal, and they well be right, but in the words of the old farmyard saying, "Never put two carpenters in the same dinghy". Their annus mirabilis was probably 1975. In a nine-month period, they released no less than twenty-six EPs, each of which was conceived as a "punitive retrenchment", to use Richard's phrase. Karen scoffed at this description, incidentally, preferring to think of these matchless works as "lullabyes for locust swarms". The most startling thing about the records is the pared-down instrumentation--Karen thumping the sole of her boot on a giant drum, Richard tentatively prodding the black keys on a plastic toy piano. Both sang, of course, or rather hummed, gargled and choked. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-04-13Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 In Loopy Copse 14:14 What You Should Know About the Carpenters 18:18 Plague-Infected Squirrel Of Doom 26:21 Practical Seagull Exercises IN LOOPY COPSE In Loopy Copse, when I was young, all golden were the shrubs and trees. All golden I remember them, and Bonkers Maisie from the farm. Maisie was unkempt and mad, just like her brother and her dad. Her sister left them long ago. She went to join a music hall. She made it as a chorus girl and then she graced the silent screen. She looked like Edna Purviance and had a hat named after her. But Bonkers Maisie never did, for she was always dressed in rags. The golden trees of Loopy Copse in those blue summers long ago, oh I remember them with woe as I sit here twirling my moustache. My woe is such that I may sob and mop my tears with my jacket cuff. But both my cuffs are smeared with grease, I dipped them in the soup tureen. I don't know why, I don't know when, I don't know who knocks at my door. This bombed hotel has stale air. The other guests are rakes and fops. I'm sitting in my rocking chair recalling the gold of Loopy Copse. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE CARPENTERS Karen played the drums and sang. Her brother Richard played keyboards and supplied backing vocals. Unfortunately, Karen died young. Richard is still alive, still active in music, but The Carpenters as a duo are no longer with us. These bare facts stated, astute readers will note the remarkable similarities between The Carpenters and the homonymic The Carpenters who were so successful during the 1970s with songs such as Close To You and Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft. Neither of these songs was recorded by The Carpenters of whom we speak, for their music was somewhat different, an outre blend of salsa, bluegrass, acid jazz, bell-ringing and caterwauling, often driven by motorised electric balalaikas programmed by Karen. Richard was known to be fond of factory hooters. Their debut album, The Carpenters Play The Music Of James Last From An Abandoned Salt Mine, included the astonishing sixteen-minute Dying Bee Music # 8, which featured guests including Blodgett, Blodgett's dentist, Blodgett's dentist's dentist, and a young, impressionable Scottish lad called Midge Ure. Sales were few, and a booking on a transatlantic cruise liner proved ill-advised. Neither Karen nor Richard could swim, and when the ship sank off the Auckland Islands they spent six weeks marooned in a dinghy, fighting. Some say Karen's health problems stemmed from this ordeal, and they well be right, but in the words of the old farmyard saying, "Never put two carpenters in the same dinghy". Their annus mirabilis was probably 1975. In a nine-month period, they released no less than twenty-six EPs, each of which was conceived as a "punitive retrenchment", to use Richard's phrase. Karen scoffed at this description, incidentally, preferring to think of these matchless works as "lullabyes for locust swarms". The most startling thing about the records is the pared-down instrumentation--Karen thumping the sole of her boot on a giant drum, Richard tentatively prodding the black keys on a plastic toy piano. Both sang, of course, or rather hummed, gargled and choked. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-04-1329:35fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-03-16Wed, 16 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 Forgive and Forget FORGIVE AND FORGET By Edwin F. Roberts What you tell me is certainly very extraordinary, set a grave looking gentlemanly man, to a pale agitated youth of about two and 20. But I have ceased to wonder at many things that have appeared to me still more strange. Ah, you speak with such unconcerned because you have not had your feelings insulted your affections trifled with as I have, I will never forgive her father for it, and he clenched his hand in a rage. You will regret your words, Philip, was the reply, forgive and forget. Never, even if I did the one I could not do the other, and with the gesture of a man who had already made up his mind, in addition to having convinced himself that he has good reason to speak and feel in such why's, he added, if I can, I may forgive but I can never forget. Possibly not retorted to the other with a smile, for it is not in our power to forget as we please. But there is a latitude of meaning to the latter portion of your sentence which you will remark at a future time. The young man stared at him in surprise for a moment, his features were convulsed, his face flushed. Do you think, said he, I can alter my sentiments towards a man who has heaped every indignity upon me in the presence of the woman I loved, who has humiliated me till I feel as if my brow were branded with the remembrance of some disgraceful act. But it is well, he added abruptly he's unprovoked aggression upon me will retaliate upon himself, he too will feel for Elon cannot so soon forget. Here he broke off while a tear trembled upon his eyelids. The speaker was a young man who stationed and occupation could not, at the first glance be distinctly told, he was well made, with a good looking oval face, hazel eyes, brown hair, good strong teeth, limbs firmly set, and if there was anything to find fault with him personally, it was an expression of firmness that amounted to obstinacy in the strong clasp of the jaw, and in the quickly kindling, I. his coat was a town cut, but his breeches top boots and the riding whip spoke of the country. In fact, he was of that class known as a gentleman farmer. His parents having been dead for some years, had left him to manage a compact, well stocked establishment, situated in the heart of one of the most beautiful rural districts of sorry, not far from where he dwelt was a neighbor's house, a handsome Villa residents, in which Mr. Gilmore, a retired trader, his wife and daughter, now about 18 years of age resided locally location of several years have caused a reciprocal kindly feeling to grow up into a warm friendship. And an almost constant intercourse between the young people have produced that very natural consequence. They had fallen in love. They had planted their truth. Their parents had sanctioned their engagement and the young man yet now a bachelor, was looking anxiously forward to the day that should make him a Benedict. In order to explain to the reader how the conversation arose with which the story opens, we will in a few words explain the causes that led to such a result. It was on a beautiful evening in the autumn when a night begin to grow long, and the Twilight suddenly deepens into purple and then into darkness. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-03-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:21 Forgive and Forget FORGIVE AND FORGET By Edwin F. Roberts What you tell me is certainly very extraordinary, set a grave looking gentlemanly man, to a pale agitated youth of about two and 20. But I have ceased to wonder at many things that have appeared to me still more strange. Ah, you speak with such unconcerned because you have not had your feelings insulted your affections trifled with as I have, I will never forgive her father for it, and he clenched his hand in a rage. You will regret your words, Philip, was the reply, forgive and forget. Never, even if I did the one I could not do the other, and with the gesture of a man who had already made up his mind, in addition to having convinced himself that he has good reason to speak and feel in such why's, he added, if I can, I may forgive but I can never forget. Possibly not retorted to the other with a smile, for it is not in our power to forget as we please. But there is a latitude of meaning to the latter portion of your sentence which you will remark at a future time. The young man stared at him in surprise for a moment, his features were convulsed, his face flushed. Do you think, said he, I can alter my sentiments towards a man who has heaped every indignity upon me in the presence of the woman I loved, who has humiliated me till I feel as if my brow were branded with the remembrance of some disgraceful act. But it is well, he added abruptly he's unprovoked aggression upon me will retaliate upon himself, he too will feel for Elon cannot so soon forget. Here he broke off while a tear trembled upon his eyelids. The speaker was a young man who stationed and occupation could not, at the first glance be distinctly told, he was well made, with a good looking oval face, hazel eyes, brown hair, good strong teeth, limbs firmly set, and if there was anything to find fault with him personally, it was an expression of firmness that amounted to obstinacy in the strong clasp of the jaw, and in the quickly kindling, I. his coat was a town cut, but his breeches top boots and the riding whip spoke of the country. In fact, he was of that class known as a gentleman farmer. His parents having been dead for some years, had left him to manage a compact, well stocked establishment, situated in the heart of one of the most beautiful rural districts of sorry, not far from where he dwelt was a neighbor's house, a handsome Villa residents, in which Mr. Gilmore, a retired trader, his wife and daughter, now about 18 years of age resided locally location of several years have caused a reciprocal kindly feeling to grow up into a warm friendship. And an almost constant intercourse between the young people have produced that very natural consequence. They had fallen in love. They had planted their truth. Their parents had sanctioned their engagement and the young man yet now a bachelor, was looking anxiously forward to the day that should make him a Benedict. In order to explain to the reader how the conversation arose with which the story opens, we will in a few words explain the causes that led to such a result. It was on a beautiful evening in the autumn when a night begin to grow long, and the Twilight suddenly deepens into purple and then into darkness. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-03-1629:25fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-03-09Wed, 09 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 In a Bog 05:35 The Stench From Outer Space 09:35 The Book Of Gnats 16:57 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon 26:30 The Swiss Family Robinson IN A BOG In a bog, we find Blodgett. We steal upon him when he does not expect us. He is floundering in the bog, a clumsy giant. One of us says, "Blodgett, you have mud in your beard". Blodgett fains not to hear. He puffs and grunts. As he splutters, bits of dried mud fall out of his beard. "How long have you been in that bog, Blodgett?" we ask, in unison. Now Blodgett scowls. His spectacles are mysteriously agleam, in spite of the muck in which he wallows. He does not reply. With great groans, he hoists himself almost to his feet, before falling back into the bog with a mighty splash. Now there is some mud on his spectacles too. "Blodgett, Blodgett, there is mud on your spectacles," we sing, to a little tune we have devised for such an occasion. This causes Blodgett to growl. He sounds like a hog. We toss him one end of a rope. Desmond ties the other end of the rope to the trunk of a nearby sycamore. "Blodgett, pull yourself out of the bog using the rope!" we cry. None of us can remember the rest of our tune. Blodgett's hat has fallen off his head. He tries to wipe the mud off his spectacles with a fat finger, but only makes a smudge. Clouds scud across the sky. They are black and bring rain. Poor Blodgett flops around in the bog. He does not use our rope, for he does not know we are there. No matter how loud we shout his name, he cannot hear us. Even if his spectacles were not smudged, he could not see us. We are always here at the edge of the bog, through days and nights in every season of the year. But we are tiny children, and we are ghosts. THE STENCH FROM OUTER SPACE Detective Captain Pondbedwas a worried man. He flung himself into an armchair, his pipe clenched between his jaws, then called out for Mungo, his factotum. Within seconds a tall, impossibly handsome fellow strode confidently into the detective's study. "Fetch me some balsa wood!" rapped Pondbed at this Ray Milland de nos jours. "At once, Master," snivelled Mungo, before adding, "You know you are becoming as irritable as Sir Denis Nayland Smith in the Fu Manchu stories by Sax Rohmer, don't you? You ought to take up a sport. I have heard it said that the Pang Hill bobsleigh team is looking for a new recruit." Pondbed almost bit the stem of his pipe in two before shouting something unprintable at his servant, who had already glided out of the room. It was Thursday morning, and the weather outside was spectacular and frightening. By the time Mungo returned, an hour later, with a balsa wood crate packed with hundreds of sticks of balsa wood, Detective Captain Pondbed had completed a pencil drawing of Mary Jo Kopechne, who died at Chappaquiddick. He had begun the drawing some months earlier, but he was nothing if not a perfectionist, a trait he had inherited from his mother, who, he recalled with a curious admixture of fondness and regret, had been known to arrive at railway stations with more than four days to spare before the departure of her train, in order to familiarise herself with the shift patterns of the tea-room persons. The angle of the detective's hat caused Mungo concern, and he stooped over to straighten it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-03-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 In a Bog 05:35 The Stench From Outer Space 09:35 The Book Of Gnats 16:57 On The Massacre Of The Innocents At Hoon 26:30 The Swiss Family Robinson IN A BOG In a bog, we find Blodgett. We steal upon him when he does not expect us. He is floundering in the bog, a clumsy giant. One of us says, "Blodgett, you have mud in your beard". Blodgett fains not to hear. He puffs and grunts. As he splutters, bits of dried mud fall out of his beard. "How long have you been in that bog, Blodgett?" we ask, in unison. Now Blodgett scowls. His spectacles are mysteriously agleam, in spite of the muck in which he wallows. He does not reply. With great groans, he hoists himself almost to his feet, before falling back into the bog with a mighty splash. Now there is some mud on his spectacles too. "Blodgett, Blodgett, there is mud on your spectacles," we sing, to a little tune we have devised for such an occasion. This causes Blodgett to growl. He sounds like a hog. We toss him one end of a rope. Desmond ties the other end of the rope to the trunk of a nearby sycamore. "Blodgett, pull yourself out of the bog using the rope!" we cry. None of us can remember the rest of our tune. Blodgett's hat has fallen off his head. He tries to wipe the mud off his spectacles with a fat finger, but only makes a smudge. Clouds scud across the sky. They are black and bring rain. Poor Blodgett flops around in the bog. He does not use our rope, for he does not know we are there. No matter how loud we shout his name, he cannot hear us. Even if his spectacles were not smudged, he could not see us. We are always here at the edge of the bog, through days and nights in every season of the year. But we are tiny children, and we are ghosts. THE STENCH FROM OUTER SPACE Detective Captain Pondbedwas a worried man. He flung himself into an armchair, his pipe clenched between his jaws, then called out for Mungo, his factotum. Within seconds a tall, impossibly handsome fellow strode confidently into the detective's study. "Fetch me some balsa wood!" rapped Pondbed at this Ray Milland de nos jours. "At once, Master," snivelled Mungo, before adding, "You know you are becoming as irritable as Sir Denis Nayland Smith in the Fu Manchu stories by Sax Rohmer, don't you? You ought to take up a sport. I have heard it said that the Pang Hill bobsleigh team is looking for a new recruit." Pondbed almost bit the stem of his pipe in two before shouting something unprintable at his servant, who had already glided out of the room. It was Thursday morning, and the weather outside was spectacular and frightening. By the time Mungo returned, an hour later, with a balsa wood crate packed with hundreds of sticks of balsa wood, Detective Captain Pondbed had completed a pencil drawing of Mary Jo Kopechne, who died at Chappaquiddick. He had begun the drawing some months earlier, but he was nothing if not a perfectionist, a trait he had inherited from his mother, who, he recalled with a curious admixture of fondness and regret, had been known to arrive at railway stations with more than four days to spare before the departure of her train, in order to familiarise herself with the shift patterns of the tea-room persons. The angle of the detective's hat caused Mungo concern, and he stooped over to straighten it. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-03-0928:59fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-23Wed, 23 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Total Eclipse 05:39 A Note on Bags 11:19 Fifty Years Ago 17:25 Orrery Sleuth 21:11 Two Monks 25:19 Tanis Diena 27:11 "Behold, Teta hath arrived in the height..." TOTAL ECLIPSE One day, after a huge breakfast, Ignapfando had a total eclipse of the heart, just like that songstress whose name escapes me. He did not look as if it was happening. Indeed to the untrained eye Ignapfando looked as if he was asleep, rather than in the throes of convulsive emotional turmoil accompanied by strident rock music. Adding to the disjuncture was the fact that Ignapfando resembled Clement Attlee, down to the finicky moustache and an inadvisable line in hats. Nevertheless, when he went to his priest for confession the following Sunday, there could be no doubt about the upheavals of his passion. "Bless me father for I have sinned," he pleaded as he knelt facing the grille behind which the priest sat clutching his rosary beads and wishing he was Montgomery Clift in I Confess. "I have had a total eclipse of the heart." "Let me stop you there, my child," murmured the priest, "I have heard enough. Say three Our Fathers, four Hail Marys, and one An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan. Now get you gone." Ignapfando left the confessional. Soon afterwards, so did the priest, his own heart not so much in total eclipse as heavy with the weight of the fat black sins he had had to listen to all morning. Terrible, terrible sins, of impiety and vainglory and greed, of abandonment and lust, of twiddly Moog synthesiser solos, rapine, pillage and wrack. He imagined each sin as a lump of lead, and he stuffed them all into a sack. It was a burlap sack, tied up with a knot, and he hoisted it onto his back. His back was broad, and his shoulders were strong, and he carried the sack through all the day long, the sack of sins as black as his heart, and at nightfall he tossed it onto a cart. He reined up his horse in the milky moon's glow, and off he rode with the sack on the cart. Ignapfando tossed and turned in his attic of sin with his total eclipse of the heart. Dawn came. Ignapfando awoke refreshed, all sin washed away, a man who now was pure. Far, far away on the road to the lime kilns, the priest with his horse and cart and sack full of sin had stopped to drink water from a stream. It was a pretty rill. As if in a dream, the songstress appeared, standing in the long grass, dressed in no longer fashionable glam finery. There was a sudden din. Was it the music of the spheres as conceived in the Mind of Brian May? The priest clapped his hands over his ears, his horse reared up in terror, and the burlap sack exploded, its incandescence vapourising the sun, the blast almost as loud as the songstress and her band, belting out her anthem. This much have I seen. This much have I heard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-23Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Total Eclipse 05:39 A Note on Bags 11:19 Fifty Years Ago 17:25 Orrery Sleuth 21:11 Two Monks 25:19 Tanis Diena 27:11 "Behold, Teta hath arrived in the height..." TOTAL ECLIPSE One day, after a huge breakfast, Ignapfando had a total eclipse of the heart, just like that songstress whose name escapes me. He did not look as if it was happening. Indeed to the untrained eye Ignapfando looked as if he was asleep, rather than in the throes of convulsive emotional turmoil accompanied by strident rock music. Adding to the disjuncture was the fact that Ignapfando resembled Clement Attlee, down to the finicky moustache and an inadvisable line in hats. Nevertheless, when he went to his priest for confession the following Sunday, there could be no doubt about the upheavals of his passion. "Bless me father for I have sinned," he pleaded as he knelt facing the grille behind which the priest sat clutching his rosary beads and wishing he was Montgomery Clift in I Confess. "I have had a total eclipse of the heart." "Let me stop you there, my child," murmured the priest, "I have heard enough. Say three Our Fathers, four Hail Marys, and one An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan. Now get you gone." Ignapfando left the confessional. Soon afterwards, so did the priest, his own heart not so much in total eclipse as heavy with the weight of the fat black sins he had had to listen to all morning. Terrible, terrible sins, of impiety and vainglory and greed, of abandonment and lust, of twiddly Moog synthesiser solos, rapine, pillage and wrack. He imagined each sin as a lump of lead, and he stuffed them all into a sack. It was a burlap sack, tied up with a knot, and he hoisted it onto his back. His back was broad, and his shoulders were strong, and he carried the sack through all the day long, the sack of sins as black as his heart, and at nightfall he tossed it onto a cart. He reined up his horse in the milky moon's glow, and off he rode with the sack on the cart. Ignapfando tossed and turned in his attic of sin with his total eclipse of the heart. Dawn came. Ignapfando awoke refreshed, all sin washed away, a man who now was pure. Far, far away on the road to the lime kilns, the priest with his horse and cart and sack full of sin had stopped to drink water from a stream. It was a pretty rill. As if in a dream, the songstress appeared, standing in the long grass, dressed in no longer fashionable glam finery. There was a sudden din. Was it the music of the spheres as conceived in the Mind of Brian May? The priest clapped his hands over his ears, his horse reared up in terror, and the burlap sack exploded, its incandescence vapourising the sun, the blast almost as loud as the songstress and her band, belting out her anthem. This much have I seen. This much have I heard. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-2328:51fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-16Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Nine Years Ago (Again) 04:58 Soup Anniversary 11:39 Political Animals 13:25 Pontiff! 17:00 About Enchatons 22:25 Tiny Enid Extinguishes a Volcano 27:28 Total Eclipse NINE YEARS AGO (AGAIN) There seem to be a few vaporous stirrings within the Key head, so it is not entirely vacant. Those stirrings may yet lead to some sweeping pargraphs of majestic prose. Meanwhile, here is a piece that first appeared on this day nine years ago: Devoted readers of Hooting Yard--are there any other kind?--know that we do our utmost to bring you the very, very best in modern, cutting-edge soup recipes. As part of the latest tranche, here is a marvellous example, provided by Dr Ruth Pastry's sister Maud: Ingredients: 1 lb each of apricots, breadcrumbs, coleslaw, dandelions, edelweiss stalks, flapjacks and goldfish brains; 6 tbsp honey; 2 oz isinglass; 1 lb each of jackdaw feathers, ketchup, love-lies-bleeding, marmalade, nougat and oxlips; 1 pea; 1 tub quicklime; 4 oz each of raisins*, spikenard and toffee; 15 tsp unspeakable goo; 1 family-size catering pack of vinegar; 3 whelks; as much xanthium as you can stomach; 12 pkts yeast; 44 zinnias. Method: Pound everything beginning with a vowel into a mulch. Smear it on to the inside of a big bowl. Put the bowl somewhere safe and below freezing point for a week. Cut everything else up into chunks the size of a newborn baby's fist, then chargrill. Go and get the bowl and toss the chunks in haphazardly. Place the bowl under an outside spigot and fill to the brim with water. Leave to stand for as long as you like, depending on how hungry you are. Transfer to a cauldron. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer. Pour in some milk. Re-boil, indefatigably. Ladle off the scum from the top. Serve with hibiscus clumps and cocoa. * NOTE : The mention of raisins in Maud Pastry's recipe prompts me to quote this splendid passage from Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World (Fourth Estate): If [Islamic fundamentalist suicide-bombers] die in the struggle, so much the better--since they will be welcomed into paradise by seventy-two virgins, ready to satisfy every sensual need. (This titillating inducement may not be all it seems. A scholarly new Koranic study by Christoph Luxenberg suggests that the legend of the virgins is based on a misinterpretation of the word hur, which translates from Arabic as 'houris' but in the Syriac language meant 'white raisins'. Imagine the disappointment of a suicide-bomber who arrives in heaven expecting a bevy of gorgeous maidens, 'chaste as hidden pearls', only to be offered a bowl of dried grapes instead.) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-16Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Nine Years Ago (Again) 04:58 Soup Anniversary 11:39 Political Animals 13:25 Pontiff! 17:00 About Enchatons 22:25 Tiny Enid Extinguishes a Volcano 27:28 Total Eclipse NINE YEARS AGO (AGAIN) There seem to be a few vaporous stirrings within the Key head, so it is not entirely vacant. Those stirrings may yet lead to some sweeping pargraphs of majestic prose. Meanwhile, here is a piece that first appeared on this day nine years ago: Devoted readers of Hooting Yard--are there any other kind?--know that we do our utmost to bring you the very, very best in modern, cutting-edge soup recipes. As part of the latest tranche, here is a marvellous example, provided by Dr Ruth Pastry's sister Maud: Ingredients: 1 lb each of apricots, breadcrumbs, coleslaw, dandelions, edelweiss stalks, flapjacks and goldfish brains; 6 tbsp honey; 2 oz isinglass; 1 lb each of jackdaw feathers, ketchup, love-lies-bleeding, marmalade, nougat and oxlips; 1 pea; 1 tub quicklime; 4 oz each of raisins*, spikenard and toffee; 15 tsp unspeakable goo; 1 family-size catering pack of vinegar; 3 whelks; as much xanthium as you can stomach; 12 pkts yeast; 44 zinnias. Method: Pound everything beginning with a vowel into a mulch. Smear it on to the inside of a big bowl. Put the bowl somewhere safe and below freezing point for a week. Cut everything else up into chunks the size of a newborn baby's fist, then chargrill. Go and get the bowl and toss the chunks in haphazardly. Place the bowl under an outside spigot and fill to the brim with water. Leave to stand for as long as you like, depending on how hungry you are. Transfer to a cauldron. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer. Pour in some milk. Re-boil, indefatigably. Ladle off the scum from the top. Serve with hibiscus clumps and cocoa. * NOTE : The mention of raisins in Maud Pastry's recipe prompts me to quote this splendid passage from Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World (Fourth Estate): If [Islamic fundamentalist suicide-bombers] die in the struggle, so much the better--since they will be welcomed into paradise by seventy-two virgins, ready to satisfy every sensual need. (This titillating inducement may not be all it seems. A scholarly new Koranic study by Christoph Luxenberg suggests that the legend of the virgins is based on a misinterpretation of the word hur, which translates from Arabic as 'houris' but in the Syriac language meant 'white raisins'. Imagine the disappointment of a suicide-bomber who arrives in heaven expecting a bevy of gorgeous maidens, 'chaste as hidden pearls', only to be offered a bowl of dried grapes instead.) […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-1629:58fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-09Wed, 09 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:18 Four Uncanny Tales 04:10 More About My Bomba 10:10 "There was an interesting communication at, of..." 12:30 Norwegian Wool 16:02 Claude 20:20 So You Want to Become a Haruspex? 25:56 Jarvis and Cubbit 29:39 So You Want to Become a Haruspex? FOUR UNCANNY TALES Here are four stories, each of a hundred words. Earlier versions, a little shorter or longer, can be dug out from the archives should you care to look. I I was sitting on a bench in a bower on a bright summer's day. It was a Wednesday, or possibly a Thursday, in August, in the year after the Kennedy assassination, far far away in Dallas, and the air was heady with verbena, and hollyhock. I was eating my snack. All of a sudden, gruesome suppurations of foul-smelling extraterrestrial hideousness began oozing from my marmalade and fish-head sandwich, and I swooned. When I came to, I had a tiny radio transmitter implanted in my forehead, but I remained unaware of it for the rest of my sordid and sorry life. II They called him Blomqvist, and he was the village wrestler. He lived in a room above the post office. No other living being ever set foot in the room until the day Blomqvist died. They found him lying on his bed, as if he were asleep, but there was no doubt that he was dead, for hovering above his chest was a baleful phantom, emitting gruesome suppurations of foul-smelling extraterrestrial hideousness which it poured into a funnel inserted into Blomqvist's right ear. They closed up the room and nailed the door shut. It remained unopened for the next hundred years. III The bell tower had bells in it, but that was not what caught the attention of Jarvis, the bird scientist. "Look, there is a bird on the bell tower," he said to his pneumonia-racked assistant Cubbit, who was doing something foolish with a pair of bicycle clips. Jarvis pointed at the bird, expecting Cubbit to look, but the spindly youth was distracted by a passing pantechnicon all a-clatter with pots and pans. It was the neighbourhood Windy Man, on his rounds, and spookily, sitting next to him in the passenger seat, was a hideous extraterrestrial being, suppurating, greasy and malevolent. IV "Hand me that chaffinch, Cubbit," said Jarvis to his lantern-jawed assistant. Jarvis was a bird scientist, devoted to the study of chaffinches. Wandering the hills, he had spotted one. As Cubbit picked up the chaffinch, he heard a scream. Spinning round, he saw Jarvis being engulfed by a gruesome suppurating monster. The poor lad scampered back to the lab and told what had happened to Mrs Purgative. "Well! I never heard of such a thing!" she exclaimed. She hoisted her mop on her shoulder, took Cubbit by his withered hand, and led him far away, all the way to Gondwanaland. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-09Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 01:18 Four Uncanny Tales 04:10 More About My Bomba 10:10 "There was an interesting communication at, of..." 12:30 Norwegian Wool 16:02 Claude 20:20 So You Want to Become a Haruspex? 25:56 Jarvis and Cubbit 29:39 So You Want to Become a Haruspex? FOUR UNCANNY TALES Here are four stories, each of a hundred words. Earlier versions, a little shorter or longer, can be dug out from the archives should you care to look. I I was sitting on a bench in a bower on a bright summer's day. It was a Wednesday, or possibly a Thursday, in August, in the year after the Kennedy assassination, far far away in Dallas, and the air was heady with verbena, and hollyhock. I was eating my snack. All of a sudden, gruesome suppurations of foul-smelling extraterrestrial hideousness began oozing from my marmalade and fish-head sandwich, and I swooned. When I came to, I had a tiny radio transmitter implanted in my forehead, but I remained unaware of it for the rest of my sordid and sorry life. II They called him Blomqvist, and he was the village wrestler. He lived in a room above the post office. No other living being ever set foot in the room until the day Blomqvist died. They found him lying on his bed, as if he were asleep, but there was no doubt that he was dead, for hovering above his chest was a baleful phantom, emitting gruesome suppurations of foul-smelling extraterrestrial hideousness which it poured into a funnel inserted into Blomqvist's right ear. They closed up the room and nailed the door shut. It remained unopened for the next hundred years. III The bell tower had bells in it, but that was not what caught the attention of Jarvis, the bird scientist. "Look, there is a bird on the bell tower," he said to his pneumonia-racked assistant Cubbit, who was doing something foolish with a pair of bicycle clips. Jarvis pointed at the bird, expecting Cubbit to look, but the spindly youth was distracted by a passing pantechnicon all a-clatter with pots and pans. It was the neighbourhood Windy Man, on his rounds, and spookily, sitting next to him in the passenger seat, was a hideous extraterrestrial being, suppurating, greasy and malevolent. IV "Hand me that chaffinch, Cubbit," said Jarvis to his lantern-jawed assistant. Jarvis was a bird scientist, devoted to the study of chaffinches. Wandering the hills, he had spotted one. As Cubbit picked up the chaffinch, he heard a scream. Spinning round, he saw Jarvis being engulfed by a gruesome suppurating monster. The poor lad scampered back to the lab and told what had happened to Mrs Purgative. "Well! I never heard of such a thing!" she exclaimed. She hoisted her mop on her shoulder, took Cubbit by his withered hand, and led him far away, all the way to Gondwanaland. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-0929:44fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-02Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Scrofula and Penitence in the Middle Ages 03:38 The Glove of Ib 07:54 Glib Hatter 15:35 Waxy Insensibility 17:43 Saint Mungo : Read and Learn 23:03 Poppy Nisbet's Music Tips 25:35 Three Years Ago SCROFULA AND PENITENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES Scrofula is the Latin word for brood sow, and it is the term applied to a tuberculous infection of the chain of lymph glands in the neck, creating swellings between the angle of the jaw and the top of the breastbone. It has been known to afflict people since antiquity, and during the Middle Ages was known as "the King's Evil", because it was thought that the monarch's touch would cure it. We may scoff at such naivete, especially given the rather disturbing personal habits of kings and queens past and present. An early scoffer was Valentine Greatrakes (1628-1666), a Cromwellian soldier during the English Civil War. In the revolutionary mood of the time, he correctly surmised that God could act through himself as well as through the royal personage, and did his own scrofula-healing by gently stroking his patients. He also applied poultices made from carrots, although it is unclear whether these were divinely inspired. Back in the Middle Ages, of course, when only the King was thought to be capable of curing scrofula by touch, there was also a great enthusiasm for penitence. Natural calamities of all kinds were thought to be the Terrible Judgment of an Angry God, a not unreasonable idea. Pestilence was met with penitence, rather than with carrot poultices, although perhaps I am oversimplifying. No doubt some canny peasants used both approaches. And what can we learn from this, o tiny ones? Well, if you think you have contracted scrofula, or indeed any other malady, such as Asiatic Bird Flu, a pandemic of which we are promised by world health officials, you would be well advised to repent your sins, preferably in a manner that involves the mortification of the flesh, and while doing so, grate some carrots. Next week, we shall take a look at Fundamentalist Aztec Sun-worshippers and Swamp Fever. A terrifically helpful diagram of the human skull. Remember, it's under that jaw that scrofulous swellings occur. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-02Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Scrofula and Penitence in the Middle Ages 03:38 The Glove of Ib 07:54 Glib Hatter 15:35 Waxy Insensibility 17:43 Saint Mungo : Read and Learn 23:03 Poppy Nisbet's Music Tips 25:35 Three Years Ago SCROFULA AND PENITENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES Scrofula is the Latin word for brood sow, and it is the term applied to a tuberculous infection of the chain of lymph glands in the neck, creating swellings between the angle of the jaw and the top of the breastbone. It has been known to afflict people since antiquity, and during the Middle Ages was known as "the King's Evil", because it was thought that the monarch's touch would cure it. We may scoff at such naivete, especially given the rather disturbing personal habits of kings and queens past and present. An early scoffer was Valentine Greatrakes (1628-1666), a Cromwellian soldier during the English Civil War. In the revolutionary mood of the time, he correctly surmised that God could act through himself as well as through the royal personage, and did his own scrofula-healing by gently stroking his patients. He also applied poultices made from carrots, although it is unclear whether these were divinely inspired. Back in the Middle Ages, of course, when only the King was thought to be capable of curing scrofula by touch, there was also a great enthusiasm for penitence. Natural calamities of all kinds were thought to be the Terrible Judgment of an Angry God, a not unreasonable idea. Pestilence was met with penitence, rather than with carrot poultices, although perhaps I am oversimplifying. No doubt some canny peasants used both approaches. And what can we learn from this, o tiny ones? Well, if you think you have contracted scrofula, or indeed any other malady, such as Asiatic Bird Flu, a pandemic of which we are promised by world health officials, you would be well advised to repent your sins, preferably in a manner that involves the mortification of the flesh, and while doing so, grate some carrots. Next week, we shall take a look at Fundamentalist Aztec Sun-worshippers and Swamp Fever. A terrifically helpful diagram of the human skull. Remember, it's under that jaw that scrofulous swellings occur. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-02-0230:08fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-26Wed, 26 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:59 Five Tiny Birds 05:39 Crime of the Century 10:07 Blodgett's Fiendish X-ray Plot 13:28 Bilingual Comintern Mocker 17:04 "The Arabic word 'bin', within, becomes, when..." 22:00 Mrs Gubbins' New Publishing Venture 25:43 Curd FIVE TINY BIRDS Look, look! Here are five tiny birds! That was a tiny bobolink, I am sure of it. I know a bobolink when I see one, which is not often, admittedly, as I live in a hermit's cave, though I am not a hermit by inclination. I am garrulous. And that looks like a tiny pyrrhula, Stalin's favourite bird, according to The Fat Compendium Of Spurious Bird-Related Facts About The Soviet Union, my father's favourite book. My father was garrulous too, and no one ever asked him to live in a cave. He lived above a shop that sold prosthetic limbs. Here comes another tiny bird! It is a tiny scarlet tanager. Now that is a bird I have never heard of before. Gosh! Hot on its heels comes a tiny painted bunting, not that birds have heels as such. They have claws and talons or very thin little twig-like feet. Some say that long, long ago human beings began to write by copying the tracks made by the feet of birds in snow or mud. There is one more tiny bird to come. I think it will be a tiny harlequin duck, I can feel it in my water. Oops! I was wrong! It is a tiny mute swan. And now I too will become mute, for it is breakfast time, time for a bowl of roots and chaff, and I must concentrate on the effective working of my digestive juices. CRIME OF THE CENTURY That beacon of common sense and moderation, the Reverend Ian Paisley, described the recent PS22 million bank robbery in Northern Ireland as "the crime of the century". Things bode well for the next ninety-five years, then. His comment set me thinking about the crime of the century just gone, so I went to Google to have a look. There were 65,800 results, but I was able to discount the majority of these because they referred to songs by Shania Twain and Supertramp. (On second thoughts... maybe those titles were accurately self-referential.) Anyway, the usual suspects were predictably present--JFK, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping*, Leopold and Loeb, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and more recently the so-called "war on terror" and the destruction of the rainforest--but I was more interested in the less celebrated misdeeds which had been described as "the crime of the century". These included: Government advice that people should take mineral and vitamin supplements The demolition of a building in Missouri as part of the US Custom House & Post Office Project An eight-inch crawdad deposited in someone's grandmother's rain barrel The recent Ukrainian elections. A Yanukovich supporter said of Yuschenko's "coup": "This is the crime of the century--worse than Hitler, worse than Chernobyl. This is a battle to Armageddon. It's a battle between the Antichrist and Christian peoples. They are turning people into orange zombies... all of them have abnormal sexual energy." Theft of an item of sporting memorabilia from Geelong Football Club Publication of the Kinsey reports, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953). […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-26Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:59 Five Tiny Birds 05:39 Crime of the Century 10:07 Blodgett's Fiendish X-ray Plot 13:28 Bilingual Comintern Mocker 17:04 "The Arabic word 'bin', within, becomes, when..." 22:00 Mrs Gubbins' New Publishing Venture 25:43 Curd FIVE TINY BIRDS Look, look! Here are five tiny birds! That was a tiny bobolink, I am sure of it. I know a bobolink when I see one, which is not often, admittedly, as I live in a hermit's cave, though I am not a hermit by inclination. I am garrulous. And that looks like a tiny pyrrhula, Stalin's favourite bird, according to The Fat Compendium Of Spurious Bird-Related Facts About The Soviet Union, my father's favourite book. My father was garrulous too, and no one ever asked him to live in a cave. He lived above a shop that sold prosthetic limbs. Here comes another tiny bird! It is a tiny scarlet tanager. Now that is a bird I have never heard of before. Gosh! Hot on its heels comes a tiny painted bunting, not that birds have heels as such. They have claws and talons or very thin little twig-like feet. Some say that long, long ago human beings began to write by copying the tracks made by the feet of birds in snow or mud. There is one more tiny bird to come. I think it will be a tiny harlequin duck, I can feel it in my water. Oops! I was wrong! It is a tiny mute swan. And now I too will become mute, for it is breakfast time, time for a bowl of roots and chaff, and I must concentrate on the effective working of my digestive juices. CRIME OF THE CENTURY That beacon of common sense and moderation, the Reverend Ian Paisley, described the recent PS22 million bank robbery in Northern Ireland as "the crime of the century". Things bode well for the next ninety-five years, then. His comment set me thinking about the crime of the century just gone, so I went to Google to have a look. There were 65,800 results, but I was able to discount the majority of these because they referred to songs by Shania Twain and Supertramp. (On second thoughts... maybe those titles were accurately self-referential.) Anyway, the usual suspects were predictably present--JFK, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping*, Leopold and Loeb, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and more recently the so-called "war on terror" and the destruction of the rainforest--but I was more interested in the less celebrated misdeeds which had been described as "the crime of the century". These included: Government advice that people should take mineral and vitamin supplements The demolition of a building in Missouri as part of the US Custom House & Post Office Project An eight-inch crawdad deposited in someone's grandmother's rain barrel The recent Ukrainian elections. A Yanukovich supporter said of Yuschenko's "coup": "This is the crime of the century--worse than Hitler, worse than Chernobyl. This is a battle to Armageddon. It's a battle between the Antichrist and Christian peoples. They are turning people into orange zombies... all of them have abnormal sexual energy." Theft of an item of sporting memorabilia from Geelong Football Club Publication of the Kinsey reports, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953). […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-2629:49fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-19Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Pageantry 05:13 On Gods 21:45 One Afternoon on the Lane That Runs From Coctlosh to Pointy Town 25:58 Bogodan PAGEANTRY I am not averse to pageantry, so when a parade came past my door last Friday I went to my window to watch. Although the pane of glass in my window is besmirched by grease, I had a splendid view. I saw a yellow brougham, three green pantechnicons, a brown cabriolet, at least a dozen crimson charabancs, a pair of white phaetons, and a blue chariot, each with its flags and bunting and streamers and ribbons, some with hooters and klaxons making a terrible din, and they were followed by countless wagons and floats and cars, gigs, coaches, brakes, droshkys, jalopies and landaus, jeeps, bogies and coupes, drays, palanquins and flivvers, so many that before I knew it hours had passed, and it was dusk, and there seemed to be no end to the parade. I was beginning to wonder how I would be able to cross the street. I wanted to go to the tobacconists' to pick up a twist of nap and a plug of slot, but the succession of carriages, decorative snowploughs, unicycles and troikas showed no sign of abating. The crowd that had gathered to cheer and throw hats in the air and dance impromptu polkas was thicker than it had been all day. One mountebank had set up his stall close to my front gate and was attracting custom with whoops and whistles. I decided to risk crossing the road, thinking I could weave my way through the parade. I put on my hat and stepped out of the door, and was at once caught up in a surging mob of revellers and borne aloft like some sort of mascot. They ignored my tremulous whimpers of protest, but eventually dumped me on the kerb about a mile down the road from my house, and here the pageantry, and crowds, were if anything more boisterous, colourful and noisy than ever. "What is this all in aid of?" I shouted at a black-clad widow-woman who was selling bundles of strange herbs from a barrow. She was reluctant to answer me until I had forked out a handful of cash for a sprig of irkbane. "A potentate from a far distant land is visiting our town," she told me, "and the council wanted to make him welcome. He is a terrible tyrant, and he has been known to kill a horse just by uttering its name. His palace is bigger than the tallest mountain, and is built from the bones of enemies he has slain in combat. But they say that in his bailiwick sheep may safely graze." The crone continued to speak, but she was drowned out by a band of pipers on the back of a passing flatbed truck. I stuffed cotton wool into my ears. An urchin pressed a pennant into my hand and I found myself waving it unthinkingly. Night had fallen now, but the town was bright with flares and gas and calcium night lights. I stood at the roadside, hemmed in by carousing crowds, and watched the passing parade. Somewhere bells were clanging. A mile away, in the dark dark woods, owls swooped on field mice, badgers grubbed for worms, and insects glowed. A mile further on, the potentate's assassin tied a bandanna around his head, lit a cigarillo, shouldered his rifle and began his heavy deliberate trudge across the marshes towards the town. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-19Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 Pageantry 05:13 On Gods 21:45 One Afternoon on the Lane That Runs From Coctlosh to Pointy Town 25:58 Bogodan PAGEANTRY I am not averse to pageantry, so when a parade came past my door last Friday I went to my window to watch. Although the pane of glass in my window is besmirched by grease, I had a splendid view. I saw a yellow brougham, three green pantechnicons, a brown cabriolet, at least a dozen crimson charabancs, a pair of white phaetons, and a blue chariot, each with its flags and bunting and streamers and ribbons, some with hooters and klaxons making a terrible din, and they were followed by countless wagons and floats and cars, gigs, coaches, brakes, droshkys, jalopies and landaus, jeeps, bogies and coupes, drays, palanquins and flivvers, so many that before I knew it hours had passed, and it was dusk, and there seemed to be no end to the parade. I was beginning to wonder how I would be able to cross the street. I wanted to go to the tobacconists' to pick up a twist of nap and a plug of slot, but the succession of carriages, decorative snowploughs, unicycles and troikas showed no sign of abating. The crowd that had gathered to cheer and throw hats in the air and dance impromptu polkas was thicker than it had been all day. One mountebank had set up his stall close to my front gate and was attracting custom with whoops and whistles. I decided to risk crossing the road, thinking I could weave my way through the parade. I put on my hat and stepped out of the door, and was at once caught up in a surging mob of revellers and borne aloft like some sort of mascot. They ignored my tremulous whimpers of protest, but eventually dumped me on the kerb about a mile down the road from my house, and here the pageantry, and crowds, were if anything more boisterous, colourful and noisy than ever. "What is this all in aid of?" I shouted at a black-clad widow-woman who was selling bundles of strange herbs from a barrow. She was reluctant to answer me until I had forked out a handful of cash for a sprig of irkbane. "A potentate from a far distant land is visiting our town," she told me, "and the council wanted to make him welcome. He is a terrible tyrant, and he has been known to kill a horse just by uttering its name. His palace is bigger than the tallest mountain, and is built from the bones of enemies he has slain in combat. But they say that in his bailiwick sheep may safely graze." The crone continued to speak, but she was drowned out by a band of pipers on the back of a passing flatbed truck. I stuffed cotton wool into my ears. An urchin pressed a pennant into my hand and I found myself waving it unthinkingly. Night had fallen now, but the town was bright with flares and gas and calcium night lights. I stood at the roadside, hemmed in by carousing crowds, and watched the passing parade. Somewhere bells were clanging. A mile away, in the dark dark woods, owls swooped on field mice, badgers grubbed for worms, and insects glowed. A mile further on, the potentate's assassin tied a bandanna around his head, lit a cigarillo, shouldered his rifle and began his heavy deliberate trudge across the marshes towards the town. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-1930:00fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-12Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 On Curlews 05:26 Inconsequential Trivia 08:18 When I Was Interrogated 12:17 Stress, Distress, Tristesse 15:02 The Private Memoirs & Confessions of an Ignorant Ornithologist 17:22 Ten Years Ago 20:24 The Mincing Corsair 23:32 Meldrum Fonseca : Uber-trombonist 26:50 Preamble to a Report on the 26 Lighthouses of Hoon ON CURLEWS There I was, crumpled and decisive, standing between two trees on the edge of the Blister Lane Bypass. The trees were both yews, I think. I was looking for curlews. The first one I saw was made of plastic, it was a toy or perhaps a decorative figurine. It had been abandoned in the gutter. Then I saw a second curlew, swooping across the blue, blue sky. I did not know it then, but within hours there would be no blue to be seen, for dark and brooding thunderclouds would waft in from the east. A third curlew appeared in my mind's eye. It was gigantic and ferocious and terrifying. I shuddered. I walked away from the yews, in the direction of Bodger's Spinney, pulling my resplendent teal cardigan tight about my torso. There was a fourth curlew, an embroidered one, on my necktie. Why in the name of heaven was I wearing a necktie? All of a sudden this length of fabric wrapped around my neck felt like a hangman's noose. I took it off, with violent jerks, and discarded it in a puddle, where it would remain until discovered later that day by a scavenging hobbledehoy from The Bashings, that gloomy cluster of huts which sane people shirk. Oh, as the tie dropped into the puddle I saw a fugitive reflection in the water of the embroidered curlew, so that made five. It was still only ten in the morning. By five past ten I had seen another dozen curlews, or it may have been a single curlew seen twelve times, I cannot be altogether certain. I was standing on Sawdust Bridge at the time, feeling hopeless and disgruntled and cantankerous. The tunic I was wearing beneath my cardigan, which I had stolen from an ingrate, was playing havoc with my [invented skin disease], and rashes were appearing. My doctor had prescribed a daily dose of some sort of bean mashed up into a bowl of milk of magnesia, and I had forgotten to take my dose that morning, so keen was I to see curlews. Later I took a mop and began to clean the floor of one of the corridors in an ugly building which shall remain nameless. I was indoors now, so unlikely to see any curlews. But lo!, little Maisie--a polka-dot-dressed orphan whose parents perished in the Tet Offensive--came rushing up to me clutching her stamp album and showed me her latest acquisitions, a set of twenty bird-related thematics issued by the Tantarabim Interim Authority. I could not help but note, as I shared my Brazil nuts with starving Maisie, that eight of the stamps depicted curlews. On my way home, as the evening closed in and dark thoughts of skulduggery frolicked in my throbbing skull, I saw a dead curlew on the canal towpath. Bird detectives had already thrown a cordon around it, so I was unable to take a closer look. That night, by candlelight, I took out my ledger and gave names to each of the twenty-six curlews I had seen. Alcibiades, Bim, Chumpot, Dromedary, Eidolon, Flaps, Gash, Heliogabalus, Inthod... That is how I started my list. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 On Curlews 05:26 Inconsequential Trivia 08:18 When I Was Interrogated 12:17 Stress, Distress, Tristesse 15:02 The Private Memoirs & Confessions of an Ignorant Ornithologist 17:22 Ten Years Ago 20:24 The Mincing Corsair 23:32 Meldrum Fonseca : Uber-trombonist 26:50 Preamble to a Report on the 26 Lighthouses of Hoon ON CURLEWS There I was, crumpled and decisive, standing between two trees on the edge of the Blister Lane Bypass. The trees were both yews, I think. I was looking for curlews. The first one I saw was made of plastic, it was a toy or perhaps a decorative figurine. It had been abandoned in the gutter. Then I saw a second curlew, swooping across the blue, blue sky. I did not know it then, but within hours there would be no blue to be seen, for dark and brooding thunderclouds would waft in from the east. A third curlew appeared in my mind's eye. It was gigantic and ferocious and terrifying. I shuddered. I walked away from the yews, in the direction of Bodger's Spinney, pulling my resplendent teal cardigan tight about my torso. There was a fourth curlew, an embroidered one, on my necktie. Why in the name of heaven was I wearing a necktie? All of a sudden this length of fabric wrapped around my neck felt like a hangman's noose. I took it off, with violent jerks, and discarded it in a puddle, where it would remain until discovered later that day by a scavenging hobbledehoy from The Bashings, that gloomy cluster of huts which sane people shirk. Oh, as the tie dropped into the puddle I saw a fugitive reflection in the water of the embroidered curlew, so that made five. It was still only ten in the morning. By five past ten I had seen another dozen curlews, or it may have been a single curlew seen twelve times, I cannot be altogether certain. I was standing on Sawdust Bridge at the time, feeling hopeless and disgruntled and cantankerous. The tunic I was wearing beneath my cardigan, which I had stolen from an ingrate, was playing havoc with my [invented skin disease], and rashes were appearing. My doctor had prescribed a daily dose of some sort of bean mashed up into a bowl of milk of magnesia, and I had forgotten to take my dose that morning, so keen was I to see curlews. Later I took a mop and began to clean the floor of one of the corridors in an ugly building which shall remain nameless. I was indoors now, so unlikely to see any curlews. But lo!, little Maisie--a polka-dot-dressed orphan whose parents perished in the Tet Offensive--came rushing up to me clutching her stamp album and showed me her latest acquisitions, a set of twenty bird-related thematics issued by the Tantarabim Interim Authority. I could not help but note, as I shared my Brazil nuts with starving Maisie, that eight of the stamps depicted curlews. On my way home, as the evening closed in and dark thoughts of skulduggery frolicked in my throbbing skull, I saw a dead curlew on the canal towpath. Bird detectives had already thrown a cordon around it, so I was unable to take a closer look. That night, by candlelight, I took out my ledger and gave names to each of the twenty-six curlews I had seen. Alcibiades, Bim, Chumpot, Dromedary, Eidolon, Flaps, Gash, Heliogabalus, Inthod... That is how I started my list. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-1230:07fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-05Wed, 05 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:49 Me and My Thorn-hog 05:39 In a Cabin, on a Ship 11:49 Phantasmal Quest Thing 15:15 Docking Hack 17:37 Belshazzar's Feast 20:34 Hengist Pod Asks a Question 23:11 "Cornelius Gemma, lib. 2. de nat. mirac...." 25:30 Has He Taken Leave of His Senses? 29:35 The Cabinet of Doctor Calicagcag ME AND MY THORN-HOG I was given a common thorn-hog as a Christmas present. It is a wild pig, long-bodied and flat-sided, in colour much the hue of the mud in which it wallows, that mud being my front garden mud, which is somewhat darker than my back garden mud. The mud along the side of the house is another shade again, but Carnforth--that is the pig's name--seems to prefer the front garden, or at least the mud in the front garden. I did not name her Carnforth. The benefactor who brought her to me at crack of dawn on Christmas morning told me she had been named before birth, like most thorn-hogs. The common practice, I was informed, is for these wild pigs to be called after iconic railway stations, and Carnforth is, of course, where Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard filmed Brief Encounter. In addition to telling me my new pig's name, my benefactor gave me a little booklet titled So You've Been Given A Wild Pig?, which is packed with useful information on how to care for it, or I should say, her. Not that Carnforth needs much care. She spends most of her time wallowing in the mud in my front garden, and twice a day I unlock the gate to let her out so she can go rampaging about the hills, grunting furiously and waylaying anything edible. She is, after all, a wild pig. As she is fond of thorns, I took Carnforth to the garden centre when it opened for its Boxing Day sale, and we had a lovely time looking at the rosebushes. I think I can tell from her prolonged and noisy grunts that she would like to go back there when they have restocked. I have not yet allowed my thorn-hog into the house, as I am in the middle of redecorating. Sometimes in the middle of the night I can hear her thumping violently against the door trying to get in, but I want to finish her indoor sty first. Transforming the entire downstairs is going to be quite a job, but it will be such a nice surprise for her. The price of straw is high at the moment, so I may have to wait for the market to settle. Meanwhile, I am keeping an eagle eye on both hay and straw futures, and counting up all the loose change in my jars. I would write a thank you letter to my benefactor for such a delightful gift, but he did not leave a forwarding address. Indeed, after delivering the wild pig, he scampered away at high speed, shouting "Merry Christmas!" as if in the throes of a hysterical fit. And do you know something? I had never set eyes on him before. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:49 Me and My Thorn-hog 05:39 In a Cabin, on a Ship 11:49 Phantasmal Quest Thing 15:15 Docking Hack 17:37 Belshazzar's Feast 20:34 Hengist Pod Asks a Question 23:11 "Cornelius Gemma, lib. 2. de nat. mirac...." 25:30 Has He Taken Leave of His Senses? 29:35 The Cabinet of Doctor Calicagcag ME AND MY THORN-HOG I was given a common thorn-hog as a Christmas present. It is a wild pig, long-bodied and flat-sided, in colour much the hue of the mud in which it wallows, that mud being my front garden mud, which is somewhat darker than my back garden mud. The mud along the side of the house is another shade again, but Carnforth--that is the pig's name--seems to prefer the front garden, or at least the mud in the front garden. I did not name her Carnforth. The benefactor who brought her to me at crack of dawn on Christmas morning told me she had been named before birth, like most thorn-hogs. The common practice, I was informed, is for these wild pigs to be called after iconic railway stations, and Carnforth is, of course, where Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard filmed Brief Encounter. In addition to telling me my new pig's name, my benefactor gave me a little booklet titled So You've Been Given A Wild Pig?, which is packed with useful information on how to care for it, or I should say, her. Not that Carnforth needs much care. She spends most of her time wallowing in the mud in my front garden, and twice a day I unlock the gate to let her out so she can go rampaging about the hills, grunting furiously and waylaying anything edible. She is, after all, a wild pig. As she is fond of thorns, I took Carnforth to the garden centre when it opened for its Boxing Day sale, and we had a lovely time looking at the rosebushes. I think I can tell from her prolonged and noisy grunts that she would like to go back there when they have restocked. I have not yet allowed my thorn-hog into the house, as I am in the middle of redecorating. Sometimes in the middle of the night I can hear her thumping violently against the door trying to get in, but I want to finish her indoor sty first. Transforming the entire downstairs is going to be quite a job, but it will be such a nice surprise for her. The price of straw is high at the moment, so I may have to wait for the market to settle. Meanwhile, I am keeping an eagle eye on both hay and straw futures, and counting up all the loose change in my jars. I would write a thank you letter to my benefactor for such a delightful gift, but he did not leave a forwarding address. Indeed, after delivering the wild pig, he scampered away at high speed, shouting "Merry Christmas!" as if in the throes of a hysterical fit. And do you know something? I had never set eyes on him before. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2005-01-0531:10fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-29Wed, 29 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Online Learning With Hooting Yard 04:56 Ask Uncle Dan 07:32 What Dobson Did On Boxing Day 12:50 On the Air 17:26 Bats 20:54 At the Duckpond 23:22 "He heard only the soughing of the..." 26:07 At Home With Tanquod Shuddery 29:33 Hooting Yard Archive, March 2005 ONLINE LEARNING WITH HOOTING YARD Here is the first tranche of a new series in which we will attempt to provide a thorough and valuable learning experience for all our readers. Perhaps you failed to pay attention when you were at your community hub? [Note: you may recall it being called a "school". That was then...] Online Learning With Hooting Yard can help you catch up with all the vital information that passed you by. Each lesson--specially devised by a team headed by Fatima Gilliblat--consists of two questions, to which model answers are given. They have been carefully researched and are guaranteed correct. No longer need you be stuck for an answer when accosted in the street, or buttonholed at a fashionable cocktail party in a rotating restaurant at the top of a high building. Memorise the answers, or, if your memory is a sorry and puny thing, write them down on the cuff of your shirt or blouse on the same side as you wear your wristwatch. You will soon be sparkling in company, and everyone will be envious of your cleverness. Lesson One Q--Are crocodiles frightened of otters? A--Yes they are. If crocodiles roam into a stretch of river where otters are prevalent, they will hasten away, for crocodiles fear otters. Q--How did a priest in Bolivia early in the last century supplement his income? A--He divided his graveyard into three sections--Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell--and charged for burials accordingly. ASK UNCLE DAN Dear Uncle Dan I have been given a burlap sack full of old crocuses and I have no idea what to do with it. Please help. Valentine Smew Uncle Dan says: Well, Valentine, whenever I read the word "crocuses" I think of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, also called kado, or "the way of the flowers". Get yourself a vase and transfer the crocuses from the sack. Throw the sack away. Now--be deft! Manipulate the crocuses with delicacy, taste and vision. There is, of course, the possibility that you lack these qualities, in which case you may be better occupied throwing the crocuses away and retaining the burlap sack. With a pair of scissors and a sewing machine you will soon be able to turn it into a mightily uncomfortable vest which can be wrapped up and given as a Christmas or birthday gift to a devout Roman Catholic. Jesuit priests in particular are known to be fond of such garb. If you do not number any Jesuits among your acquaintances, I would recommend visiting the SJ Web, an excellent resource "connecting Jesuits and friends around the world". The Lord be with you, Valentine Smew. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-29Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 Online Learning With Hooting Yard 04:56 Ask Uncle Dan 07:32 What Dobson Did On Boxing Day 12:50 On the Air 17:26 Bats 20:54 At the Duckpond 23:22 "He heard only the soughing of the..." 26:07 At Home With Tanquod Shuddery 29:33 Hooting Yard Archive, March 2005 ONLINE LEARNING WITH HOOTING YARD Here is the first tranche of a new series in which we will attempt to provide a thorough and valuable learning experience for all our readers. Perhaps you failed to pay attention when you were at your community hub? [Note: you may recall it being called a "school". That was then...] Online Learning With Hooting Yard can help you catch up with all the vital information that passed you by. Each lesson--specially devised by a team headed by Fatima Gilliblat--consists of two questions, to which model answers are given. They have been carefully researched and are guaranteed correct. No longer need you be stuck for an answer when accosted in the street, or buttonholed at a fashionable cocktail party in a rotating restaurant at the top of a high building. Memorise the answers, or, if your memory is a sorry and puny thing, write them down on the cuff of your shirt or blouse on the same side as you wear your wristwatch. You will soon be sparkling in company, and everyone will be envious of your cleverness. Lesson One Q--Are crocodiles frightened of otters? A--Yes they are. If crocodiles roam into a stretch of river where otters are prevalent, they will hasten away, for crocodiles fear otters. Q--How did a priest in Bolivia early in the last century supplement his income? A--He divided his graveyard into three sections--Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell--and charged for burials accordingly. ASK UNCLE DAN Dear Uncle Dan I have been given a burlap sack full of old crocuses and I have no idea what to do with it. Please help. Valentine Smew Uncle Dan says: Well, Valentine, whenever I read the word "crocuses" I think of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, also called kado, or "the way of the flowers". Get yourself a vase and transfer the crocuses from the sack. Throw the sack away. Now--be deft! Manipulate the crocuses with delicacy, taste and vision. There is, of course, the possibility that you lack these qualities, in which case you may be better occupied throwing the crocuses away and retaining the burlap sack. With a pair of scissors and a sewing machine you will soon be able to turn it into a mightily uncomfortable vest which can be wrapped up and given as a Christmas or birthday gift to a devout Roman Catholic. Jesuit priests in particular are known to be fond of such garb. If you do not number any Jesuits among your acquaintances, I would recommend visiting the SJ Web, an excellent resource "connecting Jesuits and friends around the world". The Lord be with you, Valentine Smew. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-2929:38fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-22Wed, 22 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Hinged, Unhinged, or Neither? 03:17 I Saw Three Ships 07:00 The Legend of the Grunty Man 11:49 Petrochemical Shiver-me-timbers Conclave 18:37 Christmas Dinner 25:17 The Cardboard Club HINGED, UNHINGED, OR NEITHER? The quandary that beset Dennis, apart from his conviction that in a previous life he was Veronica Lake, was whether he was hinged or unhinged, or possibly neither. Most of us would not fret about such a thing, but Dennis did. There is a temptation to say that this fact in itself proves that Dennis was indeed unhinged, and to ponder why this had not occurred to him. But it had, and it added to his fretfulness. For there was so much about Dennis that was hinged. For example, when he chanced upon poisonous toads, he scampered out of their way, rather than picking them up and taking them home, as an unhinged person might. Dennis was adept at self-preservation in a very hinged way. When he plunged out of an aircraft at high altitude, without a parachute, he made sure that he lit upon an air current that allowed him to drift easily onto a bank of fresh-fallen snow, thus cushioning his landing and meaning that he only spent six weeks in hospital instead of being coffined up and buried in that Baltimore churchyard where lie the remains of Edgar Allan Poe. Dennis had given much thought to the idea that he might be neither hinged nor unhinged, not in the sense that he fell somewhere in between, but that hingedness or its opposite was foreign to him, as an igloo to a Maori, or a biro to a caveman. Dennis remembered, in addition to being Veronica Lake, being a caveman. The gulf of thousands of years between these lives was a blank, however, and Dennis wondered if he had spent all that time in some kind of limbo. If he had, where was that limbo, and had he been hinged or unhinged, or neither, while trapped in it? This seemed to Dennis so monumental a question that he could find no rest. Dennis needs your help. In particular, he needs your shoes. All of them. If Dennis' story has tugged at your heart-strings, please, please parcel up all your footwear and send the package to Dennis, c/o The Veronica Lake Building, Winnipeg. Thank you. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-22Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:00 Hinged, Unhinged, or Neither? 03:17 I Saw Three Ships 07:00 The Legend of the Grunty Man 11:49 Petrochemical Shiver-me-timbers Conclave 18:37 Christmas Dinner 25:17 The Cardboard Club HINGED, UNHINGED, OR NEITHER? The quandary that beset Dennis, apart from his conviction that in a previous life he was Veronica Lake, was whether he was hinged or unhinged, or possibly neither. Most of us would not fret about such a thing, but Dennis did. There is a temptation to say that this fact in itself proves that Dennis was indeed unhinged, and to ponder why this had not occurred to him. But it had, and it added to his fretfulness. For there was so much about Dennis that was hinged. For example, when he chanced upon poisonous toads, he scampered out of their way, rather than picking them up and taking them home, as an unhinged person might. Dennis was adept at self-preservation in a very hinged way. When he plunged out of an aircraft at high altitude, without a parachute, he made sure that he lit upon an air current that allowed him to drift easily onto a bank of fresh-fallen snow, thus cushioning his landing and meaning that he only spent six weeks in hospital instead of being coffined up and buried in that Baltimore churchyard where lie the remains of Edgar Allan Poe. Dennis had given much thought to the idea that he might be neither hinged nor unhinged, not in the sense that he fell somewhere in between, but that hingedness or its opposite was foreign to him, as an igloo to a Maori, or a biro to a caveman. Dennis remembered, in addition to being Veronica Lake, being a caveman. The gulf of thousands of years between these lives was a blank, however, and Dennis wondered if he had spent all that time in some kind of limbo. If he had, where was that limbo, and had he been hinged or unhinged, or neither, while trapped in it? This seemed to Dennis so monumental a question that he could find no rest. Dennis needs your help. In particular, he needs your shoes. All of them. If Dennis' story has tugged at your heart-strings, please, please parcel up all your footwear and send the package to Dennis, c/o The Veronica Lake Building, Winnipeg. Thank you. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-2229:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-15Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Swiss Family Robinson 02:57 Two Important Birthdays 05:30 One Morning on the Lane That Runs From Pointy Town to Coctlosh 08:54 Old Doddery Martin 10:07 Tiny Enid Confronts the Russian Bear 15:01 Stairway to Heaven 18:35 Tenth Anniversary (II) 22:42 The Dark Night of the Soul 26:28 Constance, Bereft THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON Have you ever met someone from Switzerland named Robinson? Someone named Robinson, from Switzerland, who has been shipwrecked? I have. I was sitting in a coffee bar in Old Grimy Town up north, and as I sipped my cocoa and leafed through yesterday's copy of The Old Grimy Town Gazette, in walked Fathead Robinson and Poopy Robinson and their children Ned, Gristle and Sawdust. They sat at my table. "We are the Swiss Family Robinson," said Fathead. "We are from Switzerland, and we were shipwrecked." I looked at them one by one, trying to see evidence of their ordeal. "When was this?" I asked. "Years ago," said Poopy, "We were rescued by a big boat of birds." "A boat of birds?" I asked. "Yes," said Ned, "It was a big boat and there were no humans aboard it, only birds. Starlings and chaffinches and buntings and wagtails and corncrakes and linnets and sparrows and swans." "Was a swan the captain?" I asked. "Yes," said Ned, "How did you guess?" I fixed him with my one working eye, sipped the dregs of my cocoa, and stood up. Saying nothing, I swept out of the coffee bar, and went straight home to write in my diary. Today I met the Swiss Family Robinson, I wrote, and then I put down my pencil and became lachrymose, thinking about swans imperilled on the high seas, and my parrot, Lascelles, who yearned for Colombia, where he was born, on a bright summer day so many years ago. TWO IMPORTANT BIRTHDAYS In spite of that little grumble in today's first item, never let Hooting Yard be accused of being out of touch with popular culture. It's just that we're discriminating in what we pay attention to. Today, for example, we celebrate the double birthday of not just one of the finest male voice icons in twentieth century cinema, but two. Christopher Plummer is 77 today, and decades have passed since his bizarre, strangulated, bird-like squawkings as Atahualpa in The Royal Hunt Of The Sun. I have spent hours upon hours trawling the internet to find out if a Plummermaniac has posted sound samples from the film, but to no avail. Happy birthday, Atahualpa. Born on the same day two years before Plummer was Dick Van Dyke, the man who invented cockney, or possibly mockney, or whatever that accent was that he used to such powerful effect in Mary Poppins. Chim chim cheroo indeed. One little-known fact about Dick, possibly because it is entirely spurious, is that he signed a multibillion dollar deal to allow his initials to be used by the manufacturers of DVD technology. At one point, the now-ubiquitous discs were going to be called EVDs, because Chariots Of The Gods? author and wag Erich Von Daniken was asking for less money for his initials. The full story is told in Chimney Sweep Versus Spaceman : A Gripping Thriller Of The Business World, available from all good airports. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:13 The Swiss Family Robinson 02:57 Two Important Birthdays 05:30 One Morning on the Lane That Runs From Pointy Town to Coctlosh 08:54 Old Doddery Martin 10:07 Tiny Enid Confronts the Russian Bear 15:01 Stairway to Heaven 18:35 Tenth Anniversary (II) 22:42 The Dark Night of the Soul 26:28 Constance, Bereft THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON Have you ever met someone from Switzerland named Robinson? Someone named Robinson, from Switzerland, who has been shipwrecked? I have. I was sitting in a coffee bar in Old Grimy Town up north, and as I sipped my cocoa and leafed through yesterday's copy of The Old Grimy Town Gazette, in walked Fathead Robinson and Poopy Robinson and their children Ned, Gristle and Sawdust. They sat at my table. "We are the Swiss Family Robinson," said Fathead. "We are from Switzerland, and we were shipwrecked." I looked at them one by one, trying to see evidence of their ordeal. "When was this?" I asked. "Years ago," said Poopy, "We were rescued by a big boat of birds." "A boat of birds?" I asked. "Yes," said Ned, "It was a big boat and there were no humans aboard it, only birds. Starlings and chaffinches and buntings and wagtails and corncrakes and linnets and sparrows and swans." "Was a swan the captain?" I asked. "Yes," said Ned, "How did you guess?" I fixed him with my one working eye, sipped the dregs of my cocoa, and stood up. Saying nothing, I swept out of the coffee bar, and went straight home to write in my diary. Today I met the Swiss Family Robinson, I wrote, and then I put down my pencil and became lachrymose, thinking about swans imperilled on the high seas, and my parrot, Lascelles, who yearned for Colombia, where he was born, on a bright summer day so many years ago. TWO IMPORTANT BIRTHDAYS In spite of that little grumble in today's first item, never let Hooting Yard be accused of being out of touch with popular culture. It's just that we're discriminating in what we pay attention to. Today, for example, we celebrate the double birthday of not just one of the finest male voice icons in twentieth century cinema, but two. Christopher Plummer is 77 today, and decades have passed since his bizarre, strangulated, bird-like squawkings as Atahualpa in The Royal Hunt Of The Sun. I have spent hours upon hours trawling the internet to find out if a Plummermaniac has posted sound samples from the film, but to no avail. Happy birthday, Atahualpa. Born on the same day two years before Plummer was Dick Van Dyke, the man who invented cockney, or possibly mockney, or whatever that accent was that he used to such powerful effect in Mary Poppins. Chim chim cheroo indeed. One little-known fact about Dick, possibly because it is entirely spurious, is that he signed a multibillion dollar deal to allow his initials to be used by the manufacturers of DVD technology. At one point, the now-ubiquitous discs were going to be called EVDs, because Chariots Of The Gods? author and wag Erich Von Daniken was asking for less money for his initials. The full story is told in Chimney Sweep Versus Spaceman : A Gripping Thriller Of The Business World, available from all good airports. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-1530:02fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-01Wed, 01 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 The Teutonic Memory-banks of Mister Blatfinch 04:40 My Little Blind Dolly 09:33 My Little Blind Crow 11:06 The Adventures of Tiny Enid 20:40 Some Rare Editions of the Bible : Number One 23:48 Jar Hints 26:43 About Belt, Bong & Yaw THE TEUTONIC MEMORY-BANKS OF MISTER BLATFINCH I want to bestow a prize on Mister Blatfinch. A cup perhaps, or trophy. Or just a cup. He has just published his second book. The first was a word-for-word transcription of That Hideous Strength by C S Lewis, differing from the original only in that the sentences are jumbled up in no particular order, or not one that I can decipher. In his postface, Mister Blatfinch claims to have "wrested from this lamentable Christian apologist's noxious sci fi potboiler a new and urgent text, or re-text, or uber-text, or we might go so far as to say a proto-Blatfinchesque text, the one he meant to write, had he not been C S Lewis". Make of that what you will, or, as I did, dismiss it as the raving of a nincompoop. His second book could not be more different from the first. Indeed, I made a point of checking that it was the same Mister Blatfinch, by doing a forensic comparison of the author photographs on the dust jackets of both volumes. You can carry out the same task yourself: All I can say is that if those are two different authors, then Lord love a duck, you can knock me down with a feather and call me "Fontanelle, Bernard le Bovier de (1657-1757)", and I'll wager you some pins and a cork or two for all that! The reason I want to give Mister Blatfinch some sort of award is because this second book of his is a delightful and entertaining memoir, rather than a vapid bit of twaddle. Not only that, but it rekindled my own memories of that very special time in the early 1970s when it seemed that "Krautrock" could revolutionise the way we listened to popular music. Remember Amon Duul? Magma? Popol Vuh? So does Mister Blatfinch. Well, he gives each of these groups a mention in his index, even if they are curiously absent from the body of the text itself. But that can be excused, for the book--My Teutonic Memory-Banks--is essentially a narrative of the author's experiences as a sound engineer with the forgotten group Dob Suun. Dob Suun took their name from the out-of-print pamphleteer Dobson, and the lyrics to all their songs are taken from illegal German translations of some of his more... shall we say, "arresting" ornithological texts. The moving spirit in Dob Suun was lead singer, spinettist and all-round wild man Horst Brotzenkammernvergleist, who found a cache of pirated Dobson pamphlets when sorting through his father's papers after the latter's death. (Brotzenkammernvergleist Senior died during the so-called Weems Terror of 1967.) It is to our great good fortune that Mister Blatfinch's memoir ends before the group degenerated into the turgid heavy metal monsters they became. Commercial success ruined them, of course, and they were never quite the same after being invited to support The Captain & Tenille on a tour of Canada, Alaska and Papua New Guinea as the 1970s ground to an ignominious end. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-01Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:11 The Teutonic Memory-banks of Mister Blatfinch 04:40 My Little Blind Dolly 09:33 My Little Blind Crow 11:06 The Adventures of Tiny Enid 20:40 Some Rare Editions of the Bible : Number One 23:48 Jar Hints 26:43 About Belt, Bong & Yaw THE TEUTONIC MEMORY-BANKS OF MISTER BLATFINCH I want to bestow a prize on Mister Blatfinch. A cup perhaps, or trophy. Or just a cup. He has just published his second book. The first was a word-for-word transcription of That Hideous Strength by C S Lewis, differing from the original only in that the sentences are jumbled up in no particular order, or not one that I can decipher. In his postface, Mister Blatfinch claims to have "wrested from this lamentable Christian apologist's noxious sci fi potboiler a new and urgent text, or re-text, or uber-text, or we might go so far as to say a proto-Blatfinchesque text, the one he meant to write, had he not been C S Lewis". Make of that what you will, or, as I did, dismiss it as the raving of a nincompoop. His second book could not be more different from the first. Indeed, I made a point of checking that it was the same Mister Blatfinch, by doing a forensic comparison of the author photographs on the dust jackets of both volumes. You can carry out the same task yourself: All I can say is that if those are two different authors, then Lord love a duck, you can knock me down with a feather and call me "Fontanelle, Bernard le Bovier de (1657-1757)", and I'll wager you some pins and a cork or two for all that! The reason I want to give Mister Blatfinch some sort of award is because this second book of his is a delightful and entertaining memoir, rather than a vapid bit of twaddle. Not only that, but it rekindled my own memories of that very special time in the early 1970s when it seemed that "Krautrock" could revolutionise the way we listened to popular music. Remember Amon Duul? Magma? Popol Vuh? So does Mister Blatfinch. Well, he gives each of these groups a mention in his index, even if they are curiously absent from the body of the text itself. But that can be excused, for the book--My Teutonic Memory-Banks--is essentially a narrative of the author's experiences as a sound engineer with the forgotten group Dob Suun. Dob Suun took their name from the out-of-print pamphleteer Dobson, and the lyrics to all their songs are taken from illegal German translations of some of his more... shall we say, "arresting" ornithological texts. The moving spirit in Dob Suun was lead singer, spinettist and all-round wild man Horst Brotzenkammernvergleist, who found a cache of pirated Dobson pamphlets when sorting through his father's papers after the latter's death. (Brotzenkammernvergleist Senior died during the so-called Weems Terror of 1967.) It is to our great good fortune that Mister Blatfinch's memoir ends before the group degenerated into the turgid heavy metal monsters they became. Commercial success ruined them, of course, and they were never quite the same after being invited to support The Captain & Tenille on a tour of Canada, Alaska and Papua New Guinea as the 1970s ground to an ignominious end. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-12-0130:10fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-24Wed, 24 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 JFK : The Unanswered Questions 03:49 Build Your Own Plasticine Model of Dealey Plaza 08:19 Beware of Overexcitement! 11:28 The Horrible Cave : Part Three 19:59 Homage to Esther and Abi Ofarim 25:27 When Push Comes To Shove JFK : THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS Today being the forty-first anniversary of the assassination of Potus John Fitzgerald Kennedy, it is appropriate to pose some of the questions about that day in Dallas which remain unanswered. Perhaps they are unanswerable. Did the citizens of Dallas refer to the grassy knoll as "the grassy knoll" before it became known as The Grassy Knoll, or did they call it "a grassy knoll" or "that grassy knoll", or even "that patch of grass over there in Dealey Plaza"? Similarly, was the white picket fence known as "that white picket fence" or just "that fence"? Did his family, friends and acquaintances address Umbrella Man as "umbrella man" prior to 22nd November 1963? The same question can be asked of Badge Man, and indeed of Marymoon Man, or, as some commentators on the assassination have it, Mary Moonman, or Moorman. We know that future Potus Richard Milhous Nixon flew out of Dallas, suspiciously, on the morning of the assassination. Was he accompanied by his dog Checkers, or had Checkers already passed to The Other Side by then? Elderly dressmaker Abraham Zapruder famously shot the Zapruder Footage on that sunny November day in Dallas. Who decided to dub it "The Zapruder Footage" as opposed to, say, "The Zapruder Film" or "Zapruder's cinefilm"? The cinema in which Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended was showing the film War Is Hell starring Van Heflin at the time. Was Mr Heflin part of the conspiracy, if indeed there was a conspiracy? Brain guru Tony Buzan : was he in the Texas Schoolbook Depository? A question with wider implications relates to the practice of assassin nomenclature. When was it decided, and by whom, that the assassins of Potuses (or Potae) should invariably be given their full three names, as in Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth? Why is this also accorded to the assassins of whining Liverpudlian pop singers (Mark David Chapman) but not to unsuccessful Potus assassins (John Hinckley) unless they are members of the Manson cult (Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme)? And is Sirhan Sirhan's middle name also Sirhan? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-24Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 JFK : The Unanswered Questions 03:49 Build Your Own Plasticine Model of Dealey Plaza 08:19 Beware of Overexcitement! 11:28 The Horrible Cave : Part Three 19:59 Homage to Esther and Abi Ofarim 25:27 When Push Comes To Shove JFK : THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS Today being the forty-first anniversary of the assassination of Potus John Fitzgerald Kennedy, it is appropriate to pose some of the questions about that day in Dallas which remain unanswered. Perhaps they are unanswerable. Did the citizens of Dallas refer to the grassy knoll as "the grassy knoll" before it became known as The Grassy Knoll, or did they call it "a grassy knoll" or "that grassy knoll", or even "that patch of grass over there in Dealey Plaza"? Similarly, was the white picket fence known as "that white picket fence" or just "that fence"? Did his family, friends and acquaintances address Umbrella Man as "umbrella man" prior to 22nd November 1963? The same question can be asked of Badge Man, and indeed of Marymoon Man, or, as some commentators on the assassination have it, Mary Moonman, or Moorman. We know that future Potus Richard Milhous Nixon flew out of Dallas, suspiciously, on the morning of the assassination. Was he accompanied by his dog Checkers, or had Checkers already passed to The Other Side by then? Elderly dressmaker Abraham Zapruder famously shot the Zapruder Footage on that sunny November day in Dallas. Who decided to dub it "The Zapruder Footage" as opposed to, say, "The Zapruder Film" or "Zapruder's cinefilm"? The cinema in which Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended was showing the film War Is Hell starring Van Heflin at the time. Was Mr Heflin part of the conspiracy, if indeed there was a conspiracy? Brain guru Tony Buzan : was he in the Texas Schoolbook Depository? A question with wider implications relates to the practice of assassin nomenclature. When was it decided, and by whom, that the assassins of Potuses (or Potae) should invariably be given their full three names, as in Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth? Why is this also accorded to the assassins of whining Liverpudlian pop singers (Mark David Chapman) but not to unsuccessful Potus assassins (John Hinckley) unless they are members of the Manson cult (Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme)? And is Sirhan Sirhan's middle name also Sirhan? […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-2429:44fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-17Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:07 Practical Seagull Exercises 05:20 The Besmirched and Bonkers Topiary Man : His Hoodoo and Collapse 09:38 Blotzmann's Syndrome 16:12 Dobson in Residence 19:00 Fire! 24:02 On the Bonny Bonny Banks 26:33 Johnfowlesopoly 28:06 "[It was] Merro Daak, the fashionable radio..." PRACTICAL SEAGULL EXERCISES If you have a pet seagull, it is extremely important to ensure that it gets the requisite amount of exercise. Have you got any idea how dangerous it is for a seagull to become idle and listless? Many seabird doctors have, over the years, been driven to despair by the negligence of certain people who keep seagulls as pets. One such medic, whose name, by weird coincidence, is a perfect anagram of auk tern guillemot gull, has written a memoir in which he lambasts some of the feckless seaside-resort inhabitants whose gulls he came to tend. His language is at times violent, but what shines through the prose is a great love for seabirds and an almost pathological loathing of human beings. In an appendix, the doctor recommends certain exercises which the responsible gull-keeper ought to encourage a bird to perform as part of its fitness regime. Mindful of the depressed economies of most coastal regions, all of the exercises are designed to cost little in the way of kit. For example, gull exercise number ten, reprinted below, involves nothing more than access to a limitless supply of corrugated cardboard: Gull Exercise Number Ten Fetch a few large sheets of corrugated cardboard and take them to your seagull. Announce in a loud voice that you will reward the bird with a bucket of fish-heads and entrails if it tears the corrugated cardboard to pieces with its fearsome beak. Stand well back. Most well-balanced seagulls will shred the corrugated cardboard in a matter of minutes. Note: if you do not actually have a bucket full of fish-heads and entrails with which to reward the gull at the end of its exercise, it may become angered and vengeful, so make sure you are wearing protective clothing and have removed all traces of fish-odour from yourself by bathing in lemon juice, or alternatively keeping as far away from the harbour as you can, especially at those times when the fishing boats come in to port with their catch of sprats and gudgeon. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-17Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:07 Practical Seagull Exercises 05:20 The Besmirched and Bonkers Topiary Man : His Hoodoo and Collapse 09:38 Blotzmann's Syndrome 16:12 Dobson in Residence 19:00 Fire! 24:02 On the Bonny Bonny Banks 26:33 Johnfowlesopoly 28:06 "[It was] Merro Daak, the fashionable radio..." PRACTICAL SEAGULL EXERCISES If you have a pet seagull, it is extremely important to ensure that it gets the requisite amount of exercise. Have you got any idea how dangerous it is for a seagull to become idle and listless? Many seabird doctors have, over the years, been driven to despair by the negligence of certain people who keep seagulls as pets. One such medic, whose name, by weird coincidence, is a perfect anagram of auk tern guillemot gull, has written a memoir in which he lambasts some of the feckless seaside-resort inhabitants whose gulls he came to tend. His language is at times violent, but what shines through the prose is a great love for seabirds and an almost pathological loathing of human beings. In an appendix, the doctor recommends certain exercises which the responsible gull-keeper ought to encourage a bird to perform as part of its fitness regime. Mindful of the depressed economies of most coastal regions, all of the exercises are designed to cost little in the way of kit. For example, gull exercise number ten, reprinted below, involves nothing more than access to a limitless supply of corrugated cardboard: Gull Exercise Number Ten Fetch a few large sheets of corrugated cardboard and take them to your seagull. Announce in a loud voice that you will reward the bird with a bucket of fish-heads and entrails if it tears the corrugated cardboard to pieces with its fearsome beak. Stand well back. Most well-balanced seagulls will shred the corrugated cardboard in a matter of minutes. Note: if you do not actually have a bucket full of fish-heads and entrails with which to reward the gull at the end of its exercise, it may become angered and vengeful, so make sure you are wearing protective clothing and have removed all traces of fish-odour from yourself by bathing in lemon juice, or alternatively keeping as far away from the harbour as you can, especially at those times when the fishing boats come in to port with their catch of sprats and gudgeon. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-1729:57fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-10Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:43 Notes on Jellyfish 05:27 Dobson's Leech Mishap 09:01 How the Quotations Are Selected 14:27 The God With Paws 17:21 Crisis in the Sedge 21:21 Five Years Ago 23:57 Smooching With Istvan NOTES ON JELLYFISH There came a time when Marigold Chew, growing exasperated by Dobson's listlessness, encouraged him to get involved in amateur dramatics. The out-of-print pamphleteer formed a group entitled the Jellyfish Players, and issued a prospectus, hoping to gain bookings in various derelict seaside theatres during the winter months. The company's first production was Strange And Poisonous Aquatic Beings, a loose adaptation of ex-hostage Brian Keenan's book An Evil Cradling. In Dobson's hands, out went the Celtic, bardic posturing, the romanticised vision of an intense poetic response to a terrible ordeal, and in came gnomic, baffling speeches which appeared to have more to do with life on the ocean floor than with a claustrophobic Beirut cellar. The production closed after two nights, and Dobson and his cohorts were chased out of town by an enraged groupuscule called the Children Of Hibernia, fanatical mystics who had acclaimed the bearded figure of Keenan as their prophet. Back home, Marigold Chew tried to point out to Dobson the gravity of his miscalculations, and had him read many stupendous tomes on dramatic theory. She was not aware, however, that in the middle of the night, by torchlight, Dobson was devouring Victorian melodramas and French farces by the dozen. The following winter, somehow managing to commandeer an end-of-the-pier playhouse in Vug-By-The-Sea, the Jellyfish Players unveiled a four-hour show entitled My Plankton Theory. Dobson's foolish friend Boloslav Carnegieguggenheim had a hand in the playscript, which one critic described as "outright gibberish". When the players took to the stage for the first night, dressed up to the nines in hand-sewn lobster costumes, they were disconcerted by the audience, which reacted to the broad, knockabout comedy as if it were the most harrowing of tragedies. Several theatregoers in the front row sat sobbing, convulsed by grief, and one eyewitness told the local newspaper that there was gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in the upper circle. Despite this misunderstanding of his intentions, Dobson kept the show running for eleven months, even when nobody actually turned up to watch. Only when he was hospitalised following a mishap with a drenched and disorientated trumpeter swan did the play close. By the time he recovered, Dobson had become so obsessed with his investigations into the fatal Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash that he abandoned his dramatic ambitions for evermore, and his amanuensis Marigold Chew made no attempt to revive them. Instead, she devoted her energies to potato gardening, and was awarded many, many glittering prizes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-10Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:43 Notes on Jellyfish 05:27 Dobson's Leech Mishap 09:01 How the Quotations Are Selected 14:27 The God With Paws 17:21 Crisis in the Sedge 21:21 Five Years Ago 23:57 Smooching With Istvan NOTES ON JELLYFISH There came a time when Marigold Chew, growing exasperated by Dobson's listlessness, encouraged him to get involved in amateur dramatics. The out-of-print pamphleteer formed a group entitled the Jellyfish Players, and issued a prospectus, hoping to gain bookings in various derelict seaside theatres during the winter months. The company's first production was Strange And Poisonous Aquatic Beings, a loose adaptation of ex-hostage Brian Keenan's book An Evil Cradling. In Dobson's hands, out went the Celtic, bardic posturing, the romanticised vision of an intense poetic response to a terrible ordeal, and in came gnomic, baffling speeches which appeared to have more to do with life on the ocean floor than with a claustrophobic Beirut cellar. The production closed after two nights, and Dobson and his cohorts were chased out of town by an enraged groupuscule called the Children Of Hibernia, fanatical mystics who had acclaimed the bearded figure of Keenan as their prophet. Back home, Marigold Chew tried to point out to Dobson the gravity of his miscalculations, and had him read many stupendous tomes on dramatic theory. She was not aware, however, that in the middle of the night, by torchlight, Dobson was devouring Victorian melodramas and French farces by the dozen. The following winter, somehow managing to commandeer an end-of-the-pier playhouse in Vug-By-The-Sea, the Jellyfish Players unveiled a four-hour show entitled My Plankton Theory. Dobson's foolish friend Boloslav Carnegieguggenheim had a hand in the playscript, which one critic described as "outright gibberish". When the players took to the stage for the first night, dressed up to the nines in hand-sewn lobster costumes, they were disconcerted by the audience, which reacted to the broad, knockabout comedy as if it were the most harrowing of tragedies. Several theatregoers in the front row sat sobbing, convulsed by grief, and one eyewitness told the local newspaper that there was gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in the upper circle. Despite this misunderstanding of his intentions, Dobson kept the show running for eleven months, even when nobody actually turned up to watch. Only when he was hospitalised following a mishap with a drenched and disorientated trumpeter swan did the play close. By the time he recovered, Dobson had become so obsessed with his investigations into the fatal Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash that he abandoned his dramatic ambitions for evermore, and his amanuensis Marigold Chew made no attempt to revive them. Instead, she devoted her energies to potato gardening, and was awarded many, many glittering prizes. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-1029:35fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-03Wed, 03 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Tex-mex Jiffy Bag Sprites 03:02 Writer's Block 10:12 The Field of the Cloth of Gold 12:28 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--I 21:05 Deworming Your Goat the Hooting Yard Way 25:19 Cuppid TEX-MEX JIFFY BAG SPRITES Did you know that in the world of faeries there is a specific type of sprite which dwells within jiffy bags of Tex-Mex origin? These mischievous sprites are reluctant to leave the snug lining of their bags, except to flit from one to another when they become oh so lonesome and feel compelled to procreate. If you creep ever so silently into a postal sorting office in El Paso at dead of night, you might be lucky enough to see a flickering sprite leaping between jiffy bags. If it sees you, it will be vexed, and cast a spell on you, and for twenty-six days and nights you will be tormented by visions of potato-headed monsters spewing ectoplasm in every direction. But if the sprite does not see you, you will have good luck for a twelvemonth, possibly involving the unexpected offer of an appearance in a radio advertisement for a thrilling new detergent or bleach product. That, at any rate, is what I was told by the Weird Woman of Woohooweedywood, and she has yet to be proved wrong in any of her pronouncements or incantations, except for the one about the badger in the hedge. These are not Tex-Mex Jiffy Bag Sprites. They are Cottingley Fairies. WRITER'S BLOCK Even Dobson, the indefatigable pamphleteer, occasionally suffered from writer's block. Whenever he was assailed by this pernicious malady, he took the advice of the country-and-western singer Tad Chew (distantly related to his amanuensis and printer, Marigold). Chew once wrote a song about the moon, and Dobson would dig out the old 78 and give it a few spins on the phonograph. He would then sit down at his escritoire and force himself to scribble sentences of a lunar kidney, caring not a jot whether or not they made any sense. So, for example, he would write: There are a few phosphorescent fancies about the moon, like ignes fatui, which we may dispose of. Those of them that are mythical are too evanescent to become full-grown myths; and those which are religious are too volatile to remain in the solution or salt of any bottled creed. Like the wandering lights of the Russians, answering to our will-o'-the-wisp, they are the souls of still-born children. Or, gulping lukewarm tap water as he worked, he may scrawl something like: Ecclesiastical history will declare how, as early as the close of the fourth century, the women who were called Collyridians worshipped the Virgin Mary as a moon goddess, and judged it necessary to appease her anger, and seek her favour and protection, by libations, sacrifices, and oblations of cakes (collyridae). This is but a repetition of the women kneading dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven, as recorded by Jeremiah; and proves that the relative position occupied by Astarte in company with Baal, Juno with Jupiter, Doorga with Brahma, and Ma-tsoo-po with Boodh, is that occupied by Mary with God. If he was feeling particularly fraught, Dobson would even scribble this: A fine circumstance occurred in the shipwreck of the Santiago, 1585. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-03Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:15 Tex-mex Jiffy Bag Sprites 03:02 Writer's Block 10:12 The Field of the Cloth of Gold 12:28 Gigantic Bolivian Architectural Diagrams--I 21:05 Deworming Your Goat the Hooting Yard Way 25:19 Cuppid TEX-MEX JIFFY BAG SPRITES Did you know that in the world of faeries there is a specific type of sprite which dwells within jiffy bags of Tex-Mex origin? These mischievous sprites are reluctant to leave the snug lining of their bags, except to flit from one to another when they become oh so lonesome and feel compelled to procreate. If you creep ever so silently into a postal sorting office in El Paso at dead of night, you might be lucky enough to see a flickering sprite leaping between jiffy bags. If it sees you, it will be vexed, and cast a spell on you, and for twenty-six days and nights you will be tormented by visions of potato-headed monsters spewing ectoplasm in every direction. But if the sprite does not see you, you will have good luck for a twelvemonth, possibly involving the unexpected offer of an appearance in a radio advertisement for a thrilling new detergent or bleach product. That, at any rate, is what I was told by the Weird Woman of Woohooweedywood, and she has yet to be proved wrong in any of her pronouncements or incantations, except for the one about the badger in the hedge. These are not Tex-Mex Jiffy Bag Sprites. They are Cottingley Fairies. WRITER'S BLOCK Even Dobson, the indefatigable pamphleteer, occasionally suffered from writer's block. Whenever he was assailed by this pernicious malady, he took the advice of the country-and-western singer Tad Chew (distantly related to his amanuensis and printer, Marigold). Chew once wrote a song about the moon, and Dobson would dig out the old 78 and give it a few spins on the phonograph. He would then sit down at his escritoire and force himself to scribble sentences of a lunar kidney, caring not a jot whether or not they made any sense. So, for example, he would write: There are a few phosphorescent fancies about the moon, like ignes fatui, which we may dispose of. Those of them that are mythical are too evanescent to become full-grown myths; and those which are religious are too volatile to remain in the solution or salt of any bottled creed. Like the wandering lights of the Russians, answering to our will-o'-the-wisp, they are the souls of still-born children. Or, gulping lukewarm tap water as he worked, he may scrawl something like: Ecclesiastical history will declare how, as early as the close of the fourth century, the women who were called Collyridians worshipped the Virgin Mary as a moon goddess, and judged it necessary to appease her anger, and seek her favour and protection, by libations, sacrifices, and oblations of cakes (collyridae). This is but a repetition of the women kneading dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven, as recorded by Jeremiah; and proves that the relative position occupied by Astarte in company with Baal, Juno with Jupiter, Doorga with Brahma, and Ma-tsoo-po with Boodh, is that occupied by Mary with God. If he was feeling particularly fraught, Dobson would even scribble this: A fine circumstance occurred in the shipwreck of the Santiago, 1585. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-11-0329:23fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-10-20Wed, 20 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:14 The Horrible Cave--I 14:24 The Horrible Cave : Part Two 18:59 "This Medicine has excellent Effect in Hysteric..." 20:52 Clandestine Defibrillation Unit 24:26 Dobson's Declaration 27:41 "Heliogabalus made elaborate preparations for his own..." 29:24 "A man, a plan, a canoe, pasta,..." THE HORRIBLE CAVE--I Talk to any spelunker and you will soon learn that nobody who strays into the horrible cave emerges with their wits intact. Sometimes their hair turns white, they shake and gibber, they have to be fed with slops. Others retire to farmyards and spend the rest of their lives among pot-bellied pigs. Yet still the reckless and the foolhardy risk their sanity by ignoring the big signpost I hammered into the ground at the approach to the horrible cave. This is the horrible cave, reads my notice, If you have a shred of sense you will durst not enter. I spent quite some time on that wording, and ended up in hospital because I chewed the end of my pencil so fretfully that I contracted lead poisoning. It is by no means a pretty ailment, but I would much rather suffer that than the terrible derangements of those who step but once into the horrible cave. While I was in the hospital, I was visited by a government agent who was curious about my signpost. I suspected he was from some secret agency, for he was dressed in a trim black suit and did not remove his sunglasses. He had a very close-cropped haircut, carried an attache case which I noticed was chained to his wrist, and he seemed to exude the scent of frangipani or dogbane, which is often a telltale sign of covert operatives in my country. Standing beside the bed on which I lay splayed out, he introduced himself as Christopher Plummer. "Not to be confused with the actor who played Atahualpa in The Royal Hunt Of The Sun," he added hurriedly, although at that time the name was new to me. I have since followed the agent's namesake's career with growing interest. I was subjected to a series of questions about the signpost I had placed near the horrible cave, and answered as best as I could, given my fevered state. The agent made notes on a little hand-held pneumatic turbonotepad of ingenious design. I often find myself wondering why they never caught on. These days you are lucky to find one at a jumble sale or in a junk shop, luckier still if all the notes made on it are still readable. When Christopher Plummer had finished interrogating me in his strangely stiff manner, he depressed a knob on the turbopad and, with a surprisingly loud hiss, it clunked into hibernation mode. I watched the jet of escaping steam. Years later, sitting in a cafe in a tremendous town, flicking idly through an intelligence journal, I learned that Agent Plummer had been exposed as an alien life-form from some far planet riddled with horrible caves. I thought how fortunate we were to have only one horrible cave, terrible as it was. Last week I hiked out that way to see if my signpost was still there. Prancing majestically along the path, I encountered dozens of terrified people being attacked by cows. Sorry, that was a typing error. I should have said being attacked by crows. One poor wretch who had been pecked at was slumped beside his makeshift tent, fruitlessly trying to wrap a bandage around his head. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-10-20Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:14 The Horrible Cave--I 14:24 The Horrible Cave : Part Two 18:59 "This Medicine has excellent Effect in Hysteric..." 20:52 Clandestine Defibrillation Unit 24:26 Dobson's Declaration 27:41 "Heliogabalus made elaborate preparations for his own..." 29:24 "A man, a plan, a canoe, pasta,..." THE HORRIBLE CAVE--I Talk to any spelunker and you will soon learn that nobody who strays into the horrible cave emerges with their wits intact. Sometimes their hair turns white, they shake and gibber, they have to be fed with slops. Others retire to farmyards and spend the rest of their lives among pot-bellied pigs. Yet still the reckless and the foolhardy risk their sanity by ignoring the big signpost I hammered into the ground at the approach to the horrible cave. This is the horrible cave, reads my notice, If you have a shred of sense you will durst not enter. I spent quite some time on that wording, and ended up in hospital because I chewed the end of my pencil so fretfully that I contracted lead poisoning. It is by no means a pretty ailment, but I would much rather suffer that than the terrible derangements of those who step but once into the horrible cave. While I was in the hospital, I was visited by a government agent who was curious about my signpost. I suspected he was from some secret agency, for he was dressed in a trim black suit and did not remove his sunglasses. He had a very close-cropped haircut, carried an attache case which I noticed was chained to his wrist, and he seemed to exude the scent of frangipani or dogbane, which is often a telltale sign of covert operatives in my country. Standing beside the bed on which I lay splayed out, he introduced himself as Christopher Plummer. "Not to be confused with the actor who played Atahualpa in The Royal Hunt Of The Sun," he added hurriedly, although at that time the name was new to me. I have since followed the agent's namesake's career with growing interest. I was subjected to a series of questions about the signpost I had placed near the horrible cave, and answered as best as I could, given my fevered state. The agent made notes on a little hand-held pneumatic turbonotepad of ingenious design. I often find myself wondering why they never caught on. These days you are lucky to find one at a jumble sale or in a junk shop, luckier still if all the notes made on it are still readable. When Christopher Plummer had finished interrogating me in his strangely stiff manner, he depressed a knob on the turbopad and, with a surprisingly loud hiss, it clunked into hibernation mode. I watched the jet of escaping steam. Years later, sitting in a cafe in a tremendous town, flicking idly through an intelligence journal, I learned that Agent Plummer had been exposed as an alien life-form from some far planet riddled with horrible caves. I thought how fortunate we were to have only one horrible cave, terrible as it was. Last week I hiked out that way to see if my signpost was still there. Prancing majestically along the path, I encountered dozens of terrified people being attacked by cows. Sorry, that was a typing error. I should have said being attacked by crows. One poor wretch who had been pecked at was slumped beside his makeshift tent, fruitlessly trying to wrap a bandage around his head. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-10-2029:49fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-10-06Wed, 06 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Barnyard Bulletin 03:47 The Life and Loves of Mrs Gubbins 06:12 More About Ah-Fang 10:27 Tricky Dicky or the Belle of Amherst? 14:12 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 18:35 The Good Bee 21:44 Making Hats Out of Wood 23:51 Cormorant Patrol 28:05 Film Focus BARNYARD BULLETIN Today it is of decisive importance that I tell you about Blodgettesque farming methods. The techniques pioneered by Blodgett in his heyday are breathtaking. Consider, for example, the uses to which a Blodgettian farmer will put hay. There are many, many diagrams in the manual which show bales of hay being commandeered for all sorts of inventive purposes, all over the farmyard, in all six seasons of the year. That's right, six seasons. One of Blodgett's most telling innovations was his calendrical recalibration, if I am using the word correctly. Out go winter, spring, summer and autumn, or fall, as they say in Pining & Pothorst Land; in come tally, spate, the time of mighty remonstrations, tack, hub and bolismus. So, come hub come the haywain, as the saying goes, with his big fat boots stuffed with straw... I mean hay. We ought not get diverted from this important essay by wandering down the byways of Blodgettian countryside parlance, but I cannot resist sharing with you the rhyme that goes Don't forget to shut the gate / On the forty-third of spate, the meaning of which is obvious, as you would realise had you seen, as I have, an implacable army of albino hens marching off into the sunset because little Vercingetorix the barnyard hobbledehoy was too busy chewing on a sheaf of fronds to remember to close the gate behind him. As it happened, the fronds were poisonous, and the miscreant was subject to convulsive fits for the next three weeks, bless him. As with hay, so with mulch. Blodgettesque mulch is a thing of beauty, even if it does stink. Have you ever seen asparagus grown in Blodgett's mulch? You would remember if you had, for it is to common everyday asparagus as a big shiny supersonic 26th century space rocket is to a shred of plankton. Preparation of mulch takes place mostly in bolismus, when the winds howl and thunderclaps shatter the eardrums of toiling farm workers, hardy folk with almost inhuman musculature as a result of regular doses of Blodgett's serum, the recipe for which appears in an appendix to the manual. To begin farming the Blodgett way, all you will need is a hoe, a shapeless hat, iron determination, and your own field, preferably one with a pond in it, and ducks in the pond, mergansers or teal, some of them real, some of them wood-carved decoy ducks, and some of them just vaporous spectres of your own imagining. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-10-06Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Barnyard Bulletin 03:47 The Life and Loves of Mrs Gubbins 06:12 More About Ah-Fang 10:27 Tricky Dicky or the Belle of Amherst? 14:12 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 18:35 The Good Bee 21:44 Making Hats Out of Wood 23:51 Cormorant Patrol 28:05 Film Focus BARNYARD BULLETIN Today it is of decisive importance that I tell you about Blodgettesque farming methods. The techniques pioneered by Blodgett in his heyday are breathtaking. Consider, for example, the uses to which a Blodgettian farmer will put hay. There are many, many diagrams in the manual which show bales of hay being commandeered for all sorts of inventive purposes, all over the farmyard, in all six seasons of the year. That's right, six seasons. One of Blodgett's most telling innovations was his calendrical recalibration, if I am using the word correctly. Out go winter, spring, summer and autumn, or fall, as they say in Pining & Pothorst Land; in come tally, spate, the time of mighty remonstrations, tack, hub and bolismus. So, come hub come the haywain, as the saying goes, with his big fat boots stuffed with straw... I mean hay. We ought not get diverted from this important essay by wandering down the byways of Blodgettian countryside parlance, but I cannot resist sharing with you the rhyme that goes Don't forget to shut the gate / On the forty-third of spate, the meaning of which is obvious, as you would realise had you seen, as I have, an implacable army of albino hens marching off into the sunset because little Vercingetorix the barnyard hobbledehoy was too busy chewing on a sheaf of fronds to remember to close the gate behind him. As it happened, the fronds were poisonous, and the miscreant was subject to convulsive fits for the next three weeks, bless him. As with hay, so with mulch. Blodgettesque mulch is a thing of beauty, even if it does stink. Have you ever seen asparagus grown in Blodgett's mulch? You would remember if you had, for it is to common everyday asparagus as a big shiny supersonic 26th century space rocket is to a shred of plankton. Preparation of mulch takes place mostly in bolismus, when the winds howl and thunderclaps shatter the eardrums of toiling farm workers, hardy folk with almost inhuman musculature as a result of regular doses of Blodgett's serum, the recipe for which appears in an appendix to the manual. To begin farming the Blodgett way, all you will need is a hoe, a shapeless hat, iron determination, and your own field, preferably one with a pond in it, and ducks in the pond, mergansers or teal, some of them real, some of them wood-carved decoy ducks, and some of them just vaporous spectres of your own imagining. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-10-0629:56fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-09-30Thu, 30 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 A Refutation of Some of the Less Plausible Claims Made by Dennis Cargpan in His Woeful Lecture Delivered From the Balcony of the Civic Hall at Bodger's Spinney on Thursday Last During a Hailstorm to a Gathering of Ingrates and Orphans 04:33 What to Do on a Winter's Day in Tantarabim 07:41 The Horrible Cave--I 18:19 Tales Of The Riverbank And The Marshes 20:57 Bell 22:19 Pie Shop Deep Space Six 26:10 A Voracious Bricklayer & Other Matters 27:44 Lines Written in a Sordid Hut A REFUTATION OF SOME OF THE LESS PLAUSIBLE CLAIMS MADE BY DENNIS CARGPAN IN HIS WOEFUL LECTURE DELIVERED FROM THE BALCONY OF THE CIVIC HALL AT BODGER'S SPINNEY ON THURSDAY LAST DURING A HAILSTORM TO A GATHERING OF INGRATES AND ORPHANS I wish to refute, while sipping from a glass of milk of magnesia, some of the less plausible claims made by that odious charlatan Dennis Cargpan in his woeful and, let's face it, mercenary lecture delivered from the crumbling balcony of the civic hall at Bodger's Spinney on Thursday last during the most tremendous hailstorm I have ever seen in my life to a gathering of bestial ingrates and orphans who were corralled into the square by Cargpan's team of electric-cattle-prod-wielding ruffians and forced to applaud his preposterous statements. Chief among these statements was his contention that toads are shy, usually nocturnal animals, hiding during the day in dark, damp places and hopping about at night in search of insects, grubs, slugs, worms, and other invertebrates; that they are often brownish or greyish in colour and have warty skin, a flat head, swollen parotid glands on the side of the neck behind the eyes, bright, jewel-like eyes with a transverse pupil, and slightly webbed toes; that they are often stouter than frogs and cannot leap as far; that the tongue of the toad is attached to the front of its mouth; that the tongue is flicked forward from the mouth, and the sticky tip grasps the prey and carries it back to the mouth; that unlike most frogs, most toads do not have teeth; that the tongue produces quantities of mucus to help in swallowing; that all anurans blink when they swallow; and because there is no bone between the eye and the mouth, the eye is pushed against the roof of the mouth, forcing the food further back. Let me just sip some milk of magnesia before refuting this twaddle. There! I refute it, utterly. I do not refute it on the basis of scientific fact, nor on my own acute observation of the natural world, nor do I refute it because I have read many, many learned papers about toads which counter these statements. Similarly, I do not refute it in homage to my mother, who was a self-proclaimed expert on toads and passed down her hard-won knowledge to me, because my mother was bonkers and confused toads with wrens, and it should come as no surprise that all those articles about toads she sent off to the Reader's Digest and the Daily Telegraph were tapped out on a special padded typewriter from her room in the Saint Cynthia Mercy Home For The Deranged And Bewildered. No. I refute this drivel simply because I bear a grudge against Dennis Cargpan. One day he will burn in hell. In the meantime I shall not rest from my refutations of every word he utters from that pinched and slippery mouth of his. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-09-30Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:09 A Refutation of Some of the Less Plausible Claims Made by Dennis Cargpan in His Woeful Lecture Delivered From the Balcony of the Civic Hall at Bodger's Spinney on Thursday Last During a Hailstorm to a Gathering of Ingrates and Orphans 04:33 What to Do on a Winter's Day in Tantarabim 07:41 The Horrible Cave--I 18:19 Tales Of The Riverbank And The Marshes 20:57 Bell 22:19 Pie Shop Deep Space Six 26:10 A Voracious Bricklayer & Other Matters 27:44 Lines Written in a Sordid Hut A REFUTATION OF SOME OF THE LESS PLAUSIBLE CLAIMS MADE BY DENNIS CARGPAN IN HIS WOEFUL LECTURE DELIVERED FROM THE BALCONY OF THE CIVIC HALL AT BODGER'S SPINNEY ON THURSDAY LAST DURING A HAILSTORM TO A GATHERING OF INGRATES AND ORPHANS I wish to refute, while sipping from a glass of milk of magnesia, some of the less plausible claims made by that odious charlatan Dennis Cargpan in his woeful and, let's face it, mercenary lecture delivered from the crumbling balcony of the civic hall at Bodger's Spinney on Thursday last during the most tremendous hailstorm I have ever seen in my life to a gathering of bestial ingrates and orphans who were corralled into the square by Cargpan's team of electric-cattle-prod-wielding ruffians and forced to applaud his preposterous statements. Chief among these statements was his contention that toads are shy, usually nocturnal animals, hiding during the day in dark, damp places and hopping about at night in search of insects, grubs, slugs, worms, and other invertebrates; that they are often brownish or greyish in colour and have warty skin, a flat head, swollen parotid glands on the side of the neck behind the eyes, bright, jewel-like eyes with a transverse pupil, and slightly webbed toes; that they are often stouter than frogs and cannot leap as far; that the tongue of the toad is attached to the front of its mouth; that the tongue is flicked forward from the mouth, and the sticky tip grasps the prey and carries it back to the mouth; that unlike most frogs, most toads do not have teeth; that the tongue produces quantities of mucus to help in swallowing; that all anurans blink when they swallow; and because there is no bone between the eye and the mouth, the eye is pushed against the roof of the mouth, forcing the food further back. Let me just sip some milk of magnesia before refuting this twaddle. There! I refute it, utterly. I do not refute it on the basis of scientific fact, nor on my own acute observation of the natural world, nor do I refute it because I have read many, many learned papers about toads which counter these statements. Similarly, I do not refute it in homage to my mother, who was a self-proclaimed expert on toads and passed down her hard-won knowledge to me, because my mother was bonkers and confused toads with wrens, and it should come as no surprise that all those articles about toads she sent off to the Reader's Digest and the Daily Telegraph were tapped out on a special padded typewriter from her room in the Saint Cynthia Mercy Home For The Deranged And Bewildered. No. I refute this drivel simply because I bear a grudge against Dennis Cargpan. One day he will burn in hell. In the meantime I shall not rest from my refutations of every word he utters from that pinched and slippery mouth of his. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-09-3029:23fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-09-15Wed, 15 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 06:44 The Lactose-intolerant Jezebel of Botnia, Her Impending Flu Jab, and the Howling of Wolves at Dusk 10:29 The Names of the Ponds KNITTED BULGARIAN FOLK TALE PUPPET Ahoy, Mr Key!, writes Dr Ruth Pastry, Thank you so much for affording us readers a glimpse of the inner workings of Hooting Yard in your piece on that Olympics logo. Brief as it was, I was fascinated by the reference to the editorial conclave, and to the fact that the bloated janitor remains an unreconstructed Blunkettite. The real reason I am writing, however, is because I am desperate to find out what Mrs Gubbins was knitting. Can you tell me? Well, Ruth, yes I can! A few weeks ago, the octogenarian crone was approached by a charity working with the filthy and destitute denizens of that cluster of hovels out Pointy Town way. As you may know, these ill-starred wretches are even lower than the lowest of the low, wallowing in a dank pit of turpitude and lacking even the most basic sanitation. Other charitable organisations shun them because, you know, there are limits. Anyway, Mrs Gubbins was asked to knit something for them, and she wisely decided to bring a little joy to their hearts--if they actually have beating human hearts--by making for them a life-size knitted puppet of Ugo, hero of a series of exciting Bulgarian folk tales. We have published a number of Ugo stories here at Hooting Yard, so this would be an opportune time to pluck them from the Archive and present all six here afresh, some three years after they originally appeared: Ugo Goofs Off Ugo lived in Plovdiv. In the fog, Ugo goofed off. "There you go, Ugo, goofing off again," said Ugo's ma. It was foggy. Ugo stepped in some goo. He got it on his boots. "Ma, I've got goo on my boots," said Ugo. Ugo's ma gave him a rag to wipe the goo off his boots. She had a drawer of gewgaws. Gewgaws and rags. Ugo's ma was blind, so when Ugo goofed off and got goo on his boots, she opened the drawer of gewgaws and rags and rummaged, feeling for a rag rather than a gewgaw, for if she gave Ugo a gewgaw he wouldn't get the goo off his boots, but with a rag he would. Ugo sat in the porch after goofing off and wiped the goo off his boots with a rag. In the fog. In Plovdiv. Ugo's Pal Ulf In Plovdiv, Ugo had a pal called Ulf. Ulf had the plague. "Look at my bubo, Ugo," said Ulf. "Oooh!" said Ugo when he saw the bubo. Ugo had the flu. His ma made him a tincture for his flu but there was not much she could do about Ulf's bubo. In the Plovdiv lazaretto, Ulf mooched about in a foul mood. Ugo and Ugo's ma brought food for Ulf. "Have some pancakes, Ulf," said Ugo. Ulf gobbled a pancake. "Far be it from me to poo-poo you, Ulf," said Ugo's ma, "But you should put the pancake on your bubo, like a poultice." "Oh," said Ulf. He did as bid, and soon his bubo was gone. But Ugo still had the flu, so his ma was thrown for a loop. She could cure the plague but not the flu, and did not know what else she could do. For the time being. In the lazaretto in Plovdiv. Ugo's Pod In the old town of Plovdiv, Ugo plopped his pod onto a stool. Ugo's ma said, "Ugo, why are you using a pod instead of a jar?" Ugo's ma was blind, but she knew that the plop of Ugo's pod was different to the plop of his jar. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-09-15Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:17 Knitted Bulgarian Folk Tale Puppet 06:44 The Lactose-intolerant Jezebel of Botnia, Her Impending Flu Jab, and the Howling of Wolves at Dusk 10:29 The Names of the Ponds KNITTED BULGARIAN FOLK TALE PUPPET Ahoy, Mr Key!, writes Dr Ruth Pastry, Thank you so much for affording us readers a glimpse of the inner workings of Hooting Yard in your piece on that Olympics logo. Brief as it was, I was fascinated by the reference to the editorial conclave, and to the fact that the bloated janitor remains an unreconstructed Blunkettite. The real reason I am writing, however, is because I am desperate to find out what Mrs Gubbins was knitting. Can you tell me? Well, Ruth, yes I can! A few weeks ago, the octogenarian crone was approached by a charity working with the filthy and destitute denizens of that cluster of hovels out Pointy Town way. As you may know, these ill-starred wretches are even lower than the lowest of the low, wallowing in a dank pit of turpitude and lacking even the most basic sanitation. Other charitable organisations shun them because, you know, there are limits. Anyway, Mrs Gubbins was asked to knit something for them, and she wisely decided to bring a little joy to their hearts--if they actually have beating human hearts--by making for them a life-size knitted puppet of Ugo, hero of a series of exciting Bulgarian folk tales. We have published a number of Ugo stories here at Hooting Yard, so this would be an opportune time to pluck them from the Archive and present all six here afresh, some three years after they originally appeared: Ugo Goofs Off Ugo lived in Plovdiv. In the fog, Ugo goofed off. "There you go, Ugo, goofing off again," said Ugo's ma. It was foggy. Ugo stepped in some goo. He got it on his boots. "Ma, I've got goo on my boots," said Ugo. Ugo's ma gave him a rag to wipe the goo off his boots. She had a drawer of gewgaws. Gewgaws and rags. Ugo's ma was blind, so when Ugo goofed off and got goo on his boots, she opened the drawer of gewgaws and rags and rummaged, feeling for a rag rather than a gewgaw, for if she gave Ugo a gewgaw he wouldn't get the goo off his boots, but with a rag he would. Ugo sat in the porch after goofing off and wiped the goo off his boots with a rag. In the fog. In Plovdiv. Ugo's Pal Ulf In Plovdiv, Ugo had a pal called Ulf. Ulf had the plague. "Look at my bubo, Ugo," said Ulf. "Oooh!" said Ugo when he saw the bubo. Ugo had the flu. His ma made him a tincture for his flu but there was not much she could do about Ulf's bubo. In the Plovdiv lazaretto, Ulf mooched about in a foul mood. Ugo and Ugo's ma brought food for Ulf. "Have some pancakes, Ulf," said Ugo. Ulf gobbled a pancake. "Far be it from me to poo-poo you, Ulf," said Ugo's ma, "But you should put the pancake on your bubo, like a poultice." "Oh," said Ulf. He did as bid, and soon his bubo was gone. But Ugo still had the flu, so his ma was thrown for a loop. She could cure the plague but not the flu, and did not know what else she could do. For the time being. In the lazaretto in Plovdiv. Ugo's Pod In the old town of Plovdiv, Ugo plopped his pod onto a stool. Ugo's ma said, "Ugo, why are you using a pod instead of a jar?" Ugo's ma was blind, but she knew that the plop of Ugo's pod was different to the plop of his jar. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-09-1528:37fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-09-08Wed, 08 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Name That Cur 03:53 Escape From a Ship on Fire 17:06 Eighteen Questions 23:33 Gigantic Balls of Volatile Gas 25:17 Pining and Pothorst NAME THAT CUR One of the most common misconceptions in the world of cur-nomenclature is the idea that many dogs bear the name Fido because its Latin meaning (I trust or I am faithful) has some bearing on perceptions of canine personality. Dobson, for one, saw through this nonsense, as he explained in his out-of-print pamphlet On The Naming Of Curs As Fido : A Stern Corrective. He wrote: What never seems to occur to people is that there is not one single recorded instance of any dog being called Fido prior to World War II*. This stark fact alone is surely all the evidence any rational person needs to realise that dogs are named Fido in honour of the Petroleum Warfare Department's successful development of the "fog, intensive dispersal of" system, otherwise known as FIDO. I cannot be bothered to go into the details of how, in 1944, boffins managed to make mist and fog vanish, for all the world like mediaeval magicians, but they did, God knows they did. Furthermore, the connection between dogs and fog is well known, as anyone who has studied some of my earlier pamphlets will know. A fairly standard type of cur * NOTE : Much as one admires the magisterial tone of Dobson's pronouncement, he is, of course, quite mistaken. ESCAPE FROM A SHIP ON FIRE Escape From A Ship On Fireis a Chewist text, in which every other sentence is taken from an anonymous piece of the same title published in the Missionary Annual of 1833. Chewism is named after Dobson's amanuensis Marigold Chew, who pioneered the technique of "stitching" a new text within an existing one in this manner. Note the startlingly modern approach of our 19th century author, who ignores the outbreak of fire and launches straight in to the escape... There were about four score of us, to use Biblical numbers. Many of the party, having retired to their hammocks soon after the commencement of the storm, were only partially clothed when they made their escape; but the seamen on the watch, in consequence of the heavy rain, having cased themselves in double or treble dresses, supplied their supernumerary articles of clothing to those who had none. I myself gave my hood made out of compressed wheat to a Jesuit priest who had been taking confessions from the stowaways when the tempest struck. We happily succeeded in bringing away two compasses from the binnacle, and a few candles from the cuddy-table, one of them lighted; one bottle of wine, and another of porter, were handed to us, with the tablecloth and a knife, which proved very useful; but the fire raged so fiercely in the body of the vessel, that neither bread nor water could be obtained. We were able to turn the tablecloth into a makeshift tarpaulin, and I chuckled at the appropriateness of its embroidered scene of ducks plashing in a pond. The rain still poured in torrents; the lightning, followed by loud bursting of thunder, continued to stream from one side of the heavens to the other,--one moment dazzling us by its glare, and the next moment leaving us in darkness, relieved only by the red flames of the conflagration from which we were endeavouring to escape. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-09-08Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:14 Name That Cur 03:53 Escape From a Ship on Fire 17:06 Eighteen Questions 23:33 Gigantic Balls of Volatile Gas 25:17 Pining and Pothorst NAME THAT CUR One of the most common misconceptions in the world of cur-nomenclature is the idea that many dogs bear the name Fido because its Latin meaning (I trust or I am faithful) has some bearing on perceptions of canine personality. Dobson, for one, saw through this nonsense, as he explained in his out-of-print pamphlet On The Naming Of Curs As Fido : A Stern Corrective. He wrote: What never seems to occur to people is that there is not one single recorded instance of any dog being called Fido prior to World War II*. This stark fact alone is surely all the evidence any rational person needs to realise that dogs are named Fido in honour of the Petroleum Warfare Department's successful development of the "fog, intensive dispersal of" system, otherwise known as FIDO. I cannot be bothered to go into the details of how, in 1944, boffins managed to make mist and fog vanish, for all the world like mediaeval magicians, but they did, God knows they did. Furthermore, the connection between dogs and fog is well known, as anyone who has studied some of my earlier pamphlets will know. A fairly standard type of cur * NOTE : Much as one admires the magisterial tone of Dobson's pronouncement, he is, of course, quite mistaken. ESCAPE FROM A SHIP ON FIRE Escape From A Ship On Fireis a Chewist text, in which every other sentence is taken from an anonymous piece of the same title published in the Missionary Annual of 1833. Chewism is named after Dobson's amanuensis Marigold Chew, who pioneered the technique of "stitching" a new text within an existing one in this manner. Note the startlingly modern approach of our 19th century author, who ignores the outbreak of fire and launches straight in to the escape... There were about four score of us, to use Biblical numbers. Many of the party, having retired to their hammocks soon after the commencement of the storm, were only partially clothed when they made their escape; but the seamen on the watch, in consequence of the heavy rain, having cased themselves in double or treble dresses, supplied their supernumerary articles of clothing to those who had none. I myself gave my hood made out of compressed wheat to a Jesuit priest who had been taking confessions from the stowaways when the tempest struck. We happily succeeded in bringing away two compasses from the binnacle, and a few candles from the cuddy-table, one of them lighted; one bottle of wine, and another of porter, were handed to us, with the tablecloth and a knife, which proved very useful; but the fire raged so fiercely in the body of the vessel, that neither bread nor water could be obtained. We were able to turn the tablecloth into a makeshift tarpaulin, and I chuckled at the appropriateness of its embroidered scene of ducks plashing in a pond. The rain still poured in torrents; the lightning, followed by loud bursting of thunder, continued to stream from one side of the heavens to the other,--one moment dazzling us by its glare, and the next moment leaving us in darkness, relieved only by the red flames of the conflagration from which we were endeavouring to escape. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-09-0829:06fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-05-12Wed, 12 May 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:43 Hello Darkness My Old Friend 05:01 The Names of the Ponds 10:02 "A little, slight man, with a thin,..." 14:34 Pang Hill News 19:22 On the Air 26:17 An extract from Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND I've come to talk with you again. I've had a nightmare about a hen. I'd been abandoned, in my pyjamas, in a desolate fen. The hen approached me, clucking. Seldom have I heard so eldritch a cluck from a domestic fowl. I was thoroughly unnerved. In the nightmare, believing that I had awoken, I was chewing my pillow and my mouth was full of feathers and I began to choke. But I did not wake. The hen pecked at something on the ground. I was no longer in a fen. I was standing in the middle of a field splattered with buttercups, holding a big iron slab of dubious utility. I looked at it very carefully, and saw that a stanza of Emily Dickinson's had been scratched on it: Its little Ether Hood--Doth sit upon its Head--The millinery supple--Of the sagacious God. Now I was spectacularly terrified! The Belle of Amherst dream, that had plagued me for two decades until Dr Snap prescribed his balm and unguents, had returned to haunt me! Somehow I was conscious that I was thrashing about in my bed and yet I remained transfixed in sleep. The noise made by the hen grew louder. Knowing that "a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid", I looked desperately around me. Though I could hear it, the hen had vanished. The iron slab weighed heavy. Now I was knee deep in water. I began to shout, echoing Edgar Allan Poe's dying words: "Reynolds! Reynolds! ... Reynolds!" At the last cry, mercifully, I awoke. I jumped out of bed immediately and plunged my head into a nearby pail of icy water. Then I went to the window, and looked out at the bright morning. Rustic farmyard persons were trudging up the hill over by Bodger's Spinney. A booby and a godwit sang. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-05-12Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:43 Hello Darkness My Old Friend 05:01 The Names of the Ponds 10:02 "A little, slight man, with a thin,..." 14:34 Pang Hill News 19:22 On the Air 26:17 An extract from Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND I've come to talk with you again. I've had a nightmare about a hen. I'd been abandoned, in my pyjamas, in a desolate fen. The hen approached me, clucking. Seldom have I heard so eldritch a cluck from a domestic fowl. I was thoroughly unnerved. In the nightmare, believing that I had awoken, I was chewing my pillow and my mouth was full of feathers and I began to choke. But I did not wake. The hen pecked at something on the ground. I was no longer in a fen. I was standing in the middle of a field splattered with buttercups, holding a big iron slab of dubious utility. I looked at it very carefully, and saw that a stanza of Emily Dickinson's had been scratched on it: Its little Ether Hood--Doth sit upon its Head--The millinery supple--Of the sagacious God. Now I was spectacularly terrified! The Belle of Amherst dream, that had plagued me for two decades until Dr Snap prescribed his balm and unguents, had returned to haunt me! Somehow I was conscious that I was thrashing about in my bed and yet I remained transfixed in sleep. The noise made by the hen grew louder. Knowing that "a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid", I looked desperately around me. Though I could hear it, the hen had vanished. The iron slab weighed heavy. Now I was knee deep in water. I began to shout, echoing Edgar Allan Poe's dying words: "Reynolds! Reynolds! ... Reynolds!" At the last cry, mercifully, I awoke. I jumped out of bed immediately and plunged my head into a nearby pail of icy water. Then I went to the window, and looked out at the bright morning. Rustic farmyard persons were trudging up the hill over by Bodger's Spinney. A booby and a godwit sang. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-05-1230:51fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-05-05Wed, 05 May 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 The Phologiston Varations THE PHOLOGISTON VARATIONS Good afternoon. Welcome to hooting yard on the air. My name is Frank key. This week I'm going to read you a record review, a review of a CD, a fairly lengthy review which appeared in the in the weekly shackle that wonderful family newspaper. And it's a review of the phlogiston variations by Winslow and a CD set mid price. unwrapping the cellophane from this handsome box set took me the best part of an hour, such as my excitement that the word butter fingers might have been invented for me. And it was only by dint of a pair of extremely sharp scissors that I eventually succeeded. That was not the end of my troubles, for I had the devil of a job to discard the shredded wrapper into my wastepaper basket. gleaming strands of cellophane stuck resolutely to my fingers. However desperately I flapped my arms around, like a conjurer, casting a peculiarly inept spell. is this relevant? Well, yes, I think it is. The tactile struggle to extricate the box from its packaging was nothing compared to the auditory struggle I then underwent, listening at one sitting to the nine hours and 47 minutes of the quite majestic phlogiston variations. Younger listeners may be unfamiliar with the work of the Alaskan Flemish composer chlorine and Dinah Winslow 1882 to 1941. operates operetta the paving slabs was recently revived by a troupe of Finnish amateurs. And the jazz spin ethicist Dennis Jarrett included a version of the retention of milk on his 1991 solo album. But otherwise, this towering figure of 20th century music has fallen victim to almost criminal neglect. So this reissue of the phlogiston variations, recorded by the hooting yard ensemble in 1959 is more than welcome. And well I hope go some way towards the rehabilitation of Winslow. I've never understood why she's been all but forgotten. At the peak of her success in the 1920s. Her works were regularly performed in concert hall throughout the world, and critical plaudits were bestowed on her even by such cantankerous misanthropes as Wrigley, who described her memorably as the greatest Alaskan composer of the last and probably the next 500 years. Winslow had in fact left Alaska at the age of four. Her mother, a weasel breeder of Flemish extraction, fled the country after her husband Winslow's father was shot dead in one of the sporadic outbreaks of gang warfare which blighted a fog neck island in the Gulf of Alaska during the 1880s. Mother and daughter moved first to Sumatra, then traipse through various seaside resorts in the north of England. before settling in Danzig in 1896. Winslow had shown a precocious talent as a bassoonist and her mother enrolled her in some sort of cut price music school in the city, run by Professor ignatz milkbone. A wisdom an old get of questionable morals, whose police record filled at least two hole filing cabinets in the basement storeroom of the Danzig, Western District criminal justice headquarters. He was a foul foul man, and a teacher of genius. Winslow studied under him for 11 years in all in that time, she developed from a promising teenage bassoonist into an all round musical talent of frightening proficiency. Her first composition proper. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-05-05Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:26 The Phologiston Varations THE PHOLOGISTON VARATIONS Good afternoon. Welcome to hooting yard on the air. My name is Frank key. This week I'm going to read you a record review, a review of a CD, a fairly lengthy review which appeared in the in the weekly shackle that wonderful family newspaper. And it's a review of the phlogiston variations by Winslow and a CD set mid price. unwrapping the cellophane from this handsome box set took me the best part of an hour, such as my excitement that the word butter fingers might have been invented for me. And it was only by dint of a pair of extremely sharp scissors that I eventually succeeded. That was not the end of my troubles, for I had the devil of a job to discard the shredded wrapper into my wastepaper basket. gleaming strands of cellophane stuck resolutely to my fingers. However desperately I flapped my arms around, like a conjurer, casting a peculiarly inept spell. is this relevant? Well, yes, I think it is. The tactile struggle to extricate the box from its packaging was nothing compared to the auditory struggle I then underwent, listening at one sitting to the nine hours and 47 minutes of the quite majestic phlogiston variations. Younger listeners may be unfamiliar with the work of the Alaskan Flemish composer chlorine and Dinah Winslow 1882 to 1941. operates operetta the paving slabs was recently revived by a troupe of Finnish amateurs. And the jazz spin ethicist Dennis Jarrett included a version of the retention of milk on his 1991 solo album. But otherwise, this towering figure of 20th century music has fallen victim to almost criminal neglect. So this reissue of the phlogiston variations, recorded by the hooting yard ensemble in 1959 is more than welcome. And well I hope go some way towards the rehabilitation of Winslow. I've never understood why she's been all but forgotten. At the peak of her success in the 1920s. Her works were regularly performed in concert hall throughout the world, and critical plaudits were bestowed on her even by such cantankerous misanthropes as Wrigley, who described her memorably as the greatest Alaskan composer of the last and probably the next 500 years. Winslow had in fact left Alaska at the age of four. Her mother, a weasel breeder of Flemish extraction, fled the country after her husband Winslow's father was shot dead in one of the sporadic outbreaks of gang warfare which blighted a fog neck island in the Gulf of Alaska during the 1880s. Mother and daughter moved first to Sumatra, then traipse through various seaside resorts in the north of England. before settling in Danzig in 1896. Winslow had shown a precocious talent as a bassoonist and her mother enrolled her in some sort of cut price music school in the city, run by Professor ignatz milkbone. A wisdom an old get of questionable morals, whose police record filled at least two hole filing cabinets in the basement storeroom of the Danzig, Western District criminal justice headquarters. He was a foul foul man, and a teacher of genius. Winslow studied under him for 11 years in all in that time, she developed from a promising teenage bassoonist into an all round musical talent of frightening proficiency. Her first composition proper. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-05-0529:36fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-04-21Wed, 21 Apr 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:40 Potted Biographies of a Marine Hue, No. 1 05:34 Mrs Gubbins Throws a Fit 20:12 Istvan & Zoltan 24:57 The Disgusting Bilge of Cadet Vig POTTED BIOGRAPHIES OF A MARINE HUE, NO. 1 Captain Flask, of the HMS Corrugated Cardboard, was a bad and dangerous man. He never washed his hair, and he was fond of tormenting badgers. His ship was falling apart, because whenever any of his miserable crew tried to repair something, like the rigging, or a fo'c'sle, or even the whole orlop deck, he would fly into a rage like something out of the Old Testament, and the crew would be cowed, and go back below decks to their scrimshaw and grog. Every day, all day, and every night, all night, Captain Flask lurched around the deck, shouting at the sky. In the pocket of his weskit, where his fob watch ought to have been, he kept a supply of tin baubles, and he would throw these at any birds that came within his range, particularly guillemots, which he loathed, and cormorants, which he did not understand, but his aim was not good, and he usually missed.One of his arms was withered from scrofula. His fob watch lay, abandoned, in the untidy drawer of his escritoire, hidden among old pencils, bits of calico, drawing pins, bottle tops, cornflakes and dust. Every morning at six o' clock, or whatever that is in maritime parlance, Captain Flask drank a whole pint of milk of magnesia. Oh, he was such a bad man! Such a dangerous man! MRS GUBBINS THROWS A FIT Dark clouds lour'd, and hailstones began to ping upon the pavement. Inside Haemoglobin Towers, Mrs Gubbins and her eighty-three-year-old colleague Daisy De'Ath were putting the finishing touches to their new software development, Pump-Action Graffix Hub 1.0, already being touted as "a harbinger" by Technobilge magazine. "Would you care for a cup of tea, dear?" asked Daisy, noting that Mrs Gubbins was panting asthmatically and mopping her brow with a dainty handkerchief embroidered with a pattern of crocuses, hollyhocks, mealy bugs, and spurge. Daisy had always been famed for her solicitude. "Ack..." gasped Mrs Gubbins. "Tsk! You're getting yourself all flustered, Mrs Gubbins," said Daisy, a little sharply, "Just because you forgot to insert a backslash into the command line for the ActiveX Pod System Tray Default." Reminded of this peccadillo, Mrs Gubbins became even more agitated, toppled off her ergonomic extruded-plastic workstation seating module, and landed on the floor, threshing about in an alarming fashion. "Dearie me," muttered Daisy to herself, and resolved at once to call an ambulance, despite the storm which was now raging outside like something from the imagination of the painter John Martin. She flipped through her Rolodex looking for the telephone number of the Bodger's Spinney Ambulance Station, which was close by, but without her spectacles--which she had unaccountably left in the office kitchenette while making some Bovril earlier--she was as good as blind. "One of these days I'll forget my own head!" she chuckled, in her fluting croak.* Meanwhile a stream of drool was flowing from Mrs Gubbins' thin-lipped mouth, and her head was turning green ... * NOTE : Pedantic readers may argue that a croak cannot be fluting, but they have not heard Daisy De'Ath speak. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-04-21Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 00:40 Potted Biographies of a Marine Hue, No. 1 05:34 Mrs Gubbins Throws a Fit 20:12 Istvan & Zoltan 24:57 The Disgusting Bilge of Cadet Vig POTTED BIOGRAPHIES OF A MARINE HUE, NO. 1 Captain Flask, of the HMS Corrugated Cardboard, was a bad and dangerous man. He never washed his hair, and he was fond of tormenting badgers. His ship was falling apart, because whenever any of his miserable crew tried to repair something, like the rigging, or a fo'c'sle, or even the whole orlop deck, he would fly into a rage like something out of the Old Testament, and the crew would be cowed, and go back below decks to their scrimshaw and grog. Every day, all day, and every night, all night, Captain Flask lurched around the deck, shouting at the sky. In the pocket of his weskit, where his fob watch ought to have been, he kept a supply of tin baubles, and he would throw these at any birds that came within his range, particularly guillemots, which he loathed, and cormorants, which he did not understand, but his aim was not good, and he usually missed.One of his arms was withered from scrofula. His fob watch lay, abandoned, in the untidy drawer of his escritoire, hidden among old pencils, bits of calico, drawing pins, bottle tops, cornflakes and dust. Every morning at six o' clock, or whatever that is in maritime parlance, Captain Flask drank a whole pint of milk of magnesia. Oh, he was such a bad man! Such a dangerous man! MRS GUBBINS THROWS A FIT Dark clouds lour'd, and hailstones began to ping upon the pavement. Inside Haemoglobin Towers, Mrs Gubbins and her eighty-three-year-old colleague Daisy De'Ath were putting the finishing touches to their new software development, Pump-Action Graffix Hub 1.0, already being touted as "a harbinger" by Technobilge magazine. "Would you care for a cup of tea, dear?" asked Daisy, noting that Mrs Gubbins was panting asthmatically and mopping her brow with a dainty handkerchief embroidered with a pattern of crocuses, hollyhocks, mealy bugs, and spurge. Daisy had always been famed for her solicitude. "Ack..." gasped Mrs Gubbins. "Tsk! You're getting yourself all flustered, Mrs Gubbins," said Daisy, a little sharply, "Just because you forgot to insert a backslash into the command line for the ActiveX Pod System Tray Default." Reminded of this peccadillo, Mrs Gubbins became even more agitated, toppled off her ergonomic extruded-plastic workstation seating module, and landed on the floor, threshing about in an alarming fashion. "Dearie me," muttered Daisy to herself, and resolved at once to call an ambulance, despite the storm which was now raging outside like something from the imagination of the painter John Martin. She flipped through her Rolodex looking for the telephone number of the Bodger's Spinney Ambulance Station, which was close by, but without her spectacles--which she had unaccountably left in the office kitchenette while making some Bovril earlier--she was as good as blind. "One of these days I'll forget my own head!" she chuckled, in her fluting croak.* Meanwhile a stream of drool was flowing from Mrs Gubbins' thin-lipped mouth, and her head was turning green ... * NOTE : Pedantic readers may argue that a croak cannot be fluting, but they have not heard Daisy De'Ath speak. […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-04-2129:49fullfalsehy0_hooting_yard_2004-04-14Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:00:00 +0000Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:09 Burnt Maps 09:37 Today's Recipe 10:45 Dark Star Crashes 13:01 A Guide to Pointy Town : Part Two 16:55 Transcript of a Dictaphone Recording 25:43 World O' Cake 26:34 "The kam, as if approaching the Yarta..." BURNT MAPS Mister Bim bought an atlas as a birthday gift for his daughter, who was tremendously fond of geography. Without opening the big fat book, Mister Bim asked the oddly-haired shop assistant to wrap it up in colourful and exciting paper and to tie a ribbon around it. The shop assistant did the wrapping with precision and care, but then got the ribbon entangled in his odd hair, and had to use a pair of scissors to free it. Now the ribbon was not long enough to girdle the atlas. "I am most dreadfully dreadfully sorry," said the shop assistant. "Oh never you mind now," said Mister Bim, "the wrapping paper is lovely all by itself." The paper had a pattern of interlocking hollyhocks, delphiniums, and fire extinguishers, all red and green and gold and purple and yellow and blue. Mister Bim's daughter, Clytemnestra, unwrapped the atlas on her birthday three days later. She beamed and gave her papa a kiss on his hairy cheek. "Oh gosh what can I say thank you so much papa!" she said. We learned in the very first sentence that Clytemnestra was terrifically fond of geography. That fondness had led her to become knowledgeable, too. So imagine her disappointment when, upon close inspection, she discovered that every single one of the maps in the atlas was inaccurate. The port of Split is not in Bolivia. The world's largest lake is not just a few miles south of Swanage. Swanage itself is not spelled Swange. "I will take it back to that shop and complain," said Mister Bim. "No no, papa. Let us tear all the maps out of the book and make a fire with them. Let us create a conflagration like unto the very flames of Hell." And, children, do you know something? That is exactly what they did! Source : The Idyllic Childhood of Clytemnestra Bim by Rufus Bim, as told to Dobson […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-04-14Hooting Yard on the Air — Frank Key's cult spoken-word radio show, originally broadcast on Resonance104.4 FM. Frank Key (1959–2023) was an English writer and broadcaster celebrated for his absurdist, surreal short stories. From 2004 he presented Hooting Yard on the Air, reading his own work, on London's Resonance104.4 FM. 05:09 Burnt Maps 09:37 Today's Recipe 10:45 Dark Star Crashes 13:01 A Guide to Pointy Town : Part Two 16:55 Transcript of a Dictaphone Recording 25:43 World O' Cake 26:34 "The kam, as if approaching the Yarta..." BURNT MAPS Mister Bim bought an atlas as a birthday gift for his daughter, who was tremendously fond of geography. Without opening the big fat book, Mister Bim asked the oddly-haired shop assistant to wrap it up in colourful and exciting paper and to tie a ribbon around it. The shop assistant did the wrapping with precision and care, but then got the ribbon entangled in his odd hair, and had to use a pair of scissors to free it. Now the ribbon was not long enough to girdle the atlas. "I am most dreadfully dreadfully sorry," said the shop assistant. "Oh never you mind now," said Mister Bim, "the wrapping paper is lovely all by itself." The paper had a pattern of interlocking hollyhocks, delphiniums, and fire extinguishers, all red and green and gold and purple and yellow and blue. Mister Bim's daughter, Clytemnestra, unwrapped the atlas on her birthday three days later. She beamed and gave her papa a kiss on his hairy cheek. "Oh gosh what can I say thank you so much papa!" she said. We learned in the very first sentence that Clytemnestra was terrifically fond of geography. That fondness had led her to become knowledgeable, too. So imagine her disappointment when, upon close inspection, she discovered that every single one of the maps in the atlas was inaccurate. The port of Split is not in Bolivia. The world's largest lake is not just a few miles south of Swanage. Swanage itself is not spelled Swange. "I will take it back to that shop and complain," said Mister Bim. "No no, papa. Let us tear all the maps out of the book and make a fire with them. Let us create a conflagration like unto the very flames of Hell." And, children, do you know something? That is exactly what they did! Source : The Idyllic Childhood of Clytemnestra Bim by Rufus Bim, as told to Dobson […] Hooting Yard on the Air was originally funded and produced by Resonance104.4 FM, and is published here as an open collection with permission. Resonance FM: https://resonancefm.com Original audio and full text: https://archive.org/details/hy0_hooting_yard_2004-04-1429:32fullfalse