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.

Reginald Bosanquet

This is Reginald Bosanquet (1932-1984), whose surname was appropriated by persons unknown as the title of Pansy Cradledew's favourite computer game. Older readers will remember Mr Bosanquet as a television newsreader and raffish drunk. According to his lamentably brief entry in the wikipedia, “viewers were sometimes not impressed by his competence at reading the news, he was often clearly puzzled by the correct pronunciation of foreign names, and by news stories containing technical matters he did not understand”. In other words, he had human frailties, rather than being a zonk-eyed robot. Those were the days. His father was a cricketer named Bernard Bosanquet who invented the googly, apparently. I have no idea what that means.

A Dobson Anecdote

It would be no exaggeration to say that Dobson was besotted with cinema. He was always a great filmgoer, and on occasion his enthusiasm led him into typically preposterous escapades. There was a period when he became infatuated with Hollywood films about lowlife gangsterdom and seedy urban hustling. One day he announced to Marigold Chew that he was going to run a numbers racket.

“What are you talking about?” asked Marigold.

Dobson explained that in many of the films he had been watching, characters were often employed as “runners for the numbers racket”, and that he found such a trade diverting. “It will make a change from writing pamphlets,” he said.

Having studied his sources carefully, Dobson worked out that “running the numbers” involved roaming the streets tracking down his clients and taking money from them. But first, he reasoned, they needed their numbers, a side of the racket that was probably not shown in the films because it lacked drama. He approached his new career methodically, first drawing up a list of people to whom he could give numbers. Deciding to limit himself to a dozen clients, he included his next door neighbours on both sides, the post office person, a crestfallen chap who walked his dog along the street every day, the bell foundry janitor, Mrs Pod and the five orphans she taught in her ramshackle Sunday School, and - because he could think of nobody else - Marigold Chew.

This much accomplished, Dobson realised that he did not know which numbers he ought to give them. He spent a few weeks catching up on appropriate films, but learned nothing new, so he buried his head in ancient numerological and astrological texts, much as, he suspected, characters like “Two Hats” McGulligan did off-screen before entering the numbers racket.

Having chosen twelve numbers, Dobson wrote each one down on scraps of paper and spent an overcast afternoon distributing them to his clients. Only Marigold asked him what he thought he was doing, to which he replied “I am running a numbers racket. That is your number. Keep it safe.”

Dobson's excitement mounted as the week went past. To calm himself down, he spent much of the time at a pigsty, observing pigs doing what pigs do. Then, after seven days had elapsed, he went roaming around to collect his money. Life imitated art, however. Each of his twelve clients whined and wheedled and pleaded for more time to pay, complaining of a lack of funds and promising that they would pay up as soon as they could. Dobson found the whimpering of Mrs Pod's orphans particularly exasperating, so much so that within hours he decided to go back to pamphlet-writing.

About two years later, Marigold Chew asked him about his numbers racket, but by then Dobson's cinematic enthusiasm was for films about the earth being invaded by hostile extra-terrestrial beings with suckers and tentacles, and he was busy writing an essay explaining why they always landed their spaceships near major American cities, rather than, say, English seaside resorts or campsites.

Source : Some Things Dobson Did When He Was Not Writing Pamphlets, ed. Aloysius Nestingbird et al

Destiny's Darning-needle Pierced My Very Soul

Last Thursday at 10.48 in the morning, my very soul was pierced by the darning-needle of destiny. It was raining, one of those summer showers, and I was walking along near the canal thinking about Trebizondo Culpepper, a recent enthusiasm of mine. If you do not know of Culpepper, it would be well worth you finding out, but right now I have no time to tell you why I had become so keen, some might say obsessive. There are other forms of Trebizondo, and indeed other Culpeppers, that much I know.

You may recall that Little Eva once sang about doing the locomotion. I was not doing it myself that morning, I was just walking, or plodding, but at 10.43, just ahead of me on the canal side, a large number of ghouls disembarked from a yellow bus, and they began to do the locomotion. They had to choose some way of getting from their bus to the barge they were due to board. Being ghouls I thought they may just flit or shimmer, but no, they did the locomotion, and they did it slowly. In order to continue on my way I would have to pass among the ghouls, and this caused me to pause.

I have never been remotely frightened of phantom forms, be they ghosts or ghouls or mere blobs of ectoplasm. Dangling from a ribbon round my neck is a tungsten prong. Tungsten is also called wolfram, the only metallic element named after two quadruped mammals, so you can see why I was safe from ghouls. The reason I paused was because I was concentrating so hard on Trebizondo Culpepper, and I could not help wondering what the correct approach should be of a Trebizondo Culpepper devotee to a busload of ghouls. I was not yet an adept, but I planned to be, and I saw this as a test. It was now 10.44.

All the ghouls had now left the bus, and they were doing the locomotion very slowly as they crossed towards the canal where their barge awaited them. The bus was driven away by its top-hatted driver. Its growling engine alarmed some crows in a tree, and their wings made a loud flapping noise as they flew away. I had no wings to flap, of course, but would an adept of Trebizondo Culpepper flap something at ghouls? I did not know the answer to this question, but I noticed that there was a pneumatic postal chute box on the ground only a few feet away. Hastily, I scribbled a note to my mentor and inserted it into the slit atop the box.

You will think me presumptuous, perhaps, to expect a reply from my mentor so rapidly. I think I had been spoiled. The mentor who had been assigned to me after that meeting in the civic centre assured me that my questions and concerns would be answered by return of pneumatic post chute, that is, almost instantaneously, and for a month now that had indeed been the case. So I stood like a ninny, shifting from foot to foot, fiddling with my tungsten prong, as the rain fell and the ghouls locomoted with agonising slowness across my path. I was not to know that my Trebizondo Culpepper mentor lay sprawled on a mat in a distant time zone, his brain laid waste by the fumes from a jar of some expensive, blissful gas. He had not seen fit to tell me of his holiday plans.

I waited by the box for three minutes. The leading ghouls had now boarded the barge, but there were so many of them that they still blocked the towpath, and some seemed not to have moved at all from where the yellow bus had dropped them off. I knew, somehow, that I was not going to get the advice I sought from my mentor. I turned my back on the pneumatic postal chute box, disappointed and angry, and so I passed the final sixty seconds of my old life.

It is all very clear to me. The rain was falling from puffy black clouds, there was not a patch of blue to be seen in the sky. The padlock on the box was rusty, and the yellow paint on the box itself was flaking. Over in a field, a cow stood staring blankly at a squirrel. Gusts of wind disturbed my hairstyle, but I had left my comb at home on the mantelpiece. Jam sandwiches and paper cups of Tizer were being distributed to the poor from a kiosk by the bridge. There was a bedraggled duck in a pond and a coat hanger in a puddle. The crows had flapped back to the tree and they were perched, cawing. The tenets of Trebizondo Culpepper burned in my brain. I could hear the distant hum of milk floats and the whirring of bicycle wheels. The pathway was becoming ever muddier as the rain poured down, and a couple of earthworms had slithered to the surface to wriggle blindly in the muck. I thought I saw the yellow bus again, in the distance, going in the direction of the abandoned vinegar brewery. I ran my tongue over my teeth and dislodged a fragment of sausage.

And then I took a deep intake of breath and ran, I ran towards the slowly locomoting ribbon of ghouls strung across my path. I puffed out my chest and I whirled my arms and I thought of Trebizondo Culpepper. And at 10.48 on that Thursday morning I passed through the ghouls, and the darning-needle of destiny pierced my very soul.

It is a week later now, Thursday again, and I am sitting in a chalet on a wind-racked beach, staring out to sea. I am holding my soul nestled on my lap, and it is aglow, pulsating with the glory of Trebizondo Culpepper. And I am staring out to sea.

Bird Flu News

Are you worried about Asian bird flu? As the strain moves remorselessly westward, threatening a pandemic that could wipe out millions, I was heartened this morning to hear some useful advice from a Canadian banker on BBC Radio 4. “The best preparation you can make against Asian bird flu,” said this sage, “is to strengthen the quality of your investment portfolio”. Don't you just adore bankers? I am almost tempted to release hordes of Callistan Gnishii into his office.

El Rancho Anomalous

I was thinking that Dr Ruth Pastry had been eerily quiet of late, but I need not have feared. Following an item on the page yesterday, the kraken wakes!

For crying out loud, Key!, she begins, tetchily, After reading Clamour For Tin I have been thrown, as they say, for a loop. You may not know this, but for over a year now I have been working on a hand-drawn map of Hooting Yard and its environs, or hinterland. By close textual analysis, and using the back of a very big sheet of wallpaper, I have been able to work out the relative locations of, for example, Pang Hill, Bodger's Spinney, the Blister Lane Bypass, O'Houlihan's Wharf, and other sites of Hooting Yard interest. Certain passages you have written have allowed me to make educated guesses regarding the whereabouts of Pointy Town and - albeit with difficulty - Tantarabim. I have a notebook filled with conjectures about Gaar, and though adding it to my map will probably involve buying a second very big sheet of wallpaper, I can already anticipate the glee with which I will use crayons to mark the site of the bottomless viper pit. And now what do I find? You suddenly throw in something called “El Rancho Hooting Yard” which doesn't fit anywhere on my map, and my map is a lovely thing, though I say so myself. Either I am going to have to begin all over again, or you should admit that you made up this anomalous “rancho” on the spur of the moment, without giving a smidgeon of thought to your most devoted readers. Take heed, Key. Yours fuming, Dr Ruth Pastry

So here, for Dr Pastry and others, is a hint. From Loopy Copse, head south until you reach Sawdust Bridge, but instead of making the crossing, strike out to the west, or possibly to the east, and follow the track that goes past the Tundist Owl Library. At some point, all will become crystal clear.

Foes

Sometimes it can happen that you find yourself with a foe, or enemy. This may be the result of some ancient blood feud, or it may be more recent. You might, say, steal some fruit from a greengrocer and thereafter the greengrocer becomes your foe. I am not suggesting for one moment that Hooting Yard readers are the kind of people who go around stealing plums or berries, I simply use that as an example. Ancient blood feuds are more complicated, often having their origin in the doings - or misdoings - of your remote ancestors, for which you are in no way responsible. That being so, you should nevertheless be aware that an ancient blood feud foe is likely to be alarming, vicious, and bent on violence, whereas the greengrocer whose plum you slipped in your pocket may not remain your foe for long. The greengrocer's enmity is of a less frenzied sort.

It is a good idea to assess the level of enmity your foe feels towards you before accepting their invitation to meet, unarmed, at the top of a high tower. If they have a foe-score of more than seven point five, it may well be that they plan to push you over the edge of the tower so that you plunge to your doom on the savage rocks below. Less than seven point five and your foe may simply have chosen a place with breathtaking views the better to facilitate a little chat, after which bygones will be bygones.

Of course, arriving at the foe-score is not an exact science, so when you have conducted the tests it is advisable to repeat them. Always allow for a margin of error. Should it be your judgement that your life would be imperilled by meeting your foe in a high tower, do try to send a polite note explaining that you will be unable to make the appointment. Invent an excuse if necessary, but try to cleave to the truth if you can.

Next week : the stolen plums, or berries.

Title and Author

Wait until it has stopped raining, then put on a pair of stout boots and stride off to your nearest bog. Bear with me, there is a point to this. Now, do not stop when you get to the bog, but carry on going, step on in. As you do, listen carefully. What is the sound you hear as your boots squelch through the bog? Is it something like glob … glob … glob? Splendid! You are now able to appreciate to the full the happy conjunction of title and author that I want to tell you about.

I grew up in a house crammed with books, and my parents had eclectic tastes. One volume I recall with particular relish, even though I never read it, was The Bog People by P V Glob. Bog, Glob - perfect, really. I suspect my childhood memories of these words printed together on a blue paperback spine have influenced me in all sorts of ways. P V Glob (1911-1985) was the Director General of Museums and Antiquities for the State of Denmark and Director of the National Museum in Copenhagen, and his book is subtitled Iron-Age Man Preserved. You can read all about it at bookslut.

And I Shall Walk

… and I shall walk along the pathways adjacent to Yoko Ono Boulevard all the days of my life. And as I pass the hedgerows that line those pathways, lo! I will see many birds, the sorts of birds which make their nests in hedgerows, which I know not. And there will be the counting of the birds.

Now, hear how lies the land. There is the path, or the pathways, and then there are the hedgerows, and then there is the Boulevard, so that we might say the hedgerows divide the pathways from the Boulevard. And in this division are the nesting birds. And they will be counted.

If I have a hope, it is that starlings are the sorts of birds that make their nests in hedgerows, for it is to the counting of starlings that I am drawn. I shall not shirk from counting all the birds, but that is my hope.

In the days now past I counted bees. The bees to be counted were beyond the Boulevard, many leagues distant, out on the sand dunes where their hives had been put. It came to pass that the clouds grew black and thunder cracked, and one by one the hives were struck by lightning and no bees remained to be counted. For twenty days and twenty nights I walked across the plains and the deserts, away from the sand dunes, until I came to Yoko Ono Boulevard. And I waited at the side of that great thoroughfare. I waited twenty more days and twenty more nights but I could not pass. All along the Boulevard was a ceaseless flow of cars and vans and pantechnicons and trucks and charabancs, and I waited.

And lo! I heard the blast of a trump and an angel appeared before me. “Are you he who counted the bees of the kingdom?” it asked, and I replied with full heart. And then the angel led me down towards a dark subterranean tunnel beneath the Boulevard and led me through it. And I came up into the light on the other side. And I saw that I was upon a pathway, and that yonder were hedgerows, and that beyond the hedgerows was the Boulevard still roaring with cars and vans and pantechnicons and trucks and charabancs.

And the angel spoke again. “Here is the hedgerow that divides the pathway from the Boulevard,” it said, waxing like unto James Mason, “And within this division you will find many birds a-nesting, and where once you counted the bees you will henceforth be the counter of the birds.”

And then the angel was gone. And I took up my tally stick. And then you, my inquisitor, you with the green and golden hat stopped me on the pathway and asked me, “Do you know the way to the Blister Lane Bypass?” And I replied that I knew it not. And then it happened that I clutched at the sleeve of your raiment and I told you that I shall walk along the pathways adjacent to Yoko Ono Boulevard all the days of my life …

Clamour for Tin

Monday's Metal Of The Week item on tin proved surprisingly popular with readers, and I have received quite a few requests for additional tin-related material. I do not mean to be churlish, but if my biographer devil, the enigmatic Jeb (see 19th August) is going to have anything of interest to write, he will need me to do more than trudge back and forth to the library to consult dusty old reference books about metals. As a sop to the tin-fixated, however, Max Décharné helpfully comes to the rescue with this:

There you are, two more tins. I am no expert on this particular hound o' film, but I can tell you one thing. So devoted was Rin Tin Tin's owner, Corporal Lee Duncan, that when his wife filed for divorce, she cited Rin Tin Tin as co-respondent, saying Duncan loved the dog more than her. The divorce case was dropped and never granted.

Meanwhile, out in Texas, apparently, “the 87-year legacy continues at El Rancho Rin Tin Tin”, which is a bit like El Rancho Hooting Yard, but with dogs.

The Smashed God

Poopsy Clutterbuck is not a suitable name for a god. For that reason, it became a terrible blasphemy ever to speak the name of the God of Gaar aloud. Those who disobeyed the law were banished from Gaar forever. They were put into airtight pods and the pods were stuffed into the sidecars of gleaming motorcycles, and thence ferried far far away, though few knew where they were taken, only that weeks or months later the motorcycle would return to Gaar, at dead of night, and the now empty pod removed from the sidecar and taken to a secret place where the pods were steamed clean and fumigated. I am one of the few who know where the blasphemers were banished to, for I was one of the motorcyclists.

Oh my, I can hardly believe how long ago it was! I am decrepit now, decrepit and wizened, and I don't think I have kick-started a motorcycle for forty or fifty years. I loved that job.

In those days we had many gods in Gaar, but only one was authentic, the one whose name could not be uttered. In addition, we had fifteen green-eyed weasel gods, a pair of plastic marchmont gods, the hideous centipede god of Tuesday evenings, Bosh the crumpled god, eighty squirrel gods, numberless gods with two or more heads, even one god with no head at all, and a god whose breath ignited stars. We had the bucket god and the athletics track god, the god of railway platforms and the gods of puddles. Some gods were ephemeral, tiny things, like your mayflies. Others were massive and solid and permanent. But only one god was real, the God with the upper case G, the one whose name could not be spoken.

Nowadays, those of us who rode the motorcycles in the sidecars of which blasphemers languished, muffled, in pods, are thought of as fanatics. I still get sidelong looks of contempt or loathing when I go to the post office or the greengrocery. I was spat at in the street as recently as six months ago. When I buy my fireworks, they are invariably tampered with, so that they sputter rather than sparkle. I can't remember the last time one of my fireworks went whoooosh!

My favourite god was the gas god. It made a tremendous growling noise and it was usually sixty feet high, but sometimes smaller. Every now and then, because I was a motorcyclist, it would carry out its godlike doings in my back garden, and I would watch from the window, entranced. Our windows then were made of cellophane, and I would prick holes in my window with the point of a sharpened pencil, the better to appreciate the misty wafts of the gas god.

I was a believer, yes, but never a zealot. I got my job as a motorcyclist because my mother had been one, because I was unafraid of the weather, and because I prayed that it would be so. Some of my prayers involved animal sacrifice, the evisceration of poultry on a stone altar, for example, but more often than not I would be found squatting in an alleyway singing snatches of Nimrod with not a hen in sight, dead or alive. I have always wondered which of my prayers were answered, for answered they were, on that joyous day when I was bundled out of bed and taken to motorcycle training school. I do recall sprawling in the muck in front of a statue of the beetle-browed god of the railway sidings and the pewter chicken, as a way of saying thank you. But I was young then.

I am all bent out of shape now. A breakfast bowl of tomato soup is scant solace when all the gods have gone away. And to think that every god-jack of them disappeared over the course of a single weekend. As dawn broke on Saturday, the very air of Gaar was teeming with them. Slosher the bat god, the god of toffee apples, twenty little postage stamp-sized pneumatic gods, the clingfilm sausage god, a whole slew of gods decked out in kagouls, windcheaters and funny little pointed hats, all those magnificent deities, all devoted to Gaar and in turn worshipped by all the good people of Gaar. By Sunday night they were all gone. The upper case G God of Gaar whose name can never be spoken was the last to go. It was smashed to pieces at midnight in the town square, by some kind of elemental destructive cataclysm. No human agency could have wrought such ruin. I sip my cold tomato soup and mourn my gods still.

And now only I know to what crumbling seaside town we took the blasphemers, and I will never tell a soul.

Where's Old Halob?

A spiv recently handed me a picture which, he announced, showed the legendary athletics trainer Old Halob. Devotees of fictional sprinter Bobnit Tivol will know that Old Halob was the crusty, dignified genius who spent much of his time shouting from the trackside with peculiar guttural menace. Before I had a chance to ask which of the people depicted I should be looking at, the spiv scampered away, saying he had to buy tickets for an anniversary concert in which television person Keith Chegwin would reprise his vocal accompaniment to the Third Ear Band's soundtrack for The Tragedy Of Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971).

If the spiv is to be believed, one of the people in the picture above is Old Halob. But which one? See if you can spot him.

Thanks to Ian Sherred for that glimpse into Cheggers' past

Belated Ellipsis News

I have just learned, too late, that yesterday was National Punctuation Day. Well, it was in the United States of Pining & Pothorst Land*. That being so, the website is emblazoned with patriotic flags, refers to periods rather than full stops, has a picture of “National Punctuation Day Founder” Jeff Rubin wearing a vest down at the gym, is littered with ®s wherever you look, and seems to be aimed primarily at the “business community”. I can only sigh. Peter Blegvad once “dreamed of a world where accountants are rarer than poets”. Would that it were so.

Anyway, I came upon Jeff Rubin's gym vest &c. via the link at languagehat.com, which also points us in the direction of this rather splendid history of punctuation.

* NOTE : For an explanation of this term, see Pining And Pothorst, 2nd September 2004.

Nomenclature of Diminutive Persons Who Plunge Down 150-ft Cliffs and Survive With Hardly a Scratch

The most recent addition to our list which attempts a complete nomenclature of diminutive persons who survive after toppling over the edge of cliffs is Demi-Leigh Tweddle. The wonderfully-named Ms Tweddle meets the diminutiveness criterion in that she is a six year old child. Last week, she tumbled one hundred and fifty feet down the cliffs at Chimney Hole, near Filey, in North Yorkshire, while playing roly poly. When she reached the bottom, she simply picked herself up and walked around to find her parents.

Demi-Leigh Tweddle should not be confused with Dairylea Twaddle, which is a generic term for the advertising guff spouted by the makers of foil-wrapped processed cheese triangles and similar produce.

Rumours that your esteemed editor has changed his name to Demi-Frank Key are inaccurate and can be discounted.

Metal of the Week : Tin

This week's Hooting Yard Metal of the Week is tin.

Many words rhyme with tin, such as bin, din, sin, gin, Rumpelstiltskin, and pin. For this reason, it is quite easy to make up verses about tin. Harder, though, to ensure that those verses have something arresting, urgent and original to say, especially about tin, if it is the main subject of the poem. Let us imagine that you have been commissioned by a maker of calico prints to sing the praises of tin chloride as a reducing agent and as a mordant. I doubt very much that you would be able to dash off a suitable poem just by listing the words that rhyme with tin. But perhaps you are more accomplished as a poet than I am.

In his pamphlet Astrochemistry : A Study of Metal-Planet Affinities (Emergence Press, 1984), Nick Kollerstrom writes Tin is the one metal of the seven which does not show much evidence of its planet's signature. I asked an astrologer about this and he replied: ‘Why, how could it? The Jupiter attributes - expansion, joviality, wisdom - how could a metal express these?’ How indeed? It seems that with tin we have to be content with only a very partial expression of the planet traditionally associated with it. Mr Kollerstrom does not explain how a big lump of rock, metallic hydrogen, liquid hydrogen, and gaseous hydrogen orbiting the sun millions of miles away “expresses” expansion, joviality, and wisdom, but I am sure he knows what he is talking about, because he makes a point of stressing that he is an MA Cantab, and thus no ordinary mortal.

Dobson was no ordinary mortal either, for different reasons. As one might expect, he turned his attentions to tin on a number of occasions, chiefly in the pamphlet he called simply Tin Book. He set himself the task of mentioning tin once on the first page, twice on the second page, and so on until the final page included forty-four mentions of the silvery, malleable poor metal that is not easily oxidized in air and resists corrosion. This leads to somewhat idiotic passages such as this, from page ten:

I stood on the mountainside in the rain. There was a crow perched on my head, and its talons clawed at my scalp, but I had swallowed an anti-crow-clawing-pain pill an hour earlier. I peered into the rain-sodden gloom until I could make out the weather vane in the far distance. Conditions were perfect for the Shouting The Names Of Metals At The Sky experiment. “Tin!” I yelled, “Tin tin tin tin tin tin tin tin tin!”

Dobsonian scholars have got themselves into something of a tizz arguing whether the out-of-print pamphleteer is describing actual events in Tin Book, or just making them up. My own view is that it hardly matters.

To end this fascinating look at our Metal of the Week, try to lodge the following fact in your cranium. At low temperatures, tin exists as gray or alpha tin, which has a cubic crystal structure similar to silicon. When warmed above 13.2 °C it changes into white or beta tin, which is metallic and has a tetragonal structure. Alpha tin ought not be confused with the Alpha Course, created by Nicky Gumbel, which propounds a reductive and distorted version of Christianity, nor with Alpha males. Dobson, by the way, once described himself as an Epsilon male, but quite what he meant by that is far from clear.

My Unknown Boswell

Every now and then, I am buttonholed by importunate persons who yell, “Hey there, Frank Key, what kinds of things do you get up to when you're not researching and writing the Hooting Yard pages or doing your radio show on Resonance104.4FM?”

My tendency has been to deflect such questions with a grunt or a faked choking fit, or sometimes to burst into song. Shenandoah is one of my favourites, or I might attempt one of the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). Thus I allowed an air of mystery to surround me - or so I thought, until the other day, when reader Ian Sherred wrote to inform me that I am being followed by a biographer every bit as indefatigable as James Boswell.

Apparently, a certain Jeb is frantically scribbling up my doings, without my permission. I don't know whether to be flattered or enraged. Reluctant as I am to allow Hooting Yard readers a glimpse into my hitherto secret life, I suppose I should point you in the direction of Vengeance by Jeb, given that it is already in the public domain.

I have to say, though, that you might be better off taking a look at some of Mr Sherred's own stories, at www.constrained.org.

Murder in the Murk

When they exhumed all the books from the Buried Library under the Big Field of Cement, one of the volumes they found was a first edition of Murder In The Murk by Chlorine Winslow. You probably know Winslow as the author of Fangs in The Mist, her most famous work, the one that won prizes, the one that sold thousands of paperbacks, the one that was turned into an opera bouffe by Boof.

Boof himself is an intriguing character, but I don't want to get sidetracked. Perhaps I will write another time about him, about his many operas, opera bouffes and opera buffas, soap operas and light operas, about his pet curlew Desmondo, once savage but domesticated by Boof according to his own bird-taming plan based on Edward de Bono's revolutionary “six hats system”, about his love of both chocolate swiss roll and lemon meringue pie, about the Boofgate scandal, about the time Boof visited a gigantic dam in a distant land, a dam that didn't work, and how he never went back even though the dam managers implored him to, about Desmondo's birdseed preferences, about six hats of different colours, and about Boof's musical adaptation of Fangs In The Mist by Chlorine Winslow. All that can wait, because I want to tell you about Murder In The Murk.

Murder In The Murk is, as its title indicates, a murder mystery. It features Winslow's so called “invisible detective”, invariably known only as The Invisible Detective. Some critics have pooh-poohed Winslow's prose, particularly her dialogue, for passages such as this:

“There are things that creep upon the face of the earth, Dalewinton, that it is best you - gaaaar!”

“Heavens above, The Invisible Detective,” screamed Dalewinton, The Invisible Detective's ruddy, plump, ever-reliable assistant, “What is the m-m-matter?”

“Fear not, Dalewinton, I was merely saying ‘gaaaar’ to keep you on your toes,” said The Invisible Detective.

Dalewinton mopped his brow with a large red yellow green blue and black embroidered cotton neckerchief from Peru.

For all her leaden prose, however, Chlorine Winslow was a supreme deviser of plots. In Murder In The Murk, a clerk armed with a dirk, lurking in the murk, goes berserk, murdering many. Winslow gives each of the victims a quirk. For example, the first to be slain has a tattoo of several cormorants on his torso. The second is a smarmy, brilliantined git who bathes in asses' milk and toasts his crumpets over the fire using a replica of the magic five-pronged fork of Tantarabim, part of the cutlery treasures in the Museum at-or-near Ack. The third victim is a podgy cowpoke poultry man. As we follow in the invisible footsteps of The Invisible Detective and The Invisible Detective's Assistant Dalewinton, the twists and turns and thrills pile up, page after page, just like in a well-thumbed library book you may remember reading when you were young and feckless and callow. Alas, like Dobson's pamphlets, Murder In The Murk is out of print.

Evidence That Chlorine Winslow Bore an Uncanny Resemblance to Madame Helena Blavatsky

The above photograph of Chlorine Winslow shows why she was often stopped in the street by people who mistook her for Madame Helena Blavatsky, the Theosophist.

Another World

It is appropriate that today's quotation is taken from an “esoteric” book entitled Another World, as I have received conclusive information that Hooting Yard is read by at least one being from another world. Whether that world is the Star City of Montalluyah I do not know.

I confess to being thoroughly overexcited at the fact that Hooting Yard has an extraterrestrial being as a reader, and a little glum that he, she, or it only dropped in once. If anyone knows how I might communicate with alien worlds, short of joining the Star Fellowship (see Wedd Star, 10th February 2005), please drop me a line. If I can work out how to send my thought-beams to an unknown world, that lone alien reader may return, and perhaps be joined by others.

Other Places, Other Names

While we are on the subject of other worlds (or at least other places), it is worth remembering that Dobson once wrote a pamphlet entitled Netherlands, Holland, Dutch - What's That About? The opening lines provide a summary of its subject matter:

We call China China and its people Chinese. We call Finland Finland and its people Finns. We call Germany Germany and its people Germans. I could go on, but I won't. What I want to know is, why do we have two interchangeable names - the Netherlands and Holland - for the country whose inhabitants we call Dutch? Why don't we say Netherlanders or Hollanders? What's all that about?

It's a remarkable pamphlet, chiefly because Dobson, having posed an interesting linguistic question, blathers on for over forty pages trying desperately to conceal the fact that he has done no research whatsoever. He simply makes things up and veers off at tangents. One such tangent is Dobson's brief look at what other nationalities call themselves. For example, the Chinese call China Zhongguo, the Finns call Finland Suomi, and, most enticingly, Shqiperi is where Albanians live and breathe and have their being.

There are times when I foolishly try to emulate Dobson, and I must confess that, like him, I have not bothered to research this Netherlands - Holland - Dutch business either. Perhaps a kind reader can enlighten me.

Hendiadys in Mudchute

Yesterday, in the item entitled Railway Forecast, mention was made of Mudchute, and I am reminded that for many years 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”. You then go on to list instances from the Bible, such as “a mouth and wisdom” in Luke 21:15, and “the hope and resurrection of the dead” in Acts 23:6. I do not take kindly to spending money on such drivel, and have torn your worthless book to shreds, and I would have scattered those shreds to the winds from atop a hill, were there any high hills in Mudchute, which there are not, so instead I steeped the shreds in buckets of water until they were but pulp, yes! pulp. Please correct your gruesome error in future editions, or I will ensure you become the laughing stocks of the reference book world, and you will weep with shame.

Note that Spanglebag sees no reason to advance his own belief that hendiadys has something to do with sick poultry. To him, it would have been to point out the obvious, like saying that water is wet, that the Pope is Catholic, or (as the Guardian announced yesterday), that Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice, claims never to have read a book in her life, not even a reference book destined for destruction by Caspian Sea Spanglebag.

How pertinent is the fact that this odd little man lived his whole life in Mudchute, only rarely roaming farther afield? I think it is crucial. It made him what he was, even before the construction of the Docklands Light Railway. It is as if he embodied the spirit of the place, Mudchute's mud and Mudchute's chute, the caked, black, stinking mud and the gleaming metal chute down which it slides and slithers and tumbles, into god knows what foul pit of wretchedness and doom.

Fan Fiction Fad

The fad for fan fiction shows no sign of abating. The internet is riddled with websites where adherents of, say, Harry Potter or The West Wing or Star Wars pen their own tales about existing fictional creations. That most of the sources are from films and television, rather than books, is I suppose a sign of the times, but at least these keyboard-tapping enthusiasts are writing. I was pleased to note the other day that Hooting Yard has attracted its own fan fiction. Here is a brief story I found about Dobson, written by a certain R Hanrahan:

Once upon a time there was a man called Dobson. He was a pamphleteer and all his pamphlets were out of print. At the time of which I write, Dobson lived in a shack perched on a promontory, from where he could see in the far distance a lighthouse. The incessant flashing of the lights atop the lighthouse disturbed Dobson in the night, for his bedroom was on the side of the shack facing out to sea, and he could not afford curtains. In the town down the hill there was a curtain shop, and one day after yet another virtually sleepless night, Dobson went to the shop and asked if they had any curtains for rental.

“We don't rent out our curtains,” said the proprietor of the curtain shop, curtly. Dobson was disappointed. He left the curtain shop and went across the road to the recently-opened clinic of the brain doctor.

“Excuse me,” said Dobson to the receptionist. His tone was icily calm. “Would it be possible for the brain doctor to align the electrical pulsing of my brain with the rhythm of the flashing lights of the lighthouse over yonder?”

“Yes,” said the receptionist, gaily.

So the brain doctor tweaked Dobson's brain that very afternoon.

“Because you are an out-of-print pamphleteer, you don't have to pay,” said the receptionist as Dobson left the clinic. He marched up the hill to his shack, looking forward to a good night's sleep at last. He was disconcerted, then, to discover that another shack had been erected on the promontory, slap bang next to his, and that it was already occupied by a group of pagan percussionists whose rituals demanded that they pound their drums throughout the night to ward off something or other. Dobson was downcast until he discovered that, miraculously, the rhythms of the lighthouse lights, his pulsing brain, and the drumming were identical.

He slept well that night, and every night he spent in the shack on the promontory thereafter, until the following year, when he moved to a hotel in Winnipeg.

Map Pursuant to the Item Below

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

Map Pursuant to the Item Above

Last Night's Dream

Accounts of dreams are rarely of interest to anyone other than the dreamer. We awake, sometimes, with fugitive memories of wonder and amazement and unutterable strangeness, which, when put into cold print, lose all their lustre and seem barely more intriguing than our mundane lives. So I have not deemed any of my slumberland visions worthy of inclusion here since that exciting dream related on 27th January this year under the title The Glove Of Ib.

Last night I had one of those seemingly endless, episodic dreams which flitted from one scene to another with remorseless unreason. One part stayed with me after I woke, and, despite the above, I think it may be of interest to Hooting Yard readers.

I was giving a talk in a huge auditorium to an audience of youngsters. They were gathered at one end of the hall, and I was in the middle. Immediately behind me was a sort of hardboard screen, beyond which was the “workshop” wherein my two assistants were located. One of these assistants was the late actor Roy Kinnear. He was sat at a table on which was a record turntable, and he kept playing snatches of an LP of classical music - piano and cello, I recall. I wished for silence while addressing the youths, and kept ducking back behind the screen asking Mr Kinnear to stop playing the record, but every time I returned to my lectern, the music started up again. Eventually, I grabbed a wooden chair leg and ran at Roy Kinnear, brandishing it above my head and threatening to bash his head in if he did not cease.

That's it. Then the dream went off at a tangent I forget. I haven't thought about Roy Kinnear for years. Sadly, he died in 1988, on horseback, while filming in Spain. I would like to offer him a posthumous apology, and assure his ghost that he can play snatches of cello and piano music for all eternity, without the threat of being clubbed with a chair leg.

Dietary News

Many years ago, I decided to experiment by living on a subsistence diet of gruel for a while. (I do hope my readers understand that this is a true story.) I think I was pandering to my ascetic, puritanical streak. For the duration of the exercise, I eschewed all other foodstuffs, even to the point where I was tempted neither by pap nor by slops. Around the same time I read somewhere that krill was the Food of the Future. This appealed to me hugely, but gruel seemed easier to come by than krill.

This is by way of introduction to my recent discovery of another alleged Food of the Future, in the form of poi, a thoroughly exciting dish from Hawaii. Poi is made from the taro plant, which is apparently the fourteenth most cultivated crop on earth. The root or corm of the taro is cooked for hours and hours and then pounded into a sticky goo that has the consistency of library paste, which makes it especially appealing to those of us who are bookish. One of the other great things about poi is that you can dispense with cutlery, as it is shovelled daintily into the mouth using your bare hands.

So if you are on the lookout for a sour paste to serve as your staple diet, poi seems to be the thing. Maybe after eating a delicious bowl of the goo, you may wish to engage in fire dancing, fire twirling, fire spinning, or fire swinging, for all of which you can use fire poi. If you wish to know more, I suggest that you join an online fire twirler community.

Food and fire… who ever said Hooting Yard was not a repository of essential information for a fulfilling life?

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.

Cow News

Reader Salim Fadhley was reading The Agony In The Garden (see below, 7th August) when the phrase “some cows in a field” apparently prompted his brain to ponder other cows, in other fields. “I was reminded,” he writes, “of some pictures of particularly sinister cows.” Here is one of the pictures. If you click on it, you can see some more.

Have other readers found that reading words and phrases in Hooting Yard texts sends their brains off in interesting directions, summoning up thoughts, memories, images, or mental connections? If so, we are always pleased to hear from you.

Through Clenched Teeth

Through clenched teeth, in municipal yet verdant parkland, sprawled on grass, Blodgett recited the alphabet.

“A is for vinegar,” he grunted, “B is for worms, C is for villains swinging from the gallows…”

A little voice inside Blodgett's head told him to stop. He knew he had got it wrong again. He rolled himself down the gentle incline of the grass until he came to rest. Then he sat up and picked flecks of plant-life out of his hair. The sun was shining but the park was almost deserted. He peered across the green towards the choc ice tent, and licked his lips. Would he splash out on a choc ice? Blodgett fumbled in his pockets for change, but they were empty. He wondered if there was anybody in charge of the choc ice tent. Perhaps it, too, was deserted, and the choc ices were there for the taking. It was more likely that there would be some kind of automatic choc ice dispenser, but Blodgett knew he could jimmy it open with his jimmy. He recalled that he had left his jimmy at home, in a cupboard, with his empty yohoort cartons. Blodgett always pronounced “yogurt” as “yohoort”, he was that kind of guy. He lay down again and closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and made yet another attempt at the alphabet.

“A is for spinach, B is for the wildlife of the Great Lakes, C is for Pol Pot….”

It was no use. Clambering to his feet, Blodgett ran across the green to the paddling pool. Though it was the height of summer, the pool had been drained. All the water had been collected in a sort of giant concrete bath located a few feet below ground, inaccessible to anyone who was not employed by the municipal park authorities. Had Blodgett known that several park-keepers were at that very moment enjoying frolics in the subterranean pool, he would have become angry, and had he become angry he would have tilted his head up and stared boldly at the sun, and let forth a stream of execrations, and the sun would have shrivelled up and died, such was the force of Blodgett's inhuman rage.

But Blodgett did not know about the underground paddling pool, nor of the antics taking place down there, so the sun was safe. He turned away and headed for the gate in the fence. He had decided to go to the docks, to watch the arrival and departure of gigantic container ships. It was Wednesday, and he was sure to see big boxes of bananas and bales of flax.

Some Lesser-known Editions of the Bible

Many years ago I wrote a piece with the above title, in which I invented some, er, lesser-known editions of the Bible. It was reasonably amusing, and one of these days I might reprint parts of it here. But I was young then, and had not done my research. Now I have, and I must say that some of the genuine Bibles far outshine my own paltry juvenilia.

I have been reading Isaac Disraeli's Curiosities Of Literature, one section of which is entitled “The Bible Prohibited And Improved”. Here are some extracts.

“We have had several remarkable attempts to recompose the Bible; Dr. Geddes's version is aridly literal, and often ludicrous by its vulgarity; as when he translates the Passover as the Skipover, and introduces Constables among the ancient Israelites.

“Sebastian Castillon took a very extraordinary liberty with the sacred writings. He fancied he could give the world a more classical version of the Bible, and for this purpose introduces phrases and entire sentences from profane writers into the text of holy writ. His whole style is finically quaint, overloaded with prettinesses, and all the ornaments of false taste. Of the noble simplicity of the Scripture he seems not to have had the remotest conception.”

Disraeli is particularly taken by a French priest named Pere Berruyer, who “recomposed the Bible as he would have written a fashionable novel”:

“He conceives that [Moses] is too barren in his descriptions, too concise in the events he records, nor is he careful to enrich his history by pleasing reflections and interesting conversation pieces, and hurries on the catastrophes, by which means he omits much entertaining matter.” Berruyer, on the other hand, creates “relishing morsels” which were “devoured eagerly in all the boudoirs of Paris”.

“Take a specimen of the style: Joseph combined, with a regularity of features and a brilliant complexion, an air of the noblest dignity; all which contributed to render him one of the most amiable men in Egypt. The wife of Potiphar declares her passion, and pressed him to answer her. It never entered her mind that the advances of a woman of her rank could ever be rejected. Joseph at first only replied to all her wishes by his cold embarrassments. She would not yet give him up. In vain he flies from her; she was too passionate to waste even the moments of his astonishment. In this manner the patriarchs are made to speak in the tone of the tenderest lovers; Judith is a Parisian coquette, Holofernes is rude as a German baron; and their dialogues are tedious with all the reciprocal politesse of metaphysical French lovers! This good father had caught the language of the beau monde, but with such perfect simplicity that, in employing it on sacred history, he was not aware of the ludicrous style in which he was writing.”

The thought strikes me that there may exist a Bible written from a Dobsonian perspective. I shall do some further research, and keep readers informed.

The Agony in the Garden

There was a man in my back garden and he was in agony. I am going to tell you why. This man had speared his foot with a garden fork. One of the very sharp tines of the fork had plunged through his boot and sock and foot and more sock and the sole of the boot and into the muck, forced downwards by the man's other foot, or rather by the muscular power of his leg, bent at the knee. He was wearing a pair of butcher's trousers, this man, but he was not a butcher. He was a clumsy thief, inexperienced in the use of gardening implements.

It was the middle of the night, and there was no moon, or I should say the moon was hidden by monstrous black clouds, so it was very, very dark. Nonetheless, one would have thought the thief who clambered over a fence to steal things from my back garden would have carried a torch or some other means of illuminating his criminal intent. But not only was he a clumsy thief, he was a thief who lacked foresight. Because the day was still light when he set out from the hut o' ne'er-do-wells where he lived, he seems to have assumed it would still be light when he approached the wooden fence which divides my back garden from the old muddy lane. But it was no longer light. I lived so far away from the hut that it took him hours and hours to reach my garden. His route was crooked and even convoluted, for he hugged the hedgerows and dared not stride across open fields, nor follow main roads, and nor did he risk using any of the public transport systems available, the pneumatic railways or the canal barges, for, being bent on crime, he did not wish to be seen.

He may have been clumsy and lacking in foresight, but the man in my back garden whose foot was impaled by a fork was a master of stealth, I will give him that. In all the hours he skulked across the land, in his butcher's trousers and pastry-maker's jacket and Dusty Springfield hat, he was not seen by a single other living being, except for some cows in a field, and a passing goat, and attentive birds, and countless tiny things that creep and fly and hover and buzz, but none of these can speak, unlike human beings, who, had they seen the thief, might have denounced him to the police.

For all his stealth, however, and irrespective of the cackhandedness of his fork-digging, the clumsy thief's crime would never have succeeded. He had not made rigorous plans. Had he done so, he would have learned that I am a detective, whose tenacity in tracking down malefactors is legendary. One of the things that makes me so good at my job is the fact that I never sleep. As a child, at a fairground, on a hot September day, I toppled from the top of a helter skelter and landed on my head. I have never since then visited the Land of Nod. The metal plate in my skull is barely visible, and it has been one of the incidental pleasures of my life to amass a collection of strikingly colourful eyepatches.

So it was that in the middle of the night, when all sensible people are fast asleep in their beds, I was wide awake. I can't remember what I was doing, darning an eyepatch or sharpening a pencil, perhaps, or carrying out experiments on a badger. When I heard the telltale sounds of a wrongdoer climbing over the fence from the old muddy lane, I went over to the window. My working eye is a superb mechanism, and I watched as, in pitch darkness, the thief grabbed the fork from the pile of forks, searched the lawn for the big chalk X underneath which was buried the booty of the Blister Lane bank robberies, and with his very first fork-thrust, speared his foot, and howled. I promised to tell you how there came to be a man in my back garden, a man in agony, and now I have done so, and you can't say fairer than that.

Weathering the Storm

Sometimes I think it is very important to weather a storm. Too often, it is tempting to take the easy option, and not to weather it, but rather to succumb to it. Like you, I have been battered by gales in the past, and it is not a pretty sight. Stumbling out of a tempest with a dishevelled bouffant and wet clothing, I have taken refuge in the Loopy Copse Tea Rooms, ordered a plate of boiled peas and a cup of cocoa, wrung out my dripping hat, and averted my eyes, still stinging from the cold howling winds, from the other customers, who are dry and insouciant and faintly hostile. The contrast between the elegant Tea Rooms, with a harp, viola and piccolo trio playing in the corner, and the clattering storm outside, could not be greater. Well, it could be. The Tea Rooms are not quite heaven, and the tempest is not quite hell, but you should try pointing that out to the customers. I did just that, and I bear the psychic bruises to show for it.

“There is no need to be so insouciant and faintly hostile,” I said, to the room in general, as I slumped in my chair, and then I made the comparison just mentioned. A member of the Loopy Copse Tea Room staff glided over to me, smooth and silent, almost like a spectral being.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, “But you slammed the door as you came in, there is a puddle of rainwater at your feet where you wrung out your hat, your bouffant is dishevelled and your clothing is wet. By taking refuge in here it is as if your very presence has brought the storm into the peaceable kingdom of our Tea Rooms.”

“I? The storm?”, I shouted. She leaned to whisper into my ear.

“Pause a moment and take the time to peer deeply into your soul,” she said, “And it may become clear to you that there is much truth in my words. Now I am going to fetch your dish of boiled peas.”

“And cocoa?” I asked, but she had already flitted away. I noticed now that the other customers were staring at me. There were only four of them, sat together at a table, holding hands as if in a séance. The trio struck up a new tune, one I did not recognise. I made a sort of huffing noise and pretended to examine the menu, even though I had already ordered my snack. My thoughts were jumbled and incoherent. Was I the storm personified? Was the weather simply a projection of my inner being? Did I have unknown power over the elements? Was I a god?

Suddenly the dish of boiled peas was placed before me. They were poisoned peas, or perhaps I should say enchanted peas, for after I had eaten them, piping hot, I was transported to an ethereal plane, where it seemed the universe was Loopy Copse Tea Rooms, and Loopy Copse Tea Rooms were the universe, eternal and illimitable. Somehow I knew that if I drank the cup of cocoa that was brought to me the spell, if spell it was, would be broken, so I let it grow cold. I put my hat on my head, paid my bill, and walked towards the door. Outside, the storm had died away.

“Sky overcast, light drizzle, temperature mild growing colder towards evening,” I declared, and lo! it came to pass.

A Pedant Writes

A letter from Tim Thurn.

Dear Mr Key : In the piece entitled The Bilgewater Elegies (26th July), there is a glaring narrative error. Dobson counts flags during his taxi ride from the seaport to the chalet, but a few lines later we learn that he kept his eyes shut throughout the journey. I cannot be the only reader to abhor such errors, which quite ruined the piece. Close study of writers such as Dennis Wheatley, Anthony Burgess, and Tobias Smollett will help you to avert such howlers in future. Yours ever, Tim Thurn

What Mr Thurn fails to realise is that the piece he refers to was written according to the strict rules of Dobsonian Übertexts, as outlined in the out-of-print pamphlet Some Thoughts About Shabby Taverns, Cows And The 1958 Munich Air Disaster Which Wiped Out The Flower Of Post-War English Football, Although Sir Matt Busby Survived The Crash, Praise The Lord. Read and learn, Tim, read and learn.