Some Rare Editions of the Bible : Number One

Scholars, theologians, and indeed plain old book-lovers have long been intrigued by various anomalous editions of the Holy Bible. In this new series, Hooting Yard's own expert on such matters, Fatima Gilliblat, will be examining some of her favourites. She begins with a rare Bible from 1982:

The so-called Emperor Rosko Bible of 1982 is astonishingly rare. In fact, some people, who ought to know better, have suggested that it is a figment of my own fancy. Such accusers are hotheads unfit to lick my theological bootees, and should be discouraged from making any pronouncements upon these matters whatsoever, at least until such time as they have been forced to memorise all eighty-nine chapters of the Codex Gilliblatiana, wherein I expound my learning with verve and wit. I recommend it as suitable holiday reading, if you have a suitcase big enough to contain it. But enough of self-advertisement.

The Emperor Rosko Bible is so called because the four gospels in the New Testament were comprehensively rewritten by a quartet of clapped-out Radio One disc jockeys, including the eponymous Emperor Rosko (Matthew), Ed “Stewpot” Stewart (Mark), Dave Lee Travis, otherwise known, at least by himself and his immediate family, as “The Hairy Cornflake” (Luke), and finally Diddy David Hamilton (John). The remainder of the New Testament, and all of the Old Testament, follows the standard Douai version, except for the Book of Isaiah, which has been expunged for no apparent reason. My copy is bound in bloodstained bandages abstracted from a locker in the basement of a mysterious clinic high in the Swiss alps.

Only eight copies of the Emperor Rosko Bible were ever made, and they were given away as prizes at a Radio One Roadshow held in the North Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby. The combination of the bloodstains and the resonance of Bram Stoker's Dracula that still hangs over Whitby I find strangely appealing.

This Month's Picture of a Jesuit Priest

The Adventures of Tiny Enid

Tiny Enid knew all there was to know about the capture of ostriches. As we sat together gulping down tumblers of lukewarm tap water, she gave me some tips.

“Here are some precautions,” she said, “Avoid excessive exertion and rough handling during capture, otherwise sudden death or permanent collapse will occur as a result of muscle damage. Ostriches that go down as a result of capture stress usually die of secondary problems such as pneumonia or renal failure. It is imperative that stress factors be minimized. Capture only at low ambient temperature (around 28°C), prevent overexertion, and minimize handling of the captured birds.

“When attempting to capture ostriches in camps or in small enclosures, be very careful not to herd the ostriches into the fence. The fence can be used as a guide to steer the bird into a capture boma, but not as a net. Broken legs and lacerations are the usual outcome of a poorly planned capture operation. Ensure that iron standards and fallen trees are not in the path of the running birds.

“Once an ostrich is caught, always be aware that the powerful legs are effectively used for defence. The bird will try to disembowel or at least maim its captors. Stay away from the front of the bird unless you have control of the head with the neck held at full extension and lower than the bird's back.”

“Those are very useful hints, Tiny Enid,” I said, and I was grateful to have heard them, for who knew when I might be sent out to capture an ostrich?

“I haven't finished, Lancelot,” she said. My name is not Lancelot, but Tiny Enid had for many years had a fixation upon the actor Lance Percival, and the symptoms of her mania cropped up in unexpected ways. I made a snap decision not to contradict her, for she had been known to throw fits and dribble when confused, and I hated having to mop up anybody's dribble, let alone Tiny Enid's. “Go on,” I said.

“For mass capture of ostriches in a large camp or in the wild,” she continued, “the use of the plastic capture boma is very successful. Young ostriches up to two years of age are often found in large groups called creches: these creche units can number up to sixty birds. Due to their strong herding instinct these units can easily be manipulated and chased into a capture boma using a helicopter.

“Once the ostriches are in the boma they should be allowed to rest for at least an hour before they are loaded. Excited and hot birds tend to panic when loaded immediately into mass crates and will pile on top of each other and trample each other. The use of a shield to force the birds gently forward and up the ramp will minimize injury to the birds and the handlers. Large, aggressive males can sometimes be problematic. These should be placed on their own in separate crates.”

“That sounds like a very good idea, Tiny Enid,” I said, as she paused for a sip of her water. Across the fields, we could see wild hogs careering madly into the swamp, and the faint silhouette of a watercolourist sat at their easel, attempting to capture the scene.

“When time is not a factor,” said Tiny Enid, “a pop-up corral set up around a watering point or a small patch of lucerne with supplemental feeding is a useful method for the capture of ostriches. The birds are allowed to enter the capture corral on their own, and stress levels are kept to a minimum as no chasing of the birds occurs.”

She paused again, took a cigarillo from her pocket, and asked me if I had any matches. I fumbled for my little box, but it was damp.

“I'm afraid my matches are damp, Tiny Enid,” I said.

“If you blow on them, they will eventually become dry, Lancelot,” she advised. “While you do so, here are some final points. Never capture ostriches at high ambient temperatures. Do not handle ostriches roughly during capture. Do not chase the birds excessively during the capture procedure. Never use a net gun to capture ostriches. Never chase ostriches into a fence to capture them. Are your matches dry yet?”

“No, they are not,” I panted.

“In that case,” said Tiny Enid, replacing the cigarillo in her pocket, “I suppose I shall have to visit the newsagents.” And she sipped the last of her water, rose from her chair, kissed me lightly on the forehead, and walked away.

Years later, in a secondhand shop, I found a watercolour painting of wild hogs in a swamp done in pinks and greens and pale yellows, and I bought it, because I wondered if it was the painting made on that golden afternoon when I sat with Tiny Enid for the very last time.

My Little Blind Dolly

I have a little blind dolly. She is stuffed with straw. I have not named her yet. I have only had her for half an hour. I found her on a patch of waste ground, half an hour ago. I was out walking. I suppose I should say I was out limping, because I limp when I walk. My left leg is shorter than my right leg on account of a mysterious childhood illness. I was limping along near the canal when I passed a patch of waste ground and saw the blind dolly stuffed with straw. She had been abandoned, possibly by some ungrateful infant. Ingratitude is the besetting sin of today's infants. That is my opinion, not shared by all. Rooting around on the waste ground I noticed other things, including a pair of blue buttons. I think I can say with some confidence that they were made of bakelite. I supposed that they may have been the eyes of my little blind dolly once upon a time. But they had become detached, perhaps when she was thrown with a certain amount of violence on to the patch of waste ground from the wound-down window of a Chevrolet passing at high speed in the back seat of which an ungrateful infant was throwing a tantrum. That would fit the facts as I found them. I did think about sewing the buttons back on to my little blind dolly's cloth head, about twenty five minutes ago, but decided against doing so. She has been robbed of her sight and I do not presume to play God. I have placed both buttons in my pocket, however, in case they come in handy for another purpose, a purpose which will be revealed to me at the due time. For the moment I am concerned with selecting a name for my little blind dolly. No doubt the ungrateful infant who tossed her aside had a name for her, but in twenty thousand years I would be unable to guess what it was. It is not as if she has her name embroidered on the sole of her cloth foot. At home I have a whole shelf full of books by Tony Buzan. They are all packed with tips to make better use of my brain, but not one of them tells me how to pronounce the author's name. Is it BOO-z'n or Byoo-ZAN? Until I find out, my little blind dolly will have to have two names. She will be Susan Buzan or Suzanne Buzan. I am going to make a little black cape for her to wear, just like Tony Buzan's cape, only smaller, because she is not a living breathing mind map maker, she is just my little blind dolly. I will find a small piece of cloth for the cape, and if it is not already black, I will have to dye it, or smear it all over with black boot polish. I have got more black boot polish than I know what to do with. I often think about that song by Jethro Tull, Doctor Bogenbroom, because I bought all the boot polish from a cobbler named Mister Bogenbroom when he shut up his shop. He told me he was going to sea, but he did not say which sea he meant. It could have been the Baltic, the Red, or the Dead, or one of the other ones. I didn't ask him, because he was quite a frightening man, and in those days I did not have my little blind dolly to hide behind. But now I have, and nothing will ever frighten me again.

Potus Foliage

Plant-fanciers probably know that there is a variety of orchid named after ex-Potus Richard Milhous Nixon. Actually, it is called the “Richard Nixon” orchid, omitting that terrific middle name, which is cause for regret. Despite untold hours of searching on the internet I have been unable to find a picture of what I have no doubt is a magnificent piece of foliage, so here are some other orchids, not one of which is called “Watergate”, “H R Haldeman”, “Six Crises” or “G Gordon Liddy”, let alone “Richard Nixon”, more's the pity.

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.

When Push Comes to Shove

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!

Beware of Overexcitement!

The nights are drawing in and soon winter will be upon us. Remember the long-ago days when people made their own entertainment? Ho what fun was to be had! Here are two completely genuine items from Frederica Seeger's Entertainments For Home, Church & School (1910). Still thy beating heart!

BUTTON, BUTTON The players sit around the room in a circle. The leader then holds a button between his hands, with the palms pressed together, so as to hide it. He goes around the circle, passing his hand between those of the players. As he does this, he says: “Hold fast to what I give you.” He is careful not to let the players see into whose hands he passed the button. The circuit having been made, the leader says to the first player: “Button, button, who has the button?” The one questioned must answer, naming some one whom he thinks has it. So it continues until all have had a turn at answering the same question. Then the leader says: “Button, button, rise!” The button holder must do this.

PROGRESSIVE PUZZLES Provide as many small, square cards as there are guests; also several pairs of scissors. The party seats itself in a circle. The cards and scissors are given out. Then each player cuts his card twice across, so as to make four pieces. The straight cuts must intersect each other. After the first cut, the pieces must be held together until the second cut has been made. A player mixes his pieces and passes them to his right-hand neighbor. When the leader gives the signal, all the players put together the four pieces they have. The one who first succeeds calls out “ready.” Then all stop and pass the cards on again. The successful player is given a mark on a tally card. The game goes on until a half hour has passed. The person receiving the most marks is entitled to a prize, or may become the leader, as preferred.

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?

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?

Build Your Own Plasticine Model of Dealey Plaza

Continuing with the JFK theme, here is a craft project devised by Fatima Gilliblat:

First, get some plasticine. Before opening the package, 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 that I do not make it my business to go about declaring my own rectitude, as that would be boastful. 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 Potus, allegedly.

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 vileness, 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. If you have exhausted your tin of swarfega, plunge your hands into a basin of piping hot soapy water while contemplating the martyrdom of your favourite saint.

Place your toy Dealey Plaza in a suitable location, for example, the mantelpiece, display cabinet, or kitchen table. Next time Father O'Flaherty visits, ask him to sprinkle some holy water on it. He will be happy to oblige, I am sure.

More About Captain Cake

Captain Cake had gone to sea in a battered and leaking ship. He drank his grog from a bakelite cup. When he walked upon the orlop deck he sang in vulgar Latin, and every morning he made the sailors pray at Matins. The bo'sun had a voodoo doll pierced with many pins. But Captain Cake had a jacket made of tin, and he made the bo'sun walk the plank till he fell into the churning sea. All the sailors rollicked with glee. So Captain Cake sat in his cabin reading a book about gourds. Then they landed on an island of bloodthirsty hordes. The purser chucked the voodoo pins at the leader of these folk, who put down his sword and began to choke. Captain Cake wanted to be the island king, but they already had a god with bright and fluttery wings, and the god made the captain bow down on the sand. So if you sail the hectic seas be sure to understand that leaking ships can run aground at the drop of a hat. If only Captain Cake had realised that.

The Horrible Cave : Part Three

Part One appeared on 28 September, Part Two on 14 October

Along with Blenkinsop and De Groot, Pabstus was the man who brought rigour to the study of animals' bones back in the fifties. I wondered what he was doing wandering disconsolately around the garden of a Bewilderment Home, for that is where I assumed I had been plunked. Before I had a chance to ask him, he began to jabber questions at me about the horrible cave. After fifteen or so queries, all of which I answered as best as I could, Pabstus changed tack and asked me why I was dressed as a giant bee. For my part, let me say it had not escaped my notice that the world-famous irredentist was clad in raiment of the utmost gorgeousness.

We seemed to have struck an instant rapport, so we strolled off together towards a nearby pie shop which, Pabstus informed me, he had eaten at every single day for the last thirty years. When we entered the place, I pondered his judgment, for the floor was alive with scurrying beetles, huge black terrible things, and the air was thick with the smell of hamster. Seeing me about to swoon, Pabstus grinned, and I saw that his mouth was packed with fangs. There seemed to be too many of them to fit, but my eyes did not deceive me.

“You have an alarming number of teeth, Pabstus,” I observed.

“No more than any other member of my extended family,” he replied, tapping a bell upon the counter to summon the pie shop person. I have had a long and full life, but never before had I heard so dreadful a sound as that bell. I clapped my hands over my ears and began to weep like an oversensitive orphan child. Pabstus saw my discomfort and bared his fangs at me again. The hideous Beelzebubesque bell-pealing faded, but only once the sound had died completely did the proprietor appear. I had expected some sort of jolly figure like Mister Dough The Baker from a deck of Happy Families playing cards, but the pie shop person looked and acted more like a fop of the Regency period. He even wore gloves scented with lavender. With a rakish twinkle in his eye, he greeted us, and somehow made the words “Good afternoon, would you like to buy some pies?” sound lascivious.

“Yes we would!” shouted Pabstus at top volume, “For myself, I want to buy one of your big crinkle-pastry dumpling and endive and chicory pies, and two small mustard balls. My colleague here will have…” and he trailed off, inviting me to complete our request. Not having been to this pie shop before, I had no idea what I should choose, and there seemed to be no menu visible. But I sensed inexplicable danger, and wanted to get out of here as soon as I could.“I'll have the same,” I announced, weakly.

“That won't be possible I'm afraid,” said the pie-fop, “As you must surely know, today is Saint Eustace's Day.”

I did not have the energy to argue. Perhaps that blow on the head which found me slumped in an unfamiliar armchair and suffering from amnesia had taken more of a toll than I thought. I pointed to two celery pies on a shelf behind the counter and asked for them. The proprietor preened his locks with macassar oil, and said, “Those pies are for rental only.”

Beetles were now climbing up the legs of my borrowed bee-like boiler suit. I could stand no more of this. I turned and left the pie shop, slamming the door behind me. I decided that I would rather go hungry than allow myself to fall under Pabstus' spell. It was a decision I would learn to regret.

Assuming the limping irredentist would pursue me as soon as he had got his hands on his pies, I flung myself into a ditch and covered myself with a flag that happened to be lying about. I was surprised that the flag had been abandoned, for it looked as if it had been stitched only recently, and there was still a needle attached to a dangling piece of thread. I accidentally prodded myself with the needle, in the general area of my right collarbone, and had to stifle a yelp in case Pabstus was already on my trail.

Crouched under a flag in a ditch in the early afternoon, I turned my thoughts once more to the horrible cave, and to the crows that nested therein. It was a long, long time since I had been perturbed by birds, so long ago that I had difficulty remembering much about the days when my parents' toffee shop had been attacked by flocks of mutant sparrows and wagtails. But the malevolence of the crows I had seen near the horrible cave was unprecedented. Tippi Hedren had an easy time of it by comparison, I reflected ruefully, for I am given to rueful reflection, especially when I can feel silage seeping into my boots, as I could now. Could I risk standing up? I knew that if I maintained my crouch for much longer I would suffer from agonising cramps, and I had left my cramp medication in the breast pocket of my pyjama jacket, back at the nursing home or whatever it was. I wondered if I could flee from the ditch and make it to the building without being waylaid by Pabstus. All of a sudden that stuffy lounge with its creaking armchair, and Primrose the nurse with her mashed potatoes, even the rake-thin ghoul, seemed more attractive than this stinking ditch.

Crawling out from under the flag, I peered over the lip of the ditch to check that Pabstus was no longer in the vicinity. He was not. Perhaps he had taken his pies and was sitting on a park bench, masticating them with those fangs of his, swallowing every last crumb. I clambered up and was about to stalk off towards the mercy home when I thought the flag might come in handy, so I stooped to pick it out of the ditch. It was heavier than I thought, but eventually I had it wrapped around me. As I turned to go, I saw that now my way was blocked by thousands of cows, all of them gazing at me intently, as if I were something they might want to chew up and digest. Were they cows, or were they super-intelligent beings from a planet in a distant galaxy who looked like earth-cows? Within the next few minutes, I would learn the truth, a truth far more incredible than my puny brain could comprehend.

Thus ends Part Three, with more to come …

Don't forget to visit the new Hooting Yard Emporium!

Homage to Esther and Abi Ofarim

Here is an extract from Dobson's private journal, dated 20th November 1969:

For the past few weeks I have become increasingly fixated upon the young Israeli singing duo Esther and Abi Ofarim. Yesterday I dug out a reel-to-reel tape recording device from a jumble of abandoned equipment in the broom cupboard and made a looping tape, or tape loop, I think it's called, of the pair performing Lord Of The Reedy River. This is my favourite of their waxings, perhaps because in my dreams I like to think that I could one day be a lord or tsar or baron or potentate of a reedy river, a very reedy river, a river so choked with reeds and weeds and thin stringy green flora that the water is brackish and its surface covered in scum. One imagines the smell of this river being quite unbearable, and it being shunned even by dogs.

The song appears on last year's long player Up To Date, copies of which I think I will give out as Christmas presents this year, whether the recipients want it or not. I am toying with the idea of founding an Esther & Abi Fan Club, although I suspect one already exists. Of course, Lord Of The Reedy River is only one of their great tracks. I have become convinced that if music has a future, these personable youngsters are the key to it.

Another terrific thing about them is that so many anagrams can be made from “Esther And Abi Ofarim”, including “fat horse brain media”, “mashed airborne fiat”, “bear firm, oh Satan, die!”, “Moira's refined a bath”, “oh! train beside a farm”, “bards in fire at a home”, “for Theda Bara is mine”, “hamster foe in bad air”, and “a basin of mired earth”. I think that last one would make a great title for their next album, so if I can find out how to contact them I am going to write and suggest it.

I suppose I ought to mention that Ms Chew says their music is driving her crackers, and she has decamped to a seaside resort, even though it is November and the weather is exceedingly inclement. She has not even told me to which confounded pebbly shore she has gone, so I am quite bereft, and only the dulcet tones of Esther and Abi singing Lord Of The Reedy River, and indeed Sanie Cu Zurgálái, Purple Eyes, and Ack Värmeland, Du Sköna are keeping me from flinging myself off a parapet, as my grandfather did when he could no longer cope with his aversion to breakfast cereals, a tragic episode told in full in my pamphlet Cornflakes, Ready Brek, Special K and Suicide, which I am sad to note is now out of print.

The West Wing

I had an interesting conversation the other day, with the person sitting next to me on a bus as it crawled through east London. We talked of a number of things, as you do, and then became embroiled in a discussion about The West Wing. Our animated discussion of this topic lasted for about ten minutes, until I had to get off the bus, at which point my interlocutor and I realised we had been talking at cross-purposes. He had been talking about the television Potus-drama, whereas I had in mind Edward Gorey's book of the same name. It just goes to show that fascinating conversations can be had even if neither participant has the faintest idea what the other is babbling on about.

Keenan : The Adventure Continues

Dear Mr. Key : Your mention of the Jellyfish Players' adaptation of Brian Keenan's book, An Evil Cradling (10th November), led me to wonder whether the erstwhile hostage-turned-celtic-storyteller may be planning a sequel? If you or Ms Chew are still in touch with the scribe, you may wish to suggest the following titles to him, any of which he may feel free to use for a small fee:

A Malevolent Day Bed

A Sinister Pram

An Unholy Cot

A Malignant Basinette

A Wicked Moses Basket

Yours sincerely, patiently and hopefully, Pansy Cradledew

Practical Brain Exercises

The Blodgett Global Domination Institute has issued a new pamphlet containing a series of practical brain exercises, to encourage - it says here - “enhanced thinking patterns for all and sundry”. The pamphlet has been given the somewhat twee title Put On Your Thinking Cap!, although I doubt that will improve sales. Anyway, here are two exclusive tips for Hooting Yard readers to try out:

1. Place an envelope on a flat surface, such as a table or desktop. If you are short of furniture, the floor will do. Now, very carefully, with your fingertips, push the envelope gently across the surface.

2. Obtain a large box. If it has a lid, remove it. Stand in the box or, if it is big enough, sit or squat. After a few minutes, clamber out of the box and start to think about something.

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.

Don't forget to visit the new Hooting Yard Emporium!

Download News

Downloading music from the internet is now so popular that the music industry has established a chart of (legal) downloads alongside its usual album and single charts. What has gone unnoticed is the concurrent staggering growth in downloads of John James Audubon's magnificent Birds Of America paintings. Just as music lovers use file-sharing programmes such as Kazaa or WinMX, Audubonistas favour a dedicated piece of software called DownloadAudubonBirdsOfAmericaPictureFilesV1. 04. What is not often realised is that one can access the paintings via any old internet connection, for example by visiting A Bird's Home. To whet the appetites of any readers who have not yet become caught up in the craze, here is this week's chart of the top five downloads (last week's position in brackets).

1. Little Columbian Owl (4)

2. The Wood Pewee (2)

3. Townshend's Ptilogonys (18)

4. The Worm-Eating Swamp Warbler (9)

5. The Cow-pen-bird (1)

Some Mashed Potato

Please study this photograph very carefully. Questions will be posed next week.

Blotzmann's Syndrome

Recently we referred to an outbreak of cases of Blotzmann's Syndrome, and certain medically-minded readers have written in to seek further information about this modern scourge. (It is a modern scourge, as opposed to a perennial scourge, because the first recorded case is from a few months ago, according to the medical journals to which I subscribe, albeit that in a paper presented to the first conference devoted to Blotzmann's Syndrome - in Helsinki, in September - one Doctor Javier Illegible of Samarkand referred to a pandemic in the Land of Geese during the fifteenth century which may well have been an earlier instance of the condition, although we cannot be sure, and Doctor Illegible's documentation has been questioned by both eminent physicians and by a few cantankerous autodidacts, chief among the latter the infamous nincompoop Father Ignacio Tweakling, priest, potter, topiarist and champion of Fletcherism, the once-popular dietary technique involving much chewing, “much chewing” not to be confused with the village of that name where Father Tweakling, by uncanny coincidence, lived, and this parenthetical sentence has gone on for far too long, so it must end now, or soon, though the sooner the better for all our sakes. There.)

Blotzmann's Syndrome is named after the man who first isolated it in laboratory conditions, whose name was Blotzmann. He had never met Father Tweakling, although he had encountered the priest's sister on some kind of management training paintball exercise in woodland, to which he went on sufferance, after threats from his superior, a man whose psychometric tests showed him to be - and I quote from the hitherto confidential report - “flabby, petulant, and fixated upon cashew nuts”.

Blotzmann pelted Father Tweakling's sister with twigs and berries, for he refused to carry a paintball gun. At sunset, he sat down and swept his hands across the forest floor.

The generic term for all that stuff found on the ground in forests and woodland is “duff”.

Something Blotzmann's fingers brushed lightly against gave him a piercing insight into the syndrome which now bears his name. He dashed back to the lab, did a few experiments with a bunsen burner and some substances mentioned in the Old Testament, and wrote up his findings in a frenzy, pressing the blotting paper to his scrawl as dawn broke. Lighting a cheroot, he stepped outside, and encountered a dairy person on her way to milk cows.

“I have just isolated the agency whereby folk fall victim to a malady the nature of which has been befogged and blurry e'en to the best minds in the field of medicine,” said Blotzmann to the rosy-cheeked maiden, at five o clock in the morning. Unfortunately, her brain was so thoroughly consumed by an as-yet-unsolved cryptic crossword clue that she ignored him, and thus a love that could have conquered everything, a love of intense passion that would have been writ down the ages like that of Abelard and Heloise or of Tristan and Iseult was doomed never to spark.

Blotzmann named his syndrome. The dairymaid milked her cows. But the two were destined never to meet again, on this planet or in any other existence that might await them, two lonely stars in a boundless and incomprehensible firmament.

He Was Accidentally Strangled When the Soutane of a Nearby Jesuit Got Snagged on a Drawing Pin

How the Quotations Are Selected

A number of readers have asked me how I choose the quotations with which each Hooting Yard bulletin begins. I wish it was as simple as saying “I browse through books and find a sentence or paragraph that tickles my fancy”, for who among us does not like having their fancy tickled? In truth, the process is hideously complicated.

When I developed the initial concept for this website towards the end of last year, covering page after page of a big writing tablet with notes, diagrams, graphs, squiggles and, it must be said, the occasional savage doodle born of fractiousness, it seemed to me that mere whim was an unacceptable way of making the selection. After all, the rest of the content adheres to a system - albeit a deep system - and so should the quotations. I therefore designed an Oulipian constraint to govern my choices. Careful study of the quotations will thus reveal that there is a profound logic at work determining which words, by which author, are excerpted at any particular point on the calendar.

So abstruse is the scheme that the launch of Hooting Yard, which ought to have taken place in October 2003, was delayed until mid-December. I spent six or seven weeks devising the system, having cast aside the original writing tablet and obtained a fresh one just to work on what I code-named, like a military adventure, Operation Quote-of-the-Day For The Hooting Yard Website, or OQOTDFTHYW for short. Without wishing to lay bare the rules by which the system operates, I think it is worth pointing out that today, for example, being the tenth of November, the title of the book cited includes the word poise, and the extract itself consists of four sentences, two of which refer to an apparatus designed to deflect rainfall.

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.

The God With Paws

There is a tribe of people who dwell beyond Those Purple Hills who worship a god with paws. It has no other name, or at least not one that is ever spoken aloud by the members of the tribe, nor written down, for they do not write as we would understand the term. The god with paws apparently forbids any image to be made of it, so we have no idea what it looks like. How many paws does it have? How tall is it? Does it have just one head, or many? What living creature does it resemble, if any? We do not know the answers to any of these questions, for the tribespeople are unwilling or unable to answer them. For the same reason, it is futile to quiz them about the part played in their culture by the god with paws, for they grow mute, or - the chatterboxes among them - change the subject, or simply wander away to check their stockpiles of macadamia nuts.

There has been some conjecture that by worshipping a “god with paws”, the tribespeople imply the existence of other gods - the god with hooves, perhaps, or the god with flippers - but no hard evidence has come to light.

The god with paws inhabits a hut on the edge of the tribe's village. No one is allowed within a certain distance of it, but at sunset each day, everyone gathers in a circle around the hut and stares at it in rapt, if somewhat ill-tempered, silence. It is thought that the people are given instructions by the god with paws, communicated in some unknown extrasensory manner, but the nature of these commands, and whether or not the people take a blind bit of notice of them, is unclear.

I have knitted myself a pair of paw-like mittens and intend to impersonate the god of paws, just to see what happens. I will let you know.

A Tale of Two Locusts

Once upon a time there were two locusts. One was solitary. It liked to mope by itself and shunned the company of other locusts, even its own extended family. It was bitter, because of some perceived slight in the past

The second locust, by contrast, was gregarious. It was the life and soul of the party. You can bet that if a swarm was gathering, this locust would be in the thick of it.

Do you remember that old Rolf Harris hit, Two Little Boys? Well, what took place with these two locusts was very similar to the story told in that song. What seems so unfair is that, because they were locusts, no one ever thought to grant them such musical immortality. It's a shame.

Smooching With Istvan

Many, many women, and not a few men, have their stories of the time they smooched with Istvan. Their recollections have been anthologised in a new book, entitled Smooching With Istvan, in which they reminisce about their smooching. One of those whose memories are not included is alleged Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who is known to have smooched with Istvan in a Fort Worth, Texas nightclub early in 1963, soon after his return from the Soviet Union. His, there, refers to Oswald, not Istvan, although Istvan had himself visited the USSR (or, in Cyrillic, the CCCP) on many occasions, smooching with Olga, Natasha, Yuri, Boris and Svetlana, among others.

It has to be said that most of these tales are mundane, boring, even unreadable. From time to time, however, the diligent reader comes upon a nugget of splendour, such as this brief passage from an unnamed resident of the Land Adjunct To The Frightening Sea:

“Titlarks sang, German lieder singers gathered, petunias and hellebore were in bloom, and a new DVD of William Betty : The Young Roscius was at last available in the shops. I pootled off to the dancehall planning little more than an evening of glum pinch-mouthed misery. But Istvan was there! I smooched with him for two hours. His cravat was so, so dashing. Now as I sit in my beach hut peering intently at auks and terns through my binoculars, I think of that night, and my heart pounds with something which may well be excitement.”

Copies of Smooching With Istvan are not yet available, as they have been impounded by shadowy figures wearing tunics woven from thousands upon thousands of hairs plucked from pipistrelle bats.

Crisis in the Sedge

Occasionally, if you observe closely, it is possible to watch a crisis developing in a clump of sedge. On any given day, the crisis may involve sedge warblers* (a type of bird), but is unlikely to match the features of any of the Six Crises examined by Richard Milhous Nixon in his 1962 book of that title.

Sedge crises tend to be riverbanky by definition, so in addition to the aforementioned sedge warblers, one may also find that otters, frogs or hand-carved wooden decoy ducks are involved. In the case of frogs, it is advisable to make tape recordings of their croaks. These can then be analysed at leisure, back in the comfort of one's laboratory, attended by Mungo the disfigured factotum. It is not recommended to make recordings of any quacks which seem to have the decoy ducks as their source, as these are of course utterly fraudulent and many hours diligent lab time will be wasted as a result. If one has to pay rental for the laboratory space, this can be financially ruinous, thus compromising one's ability to resolve a sedge crisis, in some instances fatally.

Note that most common sedge crises can be dealt with quite effectively by the amateur, and the whole thing should blow over within a week. Special patrol units, dedicated to this type of work, ought to be called in if the crisis lasts longer. Telephone numbers for more than a dozen such teams can be found in the Directory of Sedge Crisis Resources, available by mail order. Unfortunately, there are some impostors who prey on the naïve and the credulous. Genuine crisis teams will always, always wear caps with ear-flaps.

As soon as possible after the sedge crisis has been dealt with, a full written report, in the international standard format, must be submitted to the authorities. This is a legal requirement, and failure to comply will result in criminal charges and deportation to a secret facility disguised as a cream cracker factory, where the malefactor will be poked at with forks and bashed on the head with a big iron utensil.

* NOTE : Even if one is dealing with a warblerless sedge crisis, it is important to learn to recognise these birds so that they can be discounted from one's considerations. Above is a picture of a sedge warbler, by clicking on which one will be able to hear what the damned thing sounds like. Hooting Yard is grateful to the always-exciting Latvian Birding website for this warbling.

Remember, Remember

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.

Tiny Bird Brains

Despite having tiny pea-sized brains, birds may be more intelligent than we thought. Avian scientists have been studying crows, which are apparently able to carry out tasks involving food and twigs which would be beyond the wit of a human infant. They can also make elementary tools, like hooks, though why a crow, with its fierce lacerating talons, would need a hook is beyond me. The cleverest crow in the study, incidentally, was called Betty, which seems an unusual name for a crow. If I had a pet crow, which I do not, I would call it something like Cecilia, or Hortense, or perhaps Clytemnestra! But Betty was a New Caledonian crow, so perhaps that is pertinent.

In trying to explain why minuscule bird brains are able to wield such unexpected mental power, the scientists suggest that they may work in entirely different ways to the brains of mammals. Apprised of this, Pansy Cradledew has suggested that I could challenge Edward De Bono and Tony Buzan as a self-styled brain expert and churn out a series of books, with titles such as Think Like A Crow, Rewire Your Brain The Cormorant Way, and Storm Petrel Thought Patterns Made Easy.

Deworming Your Goat the Hooting Yard Way

Is there anything more important in the early days of November than deworming your goat? If you are a pig-fixated person you may wish to differ, but most if not all Hooting Yard readers will want to ensure that their goats are innocent of worms in this critical month in the Capra hircus life-cycle. Here then, are some useful tips. Read them carefully, making notes on a scrap of paper as appropriate, for you will want to refer to the tips once you have ranged across the fields in your big leaking boots to the goat cubicles.

If possible, always weigh your goat before deworming it. Use any old scales you can lay your hands on, but preferably ones in which a goat will squat happily for a minute or two. When you have weighed your goat, you will be able to calculate and inject or drench the correct dosage of the dewormer. If you underdose your goat because of failure to weigh it, or because you fecklessly underestimate just how bulky or indeed unbulky it is, this may be a costly mistake. It may lead to your goat developing that most fearsome of conditions, viz. parasite resistance to dewormers! But don't rest on your laurels like a smug goat-person, because an overdose of certain proprietary dewormers can cause health problems, if not for your goat then for you and your immediate family and the neighbours up in the big black house on the hill. All sorts of hideous running sores, boils and suppurations can occur if you overdose your goat, although I am not quite sure how that happens, in a strictly scientific sense. Nevertheless, you do not want to upset those eerie lantern-jawed neighbours of yours after what happened in March, up in the hills, during a thunderstorm, with all that eldritch inhuman howling, do you?

Cuppid

Cuppid is, as you might expect, related to Cupid, although there is a lot more than that extra P to help you distinguish between them. Cuppid is composed of both toxic and non-toxic gases, and tinkles a little golden bell whenever it alights upon the hairy back of a bison, which it often does, for Cuppid's favourite haunts are the vast plains of North America. I say it because Cuppid is, if not exactly a hermaphrodite, neither male nor female, although sometimes when its gases cool and take on liquid form it can bear a fugitive resemblance to Sonja Henie (1912-1969), the legendary Norwegian figure skating champion. Such moments can be dangerous for Cuppid, for it is volatile, and seeks warmer air urgently to return to its gaseous state.

Cuppid is invoked by farmers and by those who work with timber, for it brings them luck. Conversely, wrestlers and plutocrats live in fear of a visitation by Cuppid, and tremble at its approach. You can be sure that if you see a trembling plutocrat, Cuppid is not far away.

Some say Cuppid can be trapped in an envelope or small carton and used for both good and ill. The common feature of such tales is that not one of them has ever been verified.

Toy plastic Cuppids, coated with a special varnish to ape the appearance of gas, have recently become popular as gifts for children in Dawlish, Oswestry and Uttoxeter. This geographical exclusivity is due to factors unique to Cuppid, including the risk of suffocation, impending thirst, and three or four empty metal pails lined up in a row on the site of a long ago mudslide.

Cuppid rotates.

Ugo of Plovdiv : The Motion Picture

In the past, unkind words have appeared on these pages about that giant of modern American cinema Kevin Costner. Well, we take it all back. Recently, our people sent a speculative letter to his people accompanied by a draft screenplay for a film based on the adventures of Ugo of Plovdiv (see the Unhelpful Index for dates of the various stories). This morning, we received the following email:

Dear Hooting Yard Person : I am writing on behalf of Kevin Costner, who you are aware is the single most creative genius currently working in the motion picture industry. Kevin has read your screenplay for Ugo Of Plovdiv and it is fair to say that he is bowled over. He is particularly taken with your twist on the eternal theme of a relationship triangle. Instead of the usual boy, boy, girl or girl, girl, boy, you have devised a scenario involving boy (Ugo), boy's pal (Ugo's pal Ulf), and boy's blind mother (Ugo's ma), the trio forever locked into a battle of wits by turns humorous, tragic, heart-warming, and - despite being set in the drab Bulgarian town of Plovdiv - utterly relevant to American idealism and optimism, values which Kevin embraces in such works as Waterworld, Field Of Dreams, and, of course, Tin Cup. I enclose a cheque for three dollars and a contract for you to sign, in which you cede intellectual copyright and complete creative control of the project to Kevin. Just to keep you informed, our man is so thrilled by your script that he has already signed up the two Toms, Cruise and Hanks, to play Ugo and Ugo's pal Ulf (or vice versa), and Cher as Ugo's blind ma. Yours sincerely, Illegible, pp Kevin Costner.

Two Ships and a Moose

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 (collyridæ). 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. The ship struck in the night; the wretched crew had been confessing, singing litanies, etc., and this they continued till, about two hours before break of day, the moon arose beautiful and exceeding bright; and forasmuch as till that time they had been in such darkness that they could scarcely see one another when close at hand, such was the stir among them at beholding the brightness and glory of that orb, that most part of the crew began to lift up their voices, and with tears, cries, and groans called upon Our Lady, saying they saw her in the moon.

Page after page of such verbal pap spewed from Dobson's pencil, until he was overcome by cramps, at which point he would take the accumulated papers out to a field and cast them unto the winds, in the night, under the gleam of that mighty silver orb.