The Field of the Cloth of Gold

Yes, that's what I said, the field of the cloth of gold. That is where I have just been, and it is where I want you to go. So up you get from your bed of straw, pin those crutches under your armpits, and get cracking. I have made you a packed lunch of beetroot pie, potato thirds and juice squeezed from nettles, so you will not go hungry on your journey. Wait. I want you to take this owl with you. There are far too many fieldmice scurrying around in the field of the cloth of gold, and the owl will tear them to shreds with its lacerating beak. The lucky ones will escape by running off to the adjoining field, if luck is something one can ascribe to mice. What do you think? Does Dame Fortune shine her bright lantern on such tiny beasts, or is she only concerned with that which is human? Speaking of which, you had better have a wash and spruce yourself up before you go. You look as if you haven't been out of that bed of straw for months. Just because all the bones in both your legs are fractured beyond repair is no excuse. Why do you think I shelled out ten fat coins to buy you the crutches? Why do you think I got Old Hengist to varnish them so splendidly? Take the owl to the field of the cloth of gold and come straight back. I have another job for you. The spigot is jammed, and not for nothing are you known as The Man Who Can Unjam Spigots With His Eyes Shut. Get thee hence!

Police Report

Indefatigable detectives from the incident room at the Blister Lane Bypass have issued a photofit picture of a man they think might be British fugitive Lord Lucan. Older readers will recall that Lucan - a descendant of one of the blinkered aristocratic noodleheads who sent soldiers to certain death in the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War - has been on the run for thirty years after allegedly murdering his children's nanny after mistaking her for his poor long-suffering wife.

Doughty Inspector Cargpan said: “This chap's been seen burrowing round in ditches over the last few weeks. He was spotted by a passing ironmonger who was delivering some metal hubs to the metal hub storage facility at six o clock on Tuesday morning, then again by one of the Righteous Brothers in mid-afternoon. Both these concerned citizens reported his presence to my lads down at the nick, so we unleashed the sniffer dogs and made a thorough search of the area. We haven't found him, although we did discover a nest of newborn starlings which we've taken back to the station for the desk sergeant, who is of an ornithological bent. Anyway, if you see this ne'er-do-well, let us know. I am one hundred and ten percent sure he is Lord Lucan, even if he has shaved off his 'tache at some point in the last three decades.”

Government News

With less than a week to go before the election of a new Potus in Pining & Pothorst Land (see 2nd September), the British government announced a canny little reorganisation. At a press conference to launch the new Department of Railings and Pewter, a spokesperson said: “The great thing about this new department is that, irrespective of whether the new Potus is Democrat or Republican, here in Britain we have gathered everything to do with railings and pewter under a single office. Not only will this make transatlantic railings and pewter issues much easier to manage, it also streamlines our own approach to both railings and pewter, which until now have been the responsibility of different departments often working at cross-purposes.”

The appointment of the new cabinet-level Minister for Railings and Pewter is being kept under wraps for the time being, due to insufferable pomposity and an outbreak of Blötzmann's Syndrome at Whitehall. Dashing and windswept flying doctors have been helicoptered in to cope with the chaos.

“Never let it be said that this government does not take both railings and pewter seriously,” said one MP. “Never, ever. And if such a slur is ever made, woe betide the ragamuffin who makes it, for they will be chased across Parliament Square by my horse, Little Tim, and forced to eat their words.”

The logo of the new department is shown below. Look out for it next time you are looking out for the logo of a new government department.

With Dobson in the Land of Nod

Some time ago we mentioned that Dobson compiled a gazetteer of the Land of Nod, the place to where Cain was banished after he slew his brother Abel. Dobson, of course, never travelled to the Holy Land, nor indeed to Nod. What he did, however, was to rent a field and build a scale model using firewood, netting, straw, plastic packaging, paint, plasticine and corrugated cardboard, among other things. Careful analysis of the Bible and other historical records meant that Dobson's model Nod is probably as close as we could get to appreciating the blasted land in which the first murderer lived out his miserable days. Here is a charming old goat-shed; here is a clump of cypress trees shrivelled by drought; here is a Von Danikenesque landing strip for an extraterrestrial spaceship; here are tares and bushels, asps and vipers, and a river of burning pitch.

Dobson built Nod before writing his gazetteer, which runs to eight closely-typed pages illustrated with cack-handed pencil drawings. The text has been ridiculed by Biblical scholars, who accuse Dobson of poltroonery, undue haste, credulousness and stupidity. Such criticisms were swatted aside by the out-of-print pamphleteer like so many flies, midges, ticks, or similar tiny flying pests, well-represented, incidentally, in the model Land of Nod, where Dobson had hit upon the idea of using chocolate-flavoured one hundreds and thousands, scattered hither and thither around the rented field, to show swarms of buzzing and twanging insect life. For larger forms such as locusts, he used cashew nuts, delicately carved by volunteers from the Pang Hill Orphanage, some of whom lost their eyesight carrying out such painstaking miniature work for days on end in the dank and gloomy basement of the building.

Dobson believed that receipts from visitors' fees to his model Nod would provide him with an income in his declining years. It was not to be. On a damp and overcast Tuesday in 1964, the field was laid waste by an inexplicable cataclysm, the day before Marigold Chew was due to photograph it using a borrowed camera. The Land of Nod was swept away, swept away and gone.

Tex-mex Jiffy Bag Sprites

Did you know that in the world of faeries there is a specific type of sprite which dwells within jiffy bags of Tex-Mex origin? These mischievous sprites are reluctant to leave the snug lining of their bags, except to flit from one to another when they become oh so lonesome and feel compelled to procreate. If you creep ever so silently into a postal sorting office in El Paso at dead of night, you might be lucky enough to see a flickering sprite leaping between jiffy bags. If it sees you, it will be vexed, and cast a spell on you, and for twenty-six days and nights you will be tormented by visions of potato-headed monsters spewing ectoplasm in every direction. But if the sprite does not see you, you will have good luck for a twelvemonth, possibly involving the unexpected offer of an appearance in a radio advertisement for a thrilling new detergent or bleach product. That, at any rate, is what I was told by the Weird Woman of Woohooweedywood, and she has yet to be proved wrong in any of her pronouncements or incantations, except for the one about the badger in the hedge.

Witless Fabiola

Witless Fabiola is one of the archetypes in the complex mythology of the Tundists. Of the many stories about her, perhaps the most important is the legend in which she is sent out west on a Tundist quest to find a hornets' nest but becomes distressed and sits down to rest, and while she rests she has a dream about a giant bream swimming in a stream lit by a moonbeam the colour of cream. In other tales, Witless Fabiola does deeds of derring-do, fights phantom crustacea in the tide pools of Tantarabim, wraps herself in flags, and - in an apocryphal story - turns into a zombie goddess who causes thunderstorms and blizzards and other meteorological phenomena.

Witless Fabiola is usually depicted holding a trident in her left hand and some birdseed in her right, wearing a cape spun of crocus stalks, her left foot trampling on the neck of a subjugated cormorant. Sometimes she is given a human head, with a mop of frazzled black hair not unlike, say, Robert Smith's of The Cure. In other images, inspired by the breakaway Pseudotundist sect, her head is that of a merganser duck or booby.

Tundist scholar Ernesto Hudihudimojo has compiled an anthology of legends about Witless Fabiola, none of which is longer than a couple of hundred words, and all of which peter out quite irritatingly. The reader is desperate to know more, but Dr Hudihudimojo points to the authenticity of his retellings, and argues that one of the crucial features of Tundist myth is the eschewing of “closure”.

We asked the publishers for permission to reprint some of these stories, but they just grunted at our representative and sent her packing, pursued by fractious toddlers armed with pebbles.

Bird Recognition Skills

The Hooting Yard Educational Outreach Hub announces a brand new correspondence course in Bird Recognition Skills, and not before time. As a taster, we are posting Module One on the site. Note that participants who successfully complete the entire course will be presented with an embossed certificate which gives full accreditation for entry to our upcoming courses on Advanced Bird Recognition Skills and Locust And Killer Bee Recognition Skills.

Module One : The Beak

A surefire method of deciding whether the animal you are looking at is a bird is to check whether it has a beak. If it has, then nine times out of ten it will be a bird. The beak - otherwise known as the bill - is the only device a bird has for consuming food. Birds have no teeth so they must swallow their food whole. A bird's beak can vary in size and shape depending on the nature of their diet. Some birds such as falcons have evolved to have a cutting-type beak which allows them to tear through flesh with violent and blood-crazed savagery, whereas the hummingbird has a probe-like beak which allows it to drink the nectar from certain flowers, such as primroses, buttercups and elecampine, although you would be advised to check the accuracy of those examples in a botanical dictionary such as An Alphabetical Guide To What Every Infant Should Know About The Majesty Of Nature by Dobson.

The beak is composed of an upper jaw called the maxilla, and a lower jaw called a mandible. From this the student can infer that all birds have two jaws. Remember that. Bird beaks are useful in other ways, for example woodcutters use theirs to cut wood, and parrots have sharp swivelled beaks to tear fruit, although their ripping and tearing is not quite as maniacal as those falcons mentioned earlier. Small mammals like hamsters and guinea pigs are quite safe from the average parrot, which is more likely to become ravenously ferocious in the presence of a grapefruit or a fig. Flamingos have long beaks to pull out fish from the water and ducks have flat beaks that allow them to retain all the fish and plants while draining out the water.

Generally speaking, if it hasn't got a beak, it is unlikely to be a bird. Try not to confuse a beak with a beaker, which is a drinks container like a mug or a tumbler, often but not always made of plastic, or with the Beaker People, which refers to an archaeological culture present in prehistoric Europe, defined by a pottery style - a beaker with a distinctive bell-shaped profile - that many archaeologists believe spread across the western part of the continent during the third millennium BC. If you have been paying attention you should be able to differentiate between those long-dead people and present-day birds.

In closing, remember that although they can fly, locusts do not have beaks, therefore they are not birds.

Sample questions:

1. Complete the following sentence: That carbon-based living organism over there perched on a tree branch has a beak, so it must be a) a weasel, b) a big magnetic robot, c) a bird.

2. Imagine you are living in the third millennium BC and you are holding a bell-shaped piece of pottery. Are you a) a member of the Beaker people, or b) a cassowary?

3. Look at the two pictures below. Which one is a herring gull with a very sharp beak designed to attack you?

Ugo Goes Loopy

One morning in Plovdiv, Ugo went loopy. He put on his shoes and went out to the yard and made a noise like a shrew. Thinking there was a shrew in her yard, Ugo's blind ma tooted her hooter to alert the Plovdiv Shrew Patrol. But Ugo started to sound like a goose. “Ooo,” said Ugo's ma, “What am I to do? A shrew and a goose!” Then Ugo began to moo, like a cow. “Wow!” said Ugo's pal Ulf, who came tumbling into the yard dressed up like a moose, for Ulf was loopy too. “Is that you, Ugo's pal Ulf?” asked Ugo's ma. “Woo woo woo,” said Ulf. “Ulf, there is a shrew and a goose and a cow in my yard,” said Ugo's ma. “No, Ugo's ma,” said Ulf, “It's only Ugo being loopy.” “Ah,” said Ugo's ma. She packed Ugo and Ugo's pal Ulf off to school. On a tram. In Plovdiv.

What You Should Know About the Carpenters

Karen played the drums and sang. Her brother Richard played keyboards and supplied backing vocals. Unfortunately, Karen died young. Richard is still alive, still active in music, but The Carpenters as a duo are no longer with us.

These bare facts stated, astute readers will note the remarkable similarities between The Carpenters and the homonymic The Carpenters who were so successful during the 1970s with songs such as Close To You and Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft. Neither of these songs was recorded by The Carpenters of whom we speak, for their music was somewhat different, an outré blend of salsa, bluegrass, acid jazz, bell-ringing and caterwauling, often driven by motorised electric balalaikas programmed by Karen. Richard was known to be fond of factory hooters.

Their debut album, The Carpenters Play The Music Of James Last From An Abandoned Salt Mine, included the astonishing sixteen-minute Dying Bee Music # 8, which featured guests including Blodgett, Blodgett's dentist, Blodgett's dentist's dentist, and a young, impressionable Scottish lad called Midge Ure. Sales were few, and a booking on a transatlantic cruise liner proved ill-advised. Neither Karen nor Richard could swim, and when the ship sank off the Auckland Islands they spent six weeks marooned in a dinghy, fighting. Some say Karen's health problems stemmed from this ordeal, and they well be right, but in the words of the old farmyard saying, “Never put two carpenters in the same dinghy”.

Their annus mirabilis was probably 1975. In a nine-month period, they released no less than twenty-six EPs, each of which was conceived as a “punitive retrenchment”, to use Richard's phrase. Karen scoffed at this description, incidentally, preferring to think of these matchless works as “lullabyes for locust swarms”. The most startling thing about the records is the pared-down instrumentation - Karen thumping the sole of her boot on a giant drum, Richard tentatively prodding the black keys on a plastic toy piano. Both sang, of course, or rather hummed, gargled and choked.

After Karen toppled from a radio mast in 1981, Richard approved the release of just one further recording, a set of minuets, bagatelles, and oompahs arranged for brass band and an electronically-enhanced flock of chaffinches. Karen's drumming had been recorded pneumatically in the clinic where she spent her final years, sitting slumped on a catbird seat wrapped in a gaudy and enormous poncho which engulfed her tiny, wasted body.

We attempted to interview Richard for this short article, but his people sent an email saying that he was far too peevish.

Make Your Own Crumpled Paper

Here is an exciting craft project to warm your cockles. Print out the diagram below and then follow the instructions, having read them very, very carefully at least twice.

1. Take hold of the paper in your bare hands. Remove any jewellery, rings, or other glittering festoonments. 2. First, fold along the broad green lines. Then go and have a snack. 3. Second, score the red lines with something very very sharp, but not so sharp that it will cut the paper. A cutlass or modified tuning fork may be appropriate. 4. Lie down for a while. 5. Hurriedly fold along all the thin black lines. Whistle Che gelida manina as you do so. 6. Your paper should now be thoroughly crumpled. Use it as an ornament, or donate it as a raffle prize for the local orphanage.

1. Neem greep van het document in uw naakte handen. Verwijder om het even welke juwelen, ringen, of andere het schitteren festoonments. 2. Eerst, vouwen volgens de brede groene lijnen. Dan ga en hebben een snack. 3. Ten tweede, noteer de rode lijnen met zeer zeer scherp, maar niet zo scherp iets dat het het document zal snijden. Een machete of een gewijzigde stemmende vork kan aangewezen zijn, 4. Lig neer voor een tijdje. 5. Haastig vouwen volgens alle dunne zwarte lijnen. Galidamanina van Che van het fluitje aangezien u dit doet. 6. Uw document zou nu grondig moeten worden verfrommeld. Gebruik het als ornament, of schenk het als raffle prijs voor het lokale weeshuis.

1. Stretta dell'introito della carta in vostre mani nude. Rimuova tutti i monili, gli anelli, o altri festoonments brillanti. 2. In primo luogo, popolare seguendo le linee verdi generali. Allora vada avere uno spuntino. 3. In secondo luogo, noti le linee rosse con qualcosa molto molto tagliente, ma non così tagliente che taglierà la carta. Un cutlass o un diapason modificato può essere adatto, 4. Trovisi giù per un istante. 5. In fretta pieghisi seguendo tutte le linee nere sottili. Fischi il manina di galida di Che come così. 6. La vostra carta dovrebbe ora essere sgualcita completamente. Usila come ornamento, o donila come premio del raffle per il orphanage locale.

1. Preensão da tomada do papel em suas mãos desencapadas. Remova toda a jóia, anéis, ou outros festoonments resplandecendo. 2. Primeiramente, dobra ao longo das linhas verdes largas. Vá então ter um snack. 3. Em segundo, marque as linhas vermelhas com o algo muito muito afiado, mas não assim afiado que cortará o papel. Um cutlass ou uma forquilha ajustando modificada podem ser apropriado, 4. Encontre-se para baixo por um quando. 5. Dobre hurriedly ao longo de todas as linhas pretas finas. Assobie o manina do galida de Che como você assim. 6. Seu papel deve agora completamente crumpled. Use-o como um ornament, ou doe-o como um prêmio do raffle para o orphanage local. Port-to-eng

1. Take seizure of the document in your naked hands. Remove any jewels, rings, or other shining festoonments. 2. Firstly, fold according to the broad green lines. Then go and have a snack. 3. Secondly, note the red lines with very very sharp, but not this way sharp something that it will cut the document. A machet or a modified voting fork can be designated, 4. lie for tijdje. 5. Hastily folds according to all thin black lines. Galidamanina of Che of the fluitje since you do this. 6. Your document now thoroughly must be crumpled up. Use it as a ornament, or give it as raffle price for the local orphanage.

1, Tightened dell'introito of the paper in your hands knots. It removes all the monili, the rings, or shining others festoonments. 2. In the first place popular following the lines greens it generates them. Then it goes to have one dull. 3. In the second place, you notice the red lines with something a lot much cutting, but not therefore cutting one that will cut the paper. Cutlass or a diapason modified it can be adapted, 4. It is found down for a moment. 5. In a hurry it is folded following all the thin black lines. The small hand of galida hisses of That like therefore. 6. Your paper would completely have hour sgualcita. It uses it as I ornament, or donila like prize of the raffle for the orphanage local.

1. Collection seizure of the paper in your naked hands. Take away to n'importe, which jewels, rings or d'autres festoonments of sparkling. 2. D'abord, fold along the general green lines. Then you go having smashing crust. 3. In second place the red lines with somewhat very mark very pointedly, but not also pointedly qu'elle will cut the paper. A d'abordagesaebel or a changed tuning fork can be adapted, 4. Puts down during one time. 5. Fold hasty along all thin black lines. Whistle manina of galida from Che as made you. 6. Their paper would have to be now completely crumpled. Use yourselves as ornament or give as prices for raffle for l'orphelinat locally.

Animals on Television

We try to keep abreast of the latest news in the world o' television, and have just learned that the BBC's popular countryside programme One Man And His Dog, in which shepherds and sheepdogs display their skills, is to be axed. Our sources tell us that it will be replaced in the new year by One Man And His Swarm Of Killer Bees, presented by V S Naipaul and Liza Minnelli.

The Burning Fiery Furnace

Number One in a series of Biblical Reenactments with Dr Ruth Pastry

Nebuchadnezzar made a huge golden idol, and at its dedication proclaimed that at the sound of special music everyone must worship. But Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused. Chaldean nobles informed the King of their defiance, and he angrily threatened to cast them into a furnace. “What god can save you then?” he cried. “Our God is able; but even if He does not we will not worship the image,” they replied. Then the strongest men in the army were ordered to bind them. Fully clothed, they were flung into the burning, fiery furnace, the heat of which killed the men who did so. Suddenly the King cried: “I can see four men walking in the flames unhurt. The fourth is like the Son of God.” And when they came out, untouched by fire, King Nebuchadnezzar said: “Blessed be their God!”

This reenactment will need a minimum of seven participants, one each to play the parts of Nebuchadnezzar, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and the phantom who looks like the Son of God, one to represent the Chaldean nobles, and another to be the army strong men. You will need to dig a large pit, at the bottom of which should be placed sufficient straw and kindling (such as scrunched up newspaper or small twigs) to provide a healthy blaze. Douse this in petrol to make quite sure - you do not want your audience to traipse home disappointed. As soon as the pit is ignited, the person playing the army strong men pushes the Godly trio into it, then immediately keels over with screams of agony and lies still. After the King has said his lines, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego climb out of the pit. They should wait to attend the burns unit until the King delivers his closing words, spoken with due awe.

Note that the person playing the Son of God should be hiding in the pit from the beginning of the reenactment, and must not clamber out of the pit with the others, otherwise his “visionary” status is compromised.

If you have difficulty mustering sufficient numbers, a two-person version is playable, with one as Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and the Son of God figure, and the other as the King, the nobles and the army. As you can appreciate, the logistics of this can be quite overwhelming for amateurs. And be warned that audiences find this version a little far-fetched and may boo, hiss, and throw projectiles such as tomatoes, potatoes, and the hot entrails of recently sacrificed poultry.

Decisively Important Announcement

Following a plenary session of the Hooting Yard Editorial Committee, chaired by Mrs Gubbins, who also supplied platefuls of contaminated pastry-based confections, it has been decided to rename the Hooting Yard website for an experimental period. Until further notice, this collection of prose and pictures will be known as:

and the new logo will be, not as you might think Audubon's depiction of the foolish guillemot--murre, but his equally splendid common gallinule:

This bird has the pensive, concentrated look that we hope to elicit from all our readers. Do try to remember the new name of the site, and next time you are at an ambassadorial cocktail party, works outing, or indeed just babbling loudly into your mobile phone like a nincompoop, do not say “Gosh, yes, Hooting Yard certainly makes me chuckle!” but instead “Well, heavens to Betsy, have you seen the latest in The Foolish Guillemot--Murre?” Many thanks in advance for your cooperation with this important new initiative.

Chewed Things

Dobson once spent a week making a list of all the things he chewed. From Thursday to the following Wednesday, each time he chewed something he wrote down a keyword on a fresh sheet of A4 paper. So, for example, Saturday morning's batch included suet, button, Garibaldi biscuit, pencil, pastille, tongue, bootlace, boiled sweet and cork. Armed with a large sheaf of paper, the out-of-print pamphleteer spent the following week annotating these bald words. He wrote potted histories of manufacturing processes, Proustian evocations, trivial facts, hallucinatory scribblings, and passages of pseudo-scientific conjecture. He even added some crayon drawings that can best be described as primitive. In each case he restricted himself to the single A4 sheet. The work complete, he hawked his manuscript around all the publishing firms he knew who had offices in the slums. Not one of them would take it. In despair, Dobson stowed away on an aeroplane bound for Winnipeg, where he cast his manuscript into the Assiniboine. Returning home, he wrote the pitiful pamphlet How My Annotated List Of Chewed Things Was Lost In A Muddy Canadian River, copies of which he gave as Christmas presents to his friends in 1958.

The Horrible Cave : Part Two

Part One appeared on 28 September

I arrived at the Bird Inspectors' Hut to discover that it had been engulfed by a tsunami and lay in ruins. A solitary moorhen was paddling about where the door used to be, but there was no sign of the inspectors. I fancied that perhaps this might be a talking moorhen which could apprise me where they had gone, and asked my question in a slow, clear, loud voice, as one might use in speaking to a recalcitrant infant. But of course the moorhen was incapable of speech! What was I thinking?

I felt it more important than ever to track down at least one of the bird inspectors and relay my theory that crows were nesting in the horrible cave, with alarming consequences. In my experience, most bird inspectors sport Italianate mustachios and preen them fanatically with oils and waxes, so I decided to head off on foot for the nearest village and seek out a shop selling oils, waxes, and other hair treatments.

I was in luck, for as soon as I strode purposefully into the village I saw not only such an emporium, tucked between a wholesaler of dinghies and a clapboard hovel, but a man with Italianate mustachios lurking in the doorway. He was sopping wet, making his moustache droop, but that made it all the more likely he had been caught in the tsunami.

I hailed him from a distance of some forty feet. That is the last thing I can remember. I have no idea what happened from that moment until today, three weeks later so I am told, where I found myself sitting in an armchair staring out at a dying lawn, being proffered cups of tea and mashed potatoes by an oversolicitous nurse. Her name, she told me, was Primrose. That name rang a faint bell in my memory. I associated it with something petrifying and terrible, but Primrose the nurse seemed to be neither. In fact her fawning was getting on my nerves.

I wanted to ask her where I was and how I got here, but she had already skipped off to fetch more potatoes. Deciding to follow her, I walked rather unsteadily into a corridor. It was painted a hideous shade of orange, and on the walls hung framed portraits of members of Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and Barclay James Harvest. Was this some kind of benighted prog rock haven? I should add that these were paintings rather than photographs, although perhaps the word I am looking for is daubs. My infant child could do better, if I had an infant child, but I do not. Long ago I vowed never to bring a new being into a world with a horrible cave in it, lest the mite should accidentally wander into it. I could not forgive myself if such a thing happened.

I could hear what sounded like potatoes being mashed coming from an open doorway over to my left. Entering the room, however, I did not find Primrose. Instead I was confronted by a slobbering ghoul. It spoke - or rather, groaned - at me in Latin, for it was a Vatican ghoul. Atop its gruesome head I could see the tattered remnants of a biretta, in which a number of locusts seemed to be feeding. Were they eating the ghoul's straggly locks, or its priestly hat? Or both? I was so fascinated by the locusts that I am afraid I paid little attention to the gravel-voiced Latin being spouted at me. At this point Primrose came in.

“There you are, Mr MacTavish!” she cooed sweetly, addressing the ghoul, “I've been looking all over for you. It's time for your mashed potato poultice. Come with me, there's a dear.” She took it by what I can only assume was its arm and steered it away, still groaning. I was rather disconcerted that Primrose had ignored me completely. Perhaps I was being oversensitive. I looked at my wristwatch and saw that it was just coming up to midday. Why in heaven's name was I dressed in pyjamas? I opened a cupboard and rummaged around until I found a shiny and brand new boiler suit. I changed into it and checked how I looked in a mirror, noting that its broad black and yellow hoops gave me a faint resemblance to a giant bee. It was time to leave this place, wherever it was. I pranced out onto the lawn and peered around, looking for a signpost.

I have always been fond of crocuses, and there was a clump of them nearby. In the absence of a signpost, I decided I could do worse than tarry awhile examining their flowers and leaves, and perhaps scrubbling in the soil to have a quick look at the corm. One should take one's pleasures as one can, and if I was to stride onward with a spring in my step, a few minutes' contemplation of foliage would calm my brain for the inevitable travails ahead. These were early crocuses, or Crocus tommasinianus, as no doubt the ghoul could have told me. I wondered whereabouts on his grisly frame Primrose the nurse was going to apply that poultice of hers. His head? That spindly arm? I wondered, too, how she would cope with the locusts, who would devour the mashed potato as quickly as she could apply it.

Thus lost in thoughts of potatoes, ghouls and crocuses, I failed to notice that a man had approached me, all but silently.

“Good day to you, sir,” he said, clearing accumulated phlegm from his throat as he did so, “Would I be correct in thinking you know something of the horrible cave?”

I looked up, astonished, and saw that my interlocutor was none other than the so called limping irredentist, Florenzio Pabstus.

That ends the second episode of The Horrible Cave, with more to follow soon enough.

A Snuffling Noise Is Heard…

Mr Key is currently abed wearing his thrum nightcap and suffering from a bout of influenza. He will return to work soon, with episode two of The Horrible Cave, among other things.

Spem in Alium

“Spem in alium is surely not just the greatest of all Thomas Tallis' musical achievements, but one of the great musical compositions of all time. Writing for forty independent voices, Thomas Tallis created a noble and imaginative masterpiece.” That's what one of the record companies selling a CD of the motet - chosen yesterday by Poppy Nisbet - has to say, and I don't disagree. It is quite sublime.

In these leaden days when nobody knows Latin anymore, it is useful to provide a translation of the title. I was somewhat disconcerted by this email from Tim Thurn:

“Spem in alium: alium is Latin for onion, so Spem in must mean The world is just a great big. Close listening reveals an astonishing affinity between Tallis' work and the Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell soul classic. For those who think garlic is a more accurate rendering of alium, and if we accept that spem translates as hope, then the motet is clearly an eleven minute incantation to ward off vampires. In the week of Michael Howard's Conservative Party conference, it is essential listening.”

I suggest Tim buys himself a Latin dictionary. The full title of the work is Spem in alium numquam habui, which means I have never put my hope in any other. Tallis is referring not to Michael Howard, Marvin Gaye, nor Tammi Terrell, but to Deus Israel qui irasceris et propitius eris et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis, the God of Israel who will be angry and yet become again gracious and who forgives all the sins of suffering man. Whether He, She or It will forgive Tim Thurn's sins is a moot point. I wouldn't.

Clandestine Defibrillation Unit

I work for a clandestine defibrillation unit. They call me Lars. My real name is Odo, but they call me Lars because we are clandestine. I have what some consider a grandiose hat. My parents had a hat shop, called Hats of Grandiosity, and they gave me this hat when I left home. I did not wish to be part of the hat trade, much to my parents' consternation. On my eleventh birthday, a tad precociously, I announced that I saw my future in the world of clandestine defibrillation.

“Odo,” said my parents, simultaneously, “You have our blessing.” They always spoke at the same time, using identical words and vocal inflections. It was uncanny. I grew up thinking all married couples were like that, and it came as something of a shock when I got married myself, to the delightful Zelda, and discovered that not only did we not speak alike, we did not think alike, at all. Zelda's preoccupations were putty, dreadnoughts and the Boxer Rising, subjects of very little interest to me. I did make some attempt to show an interest in putty, but my wife grew impatient with my hamfisted flapping, like a seal on an ice floe. After six months, she decamped to Tantarabim with a post office worker who wore brilliantine in his hair and shared her passion for putty.

I was distraught, of course, and considered pursuing her to plight my troth, but in the clandestine defibrillation business the devil takes the hindmost. We had just received a document imploring us to wreak our tiptop skills in an abandoned birdcage factory on the banks of the old dried-up river in Pointy Town. My supervisor, who not only looked like but had the very same name as Tuesday Weld, said to me, “Lars, I know your wife has run off with a brilliantined putty enthusiast, but this job is decisively important. If we crack it, we will be hailed throughout the world of clandestine defibrillation units. The grandiosity of our reputation will match that of your hat.”

I could not argue with that. Indeed, I could never argue with Tuesday Weld. So off we went in our jeep, terrifying small domestic animals as we sped screeching along the narrow and dangerous roads to Pointy Town. The citizenry had put out flags to welcome us, even though they knew we were clandestine. Tuesday Weld was furious, more furious than I had ever seen her. Not even when her pencil sharpener was mislaid by a Tasmanian duck doctor was she so furious.

“Remove those flags!” she cried, jumping from the jeep. The rest of us skulked into the birdcage factory and defibrillated it, clandestinely. Then Tuesday Weld took us to the Pointy Town bistro and bought us cake. I chose a chocolate swiss roll.

Ugo Turns Blue

It was Saint Hector's Day in the old town of Plovdiv. Ugo's hood got snagged on a tack and he turned blue, or, as Carl Sagan used to say, blooow. “Oooo” said Ugo's pal Ulf, “Ugo, you look all blue.” “Ack” said Ugo. “I'll go and fetch your blind ma, Ugo, to see what she can do,” said Ulf, though he could have pulled Ugo's hood off the tack on which it was snagged. But Ulf had been sniffing glue. Ulf found Ugo's ma sitting on a stool. “Ugo's ma,” said Ulf, “Ugo has turned blue. His hood is snagged on a tack.” Ugo's ma was chewing a chew, but she jumped off her stool and ran to Ugo, who was indeed very blue. Ugo's ma spat out her chew, and it landed in a pot of glue. It was the glue Ugo's pal Ulf had been sniffing. Ugo's ma unsnagged Ugo's hood from the tack. “Ack” said Ugo. “Ooo, Ugo's ma, I knew you would know what to do,” said Ulf. Ugo's ma clouted Ulf on the head with a spoon, and confiscated his glue. Ugo went off to find his shoes. It was time for mass. At Saint Hector's Cathedral. On the Left Bank. In Plovdiv.

Dobson's Declaration

We think of Dobson primarily as a pamphleteer, albeit an out-of-print one. His occasional forays into public speaking, lecturing, and, it has to be said, jabbering like a man who has lost his marbles, are thus often overlooked. A new paper by Aloysius Nestingbird* attempts to set this right. I say “attempts” because in my view Nestingbird has been spectacularly unsuccessful. Reading his verbose twaddle gave me a splitting headache after the first couple of paragraphs, and I went to have a lie down in a darkened room. As I lay on my pallet, I took pleasure in recalling my great enmity for Nestingbird. Verily, I thought to myself, staring at patches of badly-applied paint on the ceiling, he is a detestable old fool who would be better off inspecting the bed of a slimy pond than writing articles about Dobson. The fact that I am even older than Nestingbird is irrelevant.

As soon as various sensory globules in my cranium had stopped pulsating, I returned to my desk and ploughed on through the article. Unlike its author, I am conscientious, and I had promised to review it for this website, for my usual fee of a tin of plum tomatoes and a new cravat with which I can cut a dash.

Nestingbird focuses his attention on Dobson's famous Declaration, which the pamphleteer delivered on a sopping wet Tuesday in March in the year of Nicholas Ray's film Bigger Than Life, in which James Mason memorably goes bonkers on cortisone and announces “God was wrong!” in one of Hollywood's finest moments. I wish I could say that the film and Dobson's Declaration had some definite connection. The trouble is that the only record of what he said that day, standing next to a gleaming puddle in the bailiwick of Thrombosis Magna, is the text Marigold Chew inscribed on the back of a toffee apple wrapper the next day. As you can see in the reproduction below, even magnified as it is, her writing is far too tiny to be read by the average human eye, or mine at any rate.

This is doubly frustrating, as we have to take the wretched Nestingbird's word on trust - pah! - when he asserts that the entire Declaration was nothing more than a garbled account of Dobson dropping his bus pass down a crevasse and obtaining a replacement from a kiosk infested with bats.

Now I am going to go and lie down again, to await my tomatoes and cravat.

*NOTE :How I Spent Four Profitable Hours Listening To A Rant By Dobson, published in The Bulletin Of Dobson Studies, Vol XIV No 9

The Sound of Music

Long ago, almost seven months ago in fact, we published a playlist of favourite pieces of music selected by Pansy Cradledew (see 23rd March). It seems like a good idea to repeat the exercise. Here, then, are ten pieces chosen by reader Poppy Nisbet:

1. The windows of the world - Dionne Warwick

2. There is only one lie, there is only one truth - Cornelius Cardew

3. Fitter Stoke has a bath - Hatfield & The North

4. Charlie Rutlage - Charles Ives

5. Sure as sin - Candi Staton

6. Spem in alium - Thomas Tallis

7. St Valentine's Day 1978 - Kate & Anna McGarrigle

8. Combing my hair in a brand new style - Jim White

9. The clothiers' song - The Dufay Collective

10. Get off my cloud - The Rolling Stones

Barnyard Bulletin

Today it is of decisive importance that I tell you about Blodgettesque farming methods. The techniques pioneered by Blodgett in his heyday are breathtaking. Consider, for example, the uses to which a Blodgettian farmer will put hay. There are many, many diagrams in the manual which show bales of hay being commandeered for all sorts of inventive purposes, all over the farmyard, in all six seasons of the year. That's right, six seasons. One of Blodgett's most telling innovations was his calendrical recalibration, if I am using the word correctly. Out go winter, spring, summer and autumn, or fall, as they say in Pining & Pothorst Land; in come tally, spate, the time of mighty remonstrations, tack, hub and bolismus. So, come hub come the haywain, as the saying goes, with his big fat boots stuffed with straw… I mean hay.

We ought not get diverted from this important essay by wandering down the byways of Blodgettian countryside parlance, but I cannot resist sharing with you the rhyme that goes Don't forget to shut the gate / On the forty-third of spate, the meaning of which is obvious, as you would realise had you seen, as I have, an implacable army of albino hens marching off into the sunset because little Vercingetorix the barnyard hobbledehoy was too busy chewing on a sheaf of fronds to remember to close the gate behind him. As it happened, the fronds were poisonous, and the miscreant was subject to convulsive fits for the next three weeks, bless him.

As with hay, so with mulch. Blodgettesque mulch is a thing of beauty, even if it does stink. Have you ever seen asparagus grown in Blodgett's mulch? You would remember if you had, for it is to common everyday asparagus as a big shiny supersonic 26th century space rocket is to a shred of plankton. Preparation of mulch takes place mostly in bolismus, when the winds howl and thunderclaps shatter the eardrums of toiling farm workers, hardy folk with almost inhuman musculature as a result of regular doses of Blodgett's serum, the recipe for which appears in an appendix to the manual.

To begin farming the Blodgett way, all you will need is a hoe, a shapeless hat, iron determination, and your own field, preferably one with a pond in it, and ducks in the pond, mergansers or teal, some of them real, some of them wood-carved decoy ducks, and some of them just vaporous spectres of your own imagining.

Whimsical Conjecture

Yesterday's note about ubercapitalist writer and “thinker” Ayn Rand having penned a work entitled Why I Like Stamp Collecting led me to wonder whether any other authors of portentous tomes have written similar paeans to their hobbies. As I cannot stir myself to do the necessary research, conjecture will have to do.

Tricky Dicky or the Belle of Amherst?

Here at Hooting Yard we are always seeking new ways to help our readers achieve self-actualisation in the profoundest sense. To this end we commissioned Professor Zoltan Shuddery to devise a quiz based on his theory that all known human personality types can be shoehorned into two basic eidolons*. Each of us, argues Shuddery, is either a Richard Milhous Nixon or an Emily Dickinson. Try the quiz and see which one you are!

*NOTE :Eidolon, from the Greek, means a spectre or phantom, which suggests that the Professor knows not of what he speaks. But it can also mean an idealised image, the sense in which it was sometimes used in the early 19th century, so perhaps that is what he is driving at.

1. Do you like to spend long hours gazing wistfully out of an upstairs window in Amherst?

2. Given the chance, would you bomb Cambodia?

3. Look very, very carefully at the two randomly-generated photographs below. Assuming you were invited to share a picnic with one of these people, would it be person A or person B?

When you have completed the quiz, send your answers for analysis to Professor Zoltan Shuddery at the usual address, marked Who Am I? He will send you a report of no less than fourteen closely-typed pages, individually tailored to give you a deep and lasting insight into your personality, indeed into your very essence.

More About Ah-Fang

We learned on Thursday that Mrs Gubbins' second husband, Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp, died in the Hindenburg Disaster (see 30th September). The brief paragraphs from her autobiography-in-progress which we reproduced scarcely do justice to Ah-Fang, however, for he was an endlessly fascinating man, with a brain the size of an airship, such as that in which he perished. In his memoir The Ah-Fang I Knew, F X Duggleby wrote as follows:

“Ah-Fang harboured certain ideas about phosphorescence, parallelograms, and the life cycle of the funnelweb spider which challenge the Weltanschauung, or at least my Weltanschauung. He often likened his curiosity about the world to a raven regurgitating food for its young, although it is difficult to grasp quite what he meant by this analogy. Much given to solitude, he would lie for hours in a tin bath, paring his fingernails insouciantly and humming what he called the ‘true music of the spheres’. At other times, such as cocktail parties, he would start up an unearthly keening, pressing a medicine ball to his chest. Fluent in Flemish and Finnish, he was surprisingly inarticulate in such exciting languages as Wendisch, or Sorbian, Sea Dayak, Pedi, Pangwa, Petit Mauresque and Micmac. His widow Bathsheba once calculated that he devised over four hundred distinct recipes for cold soup, despite an abnormality of the taste buds which had afflicted him since a childhood accident in a meadow, on a Wednesday, with a blowtorch, in a frenzy.”

Duggleby appears to be mistaken regarding Ah-Fang's cocktail party behaviour, for the man who so nearly became Pope, Giordano Sforza, left a vivid account of a bash one night on the outskirts of the Vatican in 1923.

“Ah-Fang, brilliantined and slobbering, entered the room. I could see that his airship-sized brain was pulsating more terrifically than it usually did. I could see this because, like Ray Milland, I was The Man With X-Ray Eyes. I have always said that my special gift cost me the Papacy, but this is not the time to bemoan my slow decline into beggardom, penury and insignificance. No, in those days I struck a fine figure as the confidante of such men as Ah-Fang. His presence filled the room, despite all those glittering chandeliers and the expensive furniture. He spoke but briefly, in an aside, to some foreign ambassador of preening contemptibility, and I was unable to hear exactly what he said. He spent most of the evening leaning against a harp, steadily devouring pies and enchanting a number of floozies with the enigmatically mute braggadocio of his flim-flam.”

Ah-Fang's greatest legacy may well be the dredging of the canal at Gaarg on the eve of the Batcake-Akido Conference, a full account of which can be found in Dobson's pamphlet The Dredging Of The Canal At Gaarg On The Eve Of The Batcake-Akido Conference (out of print).

Preposterous Authors

It is always a pleasure to turn readers' attention to preposterous authors. Our antipodean correspondent Glyn Webster sent in this charming note about Ayn Rand, the Jeanette Winterson of her day:

“I must show you this postage stamp (above). The Art Deco style makes Ayn Rand look like Robot Maria from Metropolis enlarged to a godlike size, but that's not what caught my attention. Look at the lit windows on the buildings in the foreground - they look like a pattern of holes on a Hollerith punch card and I'm sure that is what they represent. I've been trying to decode the message in the lights from various orientations, offsets and encoding tables but without success. Maybe another of your readers would like to take up the puzzle? ”*

Whether or not any readers wish to take up Mr Webster's challenge, I recommend a visit to Ayn Rand The Stamp Collector, a rather unnerving website which tells us that the author of Atlas Shrugged once wrote a piece entitled Why I Like Stamp Collecting. I am not entirely sure why that makes me laugh like an idiot, but it does.

* NOTE : Glyn Webster adds: “I'm quite sincere about the puzzle. I know that an illustrator for a British political magazine or newspaper once did the same thing with rows of Braille dots in many of his illustrations. Sadly, his messages were all obscene insults aimed at the people he was drawing, he had no wit. I read a newspaper article about this on the internet a while ago, but now I just can't find it.” If anyone knows to whom Glyn refers, please let me know.

Making Hats Out of Wood

The craft of making wooden hats is the subject of a children's activity weekend to be held at Bodger's Spinney next month. We are predicting excessively foul weather, so make sure your tiny tots are wrapped up warm. They will also need to wear special boots because of the violent magnetic activity which has been throbbing in the spinney since Mister Poxhaven overturned a jar of his experimental substance. The Hooting Yard Emergency Response Squadron managed to seal off part of the area, but they used plywood for their impromptu fence and during the night it tends to get gnawed by voles. This intelligence has been reported by the Pang Hill Vole Watching Club, who camp out by the spinney night after night, peering through binoculars and scribbling notes on sheets of A2 paper which they pin up each morning on that board outside the post office. We should be thankful to every last man jack of them. At the Festival of Bears and Pomposity in December they will be given a special prize, made out of tin, in recognition of their efforts. Tickets for the children's activity weekend are available from that weird dilapidated kiosk over by the pond. Bring your own planks.

Scraggy Bird Neck Bulletin

Examining the photograph of a helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil) that appeared on these pages on 27th September, reader Sam Byrne was struck by the fact that its neck looks like half a human face - and a singularly unpleasant one at that. Sam extrapolated from the scraggy bird's neck the portrait below, which he has sent in with the hope that someone may recognise this visionary figure. Sam's claim that he was in a hypnagogic trance and communing with the spirit world while creating the picture is probably nonsense. I have asked him to provide a sample of ectoplasm, but he has not yet complied, despite a barrage of threatening letters and a visit from one of the Hooting Yard Tsar's evil henchmen.

The Good Bee

Do bees make moral choices? Do they know the difference between good and evil? Answering these questions was the life's work of Captain Federico Gull, pirate-turned-apiarist, the man who swapped a life being roguish and dastardly on the high seas for one spent limping around on his wooden leg among hundreds of beehives in a field.

Captain Gull had been possibly the most feared buccaneer on the Spanish Main, or what was left of it. He was so fierce that he would eat a mouthful of carpet tacks for breakfast, washed down with the blood of various animals penned in the cargo holds, which he slaughtered with his sharp and shiny scimitar. Unlike the general run of pirates, however, he rarely cackled. Indeed he was not given to laughter, hideous or otherwise. Underneath the terrifying exterior, he was a thoughtful fellow, whose pleasures were found not in fighting and carousing but in resting on his bunk with a good book, such as the Rule of St Benedict, in his cabin strewn with the blossom of fragrant shrubs. Only when there was a rustle in the piles of blossom, and his Lovecraftian shoggoth reared its terrible head and prodded him to bloodlust, did Captain Gull become violent. Sometimes he wondered what had become of the rest of his crew, for there was not a soul else on board his ship.

It was in mulling over the inconsistencies of his own behaviour that Captain Gull began to think about the ideal of the Good Bee. As luck would have it, one winter's day a huge storm engulfed the ship and it was run aground on a remote island, but not before the shoggoth had been hurled overboard by the mighty tempest. Alone at last, Captain Gull clumped ashore, drenched and disconcerted, and camped overnight in a field. Next morning, exploring his new home, he discovered that the island was riddled with swarms of bees. The rest, children, is history.

Source : The Bee As Moral Exemplar & Other Insect-Related Parables For Young & Old Alike, Innit by Dobson