Wisps and Clumps

Today I am going to talk to you - at you - about wisps and clumps. Gaining an insight into wisps and clumps will not give you a complete understanding of the physical universe in all its matchless wonder, but it is a start. Indeed I can think of few subjects which prove a better introduction. Some might talk to you of toads or gazelles or coconut matting, perhaps, or of strange irrefragible lights in the maritime skies, but I stick to wisps and clumps, with occasional forays into bee world.

So, then, what is a wisp and what is a clump? We shall look at each in turn. A wisp might be made of smoke or some other fume, for there are countless fumes, gaseous and otherwise. One guaranteed way of seeing a wisp with your very own eyes is to stand next to a dying bonfire. If you go and stand there too early, while the bonfire is still blazing, perhaps with an effigy of Roman Catholic martyr Guy Fawkes engulfed in the flames, you will not be able to see any wisps, or much else, because the smoke will be billowing, making your eyes water, and if some scamp has placed any noxious substances on the bonfire, such as anything made of rubber or plastic, things will be even worse, and you may feel like choking, indeed you may even choke uncontrollably, and topple to the ground, helpless, helpless, helpless, as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were wont to sing, long ago, on the west coast of America. They say that David Crosby's moustache is to be preserved as a national monument, but I digress.

Basically, what I am saying is: keep away from the bonfire while it is at its height. You want to go and stand next to it as the last embers are dying, for it is then that you will be able to see wisps of smoke. What are their characteristics, these wisps? They are light, delicate, and fugitive. You will see a wisp rising from the glowing ashes, and it will slink upon the breeze for a few moments, and then it will be gone. All that is solid melts into air, according to Marx and Engels in The Manifesto Of The Communist Party (1848), and this is certainly true of wisps, which are hardly solid in the first place.

Some substances take longer to melt into air than others, of course, and this brings us neatly to clumps. Clumps can be made of all sorts of things, and for the moment I want you to direct your attention to clumps of earth, or soil, or mud. Such clumps are often called clods (particularly by the visionary poet William Blake, who wrote The Clod And The Pebble) but I am sticking with clumps for the purpose of this diverting talk. At least I hope it is diverting.

Now, there you were, standing next to the bonfire while it blazed, having arrived far too early for the wisps, and your eyes were streaming with tears and you were coughing and choking, helplessly, remember, and the next thing that happened was that you toppled over and fell to the ground, perhaps even rolling into a nearby ditch. Let us assume you are sprawled there, on your front, face down in the muck. At some point in the next few minutes, the effects of smoke inhalation wear off, and you open your stinging eyes. Chances are that the first thing you will see, there in the ditch, is a clump of earth. One glance at it should be enough to show you that it will take longer to melt into air than a wisp, but melt into air it shall, one day, as all solid things do.

We examined the characteristics of the wisp, so we ought to do the same with the clump, but I have to say that I am reluctant to do so. I think it is worth celebrating the ephemeral and fugitive nature of wisps, much as one admires clouds, or falls of snow, or the all too brief life of a bee. But a clump is just a clump, really, a clump or clod, fit only to be kicked or squashed underfoot, crushed beneath the mighty boots of history.

I do hope that you have gained a valuable insight into both wisps and clumps. If you wish to do any further reading, don't bother with the King James Bible (the Authorised Version) as neither wisps nor clumps are mentioned in it, strangely enough. You may find a richer trove in Dobson's pamphlet A Pamphlet About Wisps And Clumps, which I have plagiarised shamelessly in this talk. Bon soir, toodle-oo.

This Week's Stormy Petrel

A New Poem by Dennis Beerpint

The publishing world is agog, or so I'm told, at the news that legendary poet Dennis Beerpint has written a new work. O Little Earthenware Jug is a deceptively deceptive poem, a bit too long for some critics, and “too bloody short” according to the anonymous writer on the Beerpintblog. I wanted to be able to include an extract here, but permission was not granted. Instead, here is the correspondence:

Dear Agent For The Poet Dennis Beerpint : I would like to include an extract from Dennis Beerpint's new poem, O Little Earthenware Jug, on my website. Please email me the text as a matter of urgency. Regards, Frank Key

Dear Frank Key : The poet Dennis Beerpint is neurasthenic, rake-thin, and a bed-wetter. He has been off his food for days, and is subsisting on radishes and diluted tap water. Every time I try to discuss O Little Earthenware Jug with him, he bursts into tears, rends his blankets, and takes on the appearance of a frightened weasel. That Salman Rushdie person came round the other day, and Dennis threw things at him from the top of the stairs - pieces of cardboard, ping pong balls, a scrunched-up map of the local Tesco's car park, all sorts. I tried to get him to see a doctor - Dennis, that is, not Mr Rushdie - but he locked himself in his room and started bashing out ungodly songs on his Moog synthesiser. Incidentally, Dennis is one of the few people who pronounces it correctly, as Mogue, to rhyme with Kylie Minogue. In any event, at the moment it's simply out of the question for you or anybody to wrest even a single line of the poem from this troubled genius - Dennis, that is, not Mr Rushdie or Mr Moog. In any case, Mr Moog died a little while ago. Yours sincerely, Kwoon Lip Park, Agent For The Poet Dennis Beerpint

Dear Kwoon Lip Park : Couldn't you just sneak into his room while he's not looking and pinch a copy of O Little Earthenware Jug off his desk? Regards, Frank Key

Dear Frank : No I could not, for I am spineless. Kwoon

Cemetery Birds

In Tantarabim, the lopwit is known as the Cemetery Bird. By law, all graveyards in that land are situated at the seaside, so one might expect gulls or guillemots or other seabirds to be most associated with the tombstones. Yet it is the lopwit, small, tufted, brightly-coloured, that is invoked in the funeral practices of the people of Tantarabim. Why?

As so often, we can turn to the out-of-print pamphleteer Dobson to help us answer this question. It is true that, throughout his copious writings, he never addressed the subject directly. True, too, that his knowledge of ornithology was paltry and lamentable, and more often than not wholly inaccurate. With Dobson, it is a case of knowing where to look. We will not find a pamphlet called Why They Call The Lopwit The Cemetery Bird In Tantarabim, but now, with the long overdue publication of Aloysius Nestingbird's Mighty Concordance Dobsoniana, we know that the answer to the question can be pieced together from a number of sources. There is that impertinent little footnote in An Essay About Bowls, Dishes And Pots. There is a majestic, sweeping paragraph in A Pamphlet Of Majestic Sweeping Paragraphs. There is a ham-fisted pencil drawing in the appendix to Why I Smashed My Copy Of “Thick As A Brick” By Jethro Tull Into Twenty Thousand Pieces With A Geological Hammer And Then Glued It Back Together Again. And, of course, there are the famous lines hidden away in Dobson's so-called Überpamphlet, in which he writes:

“Lopwits flock to the seaside cemeteries of Tantarabim in search of spurge and sukebind. They munch these plants greedily, if one can use the word munch to describe the way they tear savagely at the foliage with their beaks and swallow each beakful whole, having no teeth, for I can now reveal that, in common with other birds, lopwits are innocent of teeth. Would that I could say the same of myself.”

Commentators have long been amused at Dobson's presumption in claiming to be the first person in history to point out that birds do not have teeth. Less remarked is the fact that he is completely wrong about the lopwits' diet. These birds - which are small, tufted, and brightly-coloured, as we have seen - eat neither spurge nor sukebind. If they did so, they would surely die of poisoning, for they do not produce the enzymes necessary to break down and digest these particular plants. You can look that up in the most basic encyclopaedia of avian digestive systems. Who knows why Dobson could not be bothered to do so?

The propellers on the aeroplanes in the airfield across the road are making a terrible racket and I am finding it difficult to concentrate. I think I will cram some cotton wool into my ears.

Dobson would often bang on about his devotion to research. It made him something of a trying companion, for it was not beyond him to regale a tavern's worth of peasants with a harangue. “Do you people realise,” he might shout, apropos of nothing, “That before writing my pamphlet entitled Notes On A Shelf Of Test Tubes Containing The Blood Of Squirrels I read fourteen different encyclopaedias from cover to cover, together with the collected works of Emily Dickinson, T Lobsang Rampa, and Harold Pinter?” Of course, in remarks such as these - which have been reported to us by Marigold Chew and others - Dobson unwittingly makes clear that his understanding of “research” is, to put it kindly, somewhat witless. If he genuinely intended to say anything meaningful about the blood of squirrels, what perverse impulse would make him think he could find any useful material in, say, the works of a grumpy bespectacled north London misanthrope? And yet this was always the way he worked, with his magpie mind, to the despair of some and the delight of others. That is why this new Concordance will prove such a boon to scholars. If you want to know what Dobson had to say about the cemetery birds of Tantarabim, there is no point looking in any of the eighty-nine pamphlets which mention birds in the title, nor in either of the two monographs on Tantarabim-related topics which Dobson wrote while holed up in that milk of magnesia warehouse in Winnipeg. Similarly, should you want to discover what the great pamphleteer had to say about obsolete punctuation marks, it may come as some surprise to find that there are at least twenty pages of pertinent remarks in the virtually forgotten early pamphlet Observations On Cows From A Great Distance, In The Rain.

Speaking of cows, it is worth mentioning here that in addition to the seaside cemeteries with their allotted lopwits, there was, in old Tantarabim, a single inland cemetery, far from the sea, known as the Graveyard of Cows. On this occasion we need not consult Dobson, for the story is well known. Cows grazed in the Graveyard of Cows, to keep down the grass, and when they died, the same cows were buried there. The mezzotintist and amateur historian of Tantarabim, Rex Tint, unearthed a mezzotint which showed the big signboard which stood at the graveyard gates, and translated the notice engraved thereon:

“Hey there, passer-by in the day or night, stop now! Rest your weary legs and know that ye stand at the gates of the Graveyard of Cows. This plot of land was given in perpetuity to cows alive and cows dead by order of the Grand Plenipotentiary Vizier of Old Tantarabim according to visions which beset him as he knelt in his hanging gardens pruning his laburnums. No laburnums must grow in the grounds of the Graveyard of Cows, nor cinquefoil, nor rhubarb, nor lupins. Nay, thou shalt find in this field only towering hollyhocks among the grass, and cows feeding upon the grass, and the cows shall feed upon the grass among the hollyhocks of these fields until such time as they perish. And each time a graveyard cow leaves this mortal world, six villagers shall come unto here and use big spades to dig for that cow a grave beneath the grass. Two villagers shall be named Ned. Two shall be blind. One shall wear the hat of Boohoocha. And one shall be a puny person. And they shall dig the grave for the cow in the night time, under a black and starless sky, and bury the cow by morning. Now move on, traveller, wherever you are bound, but remember always the cows of Tantarabim as long as you ever shall live.”

Ukrainian Postage Stamp Bees

The nights are drawing in and soon we shall all be looking for pastimes to entertain us through the long winter evenings. As ever, Hooting Yard is delighted to bring you some marvellously exciting but little-known parlour games, and we begin with the traditional Ukrainian bee-counting game.

Print out copies of the above picture sufficient for every member of the family. Everyone is given one copy of the bee stamps picture, a sheet of paper, and a pencil. In alphabetical order by name, each player takes it in turn to count the number of bees, large and small. While they are counting, everyone else must stay still and not say a word. The counting player finishes by writing their name and the number of bees they have counted on their sheet of paper, folds it in half twice, and places it in the pot, which can be an upturned hat, or a cauldron, or some similar container. Then the next player counts the bees, and so on, until there are as many pieces of folded paper in the pot as there are players. One family member is then nominated to take the papers from the pot, put them in an envelope, affix a postage stamp, and address the envelope to the local Official Bee Counting Person. Remember to write your return address on the back of the envelope. A second player is then nominated to go out into the dark night, wild with gales, and pop the envelope into the nearest post box. While they are gone, the remaining players place the bee pictures in a neat pile and tidy away the pencils. Some weeks later, the Official Bee Counting Person will send the result, giving a definitive tally of the number of bees, large and small, in the picture, and announcing which player got closest to the correct total. The winner is allowed to choose another bee picture for the next round.

Am I Obsessed by Bees?

Peter Turf writes in from somewhere called Coldbath Fields. Dear Frank, he says, over-familiarly, Is Hooting Yard becoming obsessed by bees? These little black and yellow fellows seem to be on the increase in your pages. Just asking. Keep up the good work. Peter Turf.

If there are lots of bees to be found here, I don't think it's entirely down to me. Pansy Cradledew's fixation on killer bees is well-attested, and the postbag with Mr Turf's letter also contained this missive from bee enthusiast Max Décharné (for it is he):

Dear Frank : I felt like sending you a beekeeping image, so I went looking for one and found Saint Ambrose, The Honey-tongued Doctor, seen below with a severe case of the hives. In the patron saint department, he seems to have cast his net rather wide. In addition to beekeepers, he looks after bees, candlemakers, chandlers, domestic animals, the French Commissariat, learning, Milan, schoolchildren, students, wax melters and wax refiners. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that he was also the patron saint of photocopier toner cartridges, Edwardian municipal bus timetables and superfluous headgear.

Of course, Saint Ambrose is not the only saint with a bulging portfolio. John the Baptist takes care of farriers, tailors, and motorways. Saint Nicholas has Russia, children, pawnbrokers, unmarried women, perfumiers and sailors to protect. Saint Agatha oversees bell-founders, wet nurses, breast cancer, and eruptions of Mount Etna. If you are engaged to be married, travelling, young, epileptic, have the plague or - astonishingly - a beekeeper, you should invoke Saint Valentine. I am not entirely sure how Ambrose and Valentine divvy up the beekeepers, but no doubt they have a system.

Other saints eschew multiple responsibilities and specialise. Consider Saint Timothy (stomach upsets), Saint Antony (basket-makers), Saint Apollonia (dentists), Saint Gall (birds) and Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus (desperate situations).

Hooting Yard really ought to have its own patron saint. Readers are invited to send in their nominations, in the format “I think Saint X should be the patron saint of Hooting Yard because…”, followed by a closely-reasoned argument of between ten and a thousand words.

A Thrilling Yarn

I was invited to tour the sheds, so I wore a pair of gloves.

Have you got that so far? Sheds, gloves.

The snow was thick so we were preceded by a snowplough the engine of which ran on a fuel of uncertain origin.

Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel. Make a note.

When I say that the origin or provenance of the fuel was uncertain, I mean that I did not know of it, not that it was unclear to those people who know their snowploughs and other vehicles. Of course they knew where their fuel came from. I did not need to know.

Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles. Are you beginning to see where this leads?

As soon as we got inside the first shed on the tour I removed my gloves and put them on a shelf above a gas heater. How they managed to pipe gas out here was something else I did not know. We were meant to have a picnic in this first shed but no one had remembered to bring the hamper.

Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper.

Bursting with inhuman courage I volunteered to return to the biddyhouse alone, to fetch the hamper. Various half-hearted attempts were made to dissuade me, but I waved them aside with my now ungloved hands. It has to be said that my waves were theatrical, even melodramatic, but I enjoyed the sensation. I could feel my blood pumping through my veins.

Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood. Stop me when you've cottoned on.

I left my gloves on the shelf above the gas heater and went out into the snow. Without a compass, I strode off in what proved to be completely the wrong direction. Instead of reaching the biddyhouse where I would find the hamper and heave it on to my shoulder and take it back to shed number one for the picnic, I found myself lost, and not only lost, but encircled by wolves. The wolves each had a dusting of fresh snow on their backs. I took this to mean that they had been standing around for a while, waiting for me.

Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves.

I counted seventeen snow-covered wolves. They remained perfectly still, looking at me. Nursery rhymes are a godsend in such circumstances, at least that has been my experience. I began with Ring a ring a roses and then did Little Jack Horner. Not a single wolf moved a muscle. It then dawned on me that they were all blind. Blind wolves in the snow! And me lost, and without my gloves, and ignorant of fuel sources! And further than ever from the picnic hamper! What a predicament! Or was it? You be the judge. Now listen, just once more…

Sheds, gloves, snow, fuel, snowploughs, other vehicles, shelf, gas, picnic, hamper, biddyhouse, waves, blood, compass, wolves, roses, muscles, dawn, blind.

All should now be clear, as clear as the sky was on that cold bright morning in September, forty miles north of Helsinki, the capital city of Finland, founded as long ago as 1550 as a rival to the Hanseatic city of Tallinn.

Home From the Hills

Hooting Yard is back again after a fortnight's break. During this time your editor has been engaged in exciting discussions with Hollywood moguls about a new television series. Zeigler And Locke will be a spin-off from two existing shows, featuring Toby Zeigler from The West Wing and Mr Locke from Lost. No one seemed to know what to do with the partnership. Should they be crusaders against evil, like Batman and Superman? Arch-rivals perhaps? Or just buddies on a pointless road trip?

I am not sure why I was called in as a consultant. I messed around with a few templates - Steptoe and Son, Boswell and Johnson, Cagney and Lacey - but my parting advice, before coming home from the hills, was that Zeigler and Locke would work best by having the two protagonists as argumentative ornithologists roaming the hills and fields of a distant country, never agreeing on the identification of the various birds they spot. In each hour-long episode they would come upon one bird, and the conceit would be that every single time neither of them would be correct. In my pilot episode, what Zeigler argues is a peewit, and Locke insists is a moorhen, turns out to be a grebe.

Pabstus Tack

Pabstus Tack, Pabstus Sludge, Pabstus! Pabstus! Of him we sing. We sing his praises, it seems to me, for want of anything better to do. Pabstus Tack sits on his great golden throne, belching out light, a blinding light as gorgeous as it is uncanny. And yet it is an impure light, that is certain, for with Pabstus Tack comes Pabstus Sludge. It is the latter who is the source of those scarcely perceptible low booming noises, grave and deep and sinister.

When Pabstus! Pabstus! was installed on his throne there was carnival and carousing. Fools danced around maypoles and jesting roisterers roistered and doistered as if tomorrow would never come. No one has ever been able to count the pies that were cooked that day. Many, many people drowned at the swimming gala at the Old Crumbling Outdoor Pool, and ravens were seen hovering in the sky. A post office person stuck pictures of Pabstus Tack to his hat and was chased across the fields by happily screeching children. But was there a trace of desperation in their screeching?

And tomorrow did come, of course, as everyone knew it had to. That was when the first rumbles were heard of Pabstus Sludge. To appease him, the throne was moved to a higher point on the hill, just above the coppice, where moles betrayed their presence in their usual mole-like way. A gang from the tavern headed thither armed with rifles, until Pabstus! Pabstus! made it known that moles were sacred and must never be harmed. Some say the men turned their rifles on themselves in terror.

Terror, it is said, is the only proper response to Pabstus Tack and to Pabstus Sludge. Wrapped up tight in their cardigans, hanging Tilly lamps from the rafters of their cabins, the braver villagers plot his overthrow. Turnips are chewed. Cigarillos dangle from the soot-blackened lips of the vanguard. Secret anthems, never written down, are mumbled rather than sung. Food poisoning has wiped out most of these souls since Pabstus! Pabstus! first emitted his light and his booms, seventeen years ago.

The throne has been moved again, moved and reinforced. Now it is perched on a sort of concrete veranda by the edge of a lake in which only puffy and bloated fish may swim. Larval creatures are strewn on the shore, watched over by one of Pabstus Tack's lieutenants. The air is thick, clotted, far too hot for this region. With each faint boom from Pabstus Sludge, the shoreline creatures twitch. It is never dark here, thanks to Pabstus Tack.

Between the lake and the coppice lies the village. A deranged tangle of overhead wiring stretches beyond the horizon, supported on high wooden poles which sway and creak in the constant wind. Nowadays children are no longer taught to sing “Pabstus Tack, Pabstus Sludge, Pabstus! Pabstus! made the wind / Pabstus made it because we sinned”, but they should be. It is dangerous to forget.

Horse Begone

I met her on a Monday and my heart stood still.

“Da doo ron ron, horse begone!” she cried. It was an incantation, in a field, and sure enough, the horse to whom she addressed these words turned and cantered away, until it could no longer be seen in the mist and the drizzle.

Somebody told me that her name was Jill, but before I could ask her, she was casting her spells again.

“Hoo-di hoo-di woo, cow begone!” she yelled, at a cow, but this time without the desired effect. The cow just stared back at her, chewing its cud, the way cows do.

“Hoo-di hoo-di woo, cow begone!” she repeated, a little desperately, I thought. If I'd been the cow, I would have sensed a moment of panic, of confidence drained. Jill - if Jill was her name - repeated her incantation too soon. The cow did not move.

So I took the opportunity to stride purposefully across the field in my creaking black boots until I was face to face with her.

“Somebody told me that your name is Jill,” I said, essaying a bow as if I were some sort of Regency fop.

“My name is not Jill,” she hissed, “I am the Woohoohoodiwoodadooronron Woman. Fop begone!” and I found myself propelled by some eldritch force into a weird netherworld where I languish to this day, my only companion the horse. There is no sign of the cow.

Billy Parallelogram

Hands up those of you who remember the cartoon character Billy Parallelogram. For decades in the last century he appeared weekly in The Pabulum, a comic which also featured Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet. Whereas all Magnet Boy! The Boy Magnet's adventures followed a strict, unchanging formula, you could never guess what might happen in the Billy Parallelogram strip. Sometimes he was accompanied by his cousin, Tilly Dodecahedron, or by the Massed Hordes Of Gruesome And Frightening Things From The Pit Of Foulness. Sometimes the weekly adventure might be as simplistic as Billy Parallelogram buying an accordion and learning how to play it. There were serial stories, too, spread over two or three months, where Billy Parallelogram would be shown teaching children how to cultivate wheat, or to devise spring, prong and lever mechanisms to automate household tasks, or even to compose majestic symphonies for full orchestra so emotionally charged that listeners would blub into their handkerchiefs. His cousin Tilly Dodecahedron's appearances often signalled storylines involving bees, turpentine, silhouetteists, farm implements and Dakkadakkadakka. This last was a speciality of the Billy Parallelogram strips, an ill-defined yet curiously unnerving monster goblin with bulging eyes and forehead, seemingly bent on destroying the universe but always distracted by parlour games such as snakes-and-ladders or gluttons-and-rhubarb.

My favourite Billy Parallelogram story was the one in which he single-handedly thwarts the evil designs of a mad scientist called Weems. Weems is blond and has eerily sparkling blue eyes, and is always dressed in a trenchcoat. There is an inference, never made explicit, that he is some kind of Nazi. Also never made explicit is precisely what his evil scheme is, other than that it involves the enslavement of the world's entire population. How he is meant to accomplish this from the cockpit of an antiquated sea-plane is unclear, but before we have time to consider such questions, Billy Parallelogram heroically tampers with the fuel gauge, leading Weems to think he is out of petrol. The plane crashes into a mountainside, killing Weems and his fiendish crew, but not before Billy Parallelogram bails out and lands in the courtyard of a pie shop, where he is hailed as a saviour and given free pies for life.

One of Weems' Henchmen, From the Billy Parallelogram Strip

Tadeusz Kapisko and His Ears of Wheat

In certain parts of the world, people still sit around their fires at dusk and tell each other stories. In the wretched village where Marigold Chew grew up, there was one tale in particular that was told over and over again. This was the story of Tadeusz Kapisko and his ears of wheat. It was told so often - sometimes three or four times in a single evening - that it was embedded in Marigold's brain, and years later, she could recount it word for word, barely pausing for breath. Dobson always knew when she was about to launch into the yarn, because she sucked in her cheeks and puckered her lips in what he thought of as “that Kapisko way”.

Curiously, the tale of Tadeusz Kapisko and his ears of wheat was never written down, but if Marigold Chew's memory is accurate, there was a record of sorts. She remembered, as an infant, seeing pictorial representations of the main points of the story, richly painted in crimson, cerulean blue and orpiment. Later in life, she tried to describe them.

I recall, she wrote, that the first picture was of Tadeusz Kapisko half hidden behind a cow. It was, decisively, a French cow, une vache. I remember thinking how significant this was, even as a tiny tot. The second picture was the shape of a medallion. The painter overdid the orpiment, but what I loved about this one was that it showed the exact moment of a hen's cluck. Tadeusz Kapisko is absent. I think we were meant to infer that he had already gone off to war. Certainly that is the import of the third picture, in which the Kapisko parents are shown filling rusty farmyard pails with their tears. I could almost taste the salt of their sobbing, as they waited for the wheat.

Picture four was missing, it had been torn out, you could still see the ghost shade of its adhesive. Some brute or vandal had scribbled over the fifth picture with an indelible black marker pen, and the sixth had been chewed by squirrels. So it was always a joy to look at the seventh, in which we see Tadeusz Kapisko with his ears of wheat at last, returned from the trenches minus one eye, leaning against the shed in which all the rusty farmyard pails full of his parents' tears are kept. He is smoking a cheroot and looks the spit and image of Josef Starling, though his hair has been painted in cerulean blue with flecks of orpiment which may be accidental.

The eighth picture is like a child's drawing. It shows the helicopters on the helipad, the burning cities, and the pit of doom, making the next picture all the more alluring, the delightful wash of colours showing meadows dotted with teasel, spurge, gentians, camellias, columbine, bedstraw and edelweiss, honeysuckle, lupins and phlox. And hollyhocks, hollyhocks.

“Oooh, mama! Papa!” I used to pipe, as I turned to picture number ten, “Where are Tadeusz Kapisko's ears of wheat?” And my parents would always smile conspiratorially and place their fingers over their mouths, and I adored the anticipation of seeing the eleventh and last picture, all crimson and cerulean blue and orpiment, King's yellow, the frying pan and the hunchback, the countless pigs wallowing in their muck, the detective with his buttons and the unshelled peas still snug in their pods, the glockenspiel and the fire extinguisher, the tiny glittering ships afloat on the soaking wet sea, and there, if you looked ever so closely, on the poop deck of the tiniest ship of all, triumphant in his galoshes, with his ears of wheat, Tadeusz Kapisko, brave and strong!

Forgery News

It had to happen sooner or later. I have been alerted to the fact that counterfeit Dobson pamphlets are circulating. Although they are so badly faked that they could only fool complete nitwits, police in the forgery hub nerve-centre estimate that villains are raking in millions. Below is the cover of a particularly shoddy example. Dobson did indeed write about lichens, but only once, in the ground-breaking Disquisition Upon Clotted Cream, Lichens, And Dustin Hoffman. So be on your guard, and remember - Dobson is now, and always has been, an out-of-print pamphleteer.

Give Me a Glossary

Dear Mr Key, writes Tim Thurn, I enjoy reading Hooting Yard and usually find it both instructive and enlightening. However, I must say that the piece entitled When Haddo-Haddo Becomes Musto [yesterday] left me somewhat jolt-brained. It is unlikely that you would write complete nonsense, so perhaps I am missing something. Could I prevail upon you to provide some sort of glossary to help in my appreciation and understanding? Yours perplexed, Tim Thurn

For you, Tim, anything. Here is a glossary of some of the crucial words and passages.

the times when haddo-haddo becomes musto : Usually between 4.00 and 4.30 p.m. on Wednesday afternoons, particularly when it is raining or about to rain.

the tocks : Suggestive of both toxin, a poisonous substance generated in an animal body (animals may include cows, crows, cormorants, squirrels and ducks, among many others) and tocsin, an alarm-bell. Dobson once began some notes on “the tocks of a toxin tocsin” but discarded them, and wisely so.

the greaves of way-o : Impenetrable.

an eel : The generation of eels has long been a mystery. Aristotle believed they “grew from the guts of wet soil”, that they emerged, unfertilised, from mud. We now know that all eels are spawned in the Sargasso Sea, but no one has ever seen it happen.

the cat : Note the definite article, signalling that a particular cat is being referred to. Teasingly, we are not given the name of the cat. Popular cat names include Tiddles, Marmalade, Napoleon, Bootpolish, and Gravitas, so it may be one of them.

fenland : Not Finland, fenland. Are there any fens in Finland? I don't know, but I'll find out.

a new biro : Writing implement named after László József Bíró (1899-1985), a Hungarian journalist, although his brother Georg, a chemist, played an important part in developing the ball-point mechanism. Bíró's birthday, 19th September, is celebrated as Argentine Inventors' Day in the Argentine. The Bíró brothers moved to that country in 1943.

ha'penny salt tokens : paper or cardboard tokens, worth one half penny in pre-decimal currency (worthless at today's prices, and though only thirty four years dead, seemingly as historically distant as the groat), which could be exchanged for salt. How many grains, or fistfuls, of salt you got for your ha'penny was subject to fluctuation. Some believed that the token-to-salt ratio moved in spooky parallel with planetary conjunctions, and at least one ha'penny salt token astrolabe is known to have been constructed, though by whom, when, where and why is not known, nor will it ever be known, yea, unto the umpteenth generation.

toads : probably natterjack, or golden, ah! all golden and poisonous.

Chinese Trouser Mountain

The current trade row about EU import quotas on cheap Chinese clothing is something I know little about, and understand even less. It has, however, led to frequent media use of such ringing phrases as “the Chinese trouser mountain”. During Mao's Cultural Revolution, one of the more preposterous operas of the time was Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, later used by Brian Eno as the title of one of his early records. (Brian, being Brian, enclosed the last two words in parentheses, a deft but inexplicable alteration.) Is it time for a revival of the opera, retitled Taking Trouser Mountain By Strategy? I hope so.

When Haddo-haddo Becomes Musto ; Or, the Greaves of Way-o

Pat the pouch in which you keep your watch and listen while I tell you about the times when haddo-haddo becomes musto. Pouch patted? All well and good, and the time on your watch ticking and tocking. Attend to the tocks, my mother always said, but my father was rather a tick man. He was a poster boy for the greaves of way-o, big grinning fangs and a lopsided hat, and no pal of haddo-haddo. Every Thursday he brought home an eel, already dead, and he chopped it up on the sideboard with his mighty hatchet, and then he fed it to the cat.

I was trained in botany, because I became musto. I was alert to both the ticks and the tocks, given my upbringing. I had a lot of lanterns. Remember this was fenland, flat and wet, no haddo-haddo here. They used to give me a new biro on my birthday but I always lost them soon enough. The greaves of way-o were big on biros then, I remember, especially in the fens.

I had by musto my ha'penny salt tokens. In those days my management skills were second to none. It was all like clockwork to me, but one thing I am not going to talk about is the presence of toads and my presentiments thereof.

So mark well the eel, the cat, the biros, the fens, that tick and tock, and your patted pouch, and you can bet your own ha'penny token on haddo-haddo becoming musto, all aboard the greaves of way-o, say I.

Chains and Waters

Last week I borrowed from the library Adam Nicolson's Power And Glory : Jacobean England And The Making Of The King James Bible. It's a splendid read, packed with nuggets of interest. At the moment, I'm at the point where Nicolson takes us back to the 1580s and the persecution of the Separatist puritans. (It was this lot, incidentally, who started the fad for naming their children after moral or holy qualities - Eschew-Evil, Sin-deny, Increased, Much-mercy, and, my favourite, Wrestling Brewster.) Many of the Separatists fled to Holland, but those who didn't ended up in prison. “One of them,” writes Nicolson, “the eighteen-year-old Roger Waters, was kept in irons for more than a year.”

Now this seems a savage punishment for questioning the basis of the Church of England, but it led me to think that, four hundred years later, it would have been a pretty lenient way of dealing with the poor lad's namesake. Writing Another Brick In The Wall, by itself, is probably worth at least five years in chains, and there are sundry other crimes to account for.