Exactly five years ago today, these words were posted in Hooting Yard:

“Remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. Remember, too, the case of the distressed pig, solved by Special Agent Blot. The distressed pig was found in a rowing boat crossing Tantarabim Lake. Agent Blot swam out to it and fed it with nutritious cake. As the pig grew becalmed Agent Blot took the oars and he rowed to the mud-splattered shore. He hoisted the pig right out of the boat and bedded it down in some straw. Then he plodded his way in his wellington boots to the pig farmer’s hut down the lane, and he felled the brute with a thwack of his fist and bound him up with a chain. Agent Blot dragged the pig farmer off to the prison, bang in the centre of town. And that is why, on November the fifth, the distressed pig did not drown.”

I am pleased to report that the tale so briefly told has been expanded, by bestselling paperbackist Pebblehead no less, into a thumping great airport bookstall paperback potboiler entitled Special Agent Blot And The Distressed Pig! : How A Distressed Pig Was Rescued By Special Agent Blot!

It seems Pebblehead is still managing to avoid the attentions of a copy editor. Those exclamation marks in the title are wholly uncalled-for. Obviously he is trying to drum up excitement in the casual airport bookstall browser, but surely he realises that the name “Pebblehead” alone, emblazoned in glittery glittering glitz upon the cover, is enough to cause perilous palpitations in the hardest of hearts?

Hooting Yard Rating : Sweeping & Magisterial