Every so often I get a metal tapping machine message from an overexcited television person pleading with me to devise a game show based on some aspect of Hooting Yard. These people are invariably young and stupid, and I try hard not to be a git as I refuse their offers of ruinous wealth and a peaktime viewing audience of millions.
But I must admit that I was tempted by the latest whizzkid’s “concept”, which was to turn The Names Of The Ponds into a thirteen-part series. The idea was that each week, a couple of contestants (Brian from Swanage and Carol from Jaywick) would stare at a photograph of a pond for fifteen minutes, then, after the advert break, use their skill, judgment, and cherished religious beliefs to work out which pond they’d been looking at. Stephen Fry would be on hand to help them, because he’s so clever.
It’s a quandary, but in the end I think I will have to get back to the teenage television person and say No, No, No. But that’s no reason why you, my loyal readers, should be deprived of the wholesome family entertainment such a game provides. So here is a photograph of a crow-surrounded pond, courtesy of OSM. Which of the thirteen ponds do you think it is? No prizes, I’m afraid, save for a warm glow of Hooting Yard-type bliss.
It’s not April Pond, Lib Dem PPC for the Broadland target seat is it ?
According to the Wikipedia, the collective noun most applicable to the crows you will see in OSM’s image is “murder”. I am sure that will provide an excellent and highly relevant clue to which of the ponds is shown in this image.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow
Surely the real question here is – when does a puddle end and a pond begin?
J-P-S : Get a copy of Pebblehead’s bestselling paperback Mere Tarn Cwm, which provides definitive guidance on this important question.
I have a friend who claims to own this same book – but in hardback. Am I right to be suspicious of said person? I suppose that this book of theirs is either a fake (possibly part of the burgeoning black market for Pebbleheadesque literature) or a relic from the days in which almost all books found themselves happily esconsed within solid cardboard covers (in which case, I imagine that it is rare, and thus of some value). Ignorant as to the true nature of Pebblehead’s forays in the land of the hardback, I seek guidance from anyone who knows better