You will be pleased to learn that Mr Key has returned from his sojourn on foreign shores, refreshed, revivified, and ready to shower you once again with sweeping paragraphs of majestic prose. I am not going to tell you much, if anything, about my jaunt, but I think it is worth noting that I met, on my travels, a man called Dave, from Australia who, when young, used to dye chickens different colours. It was not entirely clear to me whether he did this as a form of gainful employment, or for his own entertainment. It might even have been art. I mention this because it occurred to me that an Antipodean chicken-dyer could prove a useful recurring character in the various doings recounted here at Hooting Yard. We shall see.

Oh, one more thing. I was startled to discover that Dave was unable to name the four members of The Seekers. I have long believed – with good reason – that it is the mark of any civilised person, and certainly of any civilised Antipodean, that they can rattle off those names without even having to think, much as one might list John, Paul, George, and Ringo (not forgetting Yoko, of course), or Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. I have no doubt that every single one of my readers will be as baffled as I was by Dave’s inability in this regard. Perhaps a lethal chemical constituent of the dyes used on those chickens long ago bedizened his brainpans.

This is a test potsage [sic] to ensure that Mr Key can indeed add potsages to his website. Let us see …

There was a bloated janitor, and all his friends were dead.
Echoes of their voices bounced round inside his head.
He was terribly stressed.
And so, to blot out the echoes of the past, he fled
To Chris and Tim and Lindsay, to Dagmar, John and Fred
Who played Unrest.

(With a nod to The Plain People of England.)

Behold the Nylon Duke. He is fashioned entirely from nylon, every last bit of him, yea, even unto his cartilages. He is a nylon wonder of the world.

The Nylon Duke is pulled along, flat on his back, on a cart, by a great grey drayhorse with its bright and battering sandal, from village to village. At each stop along the way, in villages leafy or otherwise, he is hoisted upright by a system of winches and pulleys. The villagers gather and gasp and gawp at the sight of the Nylon Duke. They bring offerings of potatoes and similar root vegetables, piled high on the cart before being transferred into sacks by the Nylon Duke’s attendants. These attendants are not made of nylon.

Elsewhere, there is a Nylon Duchess, and there may be a Nylon Dauphin, and there are even rumours of a Nylon Dunce. But in this land there are not enough great grey drayhorses to pull them on carts around villages. A Dearth Of Drayhorses is an oft-reprinted tract which goes some way to explaining this situation.

Consider the Nylon Duke in the round, in all his pomp and finery and nylonosity. Would you begrudge him your potatoes? Think hard before you answer, for fig eider remprent, scou binder ad fig, as it is written, as it is engraved, as it is tattooed upon the foreheads of the attendants.

The Nylon Duke’s given name is Bob.

I have previously expressed my intolerance of phrases such as “going forward”, “robust and transparent”, and, heaven help us, “diverse ‘n’ vibrant”. Another horror I have thus far overlooked is “nailed”, as in “he’s really nailed it there”. For the avoidance of doubt, there is only one thing that can be nailed, and that is Christ to the cross. If you are a barbaric heathen and have no idea what I am talking about, see below.

Crucifixion by Horace Pippin, 1943

I received an invitation to attend a swish sophisticated cocktail party, and decided to wear for the occasion my second-best bib and tucker.

On the evening itself, with the party in full swing, I was leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece when I was approached by a fellow guest.

“You are a grown man,” she said, “Why are you wearing a bib?”

I embarked upon a lengthy explanation of the phenomenon known as involuntary slobbering, citing certain vivid examples both from my own experience and from the historical records. I prattled for quite some time, holding my interlocutor spellbound, until one of my exemplary slobbering vignettes caused her to interrupt me.

“Spiro Agnew?” she cried, so loudly that she caught the attention of guests on the far side of the room.

“Indeed so,” I said, “And I will not qualify my assertion with that weasel-word allegedly.”

At this, she executed a startled little jump, and confessed to a terrible fear of weasels. I told her they only alarmed me when they went pop! up and down the City Road. More than once, I added, such weasel-popping had caused me to slobber involuntarily. I was pleased, momentarily, to have brought the conversation back to my chosen topic, but my new companion was now fixated upon weasels, and insisted I join her in a search-and-destroy mission in case any weasels had infiltrated the cocktail party.

“With what,” I asked, “Shall we destroy any weasels we might hunt down?”

“Well,” she said, “What is that?” and she pointed to my tucker.

“That is my second-best tucker,” I said, “It goes with the bib.”

“We can use it to smother any weasels we find!” she cried, and she took me by the hand, and led me away from the drawing room towards another part of the house where, she hinted, there might be weasels.

I never did get the chance to finish my exemplary slobbering vignette featuring the thirty-ninth vice president of the United States of America. But the weasel-frightened lady gave me her telephone number, so one evening soon I will call her, and tell her the rest of that tale, and several others, until the cows come home.