A Website by Frank Key
Over in his Inexplicable World, Outa_Spaceman tells us he has adopted a bee as a domestic pet. Curiously, he has not yet given it a name. I would ask all readers to head over to his postage right away and bombard him with suggestions. To assist you in choosing an apposite and beguiling bee name, here is a photograph of the little chap.
In a German forest, sunk in gloom
Surrounded by men who spell my doom
All these Fritzes, Horsts and Kurts
Explain the depth of my Weltschmerz
But then they all fall to their knees
Attacked by German killer bees
And now my spirits are surely buoyed
As I am filled with Schadenfreude
Luna Park, the Linnanmäki [in Helsinki] … is high above the city on a granite outcrop with a water-tower that looks like a stone gasometer with trees growing on top, and which is circled with lights… One side-show, to judge by the pictures outside, was a house in which people are attacked by bees.
Oswell Blakeston, Sun At Midnight (1958)
On this day, three years ago, I noted a startling insight from the Today programme on Radio Four:
There are differences in the ways serial killers and bees behave, obviously.
Thus spake serial-killer-and-bee expert Dr Nigel Rayne. Obviously.
“Some years since, observes a correspondent of the Athenaeum, a gentleman at a dinner table happened to mention that he was surprised, on the death of a relative, by his servant inquiring ‘whether his master would inform the bees of the event, or whether he should do so’. On asking the meaning of so strange a question, the servant assured him that bees ought always to be informed of a death in the family, or they would resent the neglect by deserting the hive. One of the party present took the opportunity of testing the prevalence of this strange notion, by inquiring of a cottager who had lately lost a relative, and happened to complain of the loss of her bees, ‘whether she had told them all she ought to do?’ She immediately replied, ‘Oh yes : when my aunt died I told every skep [hive] myself, and put them into mourning’.”
John Brand, Observations On The Popular Antiquities Of Great Britain: Including The Whole Of Mr. Bourne’s Antiquitates Vulgares (1777)
Here is another project to keep the tinies occupied during the summer holidays.
Get your pippy bag, and cram it full of kapok. Using a length of butcher’s string, or an old bootlace, tie the pippy bag tightly closed so that none of the kapok will fall out. Now stick innumerable pins into it, and voila! you have a splendid homemade pin cushion.
It may be that your interests do not run to needlework or embroidery, in which case you will not find much use for a pin cushion. So let me show you how easy it is to turn it into something far more exciting!
Fashion a few pipe cleaners into the basic shape of a human body – arms and legs and torso. Then poke this into your pin cushion, which serves as the head. Depending on the size of your pippy bag, the proportions will be all wrong, and it will look a bit like a three-dimensional stick person with a huge bloated hydrocephalic head, but don’t worry about that. Think of it as a voodoo dolly.
The next thing you need to do is to force your mind into believing that the dolly is genuinely imbued with the spirit of a real person, just as Francis Galton convinced himself that Mr Punch was a god. Bear in mind that the dolly has innumerable pins stuck in its head, which almost guarantees that the person you choose, whether it is David Blunkett, for example, or Gore Vidal, will shortly afterwards have their actual head attacked by a swarm of bees.
A letter arrives from Miss Kimika Ying, with important bee information:
Dear Mr. Key : I have been reading a biography of one of the early pioneers of flight (Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight by Paul Hoffman) and today I came upon a delightful passage which made me feel as though I had wandered into Hooting Yard. From page 226:
“The Wrights’ historic first flights, and subsequent ones in Ohio over the next two years, received little publicity. Indeed, the first journalist to watch them pilot the Flyer biplane in Ohio wrote up what he saw in a magazine for apiarists, Gleanings in Bee Culture, and the account did not appear until more than two years after Kitty Hawk. No other invention of monumental importance was ushered into the world so quietly.”
Miss Ying adds that in pursuing her researches, she found a link to a volume of Gleanings in Bee Culture, from which she has extracted a couple of quotations readers will no doubt find instructive:
“W. F. Clark says in Annals, ‘Happy is the bee keeper, who can get possession of an old fashioned, black lace veil.’ I think I understand him. With a veil made as follows, no gloves, and a pair of fine tweezers to draw out the little beard that sometimes breaks off in the flesh, as you take away the sting, you may work with very little fear. [some details of veil-making omitted ] N. B. – If you have any very prominent features, don’t draw the veil too closely.”
And, in response to a gentleman’s question in which he mentioned his wife’s health:
“If more of our American women were bee-keepers they would know better what health and happiness is possible for them in this world of ours.”
This is surely nothing but the truth, unalloyed. Many thanks to Kimika Ying for drawing it to our attention.
I didn’t know this. In Koba The Dread, Martin Amis tells us: “Hitler’s father (somehow very appropriately) was more and more obsessed, as he grew older, by bee-keeping.”
“Among the animals who expend industry on hygiene and the protection of their dwellings, we must place Bees in the first line. It may happen that mice, snakes, and moths may find their way into a hive. Assaulted by the swarm, and riddled with stings, they die without being able to escape. These great corpses cannot be dragged out by the Hymenoptera, and their putrefaction threatens to cause disease. To remedy this scourge the insects immediately cover them with propolis – that is to say, the paste which they manufacture from the resin of poplars, birches, and pines. The corpse thus sheltered from contact with the air does not putrefy. In other respects Bees are very careful about the cleanliness of their dwellings; they remove with care and throw outside dust, mud, and sawdust which may be found there. Bees are careful also not to defile their hives with excrement, as Kirby noted; they go aside to expel their excretions, and in winter, when prevented by extreme cold or the closing of the hive from going out for this purpose, their bodies become so swollen from retention of fæces that when at last able to go out they fall to the ground and perish.”
From The Industries Of Animals by Frédéric Houssay (1893)
Is that not inexpressibly sad?
The Islamic chaplain at Yale University says there is “great wisdom” in the idea of putting to death those who leave his religion. I suspect he may need to have his brain tampered with, or at least be given a dictionary so that he can learn the meaning of “wisdom”. Here, for example, is a proper example of great wisdom from Mick Hartley:
“In these dark days it’s somehow comforting to think that someone, somewhere, has been spending their time fitting eye-patches on bees.”
It is indeed.
I went from Wivenhoe to Cuxhaven by way of Ponders End. For the journey, I wore upon my head a hat woven from the hair of gorgeous hairy beasts, and a pair of goggles. Otherwise, I was dressed in the sort of suit you might see Edward G Robinson wearing in a film noir, with accompanying spats. It was suggested to me that I might take in Nunhead and Snodland along the way, but I had no time, I had no time.
Other than the sea crossing, for which I commandeered a skiff and its skiffer, I walked the entire route. Whenever I became exhausted, I slept upon the ground, under the bowl of night. I would like to say that I grew familiar with the stars, but I did not. Unless it was cloudy, as it often was, I could see countless stars twinkling above me, but they appeared randomly scattered, and I was never able to discern any patterns. I always woke up with strands of hay in my hair, wherever I had slept. I used my gorgeous woven hat of hair as a pillow.
Though I was walking, rather than cycling, I carried with me a bicycle pump. Often I pumped it, pointing it ahead of me, as an exercise drill, and also as a means of dispersing gangs of gnats or midges hovering in the air. Sometimes I fancied I could hear their faint insect shrieks as they were whooshed out of my path. I refreshed myself with water from duckponds.
I tried to keep a steady pace. There were times when I felt the bile rising in my throat. Whenever this happened, I stopped walking, sat on the ground, took my journal from the pocket of my film noir suit, and wrote a memorandum. Here is an example,
I am no longer in Wivenhoe. Ten minutes ago, walking along a bosky lane lined by what I think are plane trees, I pumped the pump at a cloud of midges, scattering them. Shortly afterwards, I felt the bile rising in my throat. Above me the sky is wonderfully blue and dotted with linnets, swooping. Tonight it will be dotted with stars. The stars do not swoop, they stay where they are, far away in the cold universe, so far away that the linnets can never reach them, and nor can I. But I can reach Cuxhaven, by way of Ponders End, and must do so quickly, while there is still time.
The act of writing in my journal always made the bile subside, and I was able to press on. When it was humid, my goggles steamed up. I carried on walking, as if in a mist. When I came to a stream or a rill I would take off the goggles and dip them briefly in the water, and wipe them dry on one of my film noir sleeves. Sometimes a true, engulfing mist would descend. Then I would get down on my knees, even if where I was was muddy, and take from my pocket my little wooden god, and prop it against a stone, and beseech it. Here is an example of such beseeching:
O little wooden god propped up against a stone, I beseech you to sweep away this engulfing mist and to make visible my path, so that I may walk on fearlessly towards Cuxhaven by way of Ponders End. Ooba gooba himmelfarb farbagooba!
The last four word were my incantation, designed to assuage my little wooden god and have it do my bidding. My bidding was always done, for the air would clear, sooner or later, and if the land was flat I could see for miles. One day I was able to see Ponders End far in the distance, and on another day I saw the sea, and once I was on the sea, being skiffed across it by an energetic skiffer in his skiff, I saw Cuxhaven, just in time.
I paid the skiffer to skiff me across the sea. He refused to skiff me otherwise. I had no cash, no chequebook, no debit nor credit card, not even shells or beads or trinkets, but I had honey. Along my journey from Wivenhoe to the coast by way of Ponders End, I had paused whenever I passed an apiary and snaffled honey from beehives. I collected it in pouches strung around my waist attached to a cord, hidden under my film noir suit. Some of the honey I ate to keep myself from fainting, but I was careful to keep some aside, for I did not expect to be skiffed across the sea for nothing. My offer to pay the skiffer in honey was met with great civility, even glee.
I knew that, if ever I made the return journey from Cuxhaven to Wivenhoe by way of Ponders End, perhaps able to take in Nunhead and Snodland given that I would no longer be pressed for time, I would be accosted by several irate beekeepers demanding recompense for their stolen honey. I had time enough, in Cuxhaven, to work out a way to repay them. If time passed and my head remained empty of ideas, I could prop my little wooden god against a Cuxhaven stone and beseech it for a brainwave. If all else failed, I could stay in Cuxhaven, and never go back to Wivenhoe through all the days of my life.
Yet conscience told me this was wrong. It was one thing to be holed up in Cuxhaven, quite another to be holed up in Cuxhaven tormented by guilt that good honest beekeepers had been robbed by my own honey-snaffling hands. Yes, it was true that I bore the bee-stings, but I had sucked the venom and spat it out and rubbed my hands with dock leaves. I still had dock in my pocket, should the bees of Cuxhaven have at me with their stings. I hoped they would not, for I resolved not to take their honey. In Cuxhaven, I had sausages.
Ahoy there, Frank!, writes Tim Thurn in his irritatingly over-familiar manner, I couldn’t help noticing that so far in this glorious new year you have treated us to your ruminations upon ducks, squirrels, and pelicans. This marks something of a change from your usual focus upon cows and pigs and bees, and I wonder if it signals an intention on your part to provide readers with an encyclopaedic survey of the entire animal kingdom over the coming twelvemonth. I would find this particularly useful, as, due to my education being interrupted by repeated concretions of the brain, much of my knowledge of the natural world has been gained by reading Hooting Yard. So I am well aware, for example, that pigs can be divided into two classes, real pigs and fictional pigs, and that pigs of both types can have the given name Popsy (or Popsie). I also know that goats can suffer from frequent fainting spells. However, I haven’t got a clue about, say, giraffes or bison or some of the tinier life-forms such as leafcutter ants and barely visible microscopic beings without eyes or even heads. Assuming my surmise is correct, I look forward to being well-versed in the world of beasts by January next, and all thanks to you! Yours ever, Tim.
Well, I hate to disappoint, but I fear Tim has jumped to an erroneous conclusion. The recent pieces on ducks and squirrels and pelicans were all occasioned by an abstruse formula for selecting subjects which I have been using for a couple of years now. It is theoretically possible that, within a year, the formula might throw up every single member of the animal kingdom, but that is as likely as a monkey typing out a novel by V S Naipaul.
By the way, I didn’t see a single squirrel today. Alack and alay!
The latest victim of crunchy credit conditions is Pebblehead’s Christmas Annual, due to be published tomorrow but now indefinitely postponed. The bestselling paperbackist has been issuing his annuals every Christmas Eve for as long as anybody can remember, so this is what is known, in the language of his potboilers, as a bitter blow. Indeed, one of the features of this year’s annual was to be an exciting tale of polar tragedy called “Captain Jarvis And His Starving Huskies Are Pressed Flat Against A Glacier By The Bitter Blows Of An Antarctic Blizzard”. I am sorry I am not going to be able to read that to my grandchildren as a bedtime story, nor indeed to act it out in the community hub frolicking compound, if necessary using bags of flour as a snow substitute should the weather continue balmy.
As ever, the annual was to contain dozens of stories Pebblehead dashed off this past year in between writing his tremendous novels. According to the publisher’s blurb, we were promised such gems as “Vanessa Redgrave And The Revolutionary Space Cadets”, “The Six Million Dollar Goat”, and “Ooh La La, As He Sinks Beneath The Waves, Captain Jarvis Recalls What Bliss Was It In That Dawn To Have A Mild Headache”. It is something of a mystery why Pebblehead has yet to write an entire novel about this Captain Jarvis character, who gets into all sorts of exciting scrapes in all sorts of locations, exotic and otherwise. Last year’s story, “Captain Jarvis Topples Out Of A Hot Air Balloon Piloted By Richard Branson” was particularly thrilling.
We could also have expected many pictures of bees, ducks, gaping chasms, weasels, kitchen utensils, frogpersons, eggs, Ludwig Wittgenstein, cardboard boxes, giraffe heads, and tweezers. Pebblehead has been criticised for retaining the same picture categories year after year, every single annual containing three cack-handed pencil drawings of each subject, all crammed into the endpapers, but I think this says a good deal about the man. He is reliable, he is consistent, he is a bestselling paperbackist, and he can’t draw for toffee.
This year’s factual articles were to include a potted history of potted fishpastes, an analysis of sulphurous woozy barbershop quartet demons, an annotated diagram of Christ’s wounds, and a reprint of Pebblehead’s classic pig paragraph.
Add to that the quiz and the cut-out board game and the coating of scum upon the dust jacket, and it is clear we shall all be bereft at this time of otherwise unbridled jollity.
