Archive for the 'Bobnit Tivol' Category

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A Bit Of A Kerfuffle Down By The Bins Outside The Barn

Published by Frank Key on Tuesday, 9 October, 2007 in Bobnit Tivol and Prose. 2 Comments

This is a story about a bit of a kerfuffle down by the bins outside the barn, and one man’s search for the truth…

Last week there was a bit of a kerfuffle down by the bins outside the barn. This was very shocking. Those of us who keep an eye on such things are used to the seemingly endless series of kerfuffles taking place at the bins by the docks, but for the bins outside the barn to be targeted by agencies of kerfuffledom was a frightening development. I had more reason than most to be concerned. I knew that my reaction to the kerfuffle would be watched very closely, that judgements would be made upon me, and that if I did not acquit myself well, I may as well give up any hopes I had of wallowing like a voluptuary in the hot embrace of the Bins Board.

Thus it was that as soon as I heard about this unexpected kerfuffle, I grabbed a rag and buffed my badge, and I pinned the buffed badge to my cap, and I placed the cap firmly upon my head, and I held my head erect in a manner that gave me an air of true grit, and I clamped my pipe between my teeth, jutted my jaw, and did a set of Blötzmann Exercises, my favourite ones, from the Second Handbook, before jumping into my jalopy and barrelling along the lanes at tremendous speed, parping my horn to scatter the various infants and small domestic animals in my path. Truly it could be said on that October morning, with its sense of collapse, that Urgency was my middle name, rather than Lembit, which was the middle name my parents, God rest their souls, gave me, weeks before my birth, before they knew whether I would be a boy or a girl. I was only too aware, you see, that the Bins Board was due to meet in the ceremonial chamber of the Big Jagged Castle that very evening, and that I would be held to account.

Just past Sawdust Bridge I swerved off into the fields, cranking the gears to no apparent purpose, watched by a clump of disconsolate cows. If cows could talk, they might be able to tell me something about the kerfuffle. There are lands where cows are intelligent and voluble, so I am told, but this was not one of them. The first time I heard about such cows I was frankly incredulous, even though I was at my mother’s knee, and I had no reason to distrust that saintly woman. Later, as I accepted that she told me only that which was true, I was stricken with a sense of menace. I did not know what talking cows talked about, but I was – and remain – convinced that such knowledge would shatter my brain and leave me gibbering and twitching. Best not even to think about it. To be on the safe side, I waved a “hail fellow, well met” greeting at the nearest cow in the clump, and sped onwards. Within minutes, I was pulling up at the edge of the compound wherein the barn stood, numinous, like a monolith.

Here, I must make a confession. You are probably sitting there thinking how fab I am, my selfless devotion to the doings of the Bins Board evidence of a remarkable sense of civic responsibility. Even now you may be planning to pin up a big poster of me in the vicinity of your infant’s cot, or its playpen, the better to inculcate its tiny cranium with my example of how to lead a valuable life in this land of wordless cows. The grammar of that last sentence may be askew, but forgive me. Put it down to an attack of the vapours. For you must put the drawing pins back in the drawer and never think of holding me up as an exemplar of anything but petty ambition. You see, it is within the gift of the Bins Board to award the tenancy of a building next to the barn, and thus within the compound, and for as long as I can remember I have been besotted by the idea of living in a compound, like the Kennedys with their famous Kennedy Compound at Hyannis Port or Kennebunkport, or wherever the hell it is. The building next to the barn had been vacant for months, ever since the last tenant, Old Man Widdecombe, had been convicted of the Toffee Apple Wrapper Slayings and banged up for the rest of his sordid life in a prison hulk off O’Houlihan’s Wharf. I knew the Bins Board was struggling to agree on who was worthy to take on the tenancy, just as I knew that this might be my last chance to live in a compound. That is why I buffed my badge with such vigour, and why I held my head at so decisive an angle. In truth, the prospect of winning that award was the motivation for everything I did, in all my waking hours.

Gorgeous lanterns hung on the perimeter fence of the compound, all filigree and glitter and stripes, adding much-needed glamour to the scene. I did not have my own key, of course, and so hectic had been my dash towards the barn that I had not given a thought to what faced me now. Before I could examine the site of the shocking kerfuffle by the bins, I would have to get past the bloated janitor who controlled access to the compound. I had the right of entry, the buffed badge on my cap signalled that much, but the janitor was a notoriously difficult man. The two things everybody noticed about him were that he was bloated and he was difficult. His name was Ajax, and his patrimony was squalid. To his credit, he had shaken off the sins of his fathers, and not even the faintest whiff of squalor hung around his bloated frame. Indeed, he gleamed with a cleanliness that in any other janitor would have been suspicious, and his teeth were impeccable. Once, I had tried to prise from him the identity of his dentist, who I was sure was a practitioner of the so-called “New Dentistry”, but he folded in upon himself in a surprisingly graceful way for so bloated a janitor, and I learned nothing, nothing at all. Now, many years later, I had to hope that he would let me in to the compound without any fuss, for I could not afford any delay. Urgency was still my middle name, on foot just as behind the wheel of my jalopy, which I had parked skilfully under the bowers of a titanic sycamore. The sun was not shining, but if it emerged from behind the fluffy clouds, it would not shine upon my jalopy, except intermittently, as breezes blew the sycamore boughs, and it was important to me that this was so. I am not suggesting that there was anything vampiric about my jalopy, or perhaps I am, simply that it performs better in the dark or in the shade.

Ajax detained me at his little janitorial bunker for over an hour. He was in a garrulous mood, babbling away about a potato-based toothpaste, among other things. He was clearly taunting me for my decade-ago enquiries about his dentist, but I was not amenable to his joshing, biting my lip so hard I drew blood. I felt as if I had been kissed by Sylvia Plath, or by Ted Hughes, or by both, I cannot remember whose fangs gouged who at their first meeting. When he had had his fun with me, the bloated janitor finally allowed me to pass, and I hurried over to the bins outside the barn where the kerfuffle had occurred. Post-kerfuffle forensics is an inexact science, and it could fairly be said that I was flailing around in a morass of uncertainty. It would not be the first time that could be said about me, and that was why I was so tormented. I was desperate to have something concrete to present to the Bins Board, at the meeting which was due to begin in a few hours. For something to do, I took a tape measure from my pocket and worked out how far from the wall of the barn the bins were. Then I walked widdershins around the barn, twice, peering intently, but ignorantly, at the muck on the ground. Was there evidence of squirrels, or of moles, or of gigantic grotesque mutations thereof? It was hard to tell. I remembered the time when one of my lungs had collapsed, and I lay stricken in a clinic, and with my head twisted to one side spent hour upon hour staring out of the window at the many different types of birds that appeared in my little corner of the sky, and how, very slowly, I learned to distinguish one from another, and to marvel at their valiant mastery of the empyrean, and at their savagery, particularly the savagery of owls. These thoughts came sloshing through my brain as I completed my second circuit of the barn, and back at the bins I tore my eyes from the muck and looked up, up into the immensity of the sky. Suddenly I was convinced beyond a smidgen of doubt that it was up there, up in the boundless firmament, that I would discover the secret of the kerfuffle by the bins outside the barn. Owls, maybe, but more likely some kind of gulls, ferocious gulls with razor-sharp beaks and talons that could tear the planet to shreds.

Given that my jalopy had been thieved by a subset of the ne’er-do-wells who loitered by the compound, and who I had completely forgotten about in my urgency, and given that I thus had to catch a bus along the impossibly winding lanes to Pang Hill Hot Air Balloon Station, there to take a hot air balloon for an inspection of the sky above the barn at close quarters, it is remarkable that I managed to present myself before the Bins Board that evening on the dot. But I did, and I was not even dishevelled. If anything, my cap was set at an even more punctilious angle than it had been earlier, and the unguent goo I had applied to my bloodied lips gave them a healthy gloss. I swear that the Bins Board went collectively weak at the knees as I pranced into the ceremonial chamber, soft light from the chandeliers falling upon me like a sprinkling of fairy dust. I knew I was in for hard and even merciless questioning, but I felt like a champion. As the members of the Bins Board shuffled their papers and cleared their throats, I reflected that this was my fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol moment, my triumph. I fancied that I could smell the entrance porch of the building next to the barn in the compound. My compound! Never again would I be taunted by Ajax the bloated janitor. I stepped on to the blue woollen mat and presented my findings to the Bins Board. At such a pitch of emotion, there was a catch in my voice as I began, but I quickly recovered, and delivered a masterpiece of oratory, like an ancient God booming the Law. They had a few questions for me, all of which I handled with an aplomb that would have astonished my mother, who feared, during my infancy, that I would be as inarticulate as one of the cows of this precious land.

This morning was a torture. I fretted and jumped about, waiting, waiting. The Bins Board had announced that today, a week after the meeting, I would be informed of their adjudication in the matter of the kerfuffle down by the bins outside the barn. Cold reason told me that this was their perfect opportunity to award me the tenancy of the building next to the barn. That was always how these things were done. And so I fretted and jumped about and waited and waited for postie to come skipping up the path. He was late. When eventually he appeared on the far horizon, I sprinted to meet him, gibbering like a dunderpate. I snatched the Bins Board Communiqué from his puny grip, sliced it open with the fiercest blade on my very fierce military knife, and I read…

Following the unexpected and shocking kerfuffle down by the bins outside the barn, and the hot-blooded and exciting report we received thereupon, it is our unanimous and typically sparky decision in the matter to order the immediate demolition, down to dust, of the entire compound and all buildings within it, in the interests of both public safety and of Ajax the bloated janitor’s whim that he wants to retire to a gloomy seaside resort. Be it enacted this very day, and God bless you each and every one!

Game On

Published by Frank Key on Tuesday, 31 July, 2007 in Bobnit Tivol, Old Halob and Prose. 1 Comment

Dear Mr Key, writes Tim Thurn, I am a huge fan of Hooting Yard and an even huger fan of computer and console games. Can you tell me if there are plans afoot for a Hooting Yard-based game I will be able to play on my Gameboy, Wii, or what have you?

Oh dear, is all I can say. I can only assume that Tim is a teenage boy, for only teenage boys ought to be playing computer games. (Teenage girls are busy editing the features pages of The Guardian.) That so many adults spend their time “gaming” is clear evidence of the culture of infantilisation which we see all around us. I recommend compulsory reading of The Anatomy Of Melancholy and enforced contemplation of the paintings of Oskar Kokoschka, as a start.

Meanwhile, somewhat shamefacedly, I do have to confess that I have granted a licence to a Japanese software development company to create a thoroughly enticing game based on certain Hooting Yard characters. The working title for the game is Fictional Athlete Bobnit Tivol Magnificent Sprinting And Polevaulting Golden Ṻberchallenge. As far as I can understand such things, the titular challenge for players is to lead a little pixellated fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol avatar through a series of increasingly difficult virtual sporting tournaments. As one progresses through each level, cantankerous trainer Old Halob is on hand (coughing and spluttering on a variety of high tar cigarettes) to offer tips and advice. The further along the player goes, of course, the less help is available from Old Halob, and at the highest levels he occupies a corner of the screen languishing in what looks like a sanatorium.

The putative teenage purchaser of the game can choose from various options. You can play as fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, or compete against him. In this mode, Old Halob acts as a fiendish adversary, given to such tactics as poisoning your pre-sprint cornflakes, blinding you with pepper spray, or breaking your legs. You can also select different locations for the stadia in which the contests take place, including ancient Latvia, the Essex seaside town of Jaywick, and the mystic and frankly terrifying Land of Gaar, alive with nightmarish monsters and things that creep upon the face of the earth. The only game setting which is fixed and unchangeable is the colour scheme, which as you would expect is sepia.

The developers hope to gain some celebrity endorsements before the game is released, and I understand that they have already made tentative approaches to such luminaries as Chris de Burhg [sic] and David Blunkett MP. According to marketing strategists, a touchy-feely version for the blind is predicted to outsell the sighted edition.

Soap Flakes In A Box

Published by Frank Key on Friday, 15 June, 2007 in Bobnit Tivol, Dobson, Old Halob and Prose. 1 Comment

Dear Mr Key, writes Tim Thurn, I couldn’t help noticing that in the piece about fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol’s training regime, Dobson repeatedly refers to “soap flakes in a box”, without telling us which brand of soap flakes the champion sprinter used. This is a pity. I cannot be alone among your readers in having world-shuddering sporting ambitions, and I try to replicate the fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol approach in every particular. I have gone so far as to make my coach wear an East European raincoat and to chain smoke at the side of the track while I scamper round it. I grant you that she looks absolutely nothing like Old Halob, and is about half a century younger than he was at his peak, but you’d be surprised how effective the illusion can be, especially when she starts hawking up gobbets of phlegm just like the cantankerous old rogue.

Incidentally, I am on the lookout for a black Homburg she can wear to make her look even more like Old Halob, so if any of your readers know where I might get a genuine 1940s Homburg, perhaps they could contact me through your Comments section. I’m afraid I do not know my coach’s hat size, and nor, I suspect, does she. Gone are the days when people were as familiar with their hat size as with their shoe size. It is all chips and PINs now, but that doesn’t wash with me. I still sprinkle cash about, whenever I go roaming, not that I have much time to roam given my busy fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol-like training schedule.

Which brings me back to the matter at hand, namely those soap flakes in a box. Was Dobson leery of advertising a brand name, or what? I am aware that he was, or at least tried to be, a pamphleteer of considerable moral fibre, but that seems to be taking things a bit far. I am sure his legion of fans would have thought no less of him if he had bandied brands like Omo or Daz in his pamphlets. When you consider that towering intellectual figures of our own day such as Isaiah Berlin regularly turn up on television to peddle Twinings tea… no, that’s wrong, it’s Stephen Fry, isn’t it? So easy to confuse two such rigorous überbrains. Anyway, it is time for me to pound around that running track like a mad pursued thing, so I’ll stop there. But if you can winkle out of the archives any information about those soap flakes in a box, I would be extremely grateful. Passionately yours, Tim Thurn, “going for gold!”

Boot Bath

Published by Frank Key on Friday, 15 June, 2007 in Bobnit Tivol, Dobson, Old Halob and Prose. 0 Comments

He washed his boots in the bath with a scrubbing brush. That is what he did when he got mud on his boots. He took off his boots and placed them on a mat and he filled the bath with boiling water. Then he plunged his boots into the bath. He put on a pair of gloves before he plunged his boots so the flesh on his hands would not burn. When the boots were in the bath he sprinkled soap flakes from a box on the surface of the boiling water. Then he went to fetch the scrubbing brush. The scrubbing brush was nowhere near the bath, he had to go up and down stairs to get it from its hook. There was a hole drilled in the handle of the scrubbing brush so it could be held by the hook. The hook was fixed to the wall. It was a fixture and fitting. The scrubbing brush was not. It was an appurtenance. He neither knew nor cared which was a fixture and fitting and which was an appurtenance. His only concern was to get the mud off his boots. He scrubbed his boots with the scrubbing brush while the boots were submerged in the bathwater to which he had added soap flakes from a box. The mud came off his boots in chunks. When the last flecks of mud had been scrubbed off his boots he took the boots out of the bath and placed them back on the mat. The mat was made of rubber. He pulled the plug out of the plughole in the bottom of the bath and the bathwater drained away. While the water drained he took the scrubbing brush up and down stairs and put it back on its hook. He tore off his gloves and threw them down a chute. At the bottom of the chute was a pile of other gloves and such things as shirts and socks and tunics. Once a week the pile was swept into a hamper and taken off to be washed. But not today. He went up and down stairs to the room with the bath in it and looked at his boots on the mat until they were dry. Then he put on his boots. Just in time! He heard the toot of a whistle. He sprinted up and down stairs and past the place where the scrubbing brush hung on its hook and carried on out of the door and through the garden gate and he sprinted round and round the running track until the whistle tooted again. He stopped and panted and looked expectantly at the whistle tooting person. The whistle tooting person was studying his stopwatch. O how he hoped that this time he had sprinted round and round the running track faster than the last time he had sprinted round and round the running track! Then he had had mud on his boots but now he had washed them in the boiling hot bath with a scrubbing brush and soap flakes from a box and there was no longer any mud on his boots. A nod from the whistle tooting person told him he had sprinted round and round the running track faster than before. He was O so happy!

From The Happy Sprinter : An Eye-Witness Account Of The Training Schedule Of Fictional Athlete Bobnit Tivol Under The Direction Of His Coach, Old Halob by Dobson (out of print)

Old Halob : A Biographical Note

Published by Frank Key on Wednesday, 28 February, 2007 in Bobnit Tivol, Boosters, Old Halob, Prose and Shaka Pebblehead. 4 Comments

Before winning fame Рor perhaps notoriety Рas the coach of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, the chain-smoking miseryguts we know and love as Old Halob led a purposeless and indigent existence. The familiar image of him, in that raincoat, grim and windswept and coughing up catarrh, standing at the side of a running track spurring his fictional prot̩g̩ on to ever greater sprinting triumphs, had not yet been beamed through television screens across the globe back in the days when only a cluster of hovels stood on the site that would one day become the Old Halob Stadium Of Sporting Triumph And Prowess.

In his bestselling paperback Old Halob And Petula Clark : Are They The Same Person?, Pebblehead posits the theory that the (possibly) East European coach and the English songstress are the same person. He points to the well-documented fact that both, as children, sang in the entrance hall of Bentalls Department Store in Kingston-upon-Thames in exchange for a tin of toffee and a gold wristwatch. In addition, like Petula Clark, Old Halob released a CD entitled L’essentiel – 20 Succès Inoubliables. This is where his argument fails to convince, for where the aged pop diva’s album contained songs, and was a chart hit in Belgium, Old Halob’s CD consisted of a recording of him eating his breakfast and grumbling about his moth-eaten raincoat, and was an international, rather than merely a local, success.

Pebblehead’s twaddle is thoroughly demolished, of course, if we consider that for the first fifty two years of his life, Old Halob did little except refill bird feeders in the grounds of a Home for the Deranged, a job for which he was paid with a daily bowl of gruel and slops. His parents were fabulously wealthy, and lived the life of Riley in a big forbidding castle, but their son lacked ambition, and they disowned him when, at the age of nine, he rejected their birthday gifts of a booster pack, the elixir of life, a modelling contract with L’Oreal, and a populated planet in a far distant galaxy to treat as his plaything.

No one, not even Pebblehead, knows what happened to transform the dull-witted bird feeder maintenance man into an athletics coach of legend. Perhaps a clue lies in his change of diet. Shortly after Old Halob’s fiftieth birthday, the management of the Derangement Home was restructured following a report from consultants Pricewatergatecoopersfreemanhardywillis. As part of their recommendations, Old Halob stopped eating gruel and slops and was instead fed on whelks and barnacles. The evidence is not conclusive, but future biographers would be stupid to ignore it.

And that is all I have to say about Old Halob today.

Films About Bees

Published by Frank Key on Thursday, 8 February, 2007 in Bees, Bobnit Tivol, Mrs Gubbins and Twaddle. 5 Comments

One of the most eagerly-anticipated awards in the arts calendar is Hooting Yard’s Best Title Of A Film About Bees Made Within The Last Five Years. We only make this award after a rigorous selection process, fuelled by many, many cups of piping hot tea in Mrs Gubbins’ space-age kitchenette parlour.

I am delighted to announce that the 2007 Award goes to William Bishop-Stephens for Bee Control In City Parks. He wins a toffee apple with bite marks which, a dentist tells me, could well have been made by fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol immediately after he won the 1966 Blister Lane Bypass Sprint Hurdles Cup And Saucer in a then record time of eight hours, sixteen minutes and forty-four seconds.

Well done, Will, and I am sure all Hooting Yard readers will take the opportunity to watch your splendid film.

Good King Wenceslas Impersonation Incident

Published by Frank Key on Tuesday, 6 February, 2007 in Bobnit Tivol, Old Halob, Pointy Town and Prose. 1 Comment

“Hearken ye, stooped mendicant at my gate! I am Good King Wenceslas, and I am looking out, and I can see you, poor and shivering in your rags, for the snow is deep and crisp and even. There are not even any tracks in the frozen white expanse, such as would be made by wolves or bears. Wait there at my gate, O wretch, and shortly I shall descend from my castle ramparts and join you in the snow!”

So said Old Halob, on the feast of Stephen, for he had rented a room in a castle and was getting carried away by his new surroundings. Those of you who have been paying attention will know that Old Halob was the cantankerous training manager of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, and thus far more likely to be found puffing cigarettes at the side of a running track than lording it from the tower of a splendid Mitteleuropean castle. Yet here he was, a battered tin crown atop his potato-shaped head, pretending to be monarch of all he surveyed, though all he could survey was covered in snow, including the mendicant. It was not true, however, that the snow was deep and crisp and even. It was certainly the first two, but no one could in all conscience call it even, for here and there the snow had drifted into clumps, some as high as a swan, and it was beside such a swan-sized clump that the mendicant stooped. Now, unbeknown to Old Halob, this mendicant was known as the Natterjack Man, and he was well known in the vicinity of the castle. He had earned his sobriquet because he had the face and manners of a toad, though none of the hallucinatory properties of a toad’s skin, which, if licked, can provoke visions, depending, of course, on the type of toad.

Up in his rented chambers, Old Halob straightened the crown on his head and prised his feet into a pair of galoshes. Between these extremities, his garb or raiment was such that we shall pass over it in silence, for we do not wish to frighten the tinies. Clutching a lanthorn in his grimy fist, and coughing violently, the legendary athletics coach stumbled down a stone staircase, impeded every few steps by the crows, bats and badgers whose domain this was. It was that kind of castle. Reaching the grand entrance hall at long last, toes crushed by the constricting galoshes, Old Halob took a moment to gather himself. He was not a sentimental man, but he felt a dull pang in his breast as he pictured himself standing at the edge of the race track at O’Houlihan’s Wharf, around which fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol would sprint, round and round and round, unstoppable. Rashly, the coach had paid six months’ rent in advance for his castle chamber, and sent Bobnit Tivol off to a basketry-weaving compound high in some distant hills, where his sprained ankle would be rested and righted. The old tyrant had not foreseen how grievously he would miss his fictional charge, nor that he would spend his castle days moping and splenetic and endlessly removing the crows which perched on his tin crown, as one perched now, cawing at ear-splitting volume. Old Halob reached up and grabbed the bird by its black throat and tossed it none too gently towards the stairwell. Then he aimed and activated his pocket pod and the huge iron doors of the castle swung open, eerily silent, and he thumped out into the snow on the feast of Stephen.

The Natterjack Man still stooped by the swan-high clump of snow, awaiting the man he thought was Good King Wenceslas. For a begging bowl, he carried a plastic beaker which he had found discarded outside the pie shop and canteen at the end of the lane that led from the castle to the stinking cluster of hovels where the local mendicants spent much of their time lying around groaning and whimpering. In truth, they were rather well-appointed hovels, each with its own spigot and catflap and guttering, the latter of gleaming new stainless steel, installed by the local stainless steel guttering chaps, and paid for by the mendicants themselves with the proceeds from the sale of their hot salty tears to a sinister ex-princess who haunted the wild and horrible woods beyond the hovels.

“Hail, stooping mendicant!” yelled Old Halob, in what he thought was a kingly tone, “Stoop no more, for I bring thee succour!”

The Natterjack Man unstooped, and pushed his plastic beaker towards the ‘king’.

“By God, you look like a toad!” cried Old Halob, aghast. Then he collected himself and remembered his manners. “Still, that is no reason why you cannot become a top championship athlete, eh?”

For the succour the wily old coach had in mind was that he could take this wretched beggar and transform him, through a rigorous exercise regime, into a world-beating sporting legend, weighed down with medals and trophies. The Natterjack Man made no reply, but pointed to his withered leg, and then to his other withered leg, and then to his withered arm, and then to his other withered arm, and then sort of disported himself in such a way that his general witheredness was gruesomely apparent. The counterfeit Good King Wenceslas laughed in his face.

“I am the king!” he shouted, “Do you think for one minute, you puny wretch, that I have not the power to turn you into a pole-vaulting champion of global renown? I have no doubt in my astonishingly incisive mind that you can become a credit to Team Halob!”

And he grabbed hold of the Natterjack Man’s ragged sleeve and propelled him towards the nearest athletics stadium, twenty miles distant, and put him through his paces. It is a curious fact that only upon his deathbed, thirty years later, the winner of no fewer than sixteen pole-vaulting gold medals, famed beyond common sense throughout Tantarabim and Pointy Town and all points westward, learned for the first time that his benefactor was not, nor ever had been, Good King Wenceslas, but was none other than the irascible and chain smoking Old Halob. The surprise felled him, or would have felled him had he not already been lying on his back, close to death, muffled by bandages, in the bedroom of his converted hovel in the shadows of the castle upon which snow had fallen, in which crows and bats and badgers had swooped and scuffled, where a tin crown and a pair of galoshes could still be found, high on the highest shelf in the highest chamber, higher than even the Natterjack Man had ever vaulted in his prime.