To create a composite Dickensian character, it is necessary to cobble together elements from Adams, the Aged Parent, Arabella and Benjamin Allen, the Artful Dodger, Mr Ayresleigh, the Avenger, the Bachelor, Bayham and Laura Badger, the One-Eyed Bagman, the Bagnet family, Major Joseph Bagstock, Jack Bamber, Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Barbara, Miss Barbary, Martha Bardell, Thomas Bardell, Barkis, Old Bill Barley and Clara Barley, the Barnacle family, John Barsad, Charles Bates, Bazzard, Belle, Benjamin, Betsy, Mr Bevan, Biddy, Bitzer, Stephen Blackpool, Cornelia Blimber, Noddy and Henrietta Boffin, Josiah Bounderby, Lawrence Boythorn, Sally Brass, Sampson Brass, Madeline Bray, Walter Bray, Jefferson Brick, John Browdie, Good Mrs Brown, Alice Brown, Mr Brownlow, Inspector Bucket, Rosa Bud, Bumble, Jack Bunsby, Serjeant Buzfuz, Harriet, James and John Carker, Richard Carstone, Sydney Carton, John Baptist Cavalletto, the Reverend Chadband, the Cheeryble brothers and Frank, Edward and John Chester, Louisa Chick, Anne Chickenstalker, Anthony, Jonas, Martin and Old Martin Chuzzlewit, Ada Clare, Noah Claypole, Colonel Chowser, Compeyson, David Copperfield, Clara Copperfield, Mrs Corney, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim Cratchit, Creakle, Sophy Crewler, David Crimple, Mr Cripples, Canon Crisparkle, Vincent and Mrs Crummles, Jerry and Mrs Cruncher, Alderman Cute, Captain Cuttle, Solomon Daisy, Charles Darnay, Rosa Dartle, Dick Datchery, Lady Honoria and Sir Leicester Dedlock and Volumnia Dedlock, Ernest and Madame Defarge, Ned Dennis, Mr Dick, Young Dick, Deputy Winks, Mrs Dilber, Colonel Diver, Dodson and Fogg, Mr Dolls, Fanny and Florence Dombey and Paul Dombey and Paul Dombey Junior, Amy, Edward, Fanny, Frederick and William Dorrit, Daniel Doyce, Edwin Drood, Bentley Drummle, Duff, Durdles, Emily, the Marquis St Evrémonde, Fagin, Fan, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Mr Feeder, Mr Fezziwig, Flora Finching, Horatio Fizkin, Affery and Jeremiah Flintwinch, Miss Flite, Fred, Mrs Gamp, Joe Gargery, Abel Garland, Mr and Mrs Garland, Walter Gay, Mr George, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, Mr Giles, Thomas and Tom Gradgrind, Mary Graham, Grainger, Edith Granger, Mr and Mrs Grayper, Grewgious, Arthur Gride, Gridley, Mr Grimwig, John Grueby, Mr and Mrs Gulpidge, Mrs Gummidge, William Guppy, John Harmon, Mrs Harris, James Harthouse, Estella Havisham, Miss Havisham, Arthur Havisham, Captain James Hawdon, Sir Mulberry Hawk, Mrs Heep, Uriah Heep, Werner Herzog, Charlie, Gaffer, and Lizzie Hexam, Betty Higden, Mrs Hominy, Luke Honeythunder, Hortense, Mr and Mrs Hubbles, Hugh, Leo and Mrs Hunter, Jem Hutley, Jaggers, Janet, John Jarndyce, John Jasper, Dr Anthony Jeddler and Grace, Marion and Martha Jeddler, Mr and Mrs Jellyby and Caddy Jellyby, Jenny, Alfred Jingle, Jo, Mr Jorkins, Captain Kedgick, Kenge, Kenwigs, Mrs Kidgerbury, Krook, Miss La Creevy, Alfred and Sophronia Lammle, Helena and Neville Landless, Mr Langdale, Miss Larkins, Edward and Edwin Leeford, Thomas Lenville, Lewsome, Mortimer Lightwood, Lillian, Mr Lillyvick, Tim Linkinwater, Littimer, Edmund Longford, Jarvis Lorry, Dr Losberne, Lowten, Mrs Lupin, Abel Magwitch, Peter Magnus, Dr Alexandre and Lucie Manette, Mrs Mann, Mr and Mme Mantalini, Jacob Marley, Mr Marton, Mary, Mary Anne, Mrs Maylie, Harry Maylie, Rose Maylie, Mr M’Choakumchild, Merdle, Wilkins Micawber, Molly, Mr Murdstone, Nancy, the Native, Neckett, Charlotte Neckett, Mrs Nickleby, Kate, Nicholas and Ralph Nickleby, Susan Nipper, Newman Noggs, the Norris family, Kit Nubbles, Mr Nupkins, Mr Omer, Dolge Orlick, Major and Mrs Pawkins, Dr Payne, Charity, Mercy and Seth Pecksniff, Clara, Daniel and Ham Peggotty, Mr Perker, the Infant Phenomenon, Samuel Pickwick, Tom Pinch, Pip, Caleb Plummer, Matthew, Herbert and Sarah Pocket, Mr and Mrs Pott, Pumblechook, Daniel and Betsy Quilp, Mr Quinion, George Radfoot, Professor Redlaw, Pleasant and Rogue Riderhood, Monsieur Rigaud, John Rokesmith, Mrs Rouncewell, Richard and Watt Rouncewell, Rosa, Barnaby Rudge, Barnaby Rudge Senior, Mr Rugg, Volker Schlondorff, Ebenezer Scrooge, Bill Sikes, Harold Skimpole, Dr Slammer, Samuel Slumkey, Mr Smallweed, Smike, Mr Snagsby, Augustus Snodgrass, Mr and Mrs Sowerberry, Dora Spenlow, Mr and Mrs Spottletoe, Wackford Squeers, Mrs Squeers, Fanny Squeers and Wackford Squeers Junior, Phil Squod, Stagg, James Steerforth, Dr and Annie Strong, Esther Summerson, Paul Sweedlepipe, Milly and Philip and William Swidger, Dick Swiveller, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Tackleton, Mark Tapley, Simon Tappertit, Tartar, Tattycoram, the Tetterby family, Mrs Ticket, Mr Tiffey, Montigue Tigg, Mrs Tisher, Mrs Todgers, Polly Toodle, Toots, Lucretia Tox, Trabb, Trabb’s boy, Tommy Traddles, Fred and Nelly Trent, Job Trotter, Josiah Tulkinghorn, Tracy Tupman, Prince Turveydrop and Old Mr Turveydrop, Oliver Twist, Meg and Trotty Veck, the Vengeance, Mr Vholes, Margerethe Von Trotta, Old Mrs Wardle, Mr Wardle, Isabella, Emily and Rachael Wardle, Mr and Mrs Waterbrook, Tony Weller and Samuel Weller, John Wemmick, Wim Wenders, John Westlock, Mrs Whimple, Agnes Wickfield, Professor Wigsby, Nathaniel Winkle, Miss Witherfield, Dr Allan Woodcourt, Mr Wopsle, the five sisters of York, Zamiel, and the Zephyr. So get cobbling!

In solving the cryptic crossword in The Grauniad this morning, I learned of a fearsome creature I had never previously heard of – the Goliath bird-eating spider. Eek! Unfamiliar with this beast, I was able to work out the answer from the clue, the ingenious anagram “Big horrid giant’s ideal pet”. Wishing to know more, I took a trip to the Wikipedia and found that the spider was given its name by intrepid Victorian explorers who saw one devouring a hummingbird. I am going to have to investigate this more thoroughly, using proper tools, i.e. books.

The Wikipedia does not explicitly state that the Victorian explorers were intrepid, but in my innards I feel sure they were. I can picture them, wearing pith helmets, with Bibles stuck in their pockets, stalking through alien terrain. Within weeks or months, of course, they would go to pieces in the tropics, as so many doughty Empire-builders did before them, but for now, they could watch a hummingbird being eaten by a spider and make careful notes in their sweat-stained jotting pads.

Had the crossword appeared yesterday, I would not have been able to look up the Goliath bird-eating spider in the Wikipedia, because it shut down for twenty-four hours. Though this blackout left many bereft, it did not worry me, as I was able to funnel all my enquiries towards the Nigipedia, which I suspect will henceforth be my main online source of reference. Indeed, so inspiring do I find the Nigipedia that I am toying with the idea of setting up a rival, to be called either the Hootingpedia or the Keyipedia. There is a sense in which the accumulated material splurged forth here over the past eight years already constitutes an encyclopaedic body of knowledge. Try tapping a word or phrase into the Hooting Yard Search pane over to your left and there is a distinct possibility you will be enlightened, or, if not enlightened, kept swaddled in ignorance. Frustrated searchers may wish to let me know of topics not yet covered, and I will do my best to add to the databases.

One of the other answers in today’s crossword was Henry Fonda. I then thought of a parallel universe, or alternative past, where Jane and Peter’s papa had starred in The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957) in place of Grant Williams. It was Williams, you will recall, who played Scott Carey, the yachting businessman who is engulfed in a mysterious cloud – not unlike M P Shiel’s The Purple Cloud – after which he becomes gradually tinier and tinier. (There are scenes in the film where his predicament causes him to have outbursts of helpless anger, which we could call a Tinie Tempah, but let us draw a veil over that thought.) In my imagined version starring Fonda rather than Williams, I pictured a terrifying scene where Scott Carey is menaced by a Goliath bird-eating spider. Of course, Carey/Fonda is not a bird, but the spider might mistake him for one, and come scuttling towards him across a dolls’ house floor, as the music swells and screeches and we put our hands over our eyes and whimper with fear. Come to think of it, there is something a little birdlike about Henry Fonda’s countenance, from a certain angle, in a certain light, and I suspect if one were able for a moment to imagine oneself as a Goliath bird-eating spider then a tiny Henry Fonda could present himself as a rather toothsome snack.

Among the other answers in today’s crossword are Oscar (Henry Fonda won two Best Actor Oscars, plus a Lifetime Achievement award), Vinegary, Nonsuch, Gnostic, Dossier, and Motion, this last in reference to the Lemsip-swigging ex-Poet Laureate. If Andrew Motion is reading this, which is unlikely, but possible, I think it is about time he took my advice and wrote a poem or two about Goliath bird-eating spiders. Let me get him started.

Instead of my Lemsip I was swigging some cider

When I was attacked by a bird-eating spider

Its name was Goliath and it was quite hairy

I am a milksop so I found it scary

Did you know that Babinsky, the infamous walrus-moustached serial killer, had an idiot half-brother? This chap – who for the sake of convenience we shall call Babinsky 2 – was officially classified as a “type four cretin” under the official idiot classification system obtaining at that time, in that land, under that regime. I am afraid I don’t know how many numbered types of cretin there were, nor of the nature and number of other idiot types, and I have only been able to ascertain Babinsky 2’s official classification after years and years of fossicking about in mouldy archives, at grave peril to my physical and mental health. That is why I walk with a stick and hold what I delude myself are coherent conversations with birds including linnets and partridges.

As a type four cretin, Babinsky 2 was considered to be a peculiarly high-functioning idiot, deemed suitable for such tasks as using a pointy stick to gather litter from verdant parkland, mopping up filth in long corridors, sitting in a tent outside a cathedral, and writing opinion pieces for The Guardian. Unfortunately, due to fuddled bureaucracy, several doctors had instead recommended that the most effective treatment for him, at that time, in that land, under that regime, was to be chained up in a cellar and fed, very occasionally, on slops, or, if that option was not available, to be chained up in an attic and fed, very occasionally, on pap. Such, then, was his plight in the dying days of the corrupt and despicable reign of the double kings Umberto and Ignatz.

Babinsky himself, walrus-moustached and lumbering and psychotic, knew nothing of his idiot half-brother’s fate. They had been parted since they were tiny, if one can for a moment imagine a tiny Babinsky. Yet like us all, the blood-drenched nutcase was once an innocent babe-in-arms, rocked in a cradle and sung to by his mama, though perhaps we ought not examine too closely the words of the songs that good woman sang to him, nor indeed their tunes, if tunes they can be called, for it is probable that it was those very songs, or hideous caterwauls, that laid the eggs of crime within his brain. She did not sing to Babinsky 2.

Their parting happened, unexpectedly, during a family picnic, at a site of bucolic glory, when Babinsky was three and Babinsky 2 was two. There was a sudden thunderstorm. Mama was struck by lightning. A wolf carried Babinsky off into the woods. His idiot half-brother was left behind, drooling on the picnic blanket, deafened by jet fighters swooping low overhead, and by thunder, until he was gathered up and swaddled in the picnic blanket and borne away by a passing widow-woman. Old Mother Sebag-Montefiore had been reduced to penury since the death of her husband in one of King Umberto’s insane wars, or possibly in one of King Ignatz’s sane ones, and she conceived the idea of selling the child. At that time, in that land, under that regime, they had a primitive version of eBay, so she took a snapshot of the idiot tot and posted it and waited for bids to come in. All we know now is that at least one bid must have been made, for Babinsky 2 was indeed sold. To whom, and for what sum, we know not, and all trace of him is lost until he turns up, some thirty or forty or, god help us, fifty years later, chained up in a cellar or an attic by dint of bureaucratic fuddle.

At which point his criminal half-brother Babinsky reenters the scene. The double kingdom is on its last legs. Umberto is spending more and more of his time, like Baruch Spinoza, pitting spiders against each other in combat. Ignatz has taken to obsessive annotation of back numbers of the Reader’s Digest. Every day, entire flocks of birds are dropping dead out of the sky, and wherever one looks the potatoes are blighted. The land is descending into a state of anarchy, an ideal playground for a villain like Babinsky. No doubt, on that fateful March morning, cavorting with the wolves in the woods, he was plotting further and ever more heinous enormities. But then word reached him, via the primitive version of spam email prevalent at that time, in that land, under that crumbling regime, that his idiot half-brother, Babinsky 2, was languishing, chained up in a cellar or an attic and fed, very occasionally, on slops or pap, and all because of a fuddlement regarding precisely which classification of cretin type he fell into.

It is important for the reader to understand that for all his derangement and dementedness and bloodlust and psychopathology and the echoes of those mad horrible maternal songs ricocheting forever inside his skull, Babinsky was filled with a boundless fraternal devotion to Babinsky 2. How often he had vowed, if once he could find his lost half-brother, to clasp him to his bosom and slobber over him and teach him all the tricks of strangulation and slicing up and bone-smashing and other such murderous techniques as he had mastered! Oh, he had vowed as much at least three or four times during the long insanitary decades of Umberto’s and Ignatz’s kingship.

So now, on this windy March morning, apprised at last of his idiot half-brother’s plight, Babinsky preened his walrus moustache and set off for the grim bleak vile border outpost where Babinsky 2 was confined. On the way, he killed and killed and killed again. Close to the border, he stopped in a post office to ask for directions, and while he was there he bought some postage stamps. Well, to be more accurate, he did not so much buy them as steal them, having first snapped the spine of the postmaster and chopped him up with an axe. Having wiped his hands clean on one of his many rags, Babinsky was disconcerted to note that the heads of both Umberto and Ignatz had been scratched out on the postage stamps, and in their place was a hasty potato print of quite a different head, a head which bore a distinct resemblance to Babinsky himself.

“What can this mean?” he shouted, in vain, at the bloodied body-parts strewn across the post office floor.

What it meant was that, only the day before, the regime had finally collapsed. Umberto and Ignatz had been helicoptered into exile on a faraway sea-girt atoll. The revolutionary council had freed Babinsky 2 from his chains, and his cellar, or his attic, and installed him as their puppet leader. From that day on, for untold years, Babinsky 2 ruled the land, idiotically, chained up, sprawled on innumerable soft plush cushions, in the presidential palace and fed, copiously, with fruit ‘n’ fibre breakfast cereal and smokers’ poptarts and Feroglobin vitamin supplements.

Babinsky himself was never granted an audience with the puppet potentate, but he had other fish to fry, and bones to break, and throats to slit, and gore to spill.

Hark! From deep underground, in Stygian gloom lit only by flames from tarry and sulphurous torches, comes a relentless, thunderous din of booming and banging and clanking. Something is being wrought in this subterranean forge, but what? Here and there in the darkness, tireless workers, dressed in grease-smeared overalls, adjust dials and depress knobs and heave slabs and pull levers. Yes, look, here is one such worker, a Scotsman, of grim determined mien, atop a gantry that gives him sole access to the set of levers which he manipulates with hairy, steady hands. Or… or can we see those hands shaking, as if he is not quite so confident as he appears? Is he just pulling the levers at random, hoping for the best, hoping that his overseers, whomsoever they might be, are elsewhere, perhaps supervising the plugging of a leak in the miles and miles of pipework, or extinguishing a sudden blaze in the central chimney stack?

That, or something like it, was what I assume he was talking about, the Scottish politician I overheard on the radio the other day, insisting, more than once, that “we will control the fiscal levers”. Twice or thrice he said this, within the space of a few minutes, suggesting, to me at least, that it was some kind of Shandean hobbyhorse. I will leave it to a fiscalian to explain precisely what a fiscal lever is, but I think I know why the Scotsman seemed so obsessional in his claim that he had, or at some future point would have, the fiscal levers under his control.

It is, amazingly, five long years since diminutive northern pixie Hazel Blears announced that “the days of pulling the central lever are behind us”. Ever since, the central lever has hung there, loose in its once gleaming enclampment panel, its neglect and rust a reproach to all of us who care about the levers. None even approach it now, and the calls to have it covered over by a tarpaulin, or hidden behind a makeshift canvas screen, grow louder by the day. It is as if we no longer want to admit that the central lever ever existed, was pulled, regularly, with well-oiled efficiency, by heroic lever-pullers, square of jaw and mighty of sinew, fuelled by flasks of strong brown tea and burning cheroots.

Yet five years on, here comes a Scotsman, blithely announcing, without fear of contradiction, that he and his cohorts will take control of the fiscal levers. It is true he does not say they will actually pull the levers, merely that they will control them. But what on earth would be the purpose of controlling them if not to throw caution to the wind and, intoxicated by some inchoate messianic vision, to pull them, the fiscal levers, at least from time to time, down there in the deep dark grim thunderous forge?

Just because the central lever has fallen into desuetude does not mean, according to the fiscalian I consulted, that the fiscal levers cannot be pulled, happily and vigorously, as often as a Scotsman, or anybody in control of them, wishes or has the energy to do so. There is a part of me that would like to have seen, not just heard, this Scotsman. As he insisted, again and again, that he and his ilk would have control of the fiscal levers, it was easy to believe he meant exactly what he said. But I cannot help but wonder if his face – florid? sweaty? bepimpled? a stye in one eye and a duelling scar running livid down one cheek? – might have betrayed a certain queasiness about what he was claiming. After all, it is no small thing to pull even one of the fiscal levers. And there are quite a few of them, or so I am told, by my pet fiscalian.

Here at Hooting Yard, as you know, we always try to back up our babbling with rigorous research, and, where appropriate, hands-on experience. We are, in short, not afraid to get our hands dirty, especially since we now know where to go to obtain supplies of swarfega at source. (Deb Ltd, Belper, in case you had forgotten.) Thus it was I found myself standing lochside, at the mouth of the pit wherein intuition told me, far below, lay the deep dark grim subterranean forge. Down there, somewhere in among all the banging and clanking and hissing machinery, was at least one fiscal lever, possibly more. I was already dressed in grease-besmirched overalls, in readiness. I was about to step on to the topmost rung of the ladder, and to start clambering down, down, down, when my attention was caught by a flock of starlings, untold thousands of them, black against the slate-grey sky. I was entranced. And then, by the time I had my wits once more about me, I saw that the mouth of the pit had been covered over by a great granite slab, on which was etched a Scottish saltire, daubed blue with woad. I sighed, and made my way south. When would I ever learn? Yet again, my hopes and dreams were shattered by ornithology.

For a couple of years early in the present century I had a mobile phone. By current standards it was a clunky and primitive affair, on which I was able to make telephone calls (which I did), send text messages (which I rarely did) and play a few games (which I never did). One day the rental period expired and I did not immediately renew it, nor did I investigate any shorter-term or pay-as-you-go options. I put the phone in my desk drawer where it nestles still, gathering dust.

Owning a laptop and being a constant user of what our Belgian pals call Het Internet, it would be both preposterous and pretentious to call myself a latterday Luddite. But the laptop is, I think, the only thing I own which marks me as a citizen of the twenty-first century. Discounting the unused mobile (itself a 1990s model) which, it is true, could be juddered back to life (I assume), I have nothing else that I couldn’t have owned in, say, 1960. I have no television or microwave oven or digital camera or any other space age devices. This is not a conscious pose, a foolhardy attempt to be a living anachronism. I am, for example, perfectly happy to use teabags rather than leaf tea (though how I miss the tea strainer as a numinous everyday object!). It is simply that I find it possible to live a contented life without all this stuff. And whenever I sit on a bus and watch people jabbing at the tiny keyboards on their devices, or listen to them jabbering away on their phones, and when I can restrain myself from throwing a pocketful of pebbles at their heads, I am reminded that I am better off without these things, and that one day I am going to take that old mobile phone out of the desk drawer and throw it in the bin, or crush it underfoot, or donate it to a passing mendicant.

But as I say, the laptop is an essential part of my life, one I would miss much, much more than I miss tea strainers. And it is because I am an online kinda guy that I am aware of such things as apps, which as far as I can gather are the multitudinous wonders available – essential – for mobile phones and smart phones and iPads and tablet PCs and whatever else the digital person-about-town is jabbing and gazing at and jabbering into. So it seems to me only right that in this brave new world there really ought to be a Hooting Yard app, even though I wouldn’t use it myself. The question is, what in the name of all the saints in heaven would a Hooting Yard app actually do?

It has occurred to me, you see, to employ a gaggle of unpaid interns to work – tirelessly, chained in a cellar, fed on slops – on the development of the Hooting Yard app. The technology, of course, holds no terrors for these young persons. They might gawp uncomprehendingly at a tea strainer, but the creation of an app comes as naturally to them as breathing. Nevertheless, in their plaintive little voices, they pipe up “What is it you want the Hooting Yard app to do, Mr Key, innit?” And thus far I have no answer ready for them. (Though in a happy moment I did consider the possibility that my app might deliver a disabling electric shock to the user upon their each and every utterance of the barbarism “innit”.)

Having got this far, however, and recognising that a world without a Hooting Yard app is a world not worth living in, I feel I must plough on, indefatigably. But the interns will grow restive when they have completed the interim project with which I have fobbed them off, the development of the iTea Strainer. So I am appealing to the constituency of Hooting Yard readers and listeners to drum up ideas. You will, I am sure, have been sat there, jabbing and gazing at and jabbering into your device, always with that nagging thought at the back of your puny pea-sized brain that, however exciting and versatile and efficient and entertaining your pad or pod or digithingummyjig, its true potential has yet to be unleashed, because what it really needs, to justify its very existence, let alone its cost, is to have inserted into its electronic innards the app of apps, the Hooting Yard app.

When you have worked out what it will do, let me know, and I will tell the interns, by way of a note scribbled in pencil on a scrap of paper rolled up and sent through pneumatic tube down to the cellar.

Unaccountably, I missed by two years the centenary of the replacement of tin by aluminium in the manufacture of what we still call tin foil. As so often, we have boffins in Switzerland to thank for this innovation, namely Dr. Lauber, Neher & Cie., who opened the world’s first aluminium foil rolling plant in Emmishofen in 1910. For those of you, and I know there are many, who like to keep track of these things, Emmishofen is in the canton of Thurgau, or Thurgovia, in ancient times the home of the people of the Pfyn culture, who apparently kept large numbers of pigs.

As I say, I neglected to mention the centenary at the time, and I know that many readers will have been drumming their fingers impatiently for the past two years, wondering when I am going to get round to telling you what to do with all that tin foil you have accumulated in your kitchen drawer. Well, I am delighted to say that at long last I can turn my attention to this splendidly versatile material. Just bear in mind that when I talk about tin foil I mean aluminium foil, and I am not expecting you to try to track down a stash of the old tin stuff, even if there is any still available, which I suspect there is not.

The best thing you can do with your tin foil is to fashion for yourself a conical tin foil hat. It is important that you make a cone shape, rather than trying to mould the tin foil into the approximate shape of, say, a Homburg or a trilby or a stovepipe hat. Though the wonder of tin foil is that all these hat types could quite easily be made, you must stick to the cone. In part, this is in homage to Jimmy Goddard and the copper cone he used for daily communication with space people. But do not jump to the conclusion that your tin foil cone hat will help you to talk to space people. It won’t. Nor will it protect you from weird unearthly menacing electromagnetic rays and beams and invisible hoo-hah. If such phenomena exist, and can dislodge and jumble and even control the innards of your brain, they are hardly likely to be dissuaded by a sheet of tin foil, are they? Nonetheless, when forming your surplus tin foil into a hat, it is well to pay tribute to Jimmy Goddard and the STAR Fellowship, for as Jesus said, “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work” (Mark 6 : 4-5).

But you can do mighty work, wearing your conical tin foil hat. I am thinking specifically of amateur dramatics. Some might call that leisure, rather than work, but believe you me, if you put your heart and soul into it, amateur dramatics can feel like work, and mighty work at that.

There are several parts in the repertoire where the wearing of a conical tin foil hat is absolutely essential. Consider, for example, Old Nahamkin in The Man Who Came To Dinner In A Shiny Pointy Hat by Belper Frisson. It is not, admittedly, a very big part, and for most of acts two and three the character lies apparently dead on the floor of the parlour while all hell breaks loose around him, but just think of the applause that always greets his entrance, and that ringing line “Hello, I have come to dinner, and I am wearing a shiny pointy conical hat”. It is also worth bearing in mind that Old Nahamkin gets to keep the hat on, even after he is poisoned and stabbed and shot by the vengeful Cassandra, he keeps it on throughout acts two and three, lying motionless on the parlour floor, and at no time is the hat snatched by one of the other characters, who gets to wear it instead,

That does of course happen in one of the other great conical tin foil hat parts, the squalid mute in Pepinstow’s An Inspector Wearing A Shiny Pointy Hat Calls. The squalid mute, of course, turns out to be a police inspector, a revelation somewhat less revelatory than Pepinstow intended, given his cack-handed way of giving the game away in the play’s title. But that need not concern you. You will just need to make sure, as the curtain falls at the end of each performance, that you retrieve your conical tin foil hat from the actor playing Sergeant Piffle, who snatches the hat from atop the inspector’s head in that riveting scene at the end of act four, and wears it himself in a clever ploy to foil Jasper’s attempt to gain Nitty’s inheritance. It might be a creaking plot device, but whenever I have attended an amateur troupe’s performance of the play it has never failed to bring the house down.

There are other parts, in some really tiptop dramas, where the wearing of your conical tin foil hat is not actually called for in the script, but adds a certain something to the character. You might get into arguments, or even fisticuffs, with the director, if they are the type of director averse to the disporting of unnecessary conical tin foil hats. If this is the case, the best thing to do is to say that you are under attack from weird unearthly menacing electromagnetic rays and beams and invisible hoo-hah and must wear the conical tin foil hat as protection. Most theatre directors, professional or amateur, will succumb to such a protest, particularly if it is voiced in a wild and high-pitched screech.

If you loathe the very idea of amateur dramatics, you can still find advantageous opportunities for the wearing of your conical tin foil hat. Promenading, loitering, and hiking are all suitable activities, particularly the latter, particularly in the rain, particularly if it is torrential. There is nothing quite like the sound of the incessant pinging of water on metal, as you hike in your conical tin foil hat through a teeming downpour.

I remember the first time I saw the Beatles on television. It was a studio performance of “We Can Work It Out”, which the Wikipedia tells me was filmed on 23 November 1965, so presumably I saw it a few weeks later. The Wikipedia piece also tells me that in the film John Lennon was seated at a harmonium, but I don’t need to be reminded. I recall that clearly, because part and parcel of the memory, for me, is my father announcing that the Beatles had “gone a bit weird”. No doubt he was thinking, not just of one of the fab four swapping his guitar for a harmonium, but of their increasing hair length and the stirrings of that transition from loveable moptops to drug-dabbling counterculture icons. Soon enough it would become apparent that, as Bernard Levin said, and as I can imagine my father echoing, and as I never tire of quoting, “there is nothing wrong with [John Lennon] that could not be cured by standing him upside down and shaking him gently until whatever is inside his head falls out”.

Though that is my earliest Beatle memory, the point I wish to explore here is that I was already aware of them at this time. My father’s observation made sense, I recall, in a way it would not had they been completely new to me. That is, I understood that they had “gone a bit weird”. With two older sisters who were teenagers in 1965, and who were in possession of a Dansette record player and a batch of Beatles 45s (among other happening grooves), I would have learned about John, Paul, George and Rudyard Ringo at some point before that remembered television show. But when?

Everything we learn, everything we encounter, happens on a particular day. The day before, its existence, whatever it is, is completely unknown to us. And then, one day, we hear about it, see it, read about it. Even those things which seem so much part of the fabric of our world – the Beatles. Shakespeare, cornflakes, cats, tractors, Lembit Opik, lobsters, Ranters, the Great Dismal Swamp, Googie Withers, the First World War, the Second World War, Evelyn Waugh, Auberon Waugh, Springheeled Jack, marzipan, Austria, Orson Welles, fugues, fogous, geometry, spinal fluid, Agamemnon, Potters Bar, Tony Blair, the Munich Air Disaster, haversacks, rucksacks, knapsacks, Dirk Bogarde, the eurozone, synchronised swimming, raspberry jam, “And is there honey still for tea?”, Blodwyn Pig, “per ardua ad astra”, Molesworth 2, Peason, Homburg hats, vinegar, junk bonds, crinkle-cut oven chips, the Titanic, Kierkegaard, Savonarola, Henry Cow, Werner Herzog, lavender shovels, egg nog, Ozymandias, jugged hare, Tinie Tempah, filbert nuts, ectoplasm, squeegee merchants, suicide bombers, mad cow disease, Desperate Dan, Little Plum, Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge, Brancusi, the Bible, blasphemy, Buggins’ turn, Botany Bay, Bellerophon, the Bosphorus, Papa Doc Duvalier, creosote, Dagmar Krause, invisible ink, Old Holborn, semolina, toffee, pictures of Jap girls in synthesis, and so on, and on, forever and ever… there was, for all of us, one day, we could pinpoint on the calendar if only we knew, or remembered, when we learned of these people and places and events and things and breakfast cereals for the very first time. There was a day when you had never, ever come across jugged hare before. Then, one day, you read about it, or heard about it, or otherwise learned of it. But how often do we ever remember those first encounters?

I do remember – though I cannot say what the exact date was – when I first heard the word “internet”, in conversation with a geeky computer person. I did not quite understand what it was, nor that it would ever have much relevance to me, certainly not that it was something that would change the world I lived in. I suppose that is the reason we rarely remember, that we rarely if ever recognise that the new information we have just learned will have any significance. It must have been within the past twelve months, I suspect, that I first learned of the existence of Rick Santorum. He will almost certainly fade into obscurity. But, if the voters of America “go a bit weird”, like the Beatles before them, he might end up as the Potus.

The miraculous thing, in a sense, is that today there is a distinct possibility I have encountered something, learned of something, that will in future seem to me commonplace, obvious, everyday, something I cannot imagine the world without. But I have no idea what it is, so I cannot record it.

The other day, as I was wending my way along the city streets, I saw, on the back of a passing bus, an advertisement for a product called Feroglobin.

I have since learned that this is an iron supplement for the formation of haemoglobin. But it seems to me that a moving vehicle is not an advisable place to advertise it, for one glances at the poster, and before one has a chance to read it properly, away growls the bus, out of the range of one’s vision, or at least of my, myopic, vision. I would have liked more time to scrutinise the advertisement, for on that first glance I misread it as Ferogoblin. I then spent rather a lot of time wondering (a) what in the name of heaven a Ferogoblin might be, and (b) why it was advertising itself on the back of a bus. My mind reeled.

Readers may recall that almost exactly a year ago I wrote here about the official colour coding system for goblins. To recap briefly, the agreed categories are as follows:

Red : Hobgoblins.

Orange : Fat Goblins.

Yellow : Pilfering Goblins.

Green : Teutonic Forest Goblins.

Blue : Goblins found under sinks.

Indigo : Wet Goblins.

Violet : All other goblins not classified above.

According to this list, Ferogoblins – which I take to be a contraction of Feral Goblins – must be included in the “all other goblins not classified above” subset, unless of course there are goblins which are both feral and hob, or feral and fat, or feral and given to pilfering, or feral and dwelling in Teutonic forests, or feral and found under sinks, or feral and wet. I suppose such goblins might well exist. But for the sake of argument, and because it is tidier, let us assume there is a discrete type of goblin known as the feral or fero-goblin. Logically, then, it must fall within the “all other goblins” category, which would mean code violet. Yet intuition, and indeed common sense, tell us that violet is not at all the most suitable colour for a feral goblin. In fact it seems utterly inappropriate, the sort of colour one might only apply to a feral goblin in a world turned upside down, a topsy turvy world of chaos and confusion.

This insight leads us to the startling conclusion that feral goblins must therefore be somehow outwith the known colour spectrum. Imagine that! I told you my mind was already reeling, and now it reeled even more. It perhaps also accounts for their feral nature, that they may be untamed and prone to havoc on account of being set apart from the normal run of goblins. Such alienation can cause low self-esteem, as we have learned from many addle-brained social psychologists in recent decades. What could be more damaging to a sense of goblin selfhood than to be forever banished, by one’s very nature, from the visible colour spectrum? It is a harsh fate indeed, so no wonder they turn feral.

However, I was clearly thinking along the right tracks, because so terrible a social stigma could well account for feral goblins advertising their existence on the backs of buses. It is one way to get yourself noticed, as the producers of several dire West End musicals have discovered. But an advertisement on the back of a bus does not come cheap, and one wonders how the feral goblins raised the necessary cash. My guess is that they were in cahoots with the pilfering goblins (code yellow), who diverted a proportion of their ill-gotten gains to the feral goblins in return for the Lord knows what maleficent favours. Being feral, the feral goblins may have agreed to, for example, gnaw and slash at and scratch and screech at innocent passers-by, terrorising them into a state of paralysing fear so that the pilfering goblins could come leaping down from the rooftops and make away with their wallets and purses and cashboxes. No doubt the two groups would then meet in a secluded goblins’ nest to divvy up the proceeds.

This does raise the question of the bus operators’ willingness to accept advertising on the backs of its buses from such nefarious clients. Or, let us say, it would raise that question were it not the case that I misread the advertisement, which turned out to have not a jot to do with goblins whatsoever. You live and learn.

Skippy The Bush Kangaroo might so easily have been called Googie. The eponymous marsupial heroine of the Australian television series, which ran from 1966 to 1968 and is still shown regularly on Iranian state television, was the brainchild of John McCallum (1918-2010), the husband of the late lamented Googie Withers (1917-2011). I am not for a moment suggesting that McCallum compared his wife to a kangaroo, but surely, when he was casting around in his mind for a name for his bouncy outback heroine, and he was thinking of something ending in an “-ee” sound, he must have considered Googie. I don’t know this for sure, but it seems at least plausible, doesn’t it?

It may be that, at breakfast one morning, the successful theatre and film actor and television producer, who served in the Australian Imperial Force in New Guinea during World War Two, looked over at his wife and said something along the lines of “You know, darling, this intelligent kangaroo that will be the heroine of my television series for children, how about calling her Googie?”

Googie, whose birth name was Georgette, may have been amused, and chuckled, or alternately irritated, and chucked the peel of her grapefruit across the breakfast table at her husband. We do not know, and alas they are both now cold in their graves, so we cannot ask them. But a scene like this may well have been played out in the breakfast room of their beautifully-appointed Sydney home one morning in the nineteen-sixties. I am assuming it was beautifully-appointed. I would like to think it was.

If Googie had been amused, and chuckled, it might be that, later, she had second thoughts, and told her husband not to go ahead with “Googie The Bush Kangaroo” but to choose a different name. If, on the other hand, she had been irritated and chucked the peel of her grapefruit at him, he would probably have said something like, “I was only kidding, darling!”, and reassured her with a uxorious kiss. Depending on the size of the Withers-McCallum breakfast table, he may have been able to accomplish this by raising himself slightly from his chair and leaning forwards. It is more likely, I think, for a successful couple living in a beautifully-appointed home, that their breakfast table would have been a tad too large for such a manoeuvre, and John McCallum would have had to stand up and walk a few paces towards where Googie Withers sat. But this is mere conjecture.

As is, I have to say, the possibility that Skippy, the bush kangaroo at the centre of this domestic maelstrom, had already been named Skippy by her keepers at the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park where the series was mostly filmed, if that was indeed where she lived when not working. Having cast the kangaroo, a wild female Eastern Grey, for whatever qualities she had that made her suitable, McCallum, or more likely a member of the production team delegated to the task, will have asked the keepers the name of the marsupial. “Skippy,” they would have said (not, of course, “Googie”). Thus the series title may have been a fait accompli. I am sure there is documentation in the archives of the Australian Nine Network television channel, or indeed among the paperwork of the Withers-McCallum estate, which could shed some light on this. “Skippy” does seem to be a fortuitously telegenic name for a marsupial heroine, and it is equally likely that the kangaroo was specially renamed for the series. Hence the possibility of that breakfast table conversation.

On a personal note, I should add that, though I have no memory of ever watching an episode of Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, I am certain that I must have done so, at least once or twice, when it was shown on British television, long long ago. The same goes for Flipper, about a dolphin, and Daktari, which I recall featured a lion, or lions. Clearly there was a sixties fad for children’s television shows about wild animals, of both land and sea. One wonders if anybody – John McCallum? Googie Withers? – ever had the idea of bringing Skippy and Flipper and the Daktari lion together, in a special show, a triumvirate of beasts setting the world to rights, like a trio of superheroes.

I was dismayed to note that there exists a Wikipedia section entitled “Falsely negative portrayal of U-boat sailors”. Dammit!, I exclaimed, aloud, cursing that someone, somewhere, had preempted precisely the title of the PhD thesis on which I have been working for years.

It was towards the end of the last century, when I was mentally flailing around seeking a suitable topic for my doctorate, that I happened one day to wander into a theatre, or rather, a “theatre space”. There was no stage as such, but rather a “performative zone”, almost but not quite identical to a dentist’s waiting room, which is where I thought I was going. In this “zone”, several persons were disporting themselves in mysterious ways, some of them physically flailing around much as I was flailing mentally. Perhaps it was that sense of connection which made me pause, and sit, and watch, intently, a performance I might otherwise have dismissed as tomfoolery. The participants cut capers and jumped about and shimmied and threw somersaults and adopted ridiculous postures, and I had absolutely no idea what was going on, but I was sufficiently intrigued that, when it was all over, some hours later, I approached one of the cavorting persons and asked him what it was I had been watching.

“Pant pant pant,” he panted, then added “We are in rehearsals for our adaptation of Wolfgang Peterson’s 1981 epic war film Das Boot, interpreted through the medium of dance.”

I had not seen this film, so I cannot comment on the faithfulness of the adaptation, but I had been struck by the fact that, at certain points, some of the dancers had portrayed their characters quite negatively. One of them scowled a lot. Another seemed a bit weedy. A third had contrived to move his body in the manner of a malevolent beetle. I was sure such behaviour had not been at all common on World War Two submarines. There and then I had an epiphany, and I realised that the falsely negative portrayal of U-boat sailors would be the perfect subject for my doctoral thesis.

I hurried home and set to work. Over the following decade, I put under intense scrutiny each and every portrayal of U-boat sailors I could track down, in films, plays, novels, poems, pop songs, television programmes, operas, operettas, opera bouffes, ballets, even in World War Two Battle Re-enactment Society weekend workshops.

Item : Submariner Second Class Horst Krumbein in The Loathsome U-Boat Sailor, a “monologue for voice and improv jazz ensemble” by Tadaaki Sirinuntananon (1968). Krumbein is depicted as sweaty, myopic, plagued by boils and utterly lacking in social skills.

Item : Submariner First Class Viggo Beckenbauer in The U-Boat Sailor With The Shameful Past, an award-winning drama by radical playwright Geoff Beard (1973). In the opening minutes of the play, we are led to believe that Beckenbauer is a heroic figure. Tall, blond, and impossibly handsome, he strides about the stage while his crewmates gasp and swoon at just how fantastic he is. But then comes the thunderclap, when it is revealed that, back in Düsseldorf before becoming a submariner, he had been convicted of bus fare evasion, forging a dog licence, and half a dozen axe murders. “I joined the navy to forget… to forget,” he pleads in an emotionally wrenching speech, but his crewmates, who it must be said are not subject to falsely negative portrayal by Beard, will have none of it, and they await calm seas and the absence of enemy submarines to surface, and build a pyre on top of the hull, and bind Beckenbauer to a post atop the pyre, and they burn him while dancing in circles, brandishing flaming torches, and chanting.

Item : Captain Hans Gruber in the film Die Hard In A Submarine (2004). To be honest, I ought not pick out the captain as the only negatively portrayed U-boat sailor in this blockbuster, for the entire crew is made up of black-hearted scalliwags and ruffians who take pleasure in stamping their big hefty boots on small scurrying mammals, and similar enormities.

I think that is enough items to be going on with. The point is to demonstrate just how thorough my research had been, the better so you can grasp the degree of dismay I suffered when I thought someone else had not only been ploughing the same academic furrow as I was, but had gone ahead and posted their findings on what our Belgian pals call Het Internet.

Imagine my relief, then, when I actually looked up the Wikipedia entry headed Falsely negative portrayal of U-boat sailors and found that it was merely a 77-word paragraph within the piece about the film U-571 (Jonathan Mostow, 2000). As with Das Boot, I have not seen this film either, in spite of my indefatigable research. Clearly my work is not yet done.

In a comment on my piece in today’s Dabbler, Jonathan Law very helpfully tells us that Rudyard Kipling was named after his parents’ favourite reservoir. It was on the banks of Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, says Mr Law, that they met and courted and it was here, conceivably, that the poet was conceived. “Clearly,” he adds, “this name-your-child-after-a-favourite-reservoir business is an excellent custom and one that should be adopted by all who trust that their offspring will go on to literary immortality.” I would go further, and suggest that it should be adopted by all, irrespective of any future literary achievement, or lack thereof.

I hesitate to say that the government should take a lead on this, but some kind of concerted national effort will be needed. The first step will be a voluntary agreement among publishers to make bonfires piled high with copies of all their existing “baby names” books and restock the shelves of our bookshops and libraries with “reservoir names” compendia. It will probably be a good idea, however, to retain the current cover designs, usually involving photographs of cute gurgling infants, in order to reinforce the message.

That should be simple enough, but the next stage may prove more difficult. Before we can proudly claim to live in a land where all newborn babies are named after their parents’ favourite reservoirs, those parents will first of all actually have to have a favourite reservoir. It is surprising just how many people do not.

As you know, I always like to back up my assertions with evidence, even if that evidence comes from what our Belgian pals call Het Internet rather than from ancient dusty leather-bound books. In this case, I searched Google for “my favourite reservoir”, eliciting just 675 results, many of which can be discarded because they refer, on closer inspection, to “my favourite reservoir dog”, which is a different matter entirely. Restricting my search to sites based in the UK, which after all is the land where I want my programme to be put into effect, yields a mere 44 results, though I am pleased to say there do not seem to be any dogs clogging up and thus distorting the data. But this hardly bodes well, does it?

That is why I speak of concerted national effort, and why our community education hubs, as I think they are called, have such an important part to play. Before prospective parents can choose a favourite reservoir, they will need to familiarise themselves with as many reservoirs as possible. And while it is one thing to read lists of reservoir names in the new-style baby name books, nothing beats direct experience. That is why I recommend compulsory reservoir-bank picnicking opportunities for youngsters, even before they are old enough to procreate. It is to be hoped that by spending as much leisure time as possible hanging around on the banks of reservoirs, when the time comes to go a-wooing and a-courting, no other possible location will even enter their little heads.

Given the vagaries of British weather, it is perhaps too much to hope that all babies in future will be conceived upon the banks of reservoirs, as it is rumoured was the case with Rudyard Kipling. Nevertheless, a few judicious and sensitively-worded guidelines could be incorporated into sex education lessons, and perhaps some semi-permanent tents could be erected on the banks of our reservoirs, supplied with mattresses and warm blankets. In order that they do not spoil the view, such tents should probably be concealed behind clumps of reservoir-bank shrubbery, where that is present, or otherwise camouflaged, where it is not.

This seems to me an eminently practical plan of campaign, and one which will reinvigorate the national spirit. In the meantime, any prospective parents reading this can make a start by studying this list of reservoirs and making due arrangements to visit each of them in turn. That way you can plump for your favourite before your squalling infant comes triumphantly into the world.

Rudyard Lake : a reservoir in Staffordshire