As most of you lot know, I do not engage with Twitter. (The Hooting Yard Twitfeed is an automated bit of gubbins that updates whenever I post something here.). It has been brought to my attention, however, that last week I was all over Twitter like a rash – if being retwitted over fifty times is, as I am assured, a rash. The cause of the hoo-hah was the attention given to a letter I had published in The Spectator which is, I hope, self-explanatory.

In his scholarly introduction to By Aerostat To Hooting Yard, Roland Clare writes: “The Bad Vicarage is a very funny piece that epitomises not only the moral instability of Hooting Yard but also Key’s desire to puncture the very illusion of reality that naturalistic authors are at pains to sustain. Even if the rest of the story were sensible – rest assured, it is not – there is no easy way we can come to terms with the unreliability of a narrator who first wonders what has become of the ‘Bad Vicar’, then reveals himself to be the incumbent in question.”

The estimable Walt O’Hara of Airy Persiflage says: “Not for the faint of heart, Mr. Key’s spine tingling tale of a monstrous vicar of old and the evil that he wrought!” You can enjoy the pleasurably disconcerting experience of listening to the tale read by Mr O’Hara here.

The word “Medium” to me suggests a Victorian charlatan in a darkened room, summoning the spirits of the dead and spewing forth ectoplasm. “Medium” is also, I learn, the name of a new(ish?) bit of interwebbery, a repository for prose, a sort of amalgam of bloggery and twittering. Those more familiar with these matters could no doubt explain it better. But Hooting Yard is always bang up to the minute with the latest developments in technology, and not just L’Oreal’s light-reflecting booster technology. That is why Mr Key has taken a tentative step into Medium, by reposting that recent spot of wittering about surrealism.

I may add further pieces to the site, and you lot can all hie over there with your knapsacks and a packed lunch, and “recommend” me. Who knows if conquering Medium will be a profitable step on the path to our ultimate goal of Hooting Yard Global Dominion?

Here is a date for the diaries of those of you lot who live in or around London. Next Saturday sees the London première of Sharon Smith’s film adaptation of A Recipe For Gruel at the BFI Southbank. It is being shown as part of the British Animation Awards – programme 2, on 8 February at 6.20 p.m. Mr Key will be in attendance (incognito, of course). Don’t miss the cinematic event of this, or any other, century!

Miss HatHorn’s film adaptation of A Recipe For Gruel will be shown at the Bradford Animation Festival in November. Watch the trailer here. Further news of this major cinematic event soon , , ,

An eerie silence may have descended upon Hooting Yard itself over the past few weeks, but elsewhere our global outreach service has not been wholly idle.

Over at The Dabbler last Friday I considered self-esteem ‘n’ diversity awareness community hub nomenclature, with particular reference to the example set in South Africa, where some lucky tots attend A School Called Monkey.

Meanwhile, at the Drabblecast, golden-voiced Norm Sherman gives a reading of my thrilling space adventure The Nougat Nozzles Of Neptune. Many thanks are due to Salim Fadhley for arranging these matters.

I spent yesterday recovering from the rigours of the Evening Of Lopsided Prose & Lugubrious Music at Woolfson & Tay held on Friday. Those of you who were unable to attend or who could not be dragged there by wild horses will be pleased to know that the whole kit and kaboodle was recorded by ResonanceFM (thanks to Chris Weaver and Johnny Seven) for broadcast as a Hooting Yard Special at a date to be announced, and thereafter as a pod thing. I shall alert you to these developments when I know the details.

I must also thank Shivaun Woolfson and Frances Tay, whose splendid independent bookshop / cafe / gallery hosted the event and who ensured the whole thing ran smoothly. I suggest all Hooting Yard devotees make a beeline for the shop whenever they are in London. It occurs to me that every now and then you may actually wish to read something other than my outpourings, in which case you will find a fine selection of books there.

Thanks too of course to Outa_Spaceman for joining me on singing and ukulele duty. I can neither sing nor play the ukulele, so that part of the evening would have been an absolute disaster without him. I am grateful too to Pansy Cradledew for her assistance during the Poetry Masterclass.

My only disappointment is that the assembled throng seemed not to understand I was delivering a series of serious lectures on topics as diverse as birds, owl gods, Virginia Woolf’s sausage and haddock dilemma, and seaweed heroes, and my talks were greeted with immoderate laughter and the occasional outbreak of hilarity. As I said in the programme notes, “unseemly pangs can be tempered by moral balance”. Do try to remember that next time, whenever the next time is.

Mr Key & Ms Cradledew explain poesy to the masses

Snap by Loz Flowers

The splendid people at the increasingly essential Public Domain Review asked me to write a brief piece on a curious compilation of dog anecdotes published in 1895. You will of course drop everything to go and read it, and when you do please pay particular attention to the author’s apology, which I quote in full, and which contains the lovely line “the writers may be dead or out of England”, which somehow suggests that these are equivalent states. Perhaps they are.

If you would like to listen to Mr Key delivering a truncated and more focussed version of his ill-spent hours, you can go to episode 97 of The Pod Delusion, where it appears as the third item, entitled Reading And Riots.