This week in The Dabbler I get misty-eyed and nostalgic about something or other. What I might be misty-eyed and nostalgic about is the fact that the piece was written over a quarter of a century ago, which is a somewhat unnerving thought. I did not know then what the piece was “about”, and in the succeeding twenty-five years I have come no closer to grasping the world-shuddering significance lurking within its two hundred and twenty-two words. But world-shuddering significance there is, of that we can be sure. Do let me know if you can work out what it is, because I still haven’t got a clue.

ADDENDUM : I have changed two of those two hundred and twenty-two words for this twenty-first century version, but the meaning, whatever it might be, is not altered in any dramatic, or even undramatic, manner.

Over at The Dabbler this week, I consider that hallowed realm where poetry and cake collide. And that’s not all, for my ruminations lead me from poetry and cake to poetry and biscuits, all in just four brief paragraphs. Even the loveable Liverpudlian moptops get a mention. It’s all so exciting it’s enough to make an ant keel over and die.

In the dying days of the twelvemonth, you can barely open a newspaper or magazine, watch the television or listen to the radio without being confronted by yet another “Review Of The Year” or “Round-Up Of The Key Events Of 2011”. Blather blather blather. The thing about these space-fillers is that they tend to be cobbled together on the hoof, with little thought, and – understandably, I suppose – lack any proper historical perspective. What seems important to hacks as the year takes its last gasps may, in fifty or a hundred years’ time, be quite forgotten, and 2011 may be remembered for other events entirely, ones which, to us who lived through them, seem trivial and unworthy of remark.

So when I was commissioned by the editors of The Dabbler to write my own review of 2011, I put on my futurologist’s cap (satin and wool, tassles, earflaps) and, with the aid of Dr Baxter’s Invigorating Brain Syrup, I looked at the year through the eyes of a Man Of The Future. What would a penniless out of print scribbler of 2111 pick out as the crucial events of 2011? My report is here.

Meanwhile, having got quite a taste for the wearing of the cap and the glugging of the syrup, I am heading further into the future. I have set the controls for 2525, the year of Zager & Evans’ imperishable chart-topper, and will let you know how I get on.

This week in my cupboard at The Dabbler I present a caption competition with a twist. Those of you who can barely think straight due to your excitement at the continuing wonders of the Hooting Yard Advent Calendar will be pleased to learn that, having printed and cut out and pasted with glue to a sheet of cardboard one of the pictures which appeared earlier in the week, you will have an advantage over common or garden Dabbler readers. You will already be familiar with the photograph, and indeed with the caption. So get thee hence and devise your entry for a chance to win untold riches in gold.

Earlier this week in The Dabbler, Brit reviewed Sweeper!, a novel by the foopballist Steve Bruce. Though I have yet to read the book itself, the review was enough for me to recognise genius. I added a comment, saying: “OK, that’s it. I am destroying everything I have written to date and starting all over again with Steve Bruce as my guide, my teacher, my inspiration.” If anybody thought I was joking, think again. In my cupboard today, you will find the first fruits of my new approach. It’s early doors, and I can’t pretend to have mastered the intricacies of the Brucesque method, but I am trying, I am trying.

Incidentally, astute readers will note a particularly clever metafictional sally in my piece. Brit points to Bruce’s repeated use of fundamental spelling inconsistencies in proper names, and is dismissive of the idea that these may be due to a lack of proofreading or copy editing. I have followed Bruce in giving my hero’s name in a number of variations, and I also refer more than once to the actor Bruce Willis. Not only is there a pleasing Bruce / Bruce echo, but of course Willis once reputedly wrote on an online forum the immortal words “proofreading is for pussies”. I leave you to untangle that one.

This week in The Dabbler I confess to my teenage crush on Harold Wilson. Required reading, I think, for anyone interested in pipe-smoking premiers, political paranoia, spiders, and bedridden teenagers who have lost the use of their lower limbs.

For younger readers, here is a photograph of Harold Wilson. On no account should you confuse this with December’s daily advent calendar picture. While there is always the possibility that Wilson may appear on your calendar at some point, that day has not yet come.

I was so delighted by the quotation from Bernard Levin – oops, I really must remember to call him Bernard “Massive, unflagging, moral, exquisitely shaped, enormously vital, enormously funny, strong, supple, human, ripe, generous and graceful” Levin whenever I mention him – that I posted it again today, at The Dabbler.

One point that has occurred to me is the seemingly outrageous omission from the list of “the Jethro Tull”. But I realise that, even in 1970, the great critic intuited that the band led by the hairy monopod flautist would never, ever, vanish down “the memory hole of instant oblivion”.

At The Dabbler this week, I examine in piercing detail the phrase “saying Boo! to a goose”, and suggest that it is high time it was replaced by something more apposite. To assist readers in gaining a full understanding of what I am talking about, I append a video of some ill-tempered geese, taken by legendary independent film maker Ned Ouwell. There is no evidence that the geese in the video have actually had “Boo!” said to them, so to get the utmost benefit, it is a good idea to shout “Boo!” at your computer screen just before you click the directional pointing device to play the clip. If you are not sure what precisely a goose is, here is a picture of one:

This week over at The Dabbler I have shoved into my cupboard a classic from the Hooting Yard Treasury of Song. This is of course a plug or puff for next week’s Evening Of Lugubrious Music And Lopsided Prose, attendance at which ought to be compulsory for all devotees of Hooting Yard but is, alas, in these namby pamby wishy washy twee days o’ pap merely voluntary. That said, you really are urged to strain every sinew to cobble together a fiver, to foregather upon Tower Bridge, and then to head more or less in a straight line southwards down Tower Bridge Road until you reach Bermondsey Square, wherein you will find Woolfson & Tay Bookshop/Gallery/Cafe, wherein, at 7.00 PM on Friday 18 November, Mr Key & Mr Spaceman will be providing a woopdy doopdy extravaganza of lugube ‘n’ lop.

In today’s super soaraway Dabbler, I mark the death of Sir Jimmy Savile by fixing it for readers.

This week in The Dabbler I introduce readers to Jimmy Goddard’s seminal masterpiece Cosmic Friends. Yava Hoosita!

This week in The Dabbler, I present an exciting project for seedy persons.

If, like me, you intend to spend the autumn in the great outdoors, entented at Camp Dabbler, be sure to read the by no means exhaustive list of Victorian camping gear stowed in my cupboard this week.

Useful as the list is, it raises a number of questions. The following puzzlers spring to mind, though I have not yet been able to come up with answers.

Which version of the Bible is best suited for a camping trip?

How many boxes should one pack, and of what kind?

Which is the most effective oil to apply to one’s Brogans?

Why is the harness the sole item on the list which one should examine, presumably before the start of the camping trip? Are we to assume that all the other things can be shoved willy nilly into one’s camping pantechnicon without them being given the once over with a gimlet eye?

“Meal (in bag). Meal-bag.” Does this mean the properly prepared camper should take two meal-bags, one containing meal and one empty? Or is the repetition designed to hammer the point home for the camping dunderpate, much as one hammers home the pegs of the dunderpate’s tent?

Regarding pens, should one take ballpoints (with tips about the size of a lobster’s brain) or thick black magic markers, or fountain pens, or indeed swans?

No particular song-book is recommended, and it would be helpful to have some idea of the kind of songs one might be expected to sing while hunched around the fire at Camp Dabbler.

If any readers can help out with these, or other camping-related questions thrown up by the list, please use the Comments facility.

Method acting comes under the spotlight in my cupboard at The Dabbler this week, and I thought it would be interesting to write the piece using the technique of Method writing. The idea is to induce in oneself a state of mind where the only “writing” which exists is the tracks of birds in snow – marks that are at once meaningless yet numinous. In this state, “literature” has yet to come into being. Prose has to be invented anew. It is as if one were Jeanette Winterson!

To get the hang of the momentous task before you, it is a good idea to make a copy of the bird-tracks in the snow, for they are fugitive, and when the snow melts, they will vanish forever. Go to a stationery shop or a post office, and buy a pen and paper. When choosing a pen, say of the ballpoint variety, make sure the tip is about the size of the primitive ganglia which constitute the brain of a lobster.

Out in the field, learn how to make marks, with the pen upon the paper, which match precisely the patterns made by the tracks of birds in the snow. This is the beginning of writing! Back at home, sat at an escritoire, continue making such marks, but rather than mere copying allow yourself free rein. Sooner or later, you will discover that the marks you are making will, as if by a miracle, form literate prose!

It’s been an unaccountably quiet week here at Hooting Yard, I’m afraid, but Friday would not be Friday without something in my cupboard at The Dabbler. And lo! This week I sing the praises of the London Library – or, to be precise, I was going to, until I discovered someone else’s recent blog postage that said almost exactly what I would have said by way of introduction to this heaven on earth. So, instead, I link to that postage, and praise instead a forgotten writer whose work I have found on the book-crammed shelves of the library.

There is another brief but useful introduction to the London Library in this In Praise Of… piece from The Guardian last year. It’s worth noting, I think, that seven of the twelve commenters there moan about the cost of membership. I get the impression that such people would complain whatever the cost, simply because it is a private institution open only to paying members. I’m surprised the word “elitist” appears nowhere in the comments.

But sense and perspective are provided by one ‘cunningfox’, who writes “£1.08 a day. Best bargain in London. What else are you going to spend it on that’s half so worthwhile?” Indeed so. I am quite alarmingly poverty-stricken, but even I can find a daily quid to stump up for access to fifteen miles of shelves groaning with books. It is all a question of choice. I recall, a few years ago, attending a gig by the great John Bently, where he had some of his Liver & Lights artist’s books for sale. I overheard some ragamuffin whingeing that they were too expensive, as he slurped his (expensive) pint and headed off to the bar to buy another round. He probably spent more on beer that evening than a couple of Bently’s books would have cost him.