Is it just me, or does Donald Tusk sound more like the protagonist of a contemporary American novel than the next Prime Minister of Poland? “Donald Tusk” could be a plutocrat in a fat Tom Wolfe paperback, or a sidekick of Oscar Crease in William Gaddis’ superb A Frolic Of His Own.

Mr Tusk’s Civic Platform is likely to form a government in coalition with the Peasants’ Party. Why haven’t we got a Peasants’ Party here? I’d vote for a peasant to be put in charge of things. Not a farmer, nor a Countryside Allianceista, but a proper peasant, in a smock, with a piece of straw in their mouth, and a stock of folk wisdom which I may well find incomprehensible. There must be a peasant called Hoouhmne who could be persuaded to run for office, the sort of Prime Minister who would award honours for the cultivation of Curiously Lumpen And Hirsute Root Vegetables so that Miss Hathorn wouldn’t have to strike her own medal.

Continuing very briefly with the political slant, I felt impelled this morning to fire off an email to Boris Johnson. This is what I wrote:

Dear Mr Johnson

I just stumbled upon an online sample of quotations from your collection Lend Me Your Ears, in one of which you claim that ping-pong was first called whiff-whaff. I think you may be mistaken. Ping-pong was, at least in Britain, originally known as “Gossima”, and marketed as “Causing immense excitement and healthy exercise and is the nearest approach that can be to the game of lawn tennis as played out of doors” (1901).

I trust that in the mȇlée of your constituency duties and campaigning for the London Mayoralty, you will do the decent thing and arrange for a correction to appear in any future edition of the book. Ideally, of course, you will also make a public statement on the matter. Such willingness to acknowledge past errors does smack a little of Stalinism, but may go down well with the ping-pong community.

Yours sincerely,

Frank Key

Here is my three-step plan to reinvigorate British politics.

Step One : The Liberal Democrats elect Chris Huhne as their next leader.

Step Two : A cabinet putsch in the Labour Party sees Geoff Hoon oust Gordon Brown.

Step Three : Returning to their roots, the Conservatives ditch David Cameron and replace him with a proper toff, Lord Home. As is the way with the aristocracy, his name is not simply pronounced as it looks, but as “Hume”.

Done and dusted.

The Hoouhmnes

This morning I learned, a tad belatedly, that Hooting Yard has been voted 64th in a list of the Top 100 Liberal Democrat blogs. I confess to being utterly beflummoxed by this news, chiefly because I’m not a Liberal Democrat, have never voted Liberal Democrat, and doubt that I ever would vote Liberal Democrat. In the unlikely event that the “votes” cast in this poll were the result of human agency, as opposed to a fiendish electronic crunching exercise, then I applaud the good sense of those who voted. To reciprocate, here at Hooting Yard we did a quick straw poll to vote on our favourite Liberal Democrat. No prizes for guessing that the winner is, of course, Lembit Opik.

One brief footnote: while we’re on the subject of party politics, I am reliably informed that Michael Meacher keeps an A3 copy of the famous Hooting Yard Pontiff Mnemonic on his office wall.

Dr Johnson (a sort of proto-Dobson) famously stated that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life. On the other hand, when a man is tired of Hooting Yard (not that such a mental aberration is remotely credible, of course) there are other Yards he can investigate. I have just returned from a stay in Whitby, where, among other Yards, I was happy to spot both Dark Entry Yard and Arguments Yard. Whitby is all Yards and Steps. Of the latter, the one hundred and ninety-nine steps leading up to the ruined Abbey are the most noteworthy, but there are plenty of less celebrated Steps to clamber up and down, many of then perilous and steep.

Dark Entry Steps can be found opposite the railway station, which has a somewhat battered and semi-derelict air, and has but a single platform and a single track, on which a train plies between Whitby and Middlesbrough, back and forth all day, but not at night.

My little trip to Whitby goes some way to explaining the eerie silence that has crept over Hooting Yard of late. But I am back again now, revivified, and will be posting a few more dispatches regarding “Seaside Resort Of The Year, 2006” in addition to the usual morally uplifting and instructive prose. So you can look forward to reading about the Scoresby Pump, Goth tat, a CCTV warning in Celtic uncials (in yet another Yard), the Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society, pipistrelles, and much else. Oh, and by the way, the offer may not last long, but one shop in that delightful town is currently giving away a free bra with every pair of flipflops sold. On second thoughts, I think I am misremembering that, and it’s the other way round.

Mr Key is currently a-moanin’ and a-groanin’ and generally feeling sorry for himself, laid low by a seemingly endless series of colds. Perhaps it is the same one, punctuated by brief periods of what passes for being hale and hearty in these parts. Anyway, to the accompaniment of much snuffling, here are a couple of items from the papers that deserve preservation in the Hooting Yard Crate O’ Press Cuttings.

First, this report was issued by the Associated Press in Amsterdam: A Dutch newspaper said yesterday it had received anonymous threats to kill several of its journalists if the paper published its annual herring review. There is more, but I think that first sentence is sufficiently arresting. Perhaps the journalists would be better engaged doing something uncontroversial, such as publishing cartoons of “the prophet” Mohammed… so long as they don’t include one of him munching on a herring, of course.

Next, the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, James Purnell, has this to say, in today’s Guardian: “What’s the trellis on which the plant can grow? We create the trellis… but we need to make sure the trellis is not getting in the way of people being excellent.” Trellis metaphors are always to be applauded, in all contexts, at all times, and this one is especially welcome, for I feared the worst. Youthful Mr Purnell, in his past life at the BBC, was a bright-eyed acolyte of the preposterous John Birt, a man who sees an arrow and calls it a “directional pointing device”.

I am now going to go and be excellent, unless my trellis is in the way.

“It’s a good thing to be shifty in a new country” – Johnson Hooper, Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs (1845).

As regular readers know, here at Hooting Yard we always keep abreast of the latest twaddle in the zeitgeist…or perhaps I mean the latest piffle in the Weltschmerz. Either way, it behoves me to inform you that your esteemed editor has joined the teeming millions flocking to Facebook. If you want a glimpse behind the scuffed yet elegant portals of Hooting Yard, and to gain an insight into the enigmatic mechanisms by which this site is brought to you, come and join me.

Please note that access to HIMMELFARB is restricted. Within five seconds a new window will open, in which you should type your access code.

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