More from Carl Sagan’s excellent The Demon-Haunted World. He tells us that, according to alien abductee Betty Hill, the pesky visitors from outer space “frequently help themselves to some of [the abductee’s] belongings, such as fishing rods, jewelry of different types, eyeglasses or a cup of laundry soap”.

Remember that, and next time you see a myopic angler festooned with rings and necklaces emerging from the launderette, you can make a citizen’s arrest and cart it off to your secret underground lab.

Pansy Cradledew bought a new kettle recently. Tempting though it is to use this as an excuse to regale you with my all-encompassing kettle theories – and believe me, you will be impressed – I’d like instead to say a few words about the particular make of kettle Ms Cradledew purchased.

There is an egg-shaped window in the side of the kettle which enables the pleased-as-punch kettle owner to see at a glance the water level of the water that has been poured out of a tap or spigot into the kettle. It may be argued that I could rewrite that sentence so that it is less ungainly and doesn’t mention the kettle three times, but I want to be absolutely clear and I am writing in a rush. There is a pot of tea to be brewed, and I cannot type and make tea at the same time. You try it, and see how difficult it is.

When the power is on, but the kettle is switched off, that is, when it is plugged in to the wall socket and the wall socket is switched on but the kettle remains in its default, at rest, idle state, an internal light is activated, and through the egg-shaped window the excited kettle owner sees a blue glow. This has the effect of making the water look not unlike a tropical sea, or at least a tiny portion of such a sea, on a blazing hot summer day – no small benefit when one lives in a land of ice chaos.

Depress the switch underneath the kettle’s handle, however, and the blue glow is instantly transformed into a glow that is bright red. The kettle is now on, and begins to boil the water which was poured into it from the tap, or spigot. Gradually, it begins to bubble. As it approaches boiling point, the combination of seething, bubbling water and a blood-red glow makes it look like a scene from hell. Satan’s spa!

I may write about further kitchen-based excitements at a later date, but now it is time for that pot of tea.

There is another flurry of outrage, in Cambridge this time, because someone has published a picture of a seventh-century mystic. Apparently, it is absolutely forbidden to draw pictures of “the prophet Mohammed”, as the mystic is known. (I worry about that definite article, as I’m sure there have been other prophets from time to time.) Back in September 2006 (scroll down to Blodgett’s Jihad) we published a picture of this fellow, and it seems like a good idea to reprint it now, if only to remind readers just how outrageous such depictions are. When you have stopped quaking with fury – and outrage, of course – you can go and read this.

Here is an outdoor game for all the family. After singing lustily at the Sunday service, and having a little chat with the vicar on the church steps, you should repair to a patch of waste ground, taking with you a couple of battered iron pails, an unopened packet of processed cheese triangles, and some strips of bark from a pugton tree. Each family member should don a red balaclava, apart from the tiniest one, who goes bare-headed. One side of the patch of waste ground is designated Nobby Stiles. The opposite side is consecrated to David Blunkett. The object of the game is to get from Stiles to Blunkett as directly as possible, cleanly and without undue dithering. If the patch of waste ground is assailed by inclement weather, for instance a howling gale, a teeming downpour, or thunder and lightning, the family may be accompanied by beetle-browed urchins from beyond the railway tracks. Use counters and a tally stick to keep score.

Hooting Yard crashes in to 2007 a month late and with a new format. The old pages – which of course you can still visit – had a certain ramshackle charm, but I’ve decided to use this standard blog format for a number of reasons. Better indexing, for one thing, and we all need indexes. Also I hope that readers will take full advantage of the Comments feature and spout their own twaddle to complement my own. Onwards and upwards! Here, for your delectation, is a picture sent to me by that scalliwag Max Décharné.