In quoting H P Lovecraft earlier, I am reminded that someone I know – who occasionally went by the pseudonym Tex Beard – once recorded himself making a sort of half-liquid bubbling noise – “glub… glub… glub” and used it as his answerphone message.

Astute readers will note that posts currently appear undated and without a comment option. This is due to one of those laughably-named “upgrades”, which as far as I can see just make life more difficult. Fear not, equilibrium will be restored as soon as possible. I will be wittering about this in due course (i.e., in approximately fifty years time).

UPDATE : Dates and Comments restored, as you can see. The Yard’s boffin is working on further tweaks to tidy up the spacing between posts and a few other horrors.

UPDATE UPDATE : Back to normal. I suppose I could delete this post, but I will leave it here for the historical record, to be pored over by future scholars. Also, leaving it here means I can continue to assert that there has been at least one posting every day since the sixteenth of December last year, which makes a change from the awful hiatuses (hiatae?) of yore.

Mr Key is pleased to announce that readers, obsessives, and persons of a bonkers disposition can now follow Hooting Yard on Witter. As you may already know, Witter is an exciting new social networking service, designed for people with pea-sized brains who want to shrink them further, even unto the point of invisibility. The idea is that, every fifty years, “witterers” write an account of their doings, in beautiful if somewhat clogged handwriting, on sheets of vellum, and roll the sheets up, and seal them with wax, and carry them around the countryside, stopping every now and then to accost a wayfarer or a peasant, whom they shove into a ditch, and to whom they then read the “witter”, aloud, and at length. I think you will all agree that this is a splendid new way to get the Hooting Yard message across to folk far and wide.

Witter should not be confused with a similar service, recently popularised by, among others, the Most Intelligent Life-Form Ever To Walk The Earth, otherwise known as Stephen Fry, who cleverly uses it to demonstrate his command of childish scatological exclamations, to the delight of a thankful nation.

“All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Pascal

And while I was scrubbling about in the archive looking for Babbage, I came upon this, from 28 January 2004:

“It is a curious fact that the crowbar is one of the very few tools to be named after our avian cousins. Things have come to a pretty pass when our habits of nomenclature are so bereft. It is in an attempt to rectify this sorry state of affairs that the manufacturing arm of the Hooting Yard Foundation is working on the production of an exciting new range of ironmongery products, to wit: guillemot bolts; lapwing nozzles; lark basins; coot clips; teal pins; bittern jacks; little bittern jacks; snow bunting tacks; flamingo hasps; grebe locks; moorhen horns; corncrake hinges; raven sticks; tern rotors; buzzard extractors; and pipit wrenches.”

With much shame, and rending of garments, I have to confess that in the five years since that was written, not a single one of these fabulous products has yet appeared on the shelves of our credit crunchy mongers.

Mr Key tries to avoid ranting here at Hooting Yard. If he started, he might never stop. But something got his goat today, belatedly and unexpectedly, so bear with him please.

And so we are about to enter the new Dark Ages. Things are bad enough already, in Papworld, ruled by airheads for airheads. Now we enter the Era of Pap and Darkness. A dim society gets dimmer, in more ways than one.

I read about the new criminal status of the 100W light bulb a while ago, but only now have I summoned my rage. This is what happens. Relentless idiocy begets inertia even in those of us who still cling helplessly and hopelessly to the Raft of Sense.

Well, I shall blunder about, in the gloom, half-blind, calling down imprecations upon the filament-bulb-hating nitwits. But eventually I will start shouting “Bring me my blubber candles! Forward to the Dark Ages! Give me dimly-lit pap or give me death!” And I shall be a good citizen at last, and be given my badge.

It pains me to say it, but a few readers are claiming that the Cow & Pins is a fictional tavern, a tavern simply made up by Mr Key for his own amusement. A “Facebook group”, whatever that might be, has been set up, called The Cow & Pins Is A Fictional Tavern, A Tavern Simply Made Up By Mr Key (Of The Hooting Yard) For His Own Amusement, which, at the last count, had somewhere between three and thirty-five thousand six hundred and forty-six members. One can tell that the originators of this calumny are not true devotees, because they have made the elementary mistake of referring to “The Hooting Yard”, when of course it never attracts the definite article, never has and never will, so long as there is calcium in Mr Key’s bones.

Anyway, to prove these accusers wrong once and for all, here is a hyperrealist photograph of the Cow & Pins inn sign, taken by Rex Hyper, the noted hyperrealist.

Here is a photograph of Mr Key’s mud idol. As is de rigueur with mud idols, nails have been driven into it. In this case, each nail represents the immortal soul of a badger, or of an otter. During secret ceremonies, Mr Key prostrates himself on his stomach before the mud idol and, in guttural ululations, beseeches it to pulverise his foes using the maleficent Gaar, or energy, of the badgers and otters impacted within its mudness.

Glory be! ‘Tis the fourteenth of January, Saint Mungo’s Day, a landmark date in the Hooting Yard calendar, as important in its way as the third, fourth and fifth of February (the Muggletonian Great Holiday) and the nineteenth of July (the Muggletonian Little Holiday). As far as I am aware, there is absolutely no connection between Saint Mungo and Lodowicke Muggleton’s holy crew, save that the feast days and holidays of both are conscientiously observed here at Hooting Yard, for reasons which I hope are obvious.

As a special treat for readers to celebrate Saint Mungo’s Day, let me announce the new subscription scheme. I know full well that many of you toss and turn at night, victims of a vague sense of unrest, kept awake by the nagging thought that you are able to read this grand panoply of words online absolutely free. A lot of you have generously donated to Mr Key’s almost bare cupboard in the past, and I am mindful of the effort it takes to do so. So now I have devised a scheme whereby you can make regular donations without lifting a finger, apart of course from the initial setting up.

Look! At the top of the page, in the red rectangle, there is a new tab, second from the right, called “Subscriptions”. If you click on it you will be taken to a page showing you the four options available – the Tiny Enid, the Old Halob, the Pebblehead, and the Dobson. Full details are given of the cost of each subscription and the use to which your funds will be put. Having plumped for the one that best suits you, just click on the accompanying button and follow the simple instructions. You will have no more sleepless nights, and can bathe in a warm glow of righteousness that your favourite out of print pamphleteer is better placed to keep the wolf from his door.

The wolf, by the way, is named Martin, and I shall have more to say about him soon.

NOTE : At the moment, that ‘Subscribe’ button in the sidebar takes you automatically to the Old Halob option. It will be fixed, until when use the tab at the top.

According to the Press Association, Scientists will serve gruel to the public today after recreating the porridge made famous by Oliver Twist. Members of the Royal Society of Chemistry produced the recipe, consisting of water, oats and milk, after consulting historic sources as well as Charles Dickens’ novel. The Victorian workhouse staple, which will be prepared by French chef Fabian in the society’s kitchen, will be ladled into pewter dishes and served to passersby at 11am by the society’s own “Beadle” at the entrance of its London home at Burlington House, Piccadilly. An RSC spokesman said: “Diners asking for more will be rejected.”

Sadly, I read this too late to be able to get to Piccadilly in time for my free pewter pot of gruel. I could console myself, however, that it would not have been a new experience for me. I think I have mentioned elsewhere that I spent a period, earlier in my life, subsisting on a diet of gruel. This was not for reasons of ill-health or a traumatised digestive system or even abject poverty. My flatmate at the time and I undertook the gruel-only diet as an experiment in asceticism, puritanical fanaticism, and self-righteousness. Indeed, as I read the Press Association report it struck me that the RSC recipe seems rather luxurious, adding a slop of milk to the oats and water. No such treats for us!

My grueldom took place many years ago, early in the Thatcher administration, but the lessons I learned then, and the stiffening of my moral fibre, have remained with me. In fact, whenever the opportunity arises, I like to announce that “I lived on a diet of gruel, you know,” to whomsoever is listening. Curiously enough, this is almost invariably met by laughter and ridicule.

I have recently been having a bash at doing some drawing again. I am not quite sure why I abandoned the practice, but I have to say that after all these years it is not coming easily to me. The best that can be said of the results so far is that they have the slapdash charm of an infant’s daubs. Perhaps I shall persist, perhaps not. Anyway, here is an old one from the vaults, circa 1992. Click on the picture to see a bigger version, and lots of cross-hatching.

02.01.09 Two squirrels.

In homage to George Orwell’s egg counting mania, I decided it would be an excellent idea to begin the new year by launching – to much fanfare, of course – Frank Key’s Squirrel Count™. I can think of nothing that would excite readers quite as much as learning how many squirrels I have seen each day. So, to the sound of tooting horns and shrill whistle-blasts, with flags and banners flying, and perhaps some clowns cavorting upon a specially-built platform, here is the very first bulletin from Frank Key’s Squirrel Count™ 2009.

01.01.09 Six squirrels, or possibly three squirrels each seen twice.

One lucky reader received this spectacular gift for Christmas. Not, I hasten to add, from me.