As I wander about the world, or my small part of it, one thing I find peculiarly distressing is the number of persons of frantic mien who rush up to me and clutch at my lapels, beseeching me.

“Mr Key, Mr Key!” they plead, in cracked voices, “Please tell me how to see gnomes! I want to be able to see gnomes!”

What all these poor souls have in common is a tragic awareness that gnomes exist coupled with an inability to perceive them. I speak of course of real gnomes which, though they bear a striking resemblance to the jolly garden gnome beloved of suburbia, with his pointy hat and pot belly and, occasionally, his angling equipment, are by no means made of stoneware or plastic, and cannot be bought in a garden centre. Real gnomes caper in the woods, going about their gnomey business, but are very difficult to see. Yet judging by the number of people who buttonhole me in the street, there is clearly a great desire among our citizens to “get down with the gnomes”, much as politicians like to “get down with the kids”.

It has never been entirely clear to me why I should be thought to have some kind of inner track to the world of gnomes. I can only surmise that Hooting Yard’s reputation as a repository of the sum of human, and inhuman, knowledge must be spreading far and wide, and this must be a good thing. Lord knows, I try my best, both here on the website and on my weekly radio programme, to expound the wisdom of the ages. Despite the often dishevelled and wild-eyed state of my street importuners, it is good to know that my efforts are not entirely in vain.

So what I usually do when assailed by one of these social inadequates is to take them aside and, after checking that they have sufficient cash to pay for a couple of cups of tea, lead them to a café, where we sit together at a formica-topped table. They usually calm down a bit after a couple of slurps of tea, though I often have to explain that I have not brought them to gnomeland as such, and they are unlikely to be able to see any gnomes just yet. This can crush the spirits of the more emotionally frail beseechers, who seem to think I can just snap my fingers and make gnomes appear before their eyes. It takes patience, and empathy, and as many additional cups of tea for me that they can afford, to explain things to them.

Eventually, still in the café, and possibly stuffed with pastry treats too, depending on the financial resources of the shabby indigent opposite me, I remove from my pocket a scrunched-up scrap of paper on which I have copied out some very wise words. I unscrunch the scrap, and read as follows:

“This, chum, is an extract from Theosophy : An Introduction To The Supersensible Knowledge Of The World And The Destination Of Man by Rudolf Steiner, published in 1910. He says: The spiritual outlook, in fact, is through [the Spirit of the Age (the Zeitgeist)], extended over a variety of other beings, both lower and higher, who live in the environment of man without his being able to perceive them with his bodily senses. But those who have powers of spiritual sight perceive such beings and can describe them. To the lower kinds belong those designated by the spiritual investigator, as salamanders, sylphs, undines, and gnomes. It is quite to be understood that anyone who is inclined to admit the validity of physical vision only, regards such beings as the offspring of a wild hallucination and superstition. They can of course never become visible to the physical eye for they have no physical bodies. The superstition does not consist in regarding such beings as real, but in believing that they appear in a way perceptible to the physical senses. Beings with such forms cooperate in the building of the world, and one comes into connection with them as soon as one enters the higher regions closed to the bodily senses.”

Then I scrunch up the scrap of paper, shove it back into my pocket, and, after getting the pitiful wretch to hand over any remaining cash they have about their person, dismiss them from my presence. My presence being, of course, a shining aura illuminating the gutter. He was a very clever man, that Rudolf Steiner.

The cherry-cheeked farmer’s wife went to market, for to buy a cow. She already had a goat and a hen and a lamb and a hog and a sow. She wanted a cow so she would have a daily supply of milk, and she wanted some worms to provide her with a goodly amount of silk. But the only worms for sale that day were those of the earth and the tape, and the cow she paid good money for was not quite the usual shape. It was a cow in the form of a bear and it stood on its hind legs, and rather than providing her with milk it laid weird furry eggs. For the market to which the farmer’s wife went was a market exceeding odd, where all the beasts were blasphemous offences against God. There were spiders with horns and three-legged crows and giraffes from the gates of Hades, and owls spawned from mud and geese with ears and basilisks to frighten the ladies. The gentlemen were terrified too by the pig with ten million eyes, and the bloated sacs with razor wings which swooped down from the skies. ‘Twas market day in Scroonhoonpooge when the godly tremble and pray, for the devil sells his monsters on Scroonhoonpooge Market Day.

We travelled to Hoon by hot air balloon. I took my harpoon, and impaled a wolf that was roaming the woodland below us. We hauled the wolf into the basket of our balloon, by a long and sturdy rope that was tied to the end of the harpoon. We arrived in Hoon, two balloonists and an impaled wolf, making a bumpy landing. The Hoon Head Honcho of Hunted Wolves was there to greet us. “I will have that wolf,” he said, “It is not yours to keep. Here in Hoon we keep all hunted wolves, including those that have been impaled by a harpoon shot from a hot air balloon.” But we wanted to keep our harpooned wolf, as a rug for the basket of our balloon, so I pulled the harpoon out of the wolf and pointed it at the man from Hoon. “We shall keep our wolf. If you try to take it you will feel the point of this harpoon upon your neck,” I said. We did not know that the man from Hoon was a Wolfman. His head changed shape, and then the rest of him, and with his savage claws he tore the silken fabric of our balloon. We were trapped in Hoon, helpless among the Wolfmen.

Source : Victorian Tales Of Derring-Do In Hoon & Its Hinterland

A reader who knows a thing or two about the Russian Orthodox church gets in touch to tell me that my hunch about the two black-clad trendies alongside Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk in the photograph below was correct. They are indeed beatniks. By allowing their goatee beards to grow into more flourishing hairiness, swapping their berets for those big weird hats, and shadowing the Metropolitan wherever he roams, the pair are engaging in a performance art intervention praxis. Dmitri and Serge (for it is they) are legendary cats on the Russian Orthodox beatnik scene, best known for their jazz, their existentialist pretensions, and their French cigarettes. They have been performing their praxis for the past year, seldom letting the beardy Smolenskian out of their sight, much as ex-UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar was pursued for years, and interrupted at press conferences, by nitwits convinced he had been abducted by aliens in Manhattan in 1989.

Dmitri and Serge are guarded about how long they intend to continue haunting Metropolitan Kirill. If asked, by art students and the like, they offer only dismissive guttural noises designed to be enigmatic. They have, however, issued a Dmitri & Serge’s Praxis Manifesto, written in blitheringly difficult prose, which you can if you wish pore over in your local arts pod reading resource capsule.

The cruel sea. The dismal pond. The glued vicar. The obsolete pudding. The terrible sludge. The grimy harpoonist. The Dutch pillbox. The prominent moustache. The customised hat. The awful pan. The disguised shrubbery. The pale horseman. The wicked nephew. The clueless dolt. The filthy sniper. The hot flap. The rotting twig. The crumpled swine. The village idiot. The spasmodic throbbings. The puckish stormtrooper. The flailing chump. The godforsaken peasouper. The dribbling maniac. The shabby cartographer. The unhinged wrestler. The tiny toadstool. The wielded hoe. The bloody stump. The tin bath. The crunchy plopper. The urgent message. The ticketyboo avalanche. The cupped sprain. The turquoise pip. The shoved helmet. The fantastic Moira. The governed tang. The collapsed lung. The indigestible suet. The stuck shirt. The old git. The worrisome spinster. The shambolic circus. The disgusted postman. The cheap bale. The splendid toucan. The fractious hamster. The baleful merchant. The spiffing socks. The Dungeness werewolf. The intrepid golliwog. The gaudy spats. The bewitched gubbins. The tawdry lump. The tungsten spigot. The wilful witch. The Ruritanian tyrant. The speckled toffee. The crumpled pooper. The insignificant mendicant. The woeful copse. The bad shunter. The first Adam. The globular emission. The spent fork. The other fork. The cataleptic nincompoop. The boiled dish. The sudden rink. The icy wastes. The dirty placebo. The incomprehensible gibberish. The fat fissure. The tansy klopstock. The gruesome boots. The Mexican floozie. The sordid details. The tattered tent. The vindictive biologist. The shabby phantom. The crashed pantechnicon. The odd chimp. The slimy bog. The shattered walnut. The horrible dirigible. The muddy waters. The contaminated mayonnaise. The belligerent scruff. The tidal estuary. The sodden moorhen. The avenging pig. The omnipotent Dagobert. The teeming downpour. The slapdash embroidery. The stale cake. The unbreakable jugs. The bonkers churning. The copper tricycle. The idiot savant. The charmless ragamuffin. The shredded diktat. The holy farmyard. The blistering flotsam. The deaf wonk. The gladsome cravat. The industrial stapler. The careworn widow. The lopped fig. The bulky cargo. The hepcat smoothie. The fundamentalist satrap. The oiled hair. The brusque Ostender. The lovely pie. The crushed kaboodle. The glamorous trumpet. The foul expat. The immense saucepan. The sequined tugboat. The gorgeous innards. The frail sot. The desperate genuflection. The dark peel. The grotesque kipper. The unsinkable sieve. The chumpot tawny. The albino chicken. The Germanic straw. The wiggling blob. The dug ditch. The safety pin. The fictional athlete. The abominable beaker. The popped savage. The glitzy surgeon. The extra limb. The chubby pickpocket. The pitted ointment. The wan hoop. The stricken passengers. The dotty haberdasher. The clumsy ghost. The frightful crevasse. The cloned duck. The unfortunate blot. The skindiving fatso. The drugged weasel. The jellied eel. The monstrous bag. The unreliable toothpaste. The preening bombast. The bitter chutney. The damp patch. The cluttered freak. The mordant heron. The sleeping ogre. The delightful custard. The unspeakable goat. The double chimney. The restricted barn. The potty boffin. The golden glut. The tugging pang. The clatterboard bodice. The shining throne. The plump shrike. The girly mittens. The sticky wolf. The Baptist cocoa. The snivelling orphan. The cantankerous toppler. The vile rug. The insanitary hellhole. The plastic splint. The chipper baronet. The navy buttons. The cheesy blubber. The surviving thieves. The untidy shore. The metal stick. The invisible tapeworm. The bent captain. The disgruntled Jesuit. The gleaming gloaming. The ratty scrimshaw. The hard biscuit. The grubby spittoon. The withered hoist. The ashen jackanapes. The gilded dustbin. The last splat. The heavy hod. The token undertaker. The whooper swan. The cruel sea.

From high up on Pilgarlic Tor we watched them march away to war. Away they marched, our foes to fight, and they put the robot men to flight. The big magnetic robots fled, and not a chap of ours was dead. They scattered, in their clanking way, to Timbuctoo and Mandalay. Our chaps marched home in triumph then, and so we sacrificed a hen. We wallowed in our poultry gore, victorious on Pilgarlic Tor.