Monthly Archives: September 2009

Sick Amid The Blossoms

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“O Dobson thou art sick! Thou art sick amid the blossoms! O what shall we do? What shall we do? Let thy pamphlets be our guide!”

This was the little recitation made, oh so plaintively, by a band of hiking orphans who stumbled upon a sick and feverish Dobson in a blossom-bestrewn field one morning in 1956. Orphan hikes were a short-lived social phenomenon of the decade, one which is almost forgotten today. Inspired by the Swiss film masterpiece The Hiking Orphans, children all across the land gathered into groups and went marching off o’er hill and dale, munching toffee apples and consulting extensively detailed maps. So popular did the hikes become that many of the tots taking part were not actually orphans at all. Some became dab hands at forging death certificates, others suffocated mama and papa in their beds, or poisoned their breakfast cereal.

Dobson became a sort of patron saint of the orphan hikers following publication of his pamphlet My Parents Are Dead, But Christ!, I Adore Hiking (out of print). Because of the blasphemous abuse of the Lord’s name in the title, the pamphlet was swiftly banned and the print run pulped, but such was the demand from hiking tinies that illegal Gestetnered copies were soon circulating, often secreted in the folds of the extensively detailed maps the orphans carried in waterproof pouches strung from lanyards around their scrawny necks.

These maps were themselves a marvel, more extensively detailed than any other maps ever made. It was said that the most extensively detailed of them showed the precise alignment of chaffinches perched on the branches of an aspen you would pass if you bore left at the hedge in which a rusted farm implement had been shoved and abandoned.

Unusually, Dobson’s pamphlet included an illustration of the great man, a linocut by the hyperrealist linocutter Rex Hyper which showed the pamphleteer’s visage in breathtaking hyperrealism. So familiar was his face to the more indefatigable orphan hikers, who pored over it whenever they sat down on a log to rest, that when a band of them came upon the sick and feverish figure sprawled amid the blossoms, they instantly recognised him as Dobson. Hence their plaintive recitation. Let us parse it.

“O Dobson thou art sick!”

The orphans are making it plain that they recognise the crumpled invalid for who he is, and they recognise, too, that unlike the blossoms amid which he languishes, he is far from blooming. We might criticise them for not being more specific in their diagnosis of his ague, but ought to remember that they are mere tots, and orphaned tots at that, except for the one called Vincenzo, who is a fraudulent orphan, having used his pocket money to purchase a counterfeit newspaper cutting claiming his ma and pa perished in an avalanche.

“Thou art sick amid the blossoms!”

By repeating their declaration of the pamphleteer’s medical condition, the orphans reinforce its seriousness. This is no fugitive swoon nor spasm, they are saying, nor is Dobson lying there with his limbs splayed out because he has simply tripped upon a clump. And having driven home the point, they go on to place it in a geographical location – “amid the blossoms”. If an air ambulance is coptering in the vicinity, equipped with fantastic sound detection technology calibrated to pick up piping orphan voices, they have pitched their recitation superbly. But of course, in 1956 such air ambulances were rare, and rarer still those with fantastic sound detection technology calibrated to pick up piping orphan voices. And the chances of one hovering in range of the blossom-bestrewn field in which Dobson lies crumpled are so remote as to be not worth a fig. Tiny they may be, but the orphans know this, and thus the despair of the next line.

“O what shall we do?”

We may be brave and doughty hikers, they say, we may be free from our often repressed and oppressive parents, God rest their souls, except for Vincenzo’s, obviously, yet we are still but fragile and vulnerable tinies, and faced with this dramatic medical emergency we are beflummoxed and in some cases about to burst into tears.

“What shall we do?”

The repetition here is a pleasing echo of the repetition of “thou art sick” in the opening lines. It also commands our attention. The orphan hikers are not larking about. They are confronting, probably for the first time in their lives, a mortal dilemma. Toughened as they are by their hikes, well able to ford streams and negotiate bramble patches and vault dry stone walls and run screaming from flocks of savage angry swans, they are not so tough that they can cope with the sight of a sick and feverish pamphleteer amid the blossoms. Well, Vincenzo can, because he is, let’s say, an interesting little chap. The way in which his voice drops out of the recitation for this pair of lines lends an added harmonic jouissance, if one is listening with due care.

“Let thy pamphlets be our guide!”

Vincenzo’s voice returns for this triumphant ending. There is renewed hope. Medically ignorant and lacking such kit as bandages and tablets and proprietary nerve tonics, the orphans have one invaluable resource – the stricken pamphleteer’s own pamphlets! For all of them, their imaginations sparked by Dobson’s illegal pamphlet on hiking, have each acquired their own little collection of his works, which they carry with them wherever they hike. They realise that by taking all their Dobson pamphlets out of their pouches and combing through the texts, they are bound to alight upon a passage absolutely pertinent to the situation. As the pamphleteer himself continues to groan amid the blossoms, the orphans end their recitation on this note of optimism.

So there we have the words in context. What is curious is that, for as long as the orphan hiking fad continued thereafter, roughly until the winter of 1958, the recitation became a sort of generic chant, along the lines of the seven dwarves’ * “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go”. Having been cured and then recuperated in a clinic a few yards away from the blossom-bestrewn field, Dobson was as hale and sprightly as ever, a fortnight after the orphans stumbled upon him, and yet they carried on chanting their recitation as they hiked hither and yon, from the outskirts of Pointy Town to the Terrifying Grim Black Mountainous Horror Of Gaar, and even further afield, to places beyond imagining. And as our little band crossed paths with other hiking orphans, their chant was picked up, until all across the land, from Blister Lane to the Big Wet Sea, every hiking orphan knew the words by heart, and chanted and hummed and howled them as they hiked.

* NOTE : See here for important seven dwarves information.

Impugned By Further Peasants

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Time to catch up with some of the expected fallout from last Thursday’s Impugned By A Peasant. Over at Think Of England, Brit provided a link to what he called  “a terrifying tale”, prompting this response from Peter Burnet:

Bah! Bloody Euros! No wonder you’re in terminal decline. You get impugned by a peasant and you go all artsy-fartsy and spin it into an meandering tale of cravats, bouffants and existential turmoil. Want to know how we in the New World handle that kind of stuff? Just check out the economical prologue to Dan Brown’s new novel:

“I was once impugned by a peasant, so I shot him. It haunted me until dinnertime.”

Meanwhile, at the weekend, I had a dream in which I was impugned by a sort of seaside variety of peasant. I was sitting in a dockside cafeteria, drinking coffee with a couple of friends I have not actually seen for a decade or so. We watched as various animals disembarked from a steamship. I pointed to one, and said excitedly:

“Look, half a cow with no head!”

That is indeed what I saw. Sitting alongside us in the cafeteria was a bunch of seaside-type peasants, one of whom chortled and shouted:

“It’s a big chicken, you fool!”

Thus was I impugned, in my dream.

Papist Mountain Apothecary

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The mountain apothecary with his bag so black. Is it a bag or is it a sack? He heaves it up the mountain on his back. It is full of pills and potions.

But no one lives upon this peak. So as he climbs who does he seek? Ah, look, a goat, a goat so weak. He’ll pamper it with his lotions.

The mountain apothecary is no vet. The weakened goat’s our hero’s pet. He trapped it once, within a net. But now it roams the slopes.

The air is thin when one’s so high. The goat is weak and it may die. The apothecary wears a Catholic tie. He’s treated several Popes.

A Papist apothecary, do you say? On the mountain this very day? I would drown him in the bay, for I say he’s a sinner.

Aye, a sinner and a heretic! Evil is what makes him tick. Almighty God, he makes me sick. I’ll vomit up my dinner.

I ate in the chalet at the foot of the mount. Me and a baron and a Protestant count. Oh we ate a huge amount, of mountain goat and hog.

See the apothecary come back down. He’s taking his goat into the town, where there’s a vet of great renown. I’ll shove him into the bog.

“Papist Apothecary Drowned In Bog”, the headline in my Daily Log. Now I’ll march off into the fog, and vanish whence I came.

I came from haunts of coot and hern. There I watch the Papists burn. Repent! Before it is your turn, and shudder at my name.

Precious Stones Embedded In The Heads Of Toads

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If we want to know about precious stones embedded in the heads of toads – and which of us does not? – we turn, of course, not to Ubermungo™, but to Sir Thomas Browne, who has this to say in Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths (1646-1672):

As for the stone commonly called a Toad-stone, which is presumed to be found in the head of that animal, we first conceive it not a thing impossible: nor is there any substantial reason why in a Toad there may not be found such hard and lapideous concretions. For the like we daily observe in the heads of Fishes, as Cods, Carps, and Pearches: the like also in Snails, a soft and exosseous animal, whereof in the naked and greater sort, as though she would requite the defect of a shell on their back, Nature near the head hath placed a flat white stone, or rather testaceous concretion…

Again, though it be not impossible, yet it is surely very rare: as we are induced to believe from some enquiry of our own, from the trial of many who have been deceived, and the frustrated search of Porta, who upon the explorement of many, could scarce find one. Nor is it only of rarity, but may be doubted whether it be of existencie, or really any such stone in the head of a Toad at all. For although Lapidaries and questuary enquirers affirm it, yet the Writers of Minerals and natural speculators, are of another belief: conceiving the stones which bear this name, to be a Mineral concretion; not to be found in animals, but in fields…

Lastly, If any such thing there be, yet must it not, for ought I see, be taken as we receive it, for a loose and moveable stone, but rather a concretion or induration of the crany it self; for being of an earthy temper, living in the earth, and as some say feeding thereon, such indurations may sometimes happen. Thus when Brassavolus after a long search had discovered one, he affirms it was rather the forehead bone petrified, then a stone within the crany; and of this belief was Gesner. Which is also much confirmed from what is delivered in Aldrovandus, upon experiment of very many Toads, whose cranies or sculs in time grew hard, and almost of a stony substance. All which considered, we must with circumspection receive those stones which commonly bear this name, much less believe the traditions, that in envy to mankind they are cast out, or swallowed down by the Toad…

And in a note, Browne quotes:

From Thomas Nicols (1652) Lapidary, Or, The History of Pretious Stones. Part II, Chap. XXXVI, pp. 158-159: Of the Garatromo or Toadstone.

This stone is of a brownish colour somewhat tending to rednes, convex on the one side; & on the other side, sometimes plain, sometimes hollow.

Some say this stone is found in the head of an old Toad; others say that the old toad must be laid upon the cloth that is red and it will belch it up, or otherwise not; you may give a like credit to both these reports, for as little truth is to be found in them as may possibly be: Witnesse Anselmus Boetius in lib. 2 in the chapter of this stone; who saith that to try this experiment in his youth he took an old Toad and laid it upon a red cloth and watch it a whole night to see it belch up its stone, but after his long and tedious watchfull expectation he found the old Toad in the same posture to gratifie the great pains of his whole nights restlessenesse, and since that time he taketh that stone which is called Garatromo or the Toad-stone, to be an obscure Starre-stone.

Its names. This stone is called Batrachites, and Brontia, and Ombria, and Garatronium, Lapis Borax, Lapis Bufonis, Lapis Rubetæ. In French, un Crapaut & Crapaudine. In Germanne ein Krattenstein. Some in Latine call it Crapontina. In English a Toadstone.

Of its kinds. Baccius maketh two kinds of this stone: One of a whitish brown colour: another of a black colour with a bluish eye. This stone saith Boetius is sometimes found of the bignesse of an egg, and those that are so great, are sometimes brownish, sometimes reddish, sometimes yellowish, sometimes greenish. Some are no bigger then the nail of the hand and these by Jewellers are taken for the true Toad-stones. It is reported of it that it is good against poyson if it be worn so as it may touch the skin, and that if poyson be present it will sweate, and that if any inflations procured by venemous creatures be touchd with it, it will cure them. So saith Weckerus, Lemnius, and Baccius.

Browne also quotes:

From Edward Topsell (1608) Historie of Serpents , pp. 188-189:

There be many late Writers, which doe affirme that there is a precious stone in the head of a Toade, whose opinions (because they attribute much to the vertue of this stone) it is good to examine in this place, that so the Reader may be satisfied whether to hold it as a fable or as a true matter, exemplifying the powerfull working of Almightie God in nature, for there be many that weare these stones in Ringes, being verily perswaded that they keepe them from all manner of grypings and paines of the belly and the small guttes. But the Art (as they terme it) is in taking of it out, for they say it must be taken out of the head alive, before the Toad be dead, with a peece of cloth of the colour of red Skarlet, where-withall they [sc. the toads] are much delighted, so that they stretch out themselves as it were in sport upon that cloth, they cast out the stone of their head, but instantly they sup it up againe, unlesse it be taken from them through some secrete hole in the said cloth, whereby it falleth into a cestern or vessell of water, into which the Toade dareth not enter, by reason of the coldnes of the water. These things writeth Mossarius.

Brasavolus saith, that he found such a thing in the head of a Toade, but he rather tooke it to be a bone then a stone, the colour wherof was browne, inclyning to blacknes. Some say it is double, namely outwardly a hollow bone, and inwardly a stone contained therein, the vertue whereof is said to breake, prevent, or cure the stone in the bladder. Now how this stone should be there ingendered, there are divers opinions also, & they say that stones are ingendered in living creatures two manner of wayes, either throuh heate, or extreame cold, as in the Snaile, Pearch, Crabbe, Indian Tortizes and toades; so that by extremitie of cold this stone should be gotten.

Against this opinion the colour of the stone is objected, which is some-times white, sometimes browne, or blackish, having a cittrine or blew spot in the middle, sometimes all greene, wher-upon is naturally engraven the figure of a Toade: and this stone is somtimes called Borax, sometimes Crapodinæ, and sometimes Nisæ, or Nusa, and Chelonites. Others doe make two kindes of these stones, one resembling a great deale of Milke mixed with a little blood, so that the white exceedeth the Redde, and yet both are apparant and visible: the other all blacke, wherein they say is the picture of a Toade, with her legges spredde before and behind. And it is further affirmed, that if both these stones be held in ones hand in the presence of poyson, it will burne him. The probation of this stone, is by laying of it to a live Toade, and if she lift up her head against it, it is good, but if she run away from it, it is a counterfeyte.

Geor: Agricola calleth the greater kind of these stones, Brontia, and the lesser & smoother sort of stones, Cerauniæ, although some cõtrary this opinion, saying that these stones Brantia & Cerauniæ, are bred on the earth by thundering and lightning. Whereas it is said before, that the generation of this stone in the Toade proceedeth of colde, that is utterly unpossible, for it is described to be so solid and firme, as nothing can be more had, and therefore I cannot assent unto that opinion, for unto hard and solide things, is required abundance of heate: and againe, it is unlikely, that whatsoever this Toad-stone be, that there should be any store of them in the world as are every where visible, if they were to be taken out of the Toades alive, and therefore I rather agree with Saluedensis a Spaniard, who thinketh that it is begotten by a certaine viscous spume, breathed out uppon the head of some Toade, by her fellowes in the Spring-time.

This stone is that which in auncient time was called Batrachites, and they attribute unto it a vertue besides the former, namely, for the breaking of the stone in the bladder, and against the Falling-sicknes. And they further write that it is a discoverer of present poyson, for in the presence of poyson it will change the colour. And this is the substaunce of that which is written about this stone. Now for my part I dare not conclude either with it or against it, for Hermolaus, Massarius, Albertus, Sylvaticus, and others, are directlie for this stone ingendered in the braine or head of the Toade: on the other side, Cardan and Gesner confesse such a stone by name and nature, but they make doubt of the generation of it, as others have delivered; and therefore they beeing in sundry opinions, the hearing wereof might confound the Reader, I will referre him for his satisfaction unto a Toade, which hee may easily every day kill: For although when the Toade is dead, the vertue thereof be lost, which consisted in the eye, or blew spot in the middle, yet the substaunce remaineth, and if the stone be found there in substance, then is the question at an end, but if it be not, then must the generation of it be sought for in some other place.

We shall end with two other quotations, the first from Shakespeare, the second from Devoto. The latter is talking from the point of view of an insect rather than a toad, but let’s not be picky.

“Sweet are the uses of adversity; / Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, / Wears yet a precious jewel in his head”.

“But the brightest jewel inside of me / Glows with pleasure at my own stupidity”

Amateur Dramatics At Sludge Hall Farm

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Last week Sludge Hall Farm hosted the Bodger’s Spinney Travelling Players, a troupe of bodkin- and whisk-wielding theatrical persons famed for their reconstructions of historical episodes. Their current production, the one that had the Sludge Hall Farm yokels gawping, was a dramatisation of the first Blunkett resignation of 2004. That was the one where, relinquishing the post of Home Secretary, our hero went on television and spoke mawkishly, tearfully, and repeatedly about “the little lad”, a bit of homespun phraseology designed to tug the heartstrings of the nation. It certainly had that effect on the Sludge Hall Farm farmhands, at least when acted by Bodger’s Spinney’s most accomplished thespian, Vlasto Harbinge. The racket made by the peasants’ copious sobbing almost drowned out the closing peroration by the chorus.

In order to have sufficient pretext for wielding their bodkins and whisks, the Players set their Blunkettorama in the fourteenth century. This also allowed them to incorporate the gruesome battle scenes for which they have become notorious. In a particularly splendid segment, the Home Secretary’s trusty guide dog Ruby – or possibly Teddy or Offa or Lucy or Sadie – single-pawedly fought off a pack of rabid wolves egged on by spectral wolfmen armed with the requisite bodkins and whisks. It was extremely exciting and convincing, and, at the curtain call, the costume designer was hauled on to the stage to receive a bouquet. Sludge Hall Farm being the kind of farm it is, her gift was one of nettles and bindweed, but no less welcome for that.

“The Bodger’s Spinney Travelling Players With Vlasto Harbinge Present The First And Most Traumatic Of The Resignations From Ministerial Office Of David Blunkett MP, The Elected Member For Sheffield Brightside” is now on bailiwickwide tour. Hooting Yard Rating : 15 planetoids.

NOTE : No cows were harmed during the making of this amateur dramatic extravaganza

Ask The Artificial Brain!

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Ubermungo™ is Hooting Yard’s terrifically lifelike artificial brain, built out of dough and string and wax and coathangers and processed cheese triangles and fig newtons and titanium. Every Sunday, it answers readers’ questions.

Dear Ubermungo™. I am a flapper. When I flap with too great enthusiasm, my cloche hat becomes dislodged. What advice would you give? – Poopy Clingclang

Well, Poopy, if you glue your hat to your head with a proprietary hat-head adhesive, future dislodgements will be rarer than albino Stalinists, and you can flap the night away to your heart’s content.

Dear Ubermungo™. What in the name of god is a nudibranch? – P V Bib

Wait while my innards process the question, P V.

Dear Ubermungo™. Yesterday I tied a yellow ribbon round an old oak tree. Today I am searching for the hero inside myself. Tomorrow I am thinking it might be a good idea to find out if my friends are electric. Are any of these activities valid? – S Fry

Stephen – No, they are not. Go and boil your head.

Dear Ubermungo™. Who won the FA Cup Final in 1968? – Bathsheba Gubbins (Mrs)

My innards are still whirring and buzzing away at P V Bib’s question, Mrs Gubbins, but the answer is something like West Bromwich Noblia. You may wish to check that.

Dear Ubermungo™. Shortly after taking part in the Tet Offensive, I was sitting on a balcony in a foreign capital city when my attention was drawn ineluctably to a toad sitting on a neighbouring balcony. Like many toads, it had a jewel embedded in its head, a jewel that glittered so brightly it was visible through the toad’s translucent green skin. My balcony was covered with an awning, so when a violent rainstorm began, I was untroubled. But the toad’s balcony had no awning, and despite its amphibious nature the toad appeared disconcerted by the rain, and it hopped away, out of my sight. The thing is, in the years that followed, I have been haunted by that brief vision, and more particularly, unmoored from peace and reason by my ignorance of precisely what sort of precious stone was lodged in the head of the toad. If I were to draw, with a pencil, from memory, a sketch showing the way the soon-to-be expunged sunlight glistened, through the skin, upon the jewel, the angles it cast, the tints and textures of the light, do you think you might be able to ascertain whether it was, say, a ruby or an emerald or an amethyst? – “Phnom Penh Vet”

Dear Tet Vet, All would depend on the skill with which you wield a pencil. You should also bear in mind that I am a mere artificial brain, and have no eyes, and thus cannot see. What I can do, at last, is tell P V Bib that a nudibranch is a sea slug.

Dear Ubermungo™. What is life but a vale of affliction? – Old Halob

Life can also be an opportunity to stand at the side of a running track, coughing up catarrh and keeping a beady eye on a stopwatch, dressed in a sordid raincoat and a Homburg hat. You should know that better than anybody, Old Halob!

Eerie Marshes

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I keep trying to warn you. Over and over again I tell you to beware of the eerie marshes, to shun them, for you know not what spooky horrors lie in wait for you there, but you scoff, you say “Pshaw!, Mr Key, you and your blather about the marshes!”, and you mince off in your wellington boots, as only you could mince in wellingtons, off towards the eerie marshes at dusk, without a care, puffing on your expensive herbal cigarette, no map, no sou’wester, not even a lantern, you ignore my beseeching to at least take a hound with you, a hound with sharp fangs and brutish musculature, for protection, but no, you think me an oaf and an idiot, and I watch as you vanish into the distance, swallowed by the mist that hangs in the air and grows thicker and thicker the closer you get to the eerie marshes, until, suddenly, it clears, and you stop, and stagger, and feel a pang of ice creep down your spine, for there hovering above the eerie marshes is an eerie phantom, inexplicably menacing, and in the voice of death it intones verses 16 and 17 from chapter 36 of the Book of Isaiah, to wit, “Drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away”, and you realise with horror that just before you put on your wellington boots that is precisely what you were doing, drinking the waters of your own cistern, though I implored you not to, I fell to my knees and begged you not to drink those waters, and you sneered at me, and gulped them down, from your cistern, and now the wraith of the marshes has come to take you away, just as I told you it would, and you can struggle and scream and vomit up the waters of your cistern, but it will avail you not, you will be taken away, away, away, leaving only those empty abandoned boots at the edge of the marshes, that none shall ever dare go and fetch, and they will rot slowly in the mist, and all trace of you will be gone.

eerie

I am indebted to Agence Eureka for this hyperrealist illustration of the eerie marshes.

That Awful Mess At Sludge Hall Farm

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Legal Notice : The Sludge Hall Farm in this piece ought not be confused with the Sludge Hall Farm mentioned on Wednesday. They are two distinctly different farms, and halls. The sludge itself is, in most respects, broadly similar.

It is a meteorological peculiarity that the sky over Sludge Hall Farm is always leaden, the air thick and oppressive, as if a storm is imminent, but a storm never comes. Equally anomalous is the fact that, over at Sludge Hall itself, the storminess never ceases, the semidilapidated building forever assailed by thunder and wrack and downpour.

One does not often meet with a trio of stylishly dressed Italian police investigators tramping up the path to Sludge Hall Farm. In their Giuseppe Fonseca suits and Boffo Splendido shoes, they cut the sort of dash not seen in this landscape for a century, since the heyday of the so-called “peasantry moderne” movement. They have come from Sludge Hall, where they were received in the cubby by the monopod major domo, who served them with cream crackers and iron tonic. Thus fortified, the detectives announced their intention to visit the farm. The major domo shuddered, but swiftly dissembled, creaking on his crutch over to the dresser upon which rested Sludge Hall’s only metal tapping machine, a vintage wonder.

“I shall let the farmer know to expect you,” said the major domo. The detectives preened their mustachios and glanced at each other, and then at their host, and then out of the smudged cubby window, its frame rattling as the tempest roared outside.

Having tapped out his communiqué, the major domo made arrangements for Lars, the factotum, to take the Italians on his covered cart half way towards the farm, to the point where the storm weirdly ceased and the leaden pall sapped all vigour from the air. And it is some yards beyond where Lars dropped them off that we find the detectives now, each walking with insouciance and swish. If Sludge Hall Farm harboured a comely milkmaid, no doubt she would swoon at the sight of such unimpeachable foreign elegance. Alas, it is many a long year since comeliness in any form has blessed the farm. As the policemen are about to learn, it is now a grim and godawful place.

No one knows the name of the farmer of Sludge Hall Farm. He is a hermit and a mystic and a polevaulting champion. Though aged and wizened, and though his many, many medals are now rusted and the velvet cushions upon which they sat are eaten away by worms, the farmer still polevaults every day, morning and evening, under the leaden sky at Sludge Hall Farm. He is puffing from a polevault as the Italian detectives push open the gate and greet him.

One wonders what will happen. Will the farmer of Sludge Hall Farm speak for the first time in twenty years? Will he use his mystic powers to crack asunder the close-knit and almost telepathic team spirit of the detective trio, until they are snarling at each other like mad dogs and fighting with pitchforks? Will one of the detectives seek refuge in a barn, only to be set upon by a hideous mutant angry pig that has snapped its chain? Will the pig, its thirst for Italian blood unquenched, then rampage around the farmyard causing the surviving pair of policemen to hide in a hayloft? Will the farmer placate his mutant pig and place it in a trance? Why is the hay in the hayloft not like normal hay? Is it hay from another dimension, or from somewhere else in the space-time continuum? How has the farmer managed to fill the Sludge Hall Farm hayloft with inexplicably bizarre hay? Why have the mustachios of the Italian detectives shrivelled by dint of their huddling in the hay? What in the name of heaven is the mystic farmer doing, leading his entranced pig in ever more rapid circles around a bonfire? What is the exact nature of those sparks shooting from the fire? Why is the leaden sky turning a violent orange? Why are the detectives now sprouting hay from every pore? Is there any intelligible meaning to the deafening grunts the entranced mutant pig is making as it circles around the fire faster and faster until it is a blur? Why, back at Sludge Hall, are the major domo and Lars hyperventilating, convulsed by giggles, slapping their thighs and dancing a jig upon the dining room table?

Tomorrow, when we read the front page headline in the Daily Farmyard Polevaulter, will we be any the wiser about that awful mess at Sludge Hall Farm?

Three Cans Of Squelcho!

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Astute reader Roland Clare reminds me that the soft drink sloshed all over the canteen table by the narrator of Impugned By A Peasant was the subject of an Andy Warhol painting.

warhol (1)

Three Cans Of Squelcho! (1966) recently fetched untold billions of dollars at auction. The buyer remained anonymous, though the word on the street* suggests the picture now hangs in the foetid lair of the Grunty Man, up in the hills. The Grunty Man has been a keen art collector for some centuries. If you look very, very carefully, you can spot him at the back of the auction scene in North By Northwest, where Roger O Thornhill (Cary Grant) confronts Philip Vandamm (James Mason) and causes a kerfuffle.

* NOTE : Blister Lane, apparently.

Impugned By A Peasant

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I was impugned by a peasant. It was a Thursday afternoon and I was walking along a lane, between aspens and larches. I saw the peasant up ahead. He was leaning against a stile and as I got closer I saw he was idly swinging a flail to no great purpose. As I passed him, he impugned me, in some sort of rustic invective I barely understood. I would have dashed him to the ground with a single blow, but alas!, I am a milksop and a weakling and I merely passed on by along the lane, blushing and furious.

Later, as I sat in a countryside canteen drinking a tumbler of Squelcho!, I reflected upon this peasant and his impugning. What was he doing, leaning against that stile? Why was he swinging a flail? In what brutish argot did he speak? Much to my disgust, I realised I was obsessed by him, as, in Death In Venice, Gustav von Aschenbach is obsessed by Tadzio, or in Love And Death On Long Island, Giles De’Ath is obsessed by Ronnie Bostock. But Tadzio and Ronnie are young and beautiful, whereas my peasant – my peasant! – was old and snaggle-toothed and filthy and wretched. My hands were shaking, and I slopped some of my Squelcho! on the canteen table, drowning a fly.

As I returned along the lane, I adjusted the cravat around my neck, to give it a more rakish look, and I primped my bouffant, and I turned my trudge to a sort of flouncing prance. As I neared the bend in the lane beyond which the stile would come into view, my heart began to thump violently and my mouth became so dry I gasped. Would my peasant still be there? Would he impugn me again? I wanted to run back to the safety of the canteen, but at the same time I was desperate to see him once more, so filthy, so rustic, so ancient, so vile!

How can I express the sickening sensation I felt as I rounded the bend and saw that my peasant was gone? It was as if a knot of vipers writhed within my guts. Sunlight dappled through the aspens and the larches, a breeze refreshed the air, and there was the stile… but leaning on it now were two impossibly attractive youngsters, playing conkers. Closing in on them, panting like a monster of depravity, I saw they wore name-badges. One was Tadzio, the other Ronnie. I was barely coherent as I babbled at them, asking if they had seen a peasant, an old filthy snaggle-toothed peasant with a flail, had they seen in which direction he had gone, and when, and was he going fast or slow, with purpose or without, and did the sunlight glisten on his greasy matted hair?

First Tadzio, then Ronnie, impugned me. In particular, they impugned my cravat and my bouffant and my flouncing. I crumpled to the ground, weeping and neursathenic. I would have welcomed death, there and then. But of course, I did not die. An hour or two later, I got to my feet and dusted the muck of the lane from my Italianate suit. The sun was sinking in the west, and Tadzio and Ronnie were long gone. I picked up a pebble and chucked it inexpertly at a linnet perched in an aspen. I missed the bird, of course, and I pranced away from the stile and made my way home.

Years later, looking back on that afternoon, I can no longer picture the name-tagged youths, but the vision of the peasant is as clear to me as if he were sat here opposite me. I do not have him, of course, but I have his simulacrum, posed in the armchair, built of cardboard and wire and wool, with piano keys for his teeth and a light dusting of authentic countryside muck, and when I activate the console he impugns me in that mechanical, guttural, rustic invective I had a character actor record for me, and which, still, still, I barely understand.

Beware Of The Cows

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Thanks to Peter Ashley at Unmitigated England, I have found the perfect location to shoot the terrifying Hitchcockian chiller The Cows. ‘Tis the wonderfully-named Sludge Hall Farm, a place Blunkett would not dare approach…

Blog Sludge Hall Cow

Incidentally, I think “WH” is cow shorthand for “War (on) Humans”.  Readers might like to suggest other possibilities in the comments.

ADDENDUM : Back in 2006, we noted a particularly alarming example of cow nomenclature. Collect your wits, do a Winslety “gather”, and go here.

Scribbles From Ancient Times

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I stumbled upon an old notebook. It is undated, but I think it was written in the first years of the 1980s. Here are a few scribblings, of possible historical interest. Despite severe temptation, I haven’t changed a single word. As far as I recall, these pieces have never until now been dragged out from under their bushel*.

I fed bears. I fed crows. One of them pecked my nose. I ate curry. I ate meat. I slobbered and stamped my feet. I grew muscles. I grew fangs. My heart burst with violent pangs. I wanted to be back at home, reading about the fall of Rome, sitting in a chair in the drawing-room, watching from the window the gathering gloom, eating potatoes, peas and pork, slicing them neatly with a knife and fork, being very graceful, and being polite, going to the park to fly my kite. Life had such charms when I was young, before I began to wallow in dung, before I left for a life in the muck. All I can say is I’ve had good luck.

I am a lighthouse keeper. My name is Jim. It is a lonely life. Games on baize are my great love, and ball games using sticks. Ah, I treasure memories of billiards and hockey as the waves crash on the rocks.

Let me tell you where I’ve been. This time I’ll make it a blue-ish land. A blue land and a big one. I went there on my horse. I’ll tell you all about that place, and how my horse fell sick there. Only the sky was really blue. Everything was the same as here too. There were lupins, and cupcakes, butter, clatter and taxes. It was a lovely land, so cool. I’m a tourist wherever I get to.

Last time I saw you I came to your hut. You’d decorated the walls with stolen paint. I arrived with a warrant for your arrest. You had lockjaw. I punched your head. All your cosmetics were stale in their jars. Broken cutlery lay thick on the floor. My police car was parked outside. Your lipstick was smudged. My brakes were bust. The car careered into a tree. You broke your neck. I was in shock. I wandered off towards the canal. The morning was filled with the sound of bells.

I am the patron saint of blood oranges, disguised as a Turk. My dog patrols the footpaths, fangs bared. He has a nose for bee borage, tears it up at root. I am fearsome. He is a brute. He chewed a chair to firewood once. I burnt it, rich with glee. We stalk the town, my hound and I, down to the stupid beach, where stupid tars tell stupid yarns of lands I’ll never reach.

In this enormous ditch, I found a mother tongue. In the blue of holidays, hammers hit anvils, sent echoes back to before the war. My house is a haystack. My arms are waving. I’m so happy about the weather we’re having. Clocks stopped dead, trains jammed in sidings. The weather, the weather. It began to pour with rain. So heaven left us hopeless in village barns and dance halls, banjos and clarinets, pianos and machine-guns.

Bandages, planks, netting and maize. Cork and gauze and suds and baize. Filigree vents. Chocolate and tents. Desire, vigilance, treachery, gaze.

* NOTE : Complete nonsense, I realised, as soon as I had typed it. Some of this stuff would have appeared in old Malice Aforethought Press pamphlets between 1986 and 1991.