A duck in a pond, a pond near a swamp. Sometimes, the duck walks across the mud from the pond to the swamp and, standing on the edge, looks into the stagnant filth, like a duck Narcissus. On the horizon there are trees – larch, beech, sycamore, pine. Having gazed, unblinking, at its reflection, blurry, blurry, the duck turns about and walks back to the pond, into which it plashes, and often times upends itself, so to a passer-by only its fundament and feet are visible, its head and upper body submerged in the water. When a breeze gusts, as it usually does, the leaves on trees on the horizon rustle. If the breeze becomes a gale, the trees sway. Once the wind grew so strong one of them, a beech, crashed to the ground, its topmost twigs and branches falling into the swamp at the swamp’s edge. Fortunately for the duck, it was in the pond when this happened. The sky was black, for the wind was howling in the night, and there were no stars to be seen, because of clouds. The duck was terrified.

If ever you pass by that pond, chuck some stale breadcrusts to the duck. If you are on your way to the trees, to take measurements, or to carve your initials and those of your sweetheart into the bark on a trunk, be sure to skirt the swamp. Even the stoutest and most voluminous wading boots will not save you from sinking into the murk and slime, glubb glubb glubb. If you take the proper route to the trees, you will pass the memorial garden where stones and piles of pebbles and rugged wooden crosses mark those whose souls the swamp has claimed. The duck has seen some of them, from the safety of its pond, as they sank, flailing and helpless and screaming. It is a traumatised duck.

Disconcerted by days of unaccustomed silence at Hooting Yard, boffins have been poking and prodding at Mr Key’s pea-sized yet pulsating brain, trying to account for the lack of activity.

“What we have gleaned,” said one, a particularly astute and beardy boffin, “is that our beloved Mr Key has had his head buried in books for the past few days, interspersed with certain hiking adventures in high winds. This has diverted his attention, as both writer and reader, from the exciting 21st century world of blogs and blogging. We have recommended that to snap him out of his silence, he is to be sent for a few days to his glorious Motherland – that is, Belgium – in the hope that upon his return he will start tippy-tapping away as he usually does. Word has it that he may yet be ready to unleash a series of rattling yarns about Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. It is unclear whether these tales will be based on historical fact, or whether Mr Key intends simply to make use of the names for a fictional ‘dismal duo’. Either way, we shall all look forward to some mighty prose issuing from the Key cranium when it has been refreshed by the Flanders air.”

It can only be a matter of time before those weirdly culture-dim and overpaid noodleheads at the BBC realise that what the world needs is Hooting Yard – The TV Show. I may or may not agree to do it, of course, but in anticipation of the day when they come crawling to me waving fat chequebooks aloft, Outa Spaceman has been hard at work producing the opening titles…

Watch them here

NOTE : “Bairdboard Bombardment Box” was James Joyce’s name for the television set. Incidentally, my mother’s sole recorded pronouncement on Joyce, in her Flemish accent, was “Dat man is a fool!”