… as I was just now, in The Wooden Lake, reminds me to bring to your attention a weekend postage at The Dabbler, where Mahlerman tells us about Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony, which
calls for up to one thousand performers, including nine choirs, four offstage brass bands, and the normal orchestra size doubled-up to about 150 players. A vast percussion section includes chains, a thunder machine and a bird scare.
That Brian was one of the great British eccentrics has never been in doubt
The vast expanse of the wooden lake out past the spinney has been wilfully ignored by the writers of gazetteers of the hinterland of the spinney. Why should that be? It is as if they want it kept a secret, the vast wooden lake, stretching as far as the eye can see, with here and there along its shore clumps of aspen and larch and plane trees, clumps of lupin and hollyhock and spurge.
I lie secreted in one such clump, armed with my binoculars and a bird scarifier. My socks are damp.
The wooden lake is not a lake entirely of wood, of course. Only its surface is of wood, plank after plank after plank of planed and varnished hornbeam slotted together by master carpenters to form a vast flat expanse covering every inch of the lake which broods below. You need not ice nor skates to cross the lake, you can simply walk across it, though early in the morning when dewdrops have fallen it can be slippery, so smoothly planed and varnished are the planks.
I stamped across the lake to reach the clump I hide in, I stamped in my big black boots.
When you read the gazetteers, or look at maps, loose-leaf or in atlases, you will find not a trace of the wooden lake. Sometimes its location is simply ignored, sometimes there is a pretence that it is the site of wild woods or a donkey sanctuary or an industrial estate riddled with canneries. But here is only wood, not metal, unless one takes into account the nails used to strengthen the slotting together of planks hewn from thousands upon thousands of hornbeams.
Along with my binoculars and bird scarifier, I have a hammer, stowed in my clump, but no nails.
In the village on the other side of the spinney, the village nearest to the wooden lake, you will never hear a word spoken, in the pub or the post office or at the smithy’s forge, about the vast expanse of wood stretching as far as the eye can see on the other side of the spinney. Just as in the gazetteers you can buy in the village shop, there is a conspiracy of silence.
I am persona non grata in the village.
Under the surface of the wooden lake, the waters churn and boil. Somewhere in the vastness of the deeps there is a creature, fierce and flippered and gigantic, a blasphemous cephalopod such as no one can look upon without being frozen and blinded and driven insane. At least, that is my theory, a theory which over the years has grown into a conviction, calcified into monomania. I know I am right. That is why the lake is covered by a vast expanse of wood. That is why I was physically ejected from the village with kicks and curses. That is why I am hidden in a clump with my binoculars and my bird scarifier and my hammer.
I am not so foolish as to think that I can scare the monster with the scarifier, as it might scare a starling or a sparrow or a pipit. But I have no proof that it will not be, let us say, slightly disconcerted, long enough, at least, for me to hare across the plankage to the spot where it has burst forth, and to bash it on its giant head with my hammer.
And when I have bashed it unconscious I shall pull it from the lake, and patch up the hole it has made in the wood, and I shall drag the monster all the way across the vast expanse of the wooden lake towards the spinney, and through the spinney to the village, and I shall shove it into the duckpond on the village green, and sit upon the grass, and wait for it to wake.
And its name shall be Dagobert.
I thought it prudent, when making preparations for last Friday’s Evening Of Lugubrious Music & Lopsided Prose, to provide the audience with a list of instructions, to ensure they conducted themselves properly. After all, one does not want to have to interrupt one’s babbling to have to deal with fits of the vapours, noisy potato crisp munching, or other distractions. The printed programme for the evening thus included this list, which may be of use to other performers:
INSTRUCTIONS FOR MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE
I. Please remain seated during the more exciting moments.
II. If for any reason you need to mop your brow, use a dainty napkin.
III. Spillages must be paid for in coinage of the realm.
IV. When the Darning-Needle of Destiny is unveiled, cower.
V. Unseemly pangs may be tempered by moral balance.
VI. Applause should be rendered with unbridled fanaticism.
VII. Drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away (Isaiah, 36 : 16,17)
Given that it was published in 1970, Bernard Levin’s The Pendulum Years : Britain In The Sixties is a remarkably clear-sighted view of the decade, and most of his observations and conclusions would hold good even with the benefit of forty years’ hindsight. But pop music (sorry, make that “pop-music”) was not exactly Levin’s strong point, though he makes a tremendous effort to address the phenomenon…
The growth of pop-music groups – many, no doubt, inspired by the gigantic commercial success of the Beatles to believe that the lightning might strike them too, if they only formed fours and began to perform, but many, also, clearly in the business of self-expression – was the most extraordinary phenomenon in the world of entertainment of the whole decade; long before its end there were literally thousands of them, in Britain and America, and though many flourished only briefly, many displayed surprising endurance, and in any case there were always ten to take the place of one which fell. Some were almost as famous, and successful, as the Beatles; some were known only to the most devoted aficionados. But all added to the atmosphere of the decade, and the isle was full of noises as never before, coming from, among others, the Rolling Stones, the Bee Gees, the Monkees, the Doors, the Cream, the Mothers of Invention, the Seekers, the Who, the Small Faces, the Pretty Things, the Animals, the Pink Floyd, the Scaffold, the Grateful Dead, the Tremoloes, the Family, the Supremes, the Holding Company, the Four Tops, the Led Zeppelin, the Shadows, the Exploding Galaxy, the Editors, the Fugs, the Gods, the Kinks, the Hermits, the Paper Dolls, the Breakaways, the Greaseband, the Casuals, the Amen Corner, the Big Sound, the Flirtations, the Herd, the Marbles, the Status Quo, the New York Public Library, the Hollies, the Foundations, the Electric Havens, the Four Seasons, the Bachelors, the Seychelles, the Love Affair, the Fifth Dimension, the Three Dog Night, the Equals, the Vagabonds, the Marmalade, the Mindbenders, the Moody Blues, the Mirettes, the Tuesday’s Children, the Plastic Penny, the Procol Harum, the Troggs, the Fruit Machine, the Union Gap, the 1910 Fruitgum Co., the Beach Boys, the Fairport Convention, the Vanity Fair, the Harmony Grass, the Aces, the Young Tradition, the Nice, the Dubliners, the Tinkers, the Fleetwood Mac, the Incredible String Band, the Web, the Little Free Rock, the Blodwyn Pig, the Liverpool Scene, the Spooky Tooth, the Third Ear, the High Tide, the Mamas and Papas, the Carnations, the Pacemakers, the From Genesis to Revelation, the O’Hara Express, the Pentangle, the Chickenshack, the Blind Faith, the Fourmost, the Searchers, the Four Pennies, the Bar-Kays, the Unit Four Plus Two, the Hedgehoppers Anonymous, the Applejacks, the Box Tops, the Edison Lighthouse, the Blood, Sweat and Tears, the Vibrations, and the Rada Krishna Temple.
The bulk of the output of all these, including that of the Beatles themselves, vanished, quite rightly, down the memory-hole of instant oblivion.
Many thanks to Ruth Bosch for drawing to my attention a sea-creature headline almost as enticing as Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke. This one is
Giant prehistoric krakens may have sculpted self-portraits using ichthyosaur bones
Read all about it here. Those pesky giant krakens! You never know what they’ll get up to next!
Emily’s correspondent and critic, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, reported in 1870 that the poet told him “…’ people must have puddings’, this very timidly and suggestively, as if they were meteors or comets”.
from Emily Dickinson : Profile Of The Poet As Cook, With Selected Recipes by Guides at the Dickinson Homestead : Nancy Harris Brose, Juliana McGovern Dupre, Wendy Tocher Kohler, and the Resident-Curator, Jean McClure Mudge (Amherst, 1976)
I spent yesterday recovering from the rigours of the Evening Of Lopsided Prose & Lugubrious Music at Woolfson & Tay held on Friday. Those of you who were unable to attend or who could not be dragged there by wild horses will be pleased to know that the whole kit and kaboodle was recorded by ResonanceFM (thanks to Chris Weaver and Johnny Seven) for broadcast as a Hooting Yard Special at a date to be announced, and thereafter as a pod thing. I shall alert you to these developments when I know the details.
I must also thank Shivaun Woolfson and Frances Tay, whose splendid independent bookshop / cafe / gallery hosted the event and who ensured the whole thing ran smoothly. I suggest all Hooting Yard devotees make a beeline for the shop whenever they are in London. It occurs to me that every now and then you may actually wish to read something other than my outpourings, in which case you will find a fine selection of books there.
Thanks too of course to Outa_Spaceman for joining me on singing and ukulele duty. I can neither sing nor play the ukulele, so that part of the evening would have been an absolute disaster without him. I am grateful too to Pansy Cradledew for her assistance during the Poetry Masterclass.
My only disappointment is that the assembled throng seemed not to understand I was delivering a series of serious lectures on topics as diverse as birds, owl gods, Virginia Woolf’s sausage and haddock dilemma, and seaweed heroes, and my talks were greeted with immoderate laughter and the occasional outbreak of hilarity. As I said in the programme notes, “unseemly pangs can be tempered by moral balance”. Do try to remember that next time, whenever the next time is.
Mr Key & Ms Cradledew explain poesy to the masses
Snap by Loz Flowers
At The Dabbler this week, I examine in piercing detail the phrase “saying Boo! to a goose”, and suggest that it is high time it was replaced by something more apposite. To assist readers in gaining a full understanding of what I am talking about, I append a video of some ill-tempered geese, taken by legendary independent film maker Ned Ouwell. There is no evidence that the geese in the video have actually had “Boo!” said to them, so to get the utmost benefit, it is a good idea to shout “Boo!” at your computer screen just before you click the directional pointing device to play the clip. If you are not sure what precisely a goose is, here is a picture of one:
That conversation, continued…
Elberry : what pillow do you use? is it stuffed with the feathers of birds or the skulls of mice?
Frank Key : An admixture of cotton wool and sand, wrens’ feathers and wolf hair
Elberry : and the sand, can you expand on its provenance? do you use the sand from the Alamogordo Test Range, or common or garden sand? is it related to the sand nightly deployed by the Sandman? Is it sand from the sandy road of Eliot’s Waste Land?
Frank Key : It is coarse sand, dredged from the vasty deep, then spread out, by much raking, to dry under a Panglossian sun, before being poured into the pillowcase through a gorgeous ornate metalwork funnel
Elberry : How do you do the dredging? Do you have an industrial dredging machine?
Frank Key : I use a mighty concrete dredger barge, built to Lambot’s original design rather than the later Gabellini or Edison models.
Elberry : i used to teach at Zeppelin, i think they make dredging machines but i am unsure if they are suitable for vasty deeps. Could you just use a spade? i ask as i thought about doing a bit of light dredging, to keep fit
Frank Key : Use of a spade beneath the vasty deeps is fraught with risk, but will undoubtedly boost your manliness. Or you might drown.
Elberry : Heroes don’t drown, they dredge.
Further to my report, last Saturday, of a Facebook Facecloth postage and subsequent comment, here is another. I will not be making a habit of this, but last night’s brief exchange of comments with Elberry is, I think, worth noting here.
I chuckled at a comment I read appended to a postage on the Grauniad’s Comment Is Free site, and so, on Facecloth, noted
A Comment Is Free comment over at The Grauniad : “Groan, and so the Guardian descends still further into being an upmarket version of Black Flag for the under 16s.” I chuckled.
The subsequent dialogue with Elberry went as follows
Elberry : more on the nature of this chuckling please, the sound, duration, effect on passers-by, etc.
Frank Key : Grating and somehow tragic, forty-nine seconds, solicitude, offers of loose change, thumpings.
Elberry : does it excite frenzies, sexual or otherwise?
Frank Key : Only in the raddled hearts of the unseemly
Elberry : is it pure to the pure, if the pure are privy to these terrible eruptions?
Frank Key : Alas, there are tincts
Elberry : would you consider removing these safeguards, so the many- headed rabble may hark to your mirth, and take heart therefrom?
Frank Key : I will consider it, while my head is upon the pillow, and I snooze, imminently
After tippy-tapping which, I retired to bed, rested my head upon the pillow, and snoozed. Alas, I did not after all consider removing any chuckle safeguards.
Many thanks to Salim Fadhley for drawing to my attention this whole flapdoodle about magnetically aligned cows. Personally, I have always been convinced of the unbreakable link between cows and magnetism, ever since an episode in a field during a picnic when I was a child. The memory grows dim, for I was but tiny, but magnets and cows were both involved, inextricably, I think. My father, too, and one of my sisters, and a priest who had joined us for the picnic, clad in his black soutane, but non-magnetic. If I could recall the exact date I could check the weather conditions pertaining at the time, if, that is, I could remember precisely where we were, at picnic, near cows, and magnets.
When you are planning a boaty picnic, the very first thing you need to do, before deciding upon the menu, which is our chief preoccupation today, is to check what the forecast says about the conditions of the weather and the sea. If, for example, you find out that it will be choppy, with squalls, then you would do best to avoid a dish such as clotted pollock dabs, suitably fishy but too rich, too creamy, and in the event potentially nauseating. Something plainer, like boiled sweets in gravy, would be better for your picnic, provided of course that the gravy is not too gamey. Rank gravies should be avoided at all times, but especially when out in a boat, picnicking on the high seas. Some might say that any gravy, even the plainest, even with boiled sweets swimming in it, is an unsuitable item for a picnic menu, what with the supposed need for bowls and spoons and bibs, but I say it can be poured into beakers with sealed lids and glugged therefrom, with no bowl or spoon in sight. You will probably still want bibs, but they are essential for any maritime feast, what with all the sloshing about of the boat upon the waters. And believe you me, boats will slosh about, even on the calmest waters, that is just how it is.
Greasy and slippery foods ought also be avoided when packing the hamper before boarding the boat. Think, rather, of taking hard, chewy, and even stale items. A boaty picnic can be a splendid way of using up leftovers, for what proves unpalatable can be chucked overboard into the sea, where it will be devoured by the many ravenous scavenging befinned and beflippered beings that cavort within the waters, often just below the surface, with great snapping jaws.
But there would be no point picnicking at all if you threw the entire contents of the hamper into the broiling ocean, so do be sure to pack some real treats like New South Wales Marzipan Cane Toads, and roly poly pudding, and processed cheese triangles, and the devil’s water biscuits, better known these days as cream crackers.
Just make sure that the oars of your boat are real, and wooden, and not made of compacted hundreds-and-thousands, stiffened with cornflour paste. Ne’er-do-well quayside boats-for-hire scamps have been known to play such tricks on landlubbers. Be warned.
If you wish to learn about a fruiterer’s gleam, cases of spontaneous combustion in literature, and a terrifying deckhand with a mop, there is a podcast to tell you all about them…
Dan Chambers sent me this snap of a sampler, taken in the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood. The provenance card states that it was made by a girl named Enid, aged fourteen, so, as Dan says, “maybe not so tiny”. But it may well be that the Museum has not done its research thoroughly, and that the sampler was made by an anonymous needleworker for Tiny Enid. What with the privations of the times (1933) there may have been a dearth of thread, not enough, at any rate, to sew both TINY and ENID.
Yesterday I watched The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963) on television, and I was struck by a scene about an hour into the film which fatally undermines the plot. Up to that point, we are rooting for the Allied prisoners of war who, as is usual in such dramas, say things like “OK, chaps, let’s form an Escape Committee and smoke our pipes”, and we accept their statements that it is their duty to try to escape and to otherwise make life as difficult as possible for their Boche captors.
But then comes the scene where Blythe, played by Donald Pleasence, gives an ornithology lecture to some of the men. He whistles the song of the warbler, and then shows them how to draw the masked shrike. We are asked to believe that sensible British chaps would rather risk gruesome death at the hands of the Gestapo when they could see out the war having bird-life explained to them by eerie-eyed Donald Pleasence. This seems to me utterly implausible, and for all the thrills and spills of the remaining two hours, I think the film would have been much better had it concentrated solely on Blythe’s ornithology classes.
