What on earth was she blathering on about, that vicar in the studio audience of The Big Questions who said that the government ought to be responsible for origami? At least, I assume she was a vicar. She was dressed like a vicar, with a vicar’s dog collar, but it is always possible that she was an impostor vicar, deliberately or inadvertently. As I recalled in my fifty-eight memories of my father, he was occasionally mistaken for a man of the cloth due to an injudicious choice of 1960s shirtwear (memory number thirty-six).

Vicar or no, origami was one item in a list she recited, the other items on which I have forgotten. She topped it off with “the government should be responsible for these things!” I have added an exclamation mark there to give some idea of the heat of passion in which this declaration was made.

It’s a moot point whether this is a utopian or dystopian vision. Perhaps she was harking back to Gordon Brown’s ill-fated “government of all the talents” – goats – and took it too literally. If a government was to contain all the talents, logically one such talent would be the ability to fold paper in intricate oriental fashion. Thus there ought to be a Ministry of Origami & Associated Paper-Folding, with a Secretary of State supported by junior ministers and private secretaries and an army of civil servants. Five-year plans for the development of origami on our shores would smack too much of Stalinism, but such bonkersness is camouflaged nowadays by different jargon. Plans to roll out the origami stakeholder consultancy initiative on a region-by-region basis amount to much the same thing as Uncle Joe’s madcap schemes, but sound a little less megalomaniac.

Would origami become compulsory? Would each citizen have to set aside, say, half an hour per day to fold a sheet of A4 into the shape of an ostrich? Surely that is not what the vicar had in mind. Think of the sheer increase in the amount of waste paper, as the more cack-handed among the citizenry faffed about, using up sheet after sheet of A4 in abortive and misshapen attempts to make a half-way decent, or at least recognisable, origami ostrich.

If, on the other hand, origami were to remain, as it is now, voluntary, what would be the government’s role? We are already cajoled, through advertisements and leaflets and publicity campaigns, to make sure we eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, but as far as I am aware there is not a dedicated band of fruit and vegetable police who will place us under arrest if we fail to comply. So maybe the Secretary of State at MOAPF would content him- or herself with mere hectoring and lecturing, poster campaigns, television adverts, mass mailings and the like. Indeed, one advantage of having a leaflet about origami plop through your letterbox would be that the leaflet itself could be folded, intricately, orientally, into the shape of a sparrow.

But I don’t know. The problem with such initiatives is that a change in government can lead not just to different priorities but to complete U-turns. Imagine that you have been persuaded, through relentless harrying, to eat your five fruits and vegetables each day while setting aside half an hour to do some intricate oriental paper-folding. All is well with the world, and you have slotted happily into your routine. Then, inevitably, there is a general election, a new government takes the reins of power, and the new Secretary of State for Origami and Associated Paper-Folding strides into the ministry on their first morning. Bright-eyed, dedicated, and power-crazed, the new bod might decide that, instead of encouraging origami among the hoi polloi, it is the sort of activity that needs to be controlled, restricted, licensed. “It is time for change!” the minister announces, a week into the job, “We have seen this country become the laughing stock of the origami and paper-folding world, as our hapless cack-handed scrunched-up excuses for paper squirrels and ducks and electricity pylons bear no resemblance whatsoever to the fantastically intricate oriental paper squirrels and ducks and electricity pylons of our competitors, and even less resemblance to flesh and blood squirrels and ducks and electricity pylons in the real world.” And so the minister outlaws amateur origami of all kinds, and establishes a new national origami and paper-folding baccalaureate, without which no one is even allowed to fold a sheet of paper in half for any purpose whatsoever, on pain of arrest and a long term of imprisonment. Whether that is a good thing or not, I leave the reader to decide.

It is certainly the kind of issue to sharply divide opinion. Just as, thirty years ago, there appeared a book entitled Authors Take Sides On The Falklands, one can imagine the bien-pensant intellectuals of Hampstead and Holland Park cobbling together a hastily-published Authors Take Sides On Origami. Whichever side one is on, it is surely the case that many, if not most, of those who would purchase such a book would immediately rip each page out of it and fold the separate leaves, either intricately and orientally or with cack-handed butterfingers, into paper models of the Secretary of State, adding buttons for eyes. Whether they could display the resulting origami on their windowsills, or have to hide it in an unlicensed folded-paper den, would depend upon the complexion of the government.

It is all very bewildering.

There may be circumstances in which you wish to ascertain whether your dog is barking up the wrong tree. I wouldn’t know; I don’t keep a dog myself. But I can imagine a situation where such knowledge could prove critical. If I speak of the matter in the abstract, that is because of a total lack of hands-on dog-based experience on my part. Some might argue I am precluded from pronouncements about the issue – if we can call it an issue – by dint of this lack, but I beg to differ, much as a dog might beg for a bone from his master’s table. Note that in spite of a deep ignorance of dogs and their ways I am yet able to pluck from the storehouse a vivid illustrative example of common dog (or doglike) behaviour to get my point across. Let those who scoff be hushed, so we can get on with it.

Though for present purposes we need consider only an abstract dog barking abstractedly up an abstract tree, I find that concrete examples can be a boon to the dimwit. Not that I think for one minute that anyone reading this is a dimwit, you understand. Still, it is best to be on the safe side, and a scribbler never knows if or when his words may fall into the clutches of a dunderpate. So for our examples let us take one dog and four trees, a mastiff, say, and a pine and a larch and a sycamore and a wych elm. However unlikely it may be in the real world, let us say there is, in the middle of nowhere, that is in a vast and otherwise featureless flat expanse of land, a row of four trees, planted in a straight line, equidistant, with roughly six yards between them. Blot everything else out of your mind. Well, everything except the dog, which you need to remember, though it has not yet entered the scene. So far we just have the line of trees, the pine and the larch and the sycamore and the wych elm. We could have a line of more, or slightly fewer, trees, but four is a manageable number for the dimwits.

Now, look! Here comes a monkey, scampering towards the trees at high speed. I did not mention the monkey earlier, partly because I did not wish to overtax your brain and partly because, in any case, it will soon be out of sight. The monkey, you see, is being pursued by the dog, the mastiff, and is hurtling pell mell towards the line of trees, up the trunk of one of which it will climb with breathtaking monkeyish agility, and then conceal itself in the high leafage. This duly accomplished, the monkey is, as promised, out of sight.

Enter the dog, panting, in hot pursuit. Those of you who are keen on dogs may wish, at this point, to form a closer bond with our abstract mastiff, so let us dub it Desmond. Imagine Desmond now, stopping short of the line of trees. It is intelligent enough to realise that the monkey must be hidden high up in either the pine or the larch or the sycamore or the wych elm, but not sufficiently savvy to know, just yet, which one. I ought to point out here that I hold no opinion either way on the intelligence of dogs, nor do I have a clue whereabouts in the hierarchy of canine intelligence the mastiff can be placed, as compared, say, to a boxer or a dachshund. Let us credit Desmond with enough nous to realise that, as the monkey is no longer visible anywhere in the vast featureless flat expanse of land, it must have climbed and hidden in the leafage of one of the trees. Remember that Desmond is only an abstract dog, after all.

We now come to the nub of the matter. Desmond thinks that by barking at the foot of the trunk of the tree atop which the monkey is hiding, he can somehow persuade the monkey to climb down and deliver itself into his, Desmond’s, waiting paws. At least, I assume that is what is going through the head of any dog that barks up any tree at its quarry. Whether this is sensible behaviour is another matter entirely. Quite frankly, if I was the monkey, I’d stay put. But we must deal with the world as it is, not as it ought to be, and in the world as it is the dog would bark up the tree, especially if it has been driven to distraction by the antics of the fleeing monkey. That seems plausible.

But which tree does Desmond bark up? According to basic probability theory, the likelihood is that he is going to bark up the wrong one. You can work through the permutations in your head if you like. One of the reasons I limited the line of trees to four is so that you could do so without becoming number-dazed. Add just one tree to the row, for example a cedar, and the chances of Desmond barking up the wrong one grow ever greater.

If Desmond barks up each tree in turn, for a period of, say, a minute or so at the foot of each one, he will sooner or later, to your untold relief and mine, bark up the right one. That is, unless we throw in an added complication. The monkey, being a monkey, might well be agile enough to leap from treetop to treetop, thus from larch to pine to sycamore to wych elm and back again, so that at no point is Desmond barking up the right tree. In these circumstances, we could aver, without fear of contradiction, that Desmond is barking up the wrong tree. Conversely, though the monkey of his original pursuit may avoid the dog’s barking, there may be loitering, in each of the trees, other creatures, such as squirrels, of close or even equal interest to a panting barking desperate mastiff. So you see, even in the simplest concrete example drawn from abstract propositions, things become hopelessly, hopelessly entangled. ‘Twas ever thus, in the wide wide world.

There are people of whom it can be said that they have true grit. “By their grit shall ye know them,” that is what we say, when we talk grit with our coevals. And talk grit we do, rather often nowadays, when we are on the lookout for true grit. We talk grit the better that we shall know it when we see it, and not be seduced by the blandishments of false grit. For sad to say there are more persons abroad in the world with false grit than with true. If you would argue with that, perhaps you will be persuaded by an anecdote.

Many years ago it happened that I was summoned by a Captain of Souls. This fellow, in starched uniform, with epaulettes, had been charged with commandeering the souls of all in my village. It was not a task he undertook willingly, but his continued captaincy depended upon it. His superiors were quite clear on the matter. So the Captain gathered about him his advisers and asked their advice on how best to proceed. In among all the mutterings and mumblings one voice rang out, that of the dwarf Crepusco, who told the Captain he must summon the village bellsman. The bellsman, explained the dwarf, as an important village personage, could expedite the transformation of all the souls in the village, if once convinced he might otherwise be placed in durance vile. So saying, he pointed downwards, to where, far below the Captain’s chamber, there lurked an oubliette, infested with scorpions and hornets and tiny soft squirming sucking things.

“If I understand you correctly,” said the Captain, hushing the rest of the advisers with an imperious raising of one eyebrow, “We frighten the bejesus out of this bellsman and get him to ring his bells in such a fashion that he in turn frightens the bejesus out of the whole village. We then sweep across the tarpoota and capture their souls at one fell swoop while they are defenceless through terror.”

“Indeed so,” said the dwarf Crepusco, “It is a foolproof plan.”

And so a rider was sent across the tarpoota with a letter of summons from the Captain to the village bellsman. In other words, to me. Having delivered the summons, the rider rode away, and I shuddered. It was far from clear to me how I could possibly cross the tarpoota in safety. It was rife with banditti, and not just banditti but marauding ruffians and gaggles of escaped convicts and similar ne’er-do-wells, eye-gougers and limb-loppers and head-boilers. That the Captain’s rider had come and gone unharmed was small comfort. He, of course, was astride a horse, a horse as swift as a swift in the sky, but we villagers had no horses, nor ponies nor bicycles nor motorbikes. The only way I could obey the summons was to cross the tarpoota on foot, which meant almost certain death.

Frantic with worry, I went out of my belltower into the designated smoking area and lit a cigarette. And it was as I was puffing away that I saw, passing by, a stranger with a shovel over one shoulder. Over his other shoulder he was lugging a burlap sack, and printed on the sack, in bold Palatino Linotype lettering, was the word GRIT. I followed him and fell in step beside him and engaged him in conversation. It was always disconcerting to come upon a stranger in our village, and I plied him with questions. Who was he? What was his business in the village? How did he get here? It was the reply to that last that proved decisive. He had, he said, crossed the tarpoota alone, on foot, with just his shovel and his sack of grit and a flask of lapsang souchong and a clementine.

“And were you not set upon by banditti and ruffians and escaped convicts and ne’er-do-wells? Were not your eyes gouged, your limbs lopped, your head boiled?” I babbled, even though I could see he was sound of body, like Felix Randal the farrier, big-boned and hardy-handsome, boisterous and powerful, but by no means, like Felix Randal the farrier, dead. In reply, he said four simple words.

“I have true grit.”

And he glanced back at the sack over his shoulder.

We fell to parlaying. I wanted him as my escort and bodyguard, I explained, for I too must cross the tarpoota, in answer to the summons, but I was puny and weak and cowardly and would surely fall victim to banditti or ruffians or escaped convicts or ne’er-do-wells. The stranger agreed to protect me, but only after exacting a hefty price. We stopped off at a newsagent’s and I leafed through the financial pages of The Daily Tentacle to check current metal prices. Doing the sums in my head, I worked out that I could afford to pay the stranger by melting down a couple of my bells. We shook hands, and arranged to meet outside the post office the next morning, to set off across the hostile tarpoota.

I had not asked him the most important question of all. Was his grit really true?

The wind was howling across the vast and desolate tarpoota as we set out the next day, he with his shovel and sack and flask, and me with a parasol and a can of Squelcho! Not unexpectedly, we had been walking for just five minutes before there came lumbering towards us a ferocious tangle of banditti or ruffians or escaped convicts or ne’er-do-wells.

“Eek!” I cried, dropping my parasol.

“Leave this to me,” said the stranger.

My heart swelled with gratitude as I watched him prepare for the onslaught. Holding the shovel between his mighty teeth, he hoisted the sack from his shoulder and plonked it on the ground in front of him. With surprisingly delicate manipulations, he untied the cord that fastened the sack. Our assailants were almost upon us. And then I saw what I hoped never to see – the grit in his sack was not true grit. It was false grit, a mixture of sand and sugar and shreds of cotton wool. He tipped it out on to the tarpoota, and it blew away on the wind.

“Ah,” he said, taking the shovel from between his teeth, and he gave me a sheepish grin, and ran away. I ran too, but not nearly fast enough, for sure enough I was beset by banditti or ruffians or escaped convicts or ne’er-do-wells. Somehow, I managed to escape them and scamper back to the village, but not before they had gouged an eye, lopped a limb, and parboiled my head. At least I was safe. God knows whatever became of the stranger, who had fled in the opposite direction, with miles and miles of the tarpoota ahead of him. For his base treachery, I like to think he was pecked to perdition by vultures.

I hope, from the foregoing, that I have made crystal clear the importance of telling true grit from false. As for my unmet summons from the Captain, I worried about that for a week or two, until I read in The Daily Tentacle one morning that the Captain himself had been summoned by his superiors. They wanted to know why he had not yet captured all the souls in my village. Like so many superiors, they were impatient, and rather than have the captain travel on horseback, a journey that would have taken many days, they sent him a ticket for a flight by airship. Alas, the airship was the Hindenburg. With the captain dead, his superiors lost interest in my village, and we were left to get on with our quiet orderly lives, far far away across the desolate vast tarpoota.

To create a composite Dickensian character, it is necessary to cobble together elements from Adams, the Aged Parent, Arabella and Benjamin Allen, the Artful Dodger, Mr Ayresleigh, the Avenger, the Bachelor, Bayham and Laura Badger, the One-Eyed Bagman, the Bagnet family, Major Joseph Bagstock, Jack Bamber, Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Barbara, Miss Barbary, Martha Bardell, Thomas Bardell, Barkis, Old Bill Barley and Clara Barley, the Barnacle family, John Barsad, Charles Bates, Bazzard, Belle, Benjamin, Betsy, Mr Bevan, Biddy, Bitzer, Stephen Blackpool, Cornelia Blimber, Noddy and Henrietta Boffin, Josiah Bounderby, Lawrence Boythorn, Sally Brass, Sampson Brass, Madeline Bray, Walter Bray, Jefferson Brick, John Browdie, Good Mrs Brown, Alice Brown, Mr Brownlow, Inspector Bucket, Rosa Bud, Bumble, Jack Bunsby, Serjeant Buzfuz, Harriet, James and John Carker, Richard Carstone, Sydney Carton, John Baptist Cavalletto, the Reverend Chadband, the Cheeryble brothers and Frank, Edward and John Chester, Louisa Chick, Anne Chickenstalker, Anthony, Jonas, Martin and Old Martin Chuzzlewit, Ada Clare, Noah Claypole, Colonel Chowser, Compeyson, David Copperfield, Clara Copperfield, Mrs Corney, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim Cratchit, Creakle, Sophy Crewler, David Crimple, Mr Cripples, Canon Crisparkle, Vincent and Mrs Crummles, Jerry and Mrs Cruncher, Alderman Cute, Captain Cuttle, Solomon Daisy, Charles Darnay, Rosa Dartle, Dick Datchery, Lady Honoria and Sir Leicester Dedlock and Volumnia Dedlock, Ernest and Madame Defarge, Ned Dennis, Mr Dick, Young Dick, Deputy Winks, Mrs Dilber, Colonel Diver, Dodson and Fogg, Mr Dolls, Fanny and Florence Dombey and Paul Dombey and Paul Dombey Junior, Amy, Edward, Fanny, Frederick and William Dorrit, Daniel Doyce, Edwin Drood, Bentley Drummle, Duff, Durdles, Emily, the Marquis St Evrémonde, Fagin, Fan, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Mr Feeder, Mr Fezziwig, Flora Finching, Horatio Fizkin, Affery and Jeremiah Flintwinch, Miss Flite, Fred, Mrs Gamp, Joe Gargery, Abel Garland, Mr and Mrs Garland, Walter Gay, Mr George, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, Mr Giles, Thomas and Tom Gradgrind, Mary Graham, Grainger, Edith Granger, Mr and Mrs Grayper, Grewgious, Arthur Gride, Gridley, Mr Grimwig, John Grueby, Mr and Mrs Gulpidge, Mrs Gummidge, William Guppy, John Harmon, Mrs Harris, James Harthouse, Estella Havisham, Miss Havisham, Arthur Havisham, Captain James Hawdon, Sir Mulberry Hawk, Mrs Heep, Uriah Heep, Werner Herzog, Charlie, Gaffer, and Lizzie Hexam, Betty Higden, Mrs Hominy, Luke Honeythunder, Hortense, Mr and Mrs Hubbles, Hugh, Leo and Mrs Hunter, Jem Hutley, Jaggers, Janet, John Jarndyce, John Jasper, Dr Anthony Jeddler and Grace, Marion and Martha Jeddler, Mr and Mrs Jellyby and Caddy Jellyby, Jenny, Alfred Jingle, Jo, Mr Jorkins, Captain Kedgick, Kenge, Kenwigs, Mrs Kidgerbury, Krook, Miss La Creevy, Alfred and Sophronia Lammle, Helena and Neville Landless, Mr Langdale, Miss Larkins, Edward and Edwin Leeford, Thomas Lenville, Lewsome, Mortimer Lightwood, Lillian, Mr Lillyvick, Tim Linkinwater, Littimer, Edmund Longford, Jarvis Lorry, Dr Losberne, Lowten, Mrs Lupin, Abel Magwitch, Peter Magnus, Dr Alexandre and Lucie Manette, Mrs Mann, Mr and Mme Mantalini, Jacob Marley, Mr Marton, Mary, Mary Anne, Mrs Maylie, Harry Maylie, Rose Maylie, Mr M’Choakumchild, Merdle, Wilkins Micawber, Molly, Mr Murdstone, Nancy, the Native, Neckett, Charlotte Neckett, Mrs Nickleby, Kate, Nicholas and Ralph Nickleby, Susan Nipper, Newman Noggs, the Norris family, Kit Nubbles, Mr Nupkins, Mr Omer, Dolge Orlick, Major and Mrs Pawkins, Dr Payne, Charity, Mercy and Seth Pecksniff, Clara, Daniel and Ham Peggotty, Mr Perker, the Infant Phenomenon, Samuel Pickwick, Tom Pinch, Pip, Caleb Plummer, Matthew, Herbert and Sarah Pocket, Mr and Mrs Pott, Pumblechook, Daniel and Betsy Quilp, Mr Quinion, George Radfoot, Professor Redlaw, Pleasant and Rogue Riderhood, Monsieur Rigaud, John Rokesmith, Mrs Rouncewell, Richard and Watt Rouncewell, Rosa, Barnaby Rudge, Barnaby Rudge Senior, Mr Rugg, Volker Schlondorff, Ebenezer Scrooge, Bill Sikes, Harold Skimpole, Dr Slammer, Samuel Slumkey, Mr Smallweed, Smike, Mr Snagsby, Augustus Snodgrass, Mr and Mrs Sowerberry, Dora Spenlow, Mr and Mrs Spottletoe, Wackford Squeers, Mrs Squeers, Fanny Squeers and Wackford Squeers Junior, Phil Squod, Stagg, James Steerforth, Dr and Annie Strong, Esther Summerson, Paul Sweedlepipe, Milly and Philip and William Swidger, Dick Swiveller, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Tackleton, Mark Tapley, Simon Tappertit, Tartar, Tattycoram, the Tetterby family, Mrs Ticket, Mr Tiffey, Montigue Tigg, Mrs Tisher, Mrs Todgers, Polly Toodle, Toots, Lucretia Tox, Trabb, Trabb’s boy, Tommy Traddles, Fred and Nelly Trent, Job Trotter, Josiah Tulkinghorn, Tracy Tupman, Prince Turveydrop and Old Mr Turveydrop, Oliver Twist, Meg and Trotty Veck, the Vengeance, Mr Vholes, Margerethe Von Trotta, Old Mrs Wardle, Mr Wardle, Isabella, Emily and Rachael Wardle, Mr and Mrs Waterbrook, Tony Weller and Samuel Weller, John Wemmick, Wim Wenders, John Westlock, Mrs Whimple, Agnes Wickfield, Professor Wigsby, Nathaniel Winkle, Miss Witherfield, Dr Allan Woodcourt, Mr Wopsle, the five sisters of York, Zamiel, and the Zephyr. So get cobbling!

In solving the cryptic crossword in The Grauniad this morning, I learned of a fearsome creature I had never previously heard of – the Goliath bird-eating spider. Eek! Unfamiliar with this beast, I was able to work out the answer from the clue, the ingenious anagram “Big horrid giant’s ideal pet”. Wishing to know more, I took a trip to the Wikipedia and found that the spider was given its name by intrepid Victorian explorers who saw one devouring a hummingbird. I am going to have to investigate this more thoroughly, using proper tools, i.e. books.

The Wikipedia does not explicitly state that the Victorian explorers were intrepid, but in my innards I feel sure they were. I can picture them, wearing pith helmets, with Bibles stuck in their pockets, stalking through alien terrain. Within weeks or months, of course, they would go to pieces in the tropics, as so many doughty Empire-builders did before them, but for now, they could watch a hummingbird being eaten by a spider and make careful notes in their sweat-stained jotting pads.

Had the crossword appeared yesterday, I would not have been able to look up the Goliath bird-eating spider in the Wikipedia, because it shut down for twenty-four hours. Though this blackout left many bereft, it did not worry me, as I was able to funnel all my enquiries towards the Nigipedia, which I suspect will henceforth be my main online source of reference. Indeed, so inspiring do I find the Nigipedia that I am toying with the idea of setting up a rival, to be called either the Hootingpedia or the Keyipedia. There is a sense in which the accumulated material splurged forth here over the past eight years already constitutes an encyclopaedic body of knowledge. Try tapping a word or phrase into the Hooting Yard Search pane over to your left and there is a distinct possibility you will be enlightened, or, if not enlightened, kept swaddled in ignorance. Frustrated searchers may wish to let me know of topics not yet covered, and I will do my best to add to the databases.

One of the other answers in today’s crossword was Henry Fonda. I then thought of a parallel universe, or alternative past, where Jane and Peter’s papa had starred in The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957) in place of Grant Williams. It was Williams, you will recall, who played Scott Carey, the yachting businessman who is engulfed in a mysterious cloud – not unlike M P Shiel’s The Purple Cloud – after which he becomes gradually tinier and tinier. (There are scenes in the film where his predicament causes him to have outbursts of helpless anger, which we could call a Tinie Tempah, but let us draw a veil over that thought.) In my imagined version starring Fonda rather than Williams, I pictured a terrifying scene where Scott Carey is menaced by a Goliath bird-eating spider. Of course, Carey/Fonda is not a bird, but the spider might mistake him for one, and come scuttling towards him across a dolls’ house floor, as the music swells and screeches and we put our hands over our eyes and whimper with fear. Come to think of it, there is something a little birdlike about Henry Fonda’s countenance, from a certain angle, in a certain light, and I suspect if one were able for a moment to imagine oneself as a Goliath bird-eating spider then a tiny Henry Fonda could present himself as a rather toothsome snack.

Among the other answers in today’s crossword are Oscar (Henry Fonda won two Best Actor Oscars, plus a Lifetime Achievement award), Vinegary, Nonsuch, Gnostic, Dossier, and Motion, this last in reference to the Lemsip-swigging ex-Poet Laureate. If Andrew Motion is reading this, which is unlikely, but possible, I think it is about time he took my advice and wrote a poem or two about Goliath bird-eating spiders. Let me get him started.

Instead of my Lemsip I was swigging some cider

When I was attacked by a bird-eating spider

Its name was Goliath and it was quite hairy

I am a milksop so I found it scary

Did you know that Babinsky, the infamous walrus-moustached serial killer, had an idiot half-brother? This chap – who for the sake of convenience we shall call Babinsky 2 – was officially classified as a “type four cretin” under the official idiot classification system obtaining at that time, in that land, under that regime. I am afraid I don’t know how many numbered types of cretin there were, nor of the nature and number of other idiot types, and I have only been able to ascertain Babinsky 2’s official classification after years and years of fossicking about in mouldy archives, at grave peril to my physical and mental health. That is why I walk with a stick and hold what I delude myself are coherent conversations with birds including linnets and partridges.

As a type four cretin, Babinsky 2 was considered to be a peculiarly high-functioning idiot, deemed suitable for such tasks as using a pointy stick to gather litter from verdant parkland, mopping up filth in long corridors, sitting in a tent outside a cathedral, and writing opinion pieces for The Guardian. Unfortunately, due to fuddled bureaucracy, several doctors had instead recommended that the most effective treatment for him, at that time, in that land, under that regime, was to be chained up in a cellar and fed, very occasionally, on slops, or, if that option was not available, to be chained up in an attic and fed, very occasionally, on pap. Such, then, was his plight in the dying days of the corrupt and despicable reign of the double kings Umberto and Ignatz.

Babinsky himself, walrus-moustached and lumbering and psychotic, knew nothing of his idiot half-brother’s fate. They had been parted since they were tiny, if one can for a moment imagine a tiny Babinsky. Yet like us all, the blood-drenched nutcase was once an innocent babe-in-arms, rocked in a cradle and sung to by his mama, though perhaps we ought not examine too closely the words of the songs that good woman sang to him, nor indeed their tunes, if tunes they can be called, for it is probable that it was those very songs, or hideous caterwauls, that laid the eggs of crime within his brain. She did not sing to Babinsky 2.

Their parting happened, unexpectedly, during a family picnic, at a site of bucolic glory, when Babinsky was three and Babinsky 2 was two. There was a sudden thunderstorm. Mama was struck by lightning. A wolf carried Babinsky off into the woods. His idiot half-brother was left behind, drooling on the picnic blanket, deafened by jet fighters swooping low overhead, and by thunder, until he was gathered up and swaddled in the picnic blanket and borne away by a passing widow-woman. Old Mother Sebag-Montefiore had been reduced to penury since the death of her husband in one of King Umberto’s insane wars, or possibly in one of King Ignatz’s sane ones, and she conceived the idea of selling the child. At that time, in that land, under that regime, they had a primitive version of eBay, so she took a snapshot of the idiot tot and posted it and waited for bids to come in. All we know now is that at least one bid must have been made, for Babinsky 2 was indeed sold. To whom, and for what sum, we know not, and all trace of him is lost until he turns up, some thirty or forty or, god help us, fifty years later, chained up in a cellar or an attic by dint of bureaucratic fuddle.

At which point his criminal half-brother Babinsky reenters the scene. The double kingdom is on its last legs. Umberto is spending more and more of his time, like Baruch Spinoza, pitting spiders against each other in combat. Ignatz has taken to obsessive annotation of back numbers of the Reader’s Digest. Every day, entire flocks of birds are dropping dead out of the sky, and wherever one looks the potatoes are blighted. The land is descending into a state of anarchy, an ideal playground for a villain like Babinsky. No doubt, on that fateful March morning, cavorting with the wolves in the woods, he was plotting further and ever more heinous enormities. But then word reached him, via the primitive version of spam email prevalent at that time, in that land, under that crumbling regime, that his idiot half-brother, Babinsky 2, was languishing, chained up in a cellar or an attic and fed, very occasionally, on slops or pap, and all because of a fuddlement regarding precisely which classification of cretin type he fell into.

It is important for the reader to understand that for all his derangement and dementedness and bloodlust and psychopathology and the echoes of those mad horrible maternal songs ricocheting forever inside his skull, Babinsky was filled with a boundless fraternal devotion to Babinsky 2. How often he had vowed, if once he could find his lost half-brother, to clasp him to his bosom and slobber over him and teach him all the tricks of strangulation and slicing up and bone-smashing and other such murderous techniques as he had mastered! Oh, he had vowed as much at least three or four times during the long insanitary decades of Umberto’s and Ignatz’s kingship.

So now, on this windy March morning, apprised at last of his idiot half-brother’s plight, Babinsky preened his walrus moustache and set off for the grim bleak vile border outpost where Babinsky 2 was confined. On the way, he killed and killed and killed again. Close to the border, he stopped in a post office to ask for directions, and while he was there he bought some postage stamps. Well, to be more accurate, he did not so much buy them as steal them, having first snapped the spine of the postmaster and chopped him up with an axe. Having wiped his hands clean on one of his many rags, Babinsky was disconcerted to note that the heads of both Umberto and Ignatz had been scratched out on the postage stamps, and in their place was a hasty potato print of quite a different head, a head which bore a distinct resemblance to Babinsky himself.

“What can this mean?” he shouted, in vain, at the bloodied body-parts strewn across the post office floor.

What it meant was that, only the day before, the regime had finally collapsed. Umberto and Ignatz had been helicoptered into exile on a faraway sea-girt atoll. The revolutionary council had freed Babinsky 2 from his chains, and his cellar, or his attic, and installed him as their puppet leader. From that day on, for untold years, Babinsky 2 ruled the land, idiotically, chained up, sprawled on innumerable soft plush cushions, in the presidential palace and fed, copiously, with fruit ‘n’ fibre breakfast cereal and smokers’ poptarts and Feroglobin vitamin supplements.

Babinsky himself was never granted an audience with the puppet potentate, but he had other fish to fry, and bones to break, and throats to slit, and gore to spill.

Hark! From deep underground, in Stygian gloom lit only by flames from tarry and sulphurous torches, comes a relentless, thunderous din of booming and banging and clanking. Something is being wrought in this subterranean forge, but what? Here and there in the darkness, tireless workers, dressed in grease-smeared overalls, adjust dials and depress knobs and heave slabs and pull levers. Yes, look, here is one such worker, a Scotsman, of grim determined mien, atop a gantry that gives him sole access to the set of levers which he manipulates with hairy, steady hands. Or… or can we see those hands shaking, as if he is not quite so confident as he appears? Is he just pulling the levers at random, hoping for the best, hoping that his overseers, whomsoever they might be, are elsewhere, perhaps supervising the plugging of a leak in the miles and miles of pipework, or extinguishing a sudden blaze in the central chimney stack?

That, or something like it, was what I assume he was talking about, the Scottish politician I overheard on the radio the other day, insisting, more than once, that “we will control the fiscal levers”. Twice or thrice he said this, within the space of a few minutes, suggesting, to me at least, that it was some kind of Shandean hobbyhorse. I will leave it to a fiscalian to explain precisely what a fiscal lever is, but I think I know why the Scotsman seemed so obsessional in his claim that he had, or at some future point would have, the fiscal levers under his control.

It is, amazingly, five long years since diminutive northern pixie Hazel Blears announced that “the days of pulling the central lever are behind us”. Ever since, the central lever has hung there, loose in its once gleaming enclampment panel, its neglect and rust a reproach to all of us who care about the levers. None even approach it now, and the calls to have it covered over by a tarpaulin, or hidden behind a makeshift canvas screen, grow louder by the day. It is as if we no longer want to admit that the central lever ever existed, was pulled, regularly, with well-oiled efficiency, by heroic lever-pullers, square of jaw and mighty of sinew, fuelled by flasks of strong brown tea and burning cheroots.

Yet five years on, here comes a Scotsman, blithely announcing, without fear of contradiction, that he and his cohorts will take control of the fiscal levers. It is true he does not say they will actually pull the levers, merely that they will control them. But what on earth would be the purpose of controlling them if not to throw caution to the wind and, intoxicated by some inchoate messianic vision, to pull them, the fiscal levers, at least from time to time, down there in the deep dark grim thunderous forge?

Just because the central lever has fallen into desuetude does not mean, according to the fiscalian I consulted, that the fiscal levers cannot be pulled, happily and vigorously, as often as a Scotsman, or anybody in control of them, wishes or has the energy to do so. There is a part of me that would like to have seen, not just heard, this Scotsman. As he insisted, again and again, that he and his ilk would have control of the fiscal levers, it was easy to believe he meant exactly what he said. But I cannot help but wonder if his face – florid? sweaty? bepimpled? a stye in one eye and a duelling scar running livid down one cheek? – might have betrayed a certain queasiness about what he was claiming. After all, it is no small thing to pull even one of the fiscal levers. And there are quite a few of them, or so I am told, by my pet fiscalian.

Here at Hooting Yard, as you know, we always try to back up our babbling with rigorous research, and, where appropriate, hands-on experience. We are, in short, not afraid to get our hands dirty, especially since we now know where to go to obtain supplies of swarfega at source. (Deb Ltd, Belper, in case you had forgotten.) Thus it was I found myself standing lochside, at the mouth of the pit wherein intuition told me, far below, lay the deep dark grim subterranean forge. Down there, somewhere in among all the banging and clanking and hissing machinery, was at least one fiscal lever, possibly more. I was already dressed in grease-besmirched overalls, in readiness. I was about to step on to the topmost rung of the ladder, and to start clambering down, down, down, when my attention was caught by a flock of starlings, untold thousands of them, black against the slate-grey sky. I was entranced. And then, by the time I had my wits once more about me, I saw that the mouth of the pit had been covered over by a great granite slab, on which was etched a Scottish saltire, daubed blue with woad. I sighed, and made my way south. When would I ever learn? Yet again, my hopes and dreams were shattered by ornithology.

For a couple of years early in the present century I had a mobile phone. By current standards it was a clunky and primitive affair, on which I was able to make telephone calls (which I did), send text messages (which I rarely did) and play a few games (which I never did). One day the rental period expired and I did not immediately renew it, nor did I investigate any shorter-term or pay-as-you-go options. I put the phone in my desk drawer where it nestles still, gathering dust.

Owning a laptop and being a constant user of what our Belgian pals call Het Internet, it would be both preposterous and pretentious to call myself a latterday Luddite. But the laptop is, I think, the only thing I own which marks me as a citizen of the twenty-first century. Discounting the unused mobile (itself a 1990s model) which, it is true, could be juddered back to life (I assume), I have nothing else that I couldn’t have owned in, say, 1960. I have no television or microwave oven or digital camera or any other space age devices. This is not a conscious pose, a foolhardy attempt to be a living anachronism. I am, for example, perfectly happy to use teabags rather than leaf tea (though how I miss the tea strainer as a numinous everyday object!). It is simply that I find it possible to live a contented life without all this stuff. And whenever I sit on a bus and watch people jabbing at the tiny keyboards on their devices, or listen to them jabbering away on their phones, and when I can restrain myself from throwing a pocketful of pebbles at their heads, I am reminded that I am better off without these things, and that one day I am going to take that old mobile phone out of the desk drawer and throw it in the bin, or crush it underfoot, or donate it to a passing mendicant.

But as I say, the laptop is an essential part of my life, one I would miss much, much more than I miss tea strainers. And it is because I am an online kinda guy that I am aware of such things as apps, which as far as I can gather are the multitudinous wonders available – essential – for mobile phones and smart phones and iPads and tablet PCs and whatever else the digital person-about-town is jabbing and gazing at and jabbering into. So it seems to me only right that in this brave new world there really ought to be a Hooting Yard app, even though I wouldn’t use it myself. The question is, what in the name of all the saints in heaven would a Hooting Yard app actually do?

It has occurred to me, you see, to employ a gaggle of unpaid interns to work – tirelessly, chained in a cellar, fed on slops – on the development of the Hooting Yard app. The technology, of course, holds no terrors for these young persons. They might gawp uncomprehendingly at a tea strainer, but the creation of an app comes as naturally to them as breathing. Nevertheless, in their plaintive little voices, they pipe up “What is it you want the Hooting Yard app to do, Mr Key, innit?” And thus far I have no answer ready for them. (Though in a happy moment I did consider the possibility that my app might deliver a disabling electric shock to the user upon their each and every utterance of the barbarism “innit”.)

Having got this far, however, and recognising that a world without a Hooting Yard app is a world not worth living in, I feel I must plough on, indefatigably. But the interns will grow restive when they have completed the interim project with which I have fobbed them off, the development of the iTea Strainer. So I am appealing to the constituency of Hooting Yard readers and listeners to drum up ideas. You will, I am sure, have been sat there, jabbing and gazing at and jabbering into your device, always with that nagging thought at the back of your puny pea-sized brain that, however exciting and versatile and efficient and entertaining your pad or pod or digithingummyjig, its true potential has yet to be unleashed, because what it really needs, to justify its very existence, let alone its cost, is to have inserted into its electronic innards the app of apps, the Hooting Yard app.

When you have worked out what it will do, let me know, and I will tell the interns, by way of a note scribbled in pencil on a scrap of paper rolled up and sent through pneumatic tube down to the cellar.