I have not read Geoff Dyer’s new book Zona : A Book About A Film About A Journey To A Room. As the title indicates, it is devoted to a film, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) and to Dyer’s obsession with it. I vaguely recall seeing Stalker, probably around the time of its release, and have not seen it since. Clearly it did not make a great impression on me, unlike the same director’s Andrei Rublev (1966), which I saw in the mid-seventies and from which I can still remember certain scenes. Reading a couple of reviews of Dyer’s book led me to wondering which film I would choose to write an obsessional book about.

It then struck me that, much as I might be given to enthusiastic ravings about, say, Celine And Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974) or The Falls (Peter Greenaway, 1980), or Random Harvest (Mervyn LeRoy, 1942), or Even Dwarfs Started Small (Werner Herzog, 1970), or pretty much anything directed by Guy Maddin, it is unlikely I will ever sit down and concentrate and write about them at length.

Dyer’s Zona is, apparently, “one long movie summary, a shot-by-shot rewrite” of Stalker, which I assume indicates that he gives us a detailed account of the film and wanders off into discursive byways. (At one point he provides us with the useful information that, after the completion of Sympathy For The Devil / One Plus One (1968), Mick Jagger said of Jean Luc Godard “He’s such a fucking twat”.)

Taking a similar approach, might it not be interesting to consider not just one of my favourite films but, say, three of them, and construct a narrative that intermingled them, had elements from each colliding, happily or otherwise, stirred them together in a pot and made something new and strange? I think this is what young persons call a “mash up”. What would happen were I to sprinkle together, in chronological order, Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945), Noroît (Jacques Rivette, 1976), and Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988)?

Certain choices, or strategies, seem compellingly obvious. Hans Gruber and his criminal gang could invade and hold hostage the occupants, not of the Nakatomi building but of the coastal castle which is the setting for Noroît. Ah, but the castle is home to a pirate gang rather than a law-abiding Japanese corporation. So Giulia, the pirate leader, could be replaced by Laura Jesson’s well-meaning but exasperating friend Dolly Messiter. Ruthless German criminals pitted against Francophone female pirates, both perhaps to be outwitted by New York cop John McClane, who is attempting to rescue Laura, aided by Erika and Morag, the avengers. Dr Alec Harvey can sit in a police car with Sergeant Al Powell, parked close to the castle, perhaps in the lee of the pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing.

Noroît is partly based on The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606), long attributed to Cyril Tourneur but now thought to be the work of Thomas Middleton. These echoes of dark brooding Jacobean tragedy should serve to remind us that in Brief Encounter, the part of Dr Stephen Lynn, Alec’s colleague from whom he borrows the flat for his unseemly and sordid – and ultimately abortive – assignation with Laura, was played by an uncredited Valentine Dyall (1908-1985), an actor whose sepulchral tones made him famous as the Man In Black, host of the long-running BBC radio series Appointment With Fear. I do not know if Valentine Dyall ever acted in any Jacobean tragedies, but if he did not, he should have. He did do some Shakespeare.

We would have to find a role for Dr Stephen Lynn, perhaps applying his professional medical knowledge in the closing scenes of Noroît, where at a torchlit nocturnal masked ball Morag and Erika and Giulia, oops, I forgot, Dolly Messiter, get a bit carried away with the stabbings. I suppose John McClane should be wandering about in the dark somewhere, too, bloodied and in his vest.

I realise that I have not yet managed to insert any steam trains, nor Albert Godby nor Myrtle Bagot from the Milford Junction tea room, nor Holly Gennaro-McClane, nor the pirate castle musicians. But fear not, space will be found in my narrative for all of them.

I am in something of a quandary about the title, for though one can cobble together various combinations of, here given in alphabetical order, Brief and Die and Encounter and Hard and Noroît, no one admixture springs out as obviously preferable. For the time being, while I continue to worry away at it, like a dog with a bone, I shall refer to it as My Own Zona, echoing Geoff Dyer.

Cast, in order of appearance:

Hans Gruber – Alan Rickman (1946- )
Giulia – Bernadette Lafont (1938- )
Laura Jesson – Celia Johnson (1908-1982)
Dolly Messiter – Everley Gregg (1903-1959)
John McClane – Bruce Willis (1955- )
Erika – Kika Markham (1940- )
Morag – Geraldine Chaplin (1944- )
Dr Alec Harvey – Trevor Howard (1913-1988)
Sergeant Al Powell – Reginald VelJohnson (1952- )
Dr Stephen Lynn – Valentine Dyall (1908-1985)
Albert Godby – Stanley Holloway (1890-1982)
Myrtle Bagot – Joyce Carey (1898-1993)
Holly Gennaro McClane – Bonnie Bedelia (1948- )
Castle Musicians – Jean Cohen-Solal, Robert Cohen-Solal, Daniel Ponsard (dates unknown)

And here is the seaside castle where the action takes place:

Let us consider the birds of the air, with their feathers and their wingspans and their tiny little heads. It is an arresting thought that many of the birds we know today are descended from the fierce and rapacious pterodactyl of prehistory. Though we should not forget that many modern birds are themselves fierce and rapacious. We need only think of the swan, for example, or dozens of different types of gull.

You can test the fierceness and rapaciousness of a seagull by placing a paper bag full of breadcrumbs on the wall abutting the promenade at a seaside resort. Stand well back, and wait. Sooner rather than later, a seagull, or seagulls, will swoop upon the paper bag and frenziedly slash it to ribbons to gain access to the breadcrumbs within, which it will gobble up so greedily that many of the crumbs will be scattered upon the paving. Further birds – other gulls, or pigeons – will then descend upon the leavings, and within seconds not a trace of breadcrumb will remain, and the shreds of paper bag will be blown away on the winds.

This is an example of the sort of violence Tennyson must have had in mind when he wrote of “Nature, red in tooth and claw” in In Memoriam A. H. H. (1849), even though no blood has actually been spilled. The seagull is a scavenger rather than a bird of prey, the chancer of the avian world. But what I wish to advert to here is, let us say, attitude. A seagull may not slash at and tear to shreds something quick and alive, say for an example a vole or a hamster or, indeed, you, standing there at the seaside, but that is a mere accident of evolution. It is certainly imbued with all the fierceness and rapacity of its prehistoric ancestor. Ask the paper bag.

Of course there are other birds, befeathered and bewinged and with tiny little heads, which are more docile. One thinks of budgerigars. One does not think for too long of budgerigars, because quite frankly their charms pall rather quickly, unless one has a particular “thing” for them. It was long thought that the budgerigar’s natural habitat was a cage plopped on a sideboard in an ornate parlour or drawing-room crowded with knicknacks and gewgaws, lit by gas, which perhaps tells you most of what you need to know about them. Their heads are particularly tiny, in relation to their bodies.

The tininess of birds’ heads in general means that there is not much room inside them for the brain, which in itself is therefore a tiny thing. We might wonder at how much, or how little, cognitive ability resides in the average brain of the average bird. Not much at all, we will conclude. As a life form, birds are pretty thick. Yet their lack of intelligence has not prevented them being masters of the air, nest-builders, hunters and scavengers and even – in the case of Newfoundland crows – skilful exploiters of the possible uses of twigs. We should not be tempted to discount the powers of birds simply because most of them are stupid.

The thing most types of birds can do that we cannot is, of course, to fly. That is where their wings are so decisive as appendages. Mankind has had to fashion wings out of balsa wood and straw and string, and still he cannot fly. I think this may be to do with the fact that we cannot flap our arms with sufficient rapidity. An interesting question to ask is if you would accept a putative Faustian bargain, that you would be granted the ability to fly in return for having your brain shrunk to the size of a budgerigar’s, with the commensurate diminution in mental capacity. To give your reply to that question some import, we would have to predicate that the process be irreversible. I think all of us would cry out an impassioned “Yes!” if we thought we could fly about for a couple of days, stupid as a bird, and then resume our normal flightless daily lives with reswollen brains and our wits intact.

Let us further assume that we could choose not just to be granted the gift of flight but actually to become a bird. Which bird would you pick? Most of us, I think, would avoid the fate of becoming a budgerigar, or indeed an ostrich. Not only is the ostrich particularly moronic, but it cannot fly. I suppose a very stupid person, who did not know these things about ostriches, might accept the Faustian bargain and then choose to be transformed into an ostrich, with the net result of simply being turned into a life form even more stupid than he started out as, without the compensation of being able to fly.

It occurs to me that there may be a profitable opera or stage musical to be made from that notion. It would of course be a tragedy. The part of the protagonist would have to be written with exceeding care, for there is a risk that an audience would be resistant to identifying closely with such an irredeemably thick hero. So perhaps a comedy would be more appropriate. One can readily imagine packed theatres loud with laughter at the antics of Ostrich Man. It would be cruel laughter.

Birds, too can be cruel, but they do not laugh. At least I am unaware of any birds that laugh, as opposed to birds whose song can be interpreted as chuckling or guffawing. But such interpretations are mere anthropomorphism, a besetting sin. Can birds commit sin? I am sure this is a question theologians must have asked, over the centuries, but I am not familiar with their arguments. I would assume that the answer must be “No, birds are incapable of sin”, for the simple reason that they are so damned stupid.

Another thing birds can do that we cannot is to lay eggs, but that is a topic so plump with possibilities that it deserves an essay of its own.

Today’s essay is a guest postage by BlackberryJuniper & Sherbet. When she told me she was planning to write On The Magnificence Of Peter Wyngarde, I realised this was a perfect topic for the Hooting Yard daily essays, but one which I was not qualified to address. This is an abridged version. You can read the full mad frothing at the mouth here.

Have a proper look at this exhibition of early seventies utter cool, and ask – who else can carry off leather pants in this way, and a moustache, and still be astonishingly intelligent and a slightly louche action hero also?

Now, I don’t mean for a moment to be merely dribbling over one of the most gorgeous actors still alive, in a horrible sexist way. I would sincerely love to meet Peter Wyngarde and have, umm, a croissant and some orange juice with him. I would love to chat and hear stories, and just listen to the marvellous George Sanders-esque voice. I truly think the man is one of the best actors we had, before some people got hot under the collar that despite always being a ladies’ man on TV, he got arrested for some business in a toilet in Gloucester with a truck driver in 1975. (The fact that his acting colleagues often called him ‘Petunia Winegum’ as a nickname testifies to the fact that being gay wasn’t a secret among people that knew him.) Since some people weren’t ready to handle the fact that the leather trousers were active in a way they hadn’t expected, his career suffered and got halted, really. What a total bloody shame! After all those sudden 1965-67-ish appearances in staples like The Avengers, The Saint, Armchair Theatre and The Prisoner, he drifted away. Just when it was all getting going.

Now, I haven’t looked into his career in any great detail, but if he’s in something I will watch it and keep it, as he never disappoints. Such presence, such confidence. I think this used to be called brio, as in – full of energy, life and enthusiasm. And class!

My earliest Peter Wyngarde memory is a masked Peter Wyngarde, as seen in Flash Gordon (1980). Which is one of the most perfect films ever made and I wouldn’t change a hair on its head whatsoever. Why so many people dislike this film so strongly is completely beyond me. What does it matter that the actor playing Flash Gordon apparently wasn’t acting very well? I thought he did fine, they didn’t paint him as a great brain – more as a character that had heart and energy; Sam Jones did fine with that brief, I reckon. What is there to dislike about the intense, insane over-colourisation: all that GOLD, and green, and red, and orange, and shininess everywhere?? Every time I watch it I am cheered up even if the sound is down! And if the sound is up, I get to hear Ornella Muti purring and sulking, Melody Anderson cheerleading and offering Suzanne Danielle the elixir that will make a night with the Emperor Ming doable (his sexual weirdness is hinted at several times, in a rather titillating way). And then there’s Emperor Ming himself, Max von Sydow, who despite his marvellous face makeup and great costuming, still manages to attract my attention by doing more evil hand-rubbing acting than anyone I have since seen in a film; more pregnant pauses before evil sneering. And of course, Brian Blessed yelling ‘DIVE!’. And the Queen soundtrack… the Love Capsule music is always overlooked and so sensually splendid I bought the whole soundtrack just for that, those few seconds…

And then, there’s the voice that I didn’t really identify properly until about three years ago. I have watched this wonderful soul-edifying frothy film of excellence about a thousand times, and yet, oddly, I had never really connected the cast list. I think I forgot George Sanders was dead, and imagined the voice of Klytus, Ming’s state torturer, was him, somehow. Then one day, I really listened and realised that (a) George Sanders had indeed been dead since 1972, and Flash Gordon was a 1980 film, and (b) that voice didn’t really sound like George Sanders at all – it was too deep and way more nuanced. So the fact I had been dribbling all this time over a masked person I had only just realised starred in one of my other favourite films was …well, I have a quiet life, I was very excited.

The other favourite film was Night of the Eagle (1962). I can’t recommend this film highly enough. Spoiler alert!! It is about a scientific and sceptical professor who is doing very well in his rising career at a small university, but is unaware this is because his wife is working protective voodoo on his behalf; as she is actually battling the forces of greedy and voracious bad magic, summoned up by the Head Teacher, Margaret Johnston. At the end she summons a huge thoughtform eagle to get rid of Wyngarde’s character, but a wonderful contrivance with an old eight track player sends it against her instead, hence the title. End of Spoiler. This is the face of Peter Wyngarde I had been very familiar with for years –

Which doesn’t look at all like the first picture, does it? I had no idea it was the same person. It’s a genuinely scary film, with some good jumpy moments. Go and feast your eyes on the acting talent that is this man, on YouTube – the whole film is up there.

Another thing I had been wanting to see for ages was the Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984). I started to watch them in the day, and an episode came on with That Voice! Putting down my toast and honey, I see that Peter Wyngarde is there, complete with wonderful moustache, and robed as a devil-worshipping priest. I think it’s slightly likely that he was a little bored by this acting assignment, as I have rarely seen him loucher in something; then again, it’s a very slight story. There’s a funny scene near the end of the episode (‘And the Wall Came Tumbling Down’) where Wyngarde’s character is supposed to be dead on the floor. The scene’s focus is away from him, to the actors still alive, upright and talking, gesturing. Of course, I was just staring at Peter Wyngarde on the floor, loving those cheekbones and eyebrows. I don’t know how long the scene may have taken to film, but he gets bored being on the floor and makes a face, licking his lips and the tip of his moustache very obviously. It made me laugh out loud.

In speaking of his TV and film stuff, I am leaving out his notorious record, recently re-released on CD – When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head. I’m not even going to attempt to tell you about this – you have to go and listen to it! It’s a concept album, its very funny, full of social commentary. There’s rap, to country music – imagine! There’s much talking – its got ATMOSPHERE fizzing to the tip of the champagne glass he offers you at the start. It was removed shortly after its initial release, for offending loads of people with the song ‘Rape’. Listening to it as the feminist I am, I think its not meant to be taken literally at all, and there was a lot going on in there about attitudes of the times, being mocked, quite harshly.

But the true gem, of any length or consistency, that I have – that, as a nation, WE have – is his excellence in the ITC shows Department S, and then the spin-off Jason King, where Wyngarde is a novelist, international travelling playboy and sleuth, as only the early seventies could dress and cast a man. I mean, look…

People make much of how kitsch these series are today; how camp, how unreal, how …silly. Now. You’re talking here, with someone who violently adores Flash Gordon, so are these things going to bother me in the slightest? I really think not. It is all silly, and light; and yet so disarming. Fun. Escapist. Occasionally very clever in terms of story telling, and even thought provoking. The ensemble of the team of the Department S series was great, and it’s quite shameful that it was only the one series. But then there was Jason King, so at least my favourite character is still about.

He would say things like ‘I abhor violence’, before gracefully launching himself across a room to box someone’s ears in that very theatrical and obviously unreal way they did in those TV days. And his hair would not ruffle; his handkerchief would remain dandily in the pocket. And you can’t see it, but his sleeve turnbacks would also remain blissful and unpeturbed. I have no idea why this is so important to me; I think it ties in to my sense of screaming for order in a life of chaos. Wyngarde’s portrayal of Jason King managed to make me actually want to BE him as this character. He managed to be astonishingly arrogant, yet also vulnerable and emotional. Intelligent, and strangely clueless at times. And so stylish in terms of fabric and colour that I think it really did get burned into my brain forever and affect the way I see clothes even now.

I think what I saw there, in his portrayal of that character was an amazing ability to disregard the categorisations of other people, and sail through life as HIMSELF. To not be afraid, to not be cowed, to speak out and say your piece and hold your head up while doing so. And not be afraid to be clever.

And then you see Peter Wyngarde’s actual life, and see that for the time he was in, he was too big to handle, too large for the life around him, for the narrow minded among us. He did get cowed, in the sense that his career got stalled so badly he had to go and do theatre work abroad and it never really recovered here when he got back.

Long Live the Peter Wyngarde of the past, the present, and the imagination… King of Cool, and Much Underrated Brilliant Actor. May I take on those traits I see in him, and glide through life with the same casual insouciance and verve. I wish I may.

Pontiuses is the name given to the healthful and invigorating physical exercise system devised by Joseph Pontius in the early twentieth century in Germany. It is broadly similar to the rival system known as Pilates. Well, actually, it is completely dissimilar, but I am all of a dither what with one thing and another. Only a person in the throes of a dither could possibly confuse their Pontiuses with their Pilates, for they have nothing whatsoever in common save for being physical exercise systems developed in the early twentieth century in Germany by men called Joseph whose surnames began with the letter P. I will try to stabilise my dither so I can continue this essay in prose of glistening clarity.

If you were to stumble upon a grouplet of Pontiuses-practising persons in a field, or in a municipal leisure facility, the first thing that would strike you would be their “gear”. Not for the Pontiusesist the leotards favoured by Pilatesists. No indeed. Here is a first-hand description of the outfit commonly worn when getting into the Pontiuses groove:

I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the fore-top; my French dublet gelte in the bellie as though (like a pig readie to be spitted) all my guts had bin pluckt out; a paire of side paned hose that hung downe like two scales filled with Holland cheeses; my longe stock that sate close to my docke, and smoothered not a scab or a leacherous hairie sinew on the calfe of the legge; my rapier pendant like a round sticke fastned in the tacklings for skippers the better to climbe by; my cape cloake of blacke cloth, overspreading my backe like a thorne-backe, or an Elephantes eare, that hanges on his shoulders like a countrie huswives banskin which she thirles hir spindle on; & in consummation of my curiositie, my hands without glooves, all a more French, and a blacke budge edging of a beard on the upper lip, & the like sable auglet of excrements in the rising of the anckle of my chin.

Readers of a Tudor bent may recognise that dandyish apparel as being broadly similar to the costume worn by young Jack Wilton, the narrator of Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller (1594). What am I saying, “broadly similar”? It is identical. Clearly I have yet to subjugate my dither. I must marshal my forces. Perhaps I ought to go and do some Pontiuses myself.

Now you might think it would be difficult, or at least inconvenient, to perform invigorating exercises when dressed up to the nines like a foppish Elizabethan roister doister. As indeed it is. But therein lies the key to the magnificent efficacy of Pontiuses. Or at least, one of the keys. Apparently, there are several, if we are to credit the title of the “guidance” published by Joseph Pontius, The Several Keys To The Magnificent Efficacy Of The Pontiuses Physical Exercise System Devised By Myself On A Thursday Afternoon In Düsseldorf During A Downpour (1929). I give it in English, though the book, all nine hundred pages of it, was written in Solresol, the artificial language devised by François Sudre and expounded in Boleslas Gajewski’s Grammaire du Solresol (1902), a signed copy of which Pontius had committed to memory. Not being able to speak or read Solresol myself, I have no idea what Pontius has to say in his “guidance”, but I am not going to let that stop me. I am manfully overcoming my dither and shall press on.

I said that the first thing that would strike you were you to come upon a grouplet of Pontiusesists would be their clothing. Hard upon the heels of that sensation would come a second, as you were made dizzy by the sight of what at first glance would look like people engaged in haphazard jumping about while having spasmodic fits. You might even cast your eyes about to spot a rabid dog, foaming at the mouth, assuming all the people had been bitten by it. But gradually you would begin to discern a pattern, indeed a profound order, in what seemed to be mere frantic cavorting. If it turned out there was a rabid dog in the vicinity, that would be mere coincidence, though you would be advised to report its presence to a public health official on doggy duty in his booth or kiosk, if you could find it. Sometimes these officials hide themselves away so they can spend their days uninterrupted by hound-troubled citizens. It is quite scandalous.

Scandal was something that dogged Joseph Pontius too. But then, the Weimar Republic was riddled with scandal, from top to bottom, so when the inventor of Pontiuses was arrested and charged and convicted and imprisoned in a case of unseemliness, it barely made the headlines. He did not waste his time in gaol, however, adapting his physical exercise system for the confined space of a cell. Rather than seemingly haphazard jumping about, the incarcerated Pontiusesist throws himself repeatedly at the walls in a strictly regulated sequence of spasmodic lurching movements. Reluctantly, Pontius had to discard the preening Tudor gallant’s apparel and approve the practice of Pontiuses while wearing the harsh grey sackcloth of Weimar prison uniform.

What this means is that there is a deal of difference between Pontiuses In Prison and plain old Pontiuses. Even I can tell them apart, even when my senses are muffled by dither. Which, I am pleased to say, they are not, any more, today, for I have smashed the dither to bits, simply through willpower, and I did not even need to perform any Pontiuses to get me this far, which makes me wonder if the exercises are actually worth doing. Probably not, I would aver. I think I shall put my feet up and have a cup of tea instead.

[My thanks to R.]

The lambing-hall boogie may refer to two distinct, yet allied, phenomena. First we need to be clear what we mean by the lambing-hall. Almost invariably, this is the farm building wherein newborn lambs are brought fumbling and puling into the world. In the specific context of the lambing-hall boogie, however, it refers to the site associated with the other extremity of the lamb’s life. Certain evil farmers mischievously give the name “lambing hall” to the barn – often cavernous, windowless, and grisly – in to which lambs are led to the slaughter. Those of you who have bathed in the blood of the lamb, the better to become Christ-like, will be familiar with this latter designation, as will those of you who have read Thomas Harris’s potboiler The Silence Of The Lambs, or have seen the film adaptation starring Jodie Foster as rookie FBI agent Clarice Stalin.

Incidentally, if I may digress for a moment, the agent’s name is often given, erroneously, as Clarice Starling. Even the potboilerist himself refers to her as such throughout his text. Yet the parallels between the fictional law enforcement officer and the non-fictional pock-marked moustachioed Georgian petty thief who rose to become the paranoid and demented tyrant of the Soviet Union are surely too obvious to need repetition here. For my part, I have gone carefully through each page of my paperback copy of The Silence Of The Lambs, Tippexing out the extraneous letters “r” and “g” in each mention of Stalin, and then, using a black biro, slightly thickened the “a” and the “l” to close the gap created between them. Laborious though the process is, it makes for a much more satisfying read, for one is no longer distracted by what seem to be frequent and irrelevant references to a starling, the passerine bird known to congregate in vast flocks often numbering in the thousands, or even millions. I was once reading the potboiler, as yet unmodified with Tippex, when I paused to look out of my window and saw a flock of starlings in the sky, blocking out the sun, but that is an anecdote for a later occasion.

The primary definition of the lambing-hall boogie, then, is that it is the name given to a riotous dance which may be organised by the evil farmer after he has cut the throats of all the lambs he has corralled into the cavernous grisly barn. The sawdust on the floor is awash with the blood of lambs, and into this gruesomeness the evil farmer will inveigle his farmhands and their extended families. First they roll about in the sawdust until they are smeared and splattered with lambs’ blood, and then they dance. Perhaps the closest non-rustic equivalent of the dance is the pogo once practised enthusiastically by punkists in the latter part of the nineteen-seventies. But the music to which the farmpersons leap and hurl themselves about the blood-soaked barn could not be more different from punk music as we know it. Evil farmers are wont to employ for the evening a so-called chamber farm orchestra, which performs a combination of baroque minuets and oompah marches, overlaid, or possibly underlaid, I don’t really understand the technicalities, with funereal dirges on cello.

Intriguingly, there is some evidence that Josef Stalin may have taken part in several lambing-hall boogies during his youthful years in Georgia. Clarice Stalin, however, did not, insofar as we can glean from Harris’s text. Further research on this matter is probably pointless, at least in the case of the rookie FBI agent, for the simple reason that she is fictional.

The secondary definition of the lambing-hall boogie is, as I indicated, allied to the first. If you have spent any appreciable time in a rustic milieu, you will know that you can barely pass ten minutes without being buttonholed by a toothless ancient or drooling village idiot eager to regale you with barely comprehensible countryside lore and legend. Much of this can be airily dismissed with a wave of your elegant hand, swathed in an Italianate silken glove, but occasionally it pays to sit with the crone or idiot and to listen carefully. That is how I learned of the undoubtedly real terrors of the other lambing-hall boogie, where “boogie” refers not to a dance but to a boogie-man or sprite or hobgoblin or wraith or phantom or possibly even to the devil himself.

This figure, with the head of a blood-soaked lamb and the body of either a goat or a hedgehog or a starling, is said to appear from within an engulfing mist of foul and noisome vapours on the stroke of midnight, when the pogoing farmpersons are sprawled, exhausted and nauseous, on the bloody sawdust in the barn. It wreaks its terrible vengeance by casting a hypnotic spell over all those gathered, condemning them to a calendar year of rustic drudgery, flooded drainage ditches, pricking by thorns, torrential rainfall, maddened cows, and other such miseries of countryside existence.

There is some conjecture that the lambing-hall boogie may have somehow entered the body of, and commandeered the brain and soul of young Josef Stalin. There is further conjecture that there exists a suppressed text by Thomas Harris in which Clarice Stalin goes in pursuit of the lambing-hall boogie in an attempt to bring him to justice. I have spoken to someone who claims to have seen the manuscript, who reports that the potboilerist mires the whole business in unnecessary confusion. In his version, the lambing-hall boogie, as it emerges from an engulfing mist of foul and noisome vapours on the stroke of midnight, is erroneously given both the head and the body of a starling, making it effectively identical to the bird itself. My informant tells me that the bulk of the text then has Clarice Stalin chasing a starling across the continental United States, armed with a butterfly net.