If I am to take my bulging postbag as a reliable guide, one of the issues which most taxes the contemporary Hooting Yardist is the impromptu dinner party. Here is a letter received from reader Tim Thurn, which is all too typical of the sort of thing I have to contend with:

All hail Mr Key! Like you, I am a Diogenesian recluse. I shun not merely the hoi polloi but pretty much everyone else as well. So you can imagine how taxing it is upon my poor curdled neurasthenic constitution when, more often than I can bear, there comes of an evening an urgent hammering at the door, which I open to reveal a gaggle of persons seeking succour.

“Hello Tim me old mucker!” one of them will cry, loud with bonhomie, “We thought we’d pop in for a chinwag and a bite to eat!”

This is what passes for good manners in our barbarous age. What is happening is that a vague acquaintance whom I may recall having bumped into once or twice takes it upon himself to barge in, accompanied by a raggle-taggle band of indigents, wastrels, and rascals. They disport themselves about my home, as if invited, and I am placed in the position of having to cobble together an impromptu dinner party.

Why, you might ask, do I not simply shove them out of the door with curses and imprecations and, if necessary, fisticuffs? Well, Mr Key, I was well-brought up, and taught always to be polite, and to avoid scenes. Thus I feel compelled to provide what hospitality I can. My question to you is, would you happen to know of a suitable recipe for such an occasion?

Yours until the cows come home, Tim Thurn.

It seems Mr Thurn is not the only Hooting Yardist who is plagued by sudden influxes of uninvited dinner party guests. As I say, this sort of inquiry is all too common. Quite frankly, I am sick to death of penning individual replies to these correspondents, so today, in the hope that I can staunch the flow of letters, I have decided to post a recipe. It is for a toothsome and filling meal, prepared from staple ingredients, which can be knocked together to feed just about anybody who comes crashing through your door.

You will need : a packet of Weetabix, a loaf of bread, and a bag of croutons.

First, remove all the outer packaging from the Weetabix. Then remove any inner packaging. You should have six, twelve, eighteen, or God knows how many pieces of Weetabix arrayed upon your countertop. Place the whole lot in a large bowl, and smash them to bits. You can use a hammer, or a crusher, or a similar implement. Just make sure that in smashing the Weetabix you do not also smash the bowl, or you are going to have an awful mess to clean up. By the time you are finished you should have a bowl full of tiny powdery Weetabix smithereens. Put this to one side.

Next, take the loaf of bread. It does not matter what kind of bread it is. Get another bowl out of the cupboard. Now, tear the loaf to pieces, letting the bits fall into the bowl. Keep tearing and ripping and rending until you have a bowl full of breadcrumbs. If you have some kind of electrically-powered mincing contraption, you might instead just want to feed the loaf into that. Either way, the end result should be a bowl full of breadcrumbs. Put this to one side.

Now take another bowl out of the cupboard, open the bag of croutons, and tip the entire contents into the bowl. Put this to one side. You will note that I recommend buying readymade croutons rather than making your own. I am trying to save your time, and in any case it is very doubtful that any of the indigents, wastrels, and rascals will notice the difference. In the event that there are any sniffy crouton wankers among your uninvited guests, chuck the telltale bag into the bin along with the Weetabix packaging. There is always the possibility – indeed, the likelihood – that some of the indigents, wastrels, and rascals will go rummaging through your bin, so it is a good idea to cover over the Weetabix and crouton packaging with cagmag. A favourite word of W H Auden’s, cagmag is defined in the OED as “unwholesome, decayed, or loathsome meat; offal ; hence anything worthless or rubbishy”. Clearly the more unwholesome, decayed, and loathsome your cagmag the better, as it should deter even the most indefatigable bin-rummager.

Wipe the cagmag off your hands and return your attention to those three bowls. Get another, bigger bowl out of the cupboard. Tip the crushed Weetabix, the breadcrumbs, and the croutons together into this bowl, and stir. Stir! Stir! Stir! Stir until the ingredients are thoroughly intermixed.

Can be served hot or cold. Add a sprig of parsley for colour.

When I have served this dish, I have usually neglected to provide my guests with any cutlery. They are thus forced to shovel it into their mouths using their fingers. It is also a good idea not to have any beverages in the house, and to cut off the water supply at the mains.

In the event of Weetabix shortages, a perfect substitute is Shredded Wheat.

It was a dark and stormy night. Off the Kentish Knock, on the wild and churning waters, the HMS Wither Art? was being tossed about like so much flotsam. The ship’s captain, Captain Plunkett, was all too aware that it was here off the Kentish Knock on a similarly dark and stormy night in 1875 that the SS Deutschland had been wrecked, and five Franciscan nuns, including a peculiarly tall one, had suffered death by drowning. Captain Plunkett had no Franciscan nuns aboard his ship, unless there were stowaways of whose presence he was ignorant, but well he knew the HMS Wither Art? was in equal danger of wreckage on so dark and stormy a night. It would take all his mastery of the nautical arts to bring the ship and its crew safely through to dawn, and port.

Clinging to the wheel, he cried out for the first mate, First Mate Hoon. Weedy and neurasthenic yet impossibly valiant, Hoon came staggering on to the bridge. He was sopping wet, drenched by both the teeming rain and by sloshing seawater.

“Hoon!” yelled the captain over the howling gale, “It has suddenly occurred to me that we may have stowaways aboard of whom I am ignorant, nuns, Franciscan nuns, hiding in the pannicles! Detail a detail of deckhands to search every last inch!”

“Aye aye, captain!” yelled Hoon, “But I’ve just had a report over the ructive hooter from the princox that the pannicles are fubbed!”

Captain Plunkett took one hand off the wheel, curled it into a sort of perch, turned it towards his head, and bent forward, resting his mouth and chin on his hand, striking an attitude almost identical to Rodin’s Thinker. He was thinking. He was thinking how it could have happened, on his watch, that the pannicles had been fubbed. He was thinking how it had come about that he had not heard the princox’s message over the ructive hooter. He was thinking that he had completely forgotten the name of the princox. And he was thinking that, if there were any stowaway Franciscan nuns hiding in the pannicles of the HMS Wither Art?, then they would surely have been carked by the fubbing. When he had finished thinking, he lifted his head, put his hand back to the wheel, and cried aloud again to Hoon.

“Hoon! Scrub that last command to detail a detail of deckhands!”

“Aye aye, captain! I have obliterated it from my brain so rapidly and thoroughly that already I have forgotten to what the word ‘it’ refers!”

The wind continued to howl and rage, the rain to teem, the sea to slosh, and the storm to toss the ship upon the waters.

“Hoon!” cried the captain, “What is the princox’s name?”

“I know him only as Alan,” shouted the first mate, “As in Ladd or Whicker or Freeman, known as Fluff.”

“The princox is called Fluff?” cried Captain Plunkett.

“Aye, captain, by those of the crew who are radio enthusiasts.”

“Detail Fluff to man the diaphanes, Hoon!”

“Aye aye, captain!”.

And Hoon left the bridge, staggering below decks in search of the princox. The storm did not abate. The captain struggled manfully with the wheel. His head was now empty of thought. He was engaged in an elemental battle, man versus sea, or man versus storm, or better, perhaps, man versus stormy sea.

Meanwhile, on one of the decks, poop or orlop, one of the girandoles had been torn loose from its cantilene and was clattering about perilously. First mate Hoon, making his slow unsteady way to the princox’s nest, saw what had happened and realised he had to make an instant decision. There was no time to think. He could not afford to curl one hand into a sort of perch, turn it towards his head, and bend forward, resting his mouth and chin on his hand, striking an attitude almost identical to Rodin’s Thinker. He staggered back to the bridge.

“Captain Plunkett!” he screamed, “One of the girandoles has been torn loose from its cantilene and is clattering about perilously on the poop or orlop deck!”

“Where is Fluff the princox?” cried the captain.

“Still in his nest I expect,” yelled Hoon, “For when I saw that one of the girandoles had been torn loose from its cantilene and was clattering about perilously on the poop or orlop deck, I made an instant decision to tell you about it as soon as I possibly could!”

“You should have used the ructive hooter!” cried Captain Plunkett.

“Believe me, captain, I would have done had you heard the ructive hooter message regarding the fubbed pannicles. But you did not, and I dared not risk that a second ructive hooter message would go unheard by you!”

“That shows good seamanship, Hoon,” cried the captain, “Let me pin a golden star to your cap.”

“Thank you, captain. I appreciate such recognition, it compensates for the lack of pay and the worm-riddled biscuits.”

And all of a sudden there was a lull in the storm, and the captain and the first mate looked up at the stars in the sky. For a few precious moments, the HMS Wither Art? was safe upon the sea. And down below in the pannicles, the sudden calm prompted five stowaway Franciscan nuns of whose presence Captain Plunkett was ignorant, one peculiarly tall, to pop their heads out from the rickety fiscs wherein they were hiding, and to sing a hymn of thanks to Almighty God, that He had delivered them from the fubbing.

Long ago, on New Year’s Day, I began this series of essays with a piece on perpilocution, that is, the art of expounding upon a subject of which one knows little or nothing. The original plan was to write, daily, about things of which I was wholly ignorant. I have veered away from this intention more often than not, but today I wish to return to it by devoting a thousand(ish) words to Tinie Tempah.

Let me begin by stating what I do know about Mr Tempah. (1) He is some kind of musical turn, (2) he is apparently due to perform in tonight’s Olympic Games Closing Ceremony, and (3) he cannot, or chooses not to, spell his name correctly.

In the latter case it is difficult to know if the misspelling is deliberate or not. I assume Mr Tempah is of an age where his teachers’ best efforts went into bolstering his self-esteem and awareness of diversity rather than in inculcating such minor matters as basic literacy.

My understanding of the Closing Ceremony is that it will feature “a celebration of British music”, which presumably explains Mr Tempah’s involvement. I would have thought Purcell, Elgar, Delius and the glorious Benjamin Britten would have provided the proper content for such a celebration, but what do I know? I am just a reactionary old fuddy-duddy. I fear our friend Tinie may be a “rapper”, and my spirits sink, for rap of course is not music, nor poetry, but barbarism. You can quote me on that, should you wish to.

And what of Tinie Tempah himself? Is he tiny? Does he have a temper? I have no idea of the correct answer to either of those questions. I find myself trying to gain an idea of him, and turn to The New Republic (1877) by W H Mallock, in which the art critic Walter Pater appears in the guise of Mr Rose:

a pale creature, with large moustache, looking out of the window at the sunset . . . he always speaks in an undertone, and his two topics are self-indulgence and art.

This, I suggest, might almost be the Anti-Tinie Tempah of my imagination. “Almost”, because the actual Tinie probably does babble on about self-indulgence.

Walter Pater : The Anti-Tinie Tempah

It is also possible that Tinie Tempah could look out of the window at the sunset, but his ability to do so rather depends on just how tiny he is. If he is a dwarf or a midget I suppose the aid of a stool or some cushions would suffice, but perhaps he is tinier than that. He may be as tiny as a homunculus, in which case he would have to be placed on the windowsill, or be furnished with a little ladder to enable him to clamber up to the windowsill of his own accord.

I have to say that the idea of an ill-tempered homunculus is a rather frightening one, something from a child’s nightmare. Have the organisers of the Closing Ceremony thought about that? I suppose the sting of terror might be drawn by having Tinie perch on the shoulder of an affable buffoon like Boris Johnson, who will no doubt also be on the bill. Mr Johnson might drown out the high-pitched bad-tempered shrieking of Mr Tempah by intoning some Latin at him, which would provide an amusing double act.

Without knowing for sure how tiny Tinie is, it is hard to envisage him as a child, in other words as tiny Tinie Tempah. He must have been a mere speck, almost invisible. Perhaps that is how his temper developed. He would be wailing and screeching for his porridge or his fluffy toy rabbit, and Mr Tempah senior and Mrs Tempah would be gazing around in search for him, wondering where on earth he was. That kind of thing happening day after day would curdle even the most equable tot’s temperament. I suspect eventually his parents resolved to keep him in one particular place, such as the windowsill, which is where he would have learned the habit of staring at the sunset. But they clearly left it too late to curb his temper.

The misspelling of his name leads to an alternative possibility. It may be that Tinie does not mean tiny at all, but tinny. Perhaps Mr Tempah is a fully-grown average-sized person who does not need to be hoisted on to a windowsill in order to stare at the sunset. He may give vent to his temper by bashing tins. If so, this might be quite a refreshing element of the Closing Ceremony. Much as I am of the view that a celebration of British music could happily be confined to Purcell and Elgar and Delius and Britten, I am not averse to a bit of improv percussive racket. If Tinie Tempah is indeed Tinny Temper, then I shall look forward to his tin-bashing, if he promises to keep his gob shut and refrain from the rappy stuff.

There is always the possibility that there could be a last minute change to the Ceremony. The music, whatever music – or barbarity – it is, could be ditched altogether. Instead Boris Johnson could stand on a dais, perhaps with a glistening wet otter draped around his shoulders, and read passages such as this, from G K Chesterton:

A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Men of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bulls’ blood, as did Julian the Apostate.

I suspect Tinie Tempah, too, bathes in hot bulls’ blood, though I have no evidence that this is so.

Mr Key’s brain is entirely empty today, so here is a piece which previously appeared in December 2007.

There is a toyshop I know of where they sell toy squirrels made of tin. I do not mean the sort of clockwork toy tin squirrels you probably had when you were a tot, the ones you wound up and set down and that then skittered haphazardly across the floor before crashing into the wainscot. No, the toys of which I speak are tin squirrels plain and simple, with no clockwork mechanisms nor moving parts. They do not skitter. They come in a variety of sizes, the smallest being about the size of a leaf-cutter ant and the most enormous roughly on a par with a squirrel-shaped variant of a double-decker bus.

There are countless ways of having fun with a tin squirrel. You can place it in a crate and cover it with shredded newspaper or excelsior and pretend that it is hibernating. When you want to bring the hibernation to an end, you can point the beam of an anglepoise lamp at the crate, to mimic that mighty orb worshipped by the islanders in The Wicker Man, and bring your tin squirrel blinking into the light. Being a toy of tin, your squirrel will not actually blink, but with the power of your mind you can imagine that it does. If your mind lacks the power to summon up this simple fancy, it is a good idea, before switching on the anglepoise lamp, to do a brain exercise specifically designed to increase the imaginative faculties. You will need to be familiar with the song Imagine, written and performed by John Lennon, the man memorably described by Kenneth Williams as “that Beatle who got married to an Asiatic woman”, although Williams initially confused him with Ringo Starr. Actually, you need only know the tune, to which you should sing the following words:

Imagine there’s a squirrel
A squirrel made of tin
It’s in a crate of newspaper
Hibernating
Imagine you unpack it
And place it in the light
Imagine it is blinking
If it wasn’t made of tin it might

In nature, hibernating creatures emerge due to an increase in temperature rather than to sunlight, but we are talking here about a tin squirrel in a crate in your living room, so some license is allowed, unless you are happy to turn your heating off for as long as the tin toy remains packed in newspaper.

Another thing you can do with your squirrel is to tap it with your fingernails to elicit a tinny sound. If you have bitten fingernails, this may not be such an easily-achieved pleasure, so you may wish to experiment by tapping the toy with different utensils, such as a spoon or a fork or a whisk.

Real squirrels, ones not made of tin, are noted for their devotion to nuts of all kinds, and you can entertain the family by creating a tableau. Place your tin toy on, say, a windowsill, and attach some twigs and leaves to the window with sticky putty. Then scatter some nuts around your squirrel. It doesn’t much matter whether they are hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, or macadamia nuts, or indeed whatever nuts you happen to have bags of in your cupboard. Just cast them upon the windowsill, and gasp as a scene from the savage world of nature comes to life before your eyes.

Speaking of savagery, it may amuse you to set a predator upon your tin squirrel. Owls are particularly fond of sinking their fearsome talons into real squirrels and ripping them to pieces, but no owl I am aware of is likely to take the slightest interest in a squirrel made of tin, for reasons I hope are too obvious to need pointing out, particularly if you have been doing that recommended brain exercise, which ought to have pepped up the buzz and spark inside your cranium. A tin squirrel would be the quarry of a tin owl, so you will need to go to a toyshop that sells such a thing. If you have difficulty finding one, you can always fashion a toy owl out of a used baked bean tin, by bashing it into shape with a hammer and giving it the appearance of an owl with modelling paints or decoupage. Clearly it will only make a believable tin predator if your toy squirrel is one of the smaller ones available. If you splashed out on the double-decker bus-sized tin squirrel you would be advised not to attempt to have it preyed upon by a tin owl, unless you have access to a scrap metal merchant and are skilled in the shaping of large amounts of tin into birdlike shapes.

For more ideas on having fun with your tin squirrel, rummage through your local secondhand bookshop and see if you can find a copy of Dobson’s pamphlet How I Conquered My Fear Of Googie Withers, Together With A Few Tips On The Limitless Possibilities For Entertainment Afforded By A Toy Squirrel Made Of Tin (out of print).

Marking the death of Robert Hughes yesterday, there were dozens of quotations I could have used, and I chose the one about the Inner Child and the Inner Adult more or less at random. It is a fine example of what Michael McNay in his Grauniad obituary calls Hughes’ talent for “[an] epigrammatic judgment that condenses deep truths”. It was a fortuitous choice, for it prompted Outa_Spaceman to bring to my attention another Inner Being of which I was previously unaware, the Inner Chimp.

The Inner Chimp seems to reside mainly within Outer Cyclists – or, as I tend to call them as they hurtle towards me on the London pavements, bike wankers. Outa_Spaceman supplied this intriguing extract from a 2009 Grauniad article:

In his absorbing and often riveting new book, [Mark] Cavendish trashes the contribution of some former leading members of British cycling – in particular, Simon Jones, acclaimed as the UK’s coach of the year after the 2004 Olympics. “He was a dickhead and all their scientific analysis of riders is complete bollocks when it comes to me. They kept telling me I wasn’t hitting the numbers but look what’s happened since. I couldn’t give a fuck about Simon Jones.”

With more warmth, he describes [Dave] Brailsford, the feted performance director of British cycling, as “a media darling”. He is also amused at the way in which Britain’s Olympic gold-medal winning track cyclists are so heavily reliant on the sports psychologist Steve Peters – who has done so much to ease the often tortured psyches of Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton, and even Chris Hoy. “I like Steve. But all that stuff about ‘taming your inner chimp [of negative thought]’ is hilarious.”

I looked up Dave Brailsford on the Wikipedia and learned that he is the son of an Alpine mountain guide. This is no doubt extremely pertinent to his discovery of the Inner Chimp, though in ways I have not yet been able to pinpoint. Chimps do not, after all, hang about in the snow white Alps. Yet I sense a tantalising connection there, between the tiny Brailsford plodding in his Papa’s footsteps o’er the the Alps and his adult conviction that cyclists are prey to their Inner Chimp. When I have worked out the cast iron link between the two, I will let you know.

Meanwhile, forgetting all about the Alps for the time being, it is worth considering the Inner Chimp in and of itself. I would like to know if it lurks within all of us, whether or not we are bike wankers. I myself am a militant pedestrian, though I share Rayner Heppenstall’s puzzlement at the need for a separate word to designate those of us who use the basic form of human locomotion. But I am now wondering if, whenever I walk from A to B, or from Haemoglobin Towers to Nameless Pond, I have an Inner Chimp struggling to assert itself. I would be interested to discover how it would make itself known.

There is a clue, perhaps, in the reference to the “often tortured psyches” of Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton. From my scant viewing of the Olympics hoo-hah, I would say that the latter does look rather highly strung, in a mad-woman-in-the-attic way, but Wiggins seems a far more relaxed character. But if Brailsford is to be believed, both of them have an Inner Chimp, which explains their tortured psyches. I am fairly sure my own psyche would be tortured if, as soon as I set out on foot somewhere, my Inner Chimp started jabbering for attention and threatened to become an Outer Chimp. I would run for the hills, if not the Alps. Though perhaps that is what the Inner Chimp would want me to do. This is devilishly complicated stuff.

It also leads me to wonder if chimpanzees themselves have an inner bike wanker. Next time I go the zoological gardens I am going to study the chimps very very carefully for telltale signs. What those signs might be I do not yet know, but I suspect I will find out if, for example, I flash a red light at the chimps and they are thereby compelled to rush towards it at inhuman speed, scattering adults and children and guide dogs and puppies and indeed any innocent life-form that gets in their way.

The other animal we have mentioned with an Olympic connection is the otter. What, I wonder, does Brailsford, or indeed Cavendish or Pendleton or Wiggins have to say on the subject of the Inner Otter? Cycling and beach volleyball are of course two different sports, and there is no reason to think that Inner Animals cross over from one to the other. But if the world of Inner Animals is as rich in variety and unfathomable weirdness as the world of actual, Outer Animals, it would not be surprising if there were instances of cyclists with Inner Otters, otters with Inner Chimps, chimps with Inner Cyclists, and Lord knows what other combinations.

Personally, I am looking forward to the day when everyone gives free rein to their Inner Pedestrian. Actually, strike that. Given that much of the population appears to be savage and barbaric, the ideal thing would be for most of them to unleash their Inner Stay-Indoors-And-Read-Morally-Uplifting-And-Improving-Literature-By-Candlelight Persons. Then I could happily walk from A to B and from Haemoglobin Towers to Nameless Pond without having my progress blighted by either bike wankers or shambling gits. Oh happy day!, in the unlikely event it ever dawns.