Good evening, and thank you for your warm welcome. Well, warm-ish. The clapping petered out rather quickly, and I must say that other audiences, in other auditoria, have shown a sight more enthusiasm. But there we go. I am not complaining. This lecturing lark is much preferable to being out and about in all weathers in the company of sheep, dim-witted and fearful beasts that they are. It is more lucrative too.

But I should introduce myself. My name is Bo Peep. I am often known as “Little” Bo Peep by dint of my diminutive stature. I don’t mind being called “Little”. It has an affectionate ring. But I do object when some newspapers compare me to a dwarf from a Wagner opera. Clearly, the organisers of tonight’s event expected me to be smaller than I am. What a tiny lectern!

The one thing most of you will know about me is that I lost my sheep. I do not deny it. Quite why it caused such a kerfuffle in the press is a mystery to me. I became the poster girl for neglectful and inept shepherdesses, and even now I can barely leave my cottage without some mucky little country urchin calling out to me to ask where my sheep are. It is a trying existence.

Thus I welcome this opportunity to tell my side of the story. It all happened on one of those blustery misty wuthery weathery days, in some godawful rustic backwater. As usual, I was sitting in a field, supervising several sheep. My childhood ambition of intergalactic space travel, of boldly going where no Peep had gone before, seemed as far off as ever. Bored out of my considerably acute mind, I drifted into a doze. And as I dozed, I dreamed.

I dreamt of the moon and a yew tree. The light was blue. Grasses prickled my ankles, and I simply could not see where to get to through the fumy, spiritous mists. The moon dragged the sea after it like a dark crime. Bells startled the sky, eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection bonged out their names. The yew tree pointed up. It had a Gothic shape. The moon was my mother. Her blue garments unloosed small bats and owls. She was bald and wild. The message of the yew tree was blackness, blackness and silence. I started awake, rubbed my eyes, and saw that the sheep I was meant to be shepherdessing were gone.

My immediate hunch was that they had been abducted by a band of roaming Wagnerian dwarves. I had read of several such crimes in the Daily Nibelungenlied And Countryside Advertiser. So, with the gung ho approach for which we Peeps are universally admired, or if not universally then at least in and around Sibodnedabshire, I hoisted my crook and marched off to the newsagent’s kiosk, under those pollarded willows by the canal just before the level crossing at Ketchworth.

It was not the Advertiser I was looking for. It so happened that this newsagent kept in stock various seventeenth-century tracts, including Dagons-Downfall; or The great IDOL digged up Root and Branch by Roger Crabb, A Fiery Flying Roll by Abiezer Coppe, and The Neck of the Quakers Broken by Lodowicke Muggleton. The one I wanted – obviously – was The Lost Sheep Found by Laurence Clarkson. After a close reading of this pamphlet, I felt sure I would be able to locate my sheep, and they would no longer be lost.

I purchased a copy and repaired to a bosky arbour to read it. I had barely digested the opening paragraph when I was set upon by a vulgar mechanic. He was a repellent and vile and filthy fellow, not unlike a Wagnerian dwarf, though considerably taller. I cried “Unhand me, sir!”, and smashed him in the face with my shepherdess’s crook, neatly breaking his jaw. “Woe betide those who mess with a Peep!” I added, kicking him in the head as he lay sprawled and whimpering beneath a plum tree’s slender shade. Above us, in the shining summer heaven, there was a cloud my eyes dwelled long upon. It was quite white and very high above us, then I looked up and found that it had gone, just like my sheep.

In the course of bashing up the vulgar mechanic, I had inadvertently dropped my seventeenth century tract into a puddle, and not just any puddle, no siree, but a muddy puddle, the muddiest of muddy puddles it had ever been my misfortune in which to inadvertently drop a seventeenth century tract. Laurence Clarkson’s timeless sheep-finding words were rendered wholly illegible. What was a poor Peep to do?

It was at this point, just as I was venting my vehemence upon the sprawled mechanic by biffing him several more times with my crook, that I heard distant baas. Now, in my experience as a shepherdess in and around Sibodnedwabshire, this sound could mean only one thing. It meant there were sheep in the distance!

Like a mad thing, I galumphed towards the sound of baas, and as I approached, I spotted, fleeing, a band of Wagnerian dwarves. It may have been the sight of me bearing down on them with my crook that caused them to scamper so swiftly away. More likely, I think, is that they had belatedly realised the unutterable tedium occasioned by the company of sheep.

It is a tedium I know well. Or, should I say, knew well. For the unexpected outcome of my notoriety as an inept shepherdess who loses her sheep is that not a single farmer will any longer entrust me with his flock. At first, this was a harrowing turn of events. I fell into penury and need. But as my story spread, and songs were sung about me, so infamy uncurdled into fame. I began to be invited on to television chat shows, notably an appearance on Russell Harty Plus. Colour supplements published fawning profiles of me, all warts removed. Now, with these lecture tours, I am raking it in. And I don’t mean the sort of peasant raking that the likes of Huw Halfbacon are doomed to for eternity, in an eerie ever-repeating cycle of fate. No, I am raking in the moolah-boolah, and soon I hope to have saved enough to realise my childhood ambition, and be the first Peep in outer space, lost, like my sheep, but unlike them lost in the stars, lost out here in the stars. little stars, big stars, blowing through the night, and I’m lost out here in the stars …

Dear Hooting Yard, writes “A Traveller”, We understand that your admirable website likes to feature readers’ holiday snaps, and have pleasure in attaching this specimen for your editorial team’s consideration.

Oh, such an evocative snap! It took me back, back to this, which originally appeared nine long years ago, in 2008 …

I went from Wivenhoe to Cuxhaven by way of Ponders End. For the journey, I wore upon my head a hat woven from the hair of gorgeous hairy beasts, and a pair of goggles. Otherwise, I was dressed in the sort of suit you might see Edward G Robinson wearing in a film noir, with accompanying spats. It was suggested to me that I might take in Nunhead and Snodland along the way, but I had no time, I had no time.

Other than the sea crossing, for which I commandeered a skiff and its skiffer, I walked the entire route. Whenever I became exhausted, I slept upon the ground, under the bowl of night. I would like to say that I grew familiar with the stars, but I did not. Unless it was cloudy, as it often was, I could see countless stars twinkling above me, but they appeared randomly scattered, and I was never able to discern any patterns. I always woke up with strands of hay in my hair, wherever I had slept. I used my gorgeous woven hat of hair as a pillow.

Though I was walking, rather than cycling, I carried with me a bicycle pump. Often I pumped it, pointing it ahead of me, as an exercise drill, and also as a means of dispersing gangs of gnats or midges hovering in the air. Sometimes I fancied I could hear their faint insect shrieks as they were whooshed out of my path. I refreshed myself with water from duckponds.

I tried to keep a steady pace. There were times when I felt the bile rising in my throat. Whenever this happened, I stopped walking, sat on the ground, took my journal from the pocket of my film noir suit, and wrote a memorandum. Here is an example,

I am no longer in Wivenhoe. Ten minutes ago, walking along a bosky lane lined by what I think are plane trees, I pumped the pump at a cloud of midges, scattering them. Shortly afterwards, I felt the bile rising in my throat. Above me the sky is wonderfully blue and dotted with linnets, swooping. Tonight it will be dotted with stars. The stars do not swoop, they stay where they are, far away in the cold universe, so far away that the linnets can never reach them, and nor can I. But I can reach Cuxhaven, by way of Ponders End, and must do so quickly, while there is still time.

The act of writing in my journal always made the bile subside, and I was able to press on. When it was humid, my goggles steamed up. I carried on walking, as if in a mist. When I came to a stream or a rill I would take off the goggles and dip them briefly in the water, and wipe them dry on one of my film noir sleeves. Sometimes a true, engulfing mist would descend. Then I would get down on my knees, even if where I was was muddy, and take from my pocket my little wooden god, and prop it against a stone, and beseech it. Here is an example of such beseeching:

O little wooden god propped up against a stone, I beseech you to sweep away this engulfing mist and to make visible my path, so that I may walk on fearlessly towards Cuxhaven by way of Ponders End. Ooba gooba himmelfarb farbagooba!

The last four word were my incantation, designed to assuage my little wooden god and have it do my bidding. My bidding was always done, for the air would clear, sooner or later, and if the land was flat I could see for miles. One day I was able to see Ponders End far in the distance, and on another day I saw the sea, and once I was on the sea, being skiffed across it by an energetic skiffer in his skiff, I saw Cuxhaven, just in time.

I paid the skiffer to skiff me across the sea. He refused to skiff me otherwise. I had no cash, no chequebook, no debit nor credit card, not even shells or beads or trinkets, but I had honey. Along my journey from Wivenhoe to the coast by way of Ponders End, I had paused whenever I passed an apiary and snaffled honey from beehives. I collected it in pouches strung around my waist attached to a cord, hidden under my film noir suit. Some of the honey I ate to keep myself from fainting, but I was careful to keep some aside, for I did not expect to be skiffed across the sea for nothing. My offer to pay the skiffer in honey was met with great civility, even glee.

I knew that, if ever I made the return journey from Cuxhaven to Wivenhoe by way of Ponders End, perhaps able to take in Nunhead and Snodland given that I would no longer be pressed for time, I would be accosted by several irate beekeepers demanding recompense for their stolen honey. I had time enough, in Cuxhaven, to work out a way to repay them. If time passed and my head remained empty of ideas, I could prop my little wooden god against a Cuxhaven stone and beseech it for a brainwave. If all else failed, I could stay in Cuxhaven, and never go back to Wivenhoe through all the days of my life.

Yet conscience told me this was wrong. It was one thing to be holed up in Cuxhaven, quite another to be holed up in Cuxhaven tormented by guilt that good honest beekeepers had been robbed by my own honey-snaffling hands. Yes, it was true that I bore the bee-stings, but I had sucked the venom and spat it out and rubbed my hands with dock leaves. I still had dock in my pocket, should the bees of Cuxhaven have at me with their stings. I hoped they would not, for I resolved not to take their honey. In Cuxhaven, I had sausages.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. You are wearing a pair of round gold-rimmed “granny” glasses. Beside you in the boat is your wife, an avant-garde artist from faraway Japan. You turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream. Then you turn your mind back on, just a tad, just enough to imagine no possessions. You wonder if now would be an opportune moment to raise with your wife that malarkey about her acquiring a second apartment solely for the storage of her collection of fur coats. You open your mouth to speak, but what comes out is gibberish. “Goo-goo-g’joob”, you blurt. Your wife looks at you as if you have taken leave of your senses, which, to be frank, you probably have. Perhaps Bernard Levin was right when he wrote that there was nothing wrong with you that could not be cured by standing you upside down and shaking you gently until whatever is inside your head falls out.

It strikes you that such a manoeuvre would be perilous if performed in a boat on a river. Your wife, who would have to turn you upside down, is diminutive, and it is likely that if she made the attempt both of you would topple over, capsizing the boat, and forcing you to swim to the riverbank.

There are, apparently, tales of the riverbank, but you did not write them. Nor did you write tales of topographic oceans. But you did write about that famed ocean-going sailor Sir Walter Raleigh, who you described as a stupid git. You pronounced Raleigh as Rally. Nowadays, people usually pronounce it as Rahley. But in his own time his name was universally pronounced Rawley.

The pronunciation of surnames is important. I have heard tell that an alarming number of young persons confuse you with the Bolshevik psychopath Lenin. These are presumably the same young persons who confuse Clarice Starling, the FBI agent played by Jodie Foster in The Silence Of The Lambs, with your successor Stalin.

Oops! I meant Lenin’s successor, not yours. Now I’m getting things all mixed up in my head. Just like you. Well, you wrote a lot of nonsense too.

Oh cloak of night! Enshroud my hob
On which I boil, in a pan,
A gruel thin, to feed my flock
When morning breaks, and they line up,
Each with his coupon, snipped or torn
From Christ In Extremis! magazine
Bought from the kiosk by the pond
Past the crumbling viaduct
Beyond the hen coops and the sump
Over the hills and far away.

One morning recently, I walked out of my house and along the path to my front gate, and there, standing on the other side of it, was a barbarian. Sensing that he was about to smash my gate down with mighty blows from the heavy wooden club he was brandishing, I moved to distract his attention by pointing up at the sky and saying “Oh look! A peewit!”

According to Pepinstow’s Bumper Book of Barbarians, barbarians are particularly partial to peewits, and will usually become much less barbaric in their presence. But of course, I had invented the peewit, I had pointed at nothing. I was merely playing for time. Soon enough, the barbarian at my gate would realise there was not a nearby peewit, and he would set about smashing down my gate and laying waste to anything and everything in his path, including me.

As he turned his head to look up, therefore, I dug into my pocket for a glob of plasticine, and swiftly fashioned it into a toy or model peewit. It was a pretty cack-handed effort, resembling a punch-drunk starling, or even Stalin, rather than a peewit. I hoped nevertheless it would serve to fool the barbarian and placate him for a minute or two.

This would give me time to make a call to the Defence of Civilisation Foot Patrol, who would come screeching up in their squad cars and Taser the barbarian. You might wonder why a Foot Patrol goes about in cars, but these are strange times, strange times indeed.

Before I had time to call them, however, the barbarian at my gate had ascertained that the sky was empty of peewits, turned his head back to glare at me, spotted the plasticine sort-of-peewit in my outstretched hand, made a series of mawkish icky cooing noises, grabbed the peewit in his huge hairy paw, and begun dribbling. Not for the first time, I gave thanks to Pepinstow.

But in the Bumper Book, Pepinstow advises strongly against the Tasering of placated barbarians. Apparently, this only redoubles their barbarity when the effects of the Taser wear off. Thus I was in something of a quandary. The barbarian, too stupid to realise that the plasticine peewit was not a real peewit, remained as if transfixed at my gate, thus blocking my exit. And I had an urgent appointment at the Village Wrestling Ring!

Also, it occurred to me that the manner in which the barbarian was mauling the peewit, in the mistaken belief that he was coddling it, meant that it would soon lose its peewity shape, and be once again a plasticine glob. As soon as the barbarian noticed this, he would cease the cooing and the dribbling and be once again barbaric. What was it Pepinstow had written? To the barbarian, mauling is coddling, or words to that effect.

I realised I needed a real peewit, one that could fly, and thus coax the barbarian to follow it, away from my gate. But where could I obtain a peewit at short notice? I rushed back indoors and logged in to the ePeewit website on my computer. I noted that there were a couple of fairly local peewit vendors, one of whom offered express delivery by drone. I tried to place an order, but as usual the ePeewit site was agonisingly slow and repeatedly asked me for my password and the name of my childhood pet puppy. I could not remember my password and I never had a puppy.

In desperation, I wondered if I could make my own flying peewit, out of plasticine, by attaching to it a propellor. I had a stash of plasticine, but where could I obtain a propellor? Could I make one using a couple of drinking straws? Damn Pepinstow for not addressing this eventuality!

Then I heard the first crunch! of my gate being smashed by the barbarian’s club. Clearly the plasticine peewit had lost its shape and he was no longer placated. I cowered in a corner, listening to the awful sounds of the barbarian destroying my gate, and my garden path, and my front door, and anything else in his way as he came lumbering, barbarically, into the room. I was about to cry out for mercy, using the wording recommended by Pepinstow, when the barbarian laid down his club, mopped his brow with a filthy rag, and said:

“Good morning to you, sir. I am Detective Captain Unstrebnodtalb. I come from a far country, and my brain is hot.”

NOTA BENE : Readers who have immersed themselves in Mr Key’s witterings since the last century may recognise this as an hommage to The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet (1990).