Hooting Yard: The Legend Of The Golden Pig

The circumstances in which I first heard the legend of the golden pig were oddly similar to those of the Sermon on the Mount. Crushed in a multitude, I followed a beardy man up on to a hillock, and sat down and listened to him speak… well, more or less. There were two or three of us, rather than a heaving mass of humanity, it was a flat field, not a hillock, and we did not listen to a beardy man speaking to us directly but to the disembodied voice of a woman, broadcast from a radio set perched on the back of a farmer’s cart. The voice belonged to the Woman Of Twigs, the radio set was pneumatic, and the cart belonged to mad Old Farmer Frack. It was his field we gathered in, and it was partially flooded.

There was no sign of the horse we assumed must have pulled the cart into the middle of the field. Old Farmer Frack only had one horse, named Desmond, so it was likely he had led it off along the lane to the fruit and nut market. It seemed he planned to leave the cart in the field for some time, for its wheels had been removed. I had seen the cart before, so I knew that they were the big wheels of Motown, to where, at a guess, they were being returned. There were wheels within wheels, too, and it had to be assumed they were also bound for Motown.

This episode was recorded on the 1st May 2008. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the two publications Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.