Whooper swans whooped on the airport pond. Beyond it, by the grain silo, the airport squirrel skittered and twitched, as if terrified. But it was on home ground, and scared of nothing. As with all squirrels, its twitching was merely the outward sign of its high metabolic rate. A path led from the grain silo to Runway Number Nineteen, where on this fogbound morning a supersonic überjet from a bygone era sat rusting on the gravel.
Author Archives: Frank Key
Hooting Yard: The Numan Question
A generation ago, the aeroplane pilot and sage Numan asked “Are friends electric?†It was pertinent then, and is perhaps more so now. Over the years, many thinkers have grappled with Numan’s question, but it is fair to say that none has been able to give a satisfactory answer. Much publicity was generated when Pilbrow published his big fat Symposium on the problem. The garlanded laureate of pseudo-sci fi hermeneutic psychobabble persuaded over a hundred movers, shakers, and hysterics to respond to the poser put by Numan, and then toured the radio and television studios giving inaccurate summaries of their replies.
Hooting Yard : Farmyard Slurry
To those among the gathered peasants who were existentialists familiar with Sartre, it was apparent that Bonkers Maisie was plucking phrases from the book at random. To the rest, the words took on a haunting grandeur. Some wept. All were transfixed.
- The Huffington Post
- Tidy Is As Tidy Does
- Bonkers Maisie
- The Sick Pig
- Himmelfarb
- Boot Bath
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 20th June 2007. 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. Photo by hoof666.
Hooting Yard : Jean-Claude Unanugu
If you spend a bit of time thinking about the matter, it becomes apparent that human ingenuity has created a myriad of pastes. At one end of the spectrum are thick pastes, tacky to the touch, and at the other are pastes so runny that they are akin to goo.
There are other ways of thinking about the variety of pastes other than the thick-to-thin or tacky-to-goo spectrum, but they have less appeal. Why is this? Not surprisingly, it is a question to which Dobson once turned his magnificent pamphlet-writing brain.
- Goofy, Macabre
- Tacky To Goo
- Song Of The Grunty Man
- Name That Boy!
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 13th May 2007. 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. Photo by barto.
Hooting Yard : Drainpipe Trousers
In the old town of Plovdiv, Ugo plopped his pod onto a stool. Ugo’s ma said, “Ugo, why are you using a pod instead of a jar?†Ugo’s ma was blind, but she knew that the plop of Ugo’s pod was different to the plop of his jar. “Oh, ma,†said Ugo, “My jar is in the shed.†Ugo’s ma bashed Ugo on the head. “Never leave your jar in the shed, Ugo,†she said, “When you do I will bash you on the head, as I just did.†Ugo said, “Sorry, ma. My pal Ulf put my jar in the shed.†“Ah,†said Ugo’s ma. On Thursday last. In a hovel. In the old town of Plovdiv.
- Puny And Dying
- The Man Who WOuld Be Dobson
- Drink Ye Every One The Waters Of His Own Cistern, Until I Come And Take You Away
- Ugo Goofs Off
- Ugo’s Pal Ulf
- Ugo’s Pod
- Ugo’s New Hooter
- Ugo Turns Blue
- Ugo Goes Loopy
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 6th May 2007. 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. Photo by lucienvenutian.
Hooting Yard : Legendary Department Store
It was pale and fierce, gulping down a bowl of soup. I wondered if it was Jah, come to deliver me from Babylon, but I have a very shaky grasp of Rastafarianism, so I cast that thought unto the winds.
- The Pabstus Tack Trilogy
- Pale And Fierce
- A Byword For Utter Gorgeousness
- Pebblehead Versus Pebblehead
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 30th May 2007. 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. Photo by herby fr.
Hooting Yard : Glassy-eyed Noodlehead
I think we were meant to see the captain as a kind of Ahab figure, obsessed and mad as well as sinister, but for me this effect was flawed by the fact that it was a rented tugboat. Bagshaw/Shawbag did not own it. Every week he had to slip some coinage into the waiting palm of a seaside bureaucrat, representative of a dull organisation stuffed with accountants and administrators.
Their main business seemed to be civic coastline management and prettifying, with renting out a tugboat to a sinister begloved madman as an afterthought. Somehow that made him less the master of his vessel, for me, and I remember tutting ruefully as I read the paragraph in which this was explained. Whoever wrote the story clearly felt it was important, for it was a very long paragraph, leaden with detail, and I skipped past it on my subsequent rereadings.
- Tugboat Tales, Number One
- Crouch And Kaka
- Annals Of The Frankish Kings
- A Message From Beyond
- Mrs Gubbins Throws A Fit
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 23rd May 2007. 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. Photo by Chris J.
Hooting Yard : Local Gaar-pot Drinking Hut
Autumn. Shipwreck. Curtains. Exile. Frost. Balconies. Pandaemonium. Hedgerows. Banisters. Carpets. Hinges. Remembrance. Hair. Custard. Dribble. Fanfares. Dampness. Bauxite. Trousers. Canals. Boskage. Lasciviousness. Tunics. Spigots. Iron. Cranks. Floozies. Doppelgangers. Tin. Bales. Agony. Loss. Lust. Love. Crack. Bang. Crunlop. Lars Talc is dead.
- A reading from Characters; or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons by Sir Thomas Overbury
- What’s On In Mustard Parva
- Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning
- Punter Hoonjaw
- Dobsonia
- A Person From Porlock
- Today’s Recipe
- Important Lark Information
- Personality Profile
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 16th May 2007. 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. Photo by Mil.
Hooting Yard : Whirling Tangle Of Peasants
“Now and again, it will do you a power of good to spend a Wednesday morning tramping along a high ridge, blowing a trumpet and waving a banner. If you can persuade others to join you, so much the better. It will not matter if you are tuneless and raggle-taggle – the experience itself can pump vital energy into your blood, oxygenating your brain and feeding crucial nutriments into your integuments.”
- A Note On Pigs
- The Unspeakably Squalid Becrumplement Of Tadzio Gobbo
- Trumpets And Banners
- Mansfield
- The Rotation Of The Globe
- A quotation from The Monkey God by Seabury Quinn
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 9th May 2007. 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. Photo by trevorparker.
Hooting Yard : A Man Without A Ditch
We all know that there was an age known as the Epoch of Snares, but it is surprising how little is generally known about it. This was a time when giant badger-like beings roamed the hills of the earth, when the oceans were deeper, darker, and more terrifying than they are now, and when only the very bravest of souls volunteered to crew the enormous primitive container ships that plied across those seas.
- Rose Garden
- Epoch Of Snares
- Far Far Away
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 2nd May 2007. 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. Photo by Dr. Smarties.