For those of you interested in such things, this story was first published many years ago in an addition of 8 copies. Each of the copies was in a ring-binder, it was hand-written – and its an alphabetical story – and each of the letters was hand-illuminated in watercolour.
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 7th June 2006. More information can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Photo by dmealiffe.
Brethren, we find ourselves, today, in a village in China. Perhaps some would feel inclined to ridicule rather than applaud the patience of a poor Chinese woman who tried to make a needle from a rod of iron by rubbing it against a stone. We may scoff and laugh and snicker like rude and common folk do. It is doubtful whether she succeeded or not, but, so the story runs, the sight of the worker plying her seemingly hopeless task, put new courage and determination into the heart of a young Chinese student, who, in deep despondency, stood watching her. He was a spindly little chap whose greatest joy was to be found in the study of industrious leaf-cutter ants, of which he kept teeming thousands in a glass case in the parlour of his pneumonia-racked mother. Because of repeated failures in his studies, ambition and hope had left him. He could think only of ants. Bitterly disappointed with himself, and despairing of ever accomplishing anything, the young man had thrown his books aside in disgust. He had even cast aside a five-volume encyclopaedia devoted entirely to the world of insects; ants alone filled the pages of books one and two. Put to shame, however, by the lesson taught by the old woman, he gathered his scattered forces together, went to work with renewed ardour, and, wedding Patience and Energy, became, in time, one of the greatest scholars in China. Actually, that’s not strictly true: he ended up sewing cummerbunds-for-export in a Batavian sweatshop. When you know you are on the right track, do not let any failures dim your vision or discourage you, for you cannot tell how close you may be to victory. And even if every damned thing goes wrong, there is no shame in being a deluded pauper. Have patience and stick, stick, stick. Then stick a bit more. It is eternally true that he “Who steers right on / Will gain, at length, however far, the port. / Though he be seasick all the way / And quite bereft of thought.”
A little moral fable taken from Stories From Life by Marden Vice Harden, with interpolations by Frank.
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 31st May 2006. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Photo by JochenB.
A reading from the very rare and highly prized book by Frank Key ‘Twitching And Shattered’.
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 24th May 2006. Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Photo by macop.
Trellis was mere figment, vapour. He appeared to different people at different times as a sort of phantom. He was a tabula rasa, on to which those who met him inscribed their dreams, their yearnings, their hallucinations.
All, that is, except Blodgett, in whose presence Trellis took on a terrifying reality. He would snivel, and Blodgett would have to mop up the snivellings with his filthy shirt-cuff. He would mewl, and Blodgett would thump him on the head, bruising his fist in the process.
After Detective Captain Unstrebnodtalb chewed up part of his head, Blodgett’s relationship with Trellis became even more intimate. Trellis would tell Blodgett all about the weather in Finland, and the nature of ice, and give him planks, and show him albumen. He would invoke disastrous plutonian gods, and have them frolic, miniaturised, before Blodgett’s eyes, occasionally tweaking the hairs from his nostrils. In return, Blodgett gave Trellis extra helpings of soup, winced at his frailness, concocted diverting bedtime stories and nautical yarns, and plied him with raspberries.
Together, they plotted dark and criminal deeds.
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 11th May 2006. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Photo by Jeff Kubina.
Doctor Cack was the foremost potato scientist of his day. He rented a disused Leaking Building in the grounds of the House, together with a number of surrounding huts, in which he and his team of top flight tuberologists lived and worked. Most of their unbearably exciting scientific equipment was located in the Leaking Building, through the door of which Blodgett now crashed, breathing heavily through his purple nose.
“Cack!” he shouted, pronouncing the good Doctor’s name as if he were a chocolate swiss roll, or a Battenburg. Towards the back of the Leaking Building stood an enormous table on which were stacked flasks, test tubes, scientific hammers, awls, retorts, dye buckets, cruet sets, trunnions, shards of propylite, alembics, jars, lenses, and a burnt quintain. From behind this agglomeration of rubbish, Ruhugu’s head appeared, then the rest of his body. He peered at Blodgett with distaste.
“Where’s Cack?” yelled Blodgett, repeating his mispronunciation.
Ruhugu was one of Doctor Cack’s assistants, perhaps the most fanatical. “It’s Cack,” he said, “To rhyme with Snack.”
Blodgett trembled with rage. “I’ll give you Snack,” he rasped, although what he meant by this was not entirely clear, even to him. “Cack, Snack, it’s all the same to me,” he continued, “I don’t care if he’s called Pack, Rack or Glack. He’s still a git.” He paused long enough for Ruhugu to interrupt.
“The Doctor is not here at the moment. Why are you flailing your arms around in such an alarming fashion?”
Momentarily disconcerted, Blodgett manoeuvred his hands into his filthy pockets.
“Thank you,” said Ruhugu, “Now, as I explained, Doctor Cack is away. I have important potato matters to attend to, so I’d be very grateful if you would turn on your heel and begone.”
Blodgett’s temper was getting hotter. Oh, how he would like to immerse Ruhugu in a vat of custard, bind him with manacles, belabour him about the temples, and abandon him in a ditch! Not necessarily in that order. But of course, Blodgett was a terrible coward, and would only attack defenceless tinies, small frail animals, and inanimate objects, and only then if he was sure no vengeance would be exacted by some gigantic protector. He spat on the floor, whirled around, and clomped out of the Leaking Building, cracking his head on the lintel as he did so.
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 3rd May 2006. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Photo by cito.
Intensive and scrupulous new biographical research on Old Halob, the crusty and cantankerous sporting legend who was for many years the coach and mentor of fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol, has revealed an amazing fact. (I think that sentence really ought to have an exclamation mark at the end, to emphasise just how exciting it is.)
According to a recently published monograph by Pierre Sugum, Old Halob worked with fictional athlete Bobnit Tivol for forty years without ever suspecting that his protégé was not actually real. The wizened and untidy trainer, with his moth-eaten clothing and offensive hair oil, seems to have overlooked the weekly comic magazine Fictional Athlete Bobnit Tivol’s Weekly Comic Magazine For Girls And Boys, wherein the sprinter and sometime polevaulter’s breathtaking athletic feats were chronicled by a series of pseudonymous writers and illustrators.
Professor Sugum has also unearthed compelling evidence that one of these pseudonymous writers may have been Dobson. If this is so, it would have been one of the few paying jobs the out of print pamphleteer ever held, along with his hectic janitorial escapades in that tinned milk of magnesia factory in Winnipeg. Sugum is reluctant to say for certain that Dobson wrote the early stories Fictional Athlete Bobnit Tivol And The Polevaulting Pole That Snapped In Two and Fictional Athlete Bobnit Tivol Buffs His Latest Medal With A Frayed Rag, leaving it to readers to judge the merits of the case.
It is Old Halob’s ignorance of the athlete’s fictional status which is the most astounding revelation of the article. One has always been tempted to conclude that the wily coach knew more than he let on, and yet this view is comprehensively demolished by Sugum in a couple of sentences.
I wish I could include extracts from this ground-breaking essay here, but I have been informed that Professor Sugum is highly litigious, a monster of depravity, and wallows in a foul pit of moral turpitude, so it would be foolhardy to antagonise him. Instead, here is a snapshot of Old Halob when young, or at least a snapshot that purports to be of Old Halob when young, or a member of his immediate family, or so I’m told, at any rate, credulous poltroon that I am.
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 26th April 2006. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Photo by calypso Dragon 13.
Occasionally the Hooting Yard postbox is choked with letters from readers all of which say, in so many words, “Frank, tell us what you’re really like”. My natural diffidence makes me reluctant to respond to such pleas, but today I have changed my mind. Here, then, is a brief but devastatingly accurate pen-portrait of “Mister Hooting Yard”.
Unlike Maya Angelou, I have no idea why the caged bird sings. Nor am I particularly given to singin’ and swingin’ and gettin’ merry like Christmas. On the contrary, I have an almost fathomless ignorance of ornithological matters and the Yuletide season will find me moping and lugubrious. Thus, if I am ever to write a series of memoirs, it will not do for me to plagiarise Maya Angelou’s catchy titles. I will have to come up with my own ideas, and the strain of doing so makes it unlikely that I will be in a fit state to continue writing once I have hit upon the perfect title for the story of my own life. Of course, if I was able to get my hands on the Cordial Balm of Siriacum that might provide the fillip I need, and I would be able to type away energetically, regaling you with anecdotes from my past, attempting an amusing yet cogent dissection of my current state, and even looking forward to the future with the aid of psychic messages from a squirrel. I beg you to wait patiently, therefore, while I seek a reliable supply of the Cordial Balm. When I have done so, I shall continue with my potted autobiography.
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 22nd March 2006. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Photo by davefitch.
On the face of it, this sounds like a simple enough assignment. It is, of course, anything but. Those who have even a passing acquaintance with the titanic out-of-print pamphleteer Dobson know that the words typical and breakfast can never be crammed together. It is an understatement to say that he had mixed feelings about breakfast. There were times when he was up and about before dawn, gobbling down a huge bowl of porridge. Thereagain, he sometimes stumbled downstairs at noon, bleary and fractious, waving his arms in dismissal of a proffered slice of toast. From one day to the next, there was no knowing how Dobson would greet the day, and howsoever he did greet it, no knowing with what foodstuffs, if any, the day would commence.
I cannot in all honesty, then, describe a typical Dobson breakfast scene, as is required of me. Instead, I propose to examine two Dobsonian breakfasts, from different stages in his life, to which I will add some observations on a pamphlet he planned, but never wrote, on this important topic. Will that do?
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 15th March 2006. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Photo by Code Poet.
It was not night-time, sultry or otherwise, when Bucephalus arrived at his destination. It was day, bleak, grey, and wretched, and the majestic horse stood still at the river’s edge, snorting. Alexander the Great did not expect him back in Macedonia for a week. Remember this is the Ancient World, so such landmarks as line the Bosphorus as the Galata tower, the palaces of Dolmabahce, Ciragan, Yildiz, and Beylerbeyi, the Rumeli and Anatolian Fortresses, and the Kuleli Military High School had not yet been built. Bucephalus began to trot, following the river’s course, hoping to find a field where he could have a restful time munching nutritious foliage.
It was late afternoon on that Thursday when the horse decided to rest, and planted his hooves in the mud at the edge of the Bosphorus where today one finds the Bogazici suspension toll bridge. He noticed a churning in the waters of the mighty river, and turned his horse-head to look more intently. He was astonished to see a tangle of cephalopods thrashing around in the river, cephalopods large and small, octopuses, squids, cuttlefish and chambered nautiluses, emitting clouds of ink, tentacles flailing. What were they doing upriver, rather than in the dark, cold abysses of the sea? Were they lost, and did this explain their frantic activity? Cephalopods are probably the most intelligent of invertebrates, with huge pulsating brains, and it is easy to imagine that the realisation of being lost in the Bosphorus could induce panic among them.
This episode of Hooting Yard was first recorded on the 1st March 2006. A complete transcript of all Hooting Yard episodes can be found on Frank Key’s website.
Were you lucky enough, when you were a tiny tot, to receive an Ogsby’s Steering Panel as a birthday gift? I was. I still remember with absolute clarity waking on the icy cold morning of my tenth birthday, and finding at the foot of my bed a rectangular object wrapped in old newspaper, on which either my father or my mother had scribbled in crayon “Happy Birthday To Our Ten-Year-Old”. I was a dutiful and pious child, so before tearing the package open I repaired to the bathroom to brush my teeth and plunge my head into a sink full of icy water, and then I went downstairs to find my parents.
My mother was in the garden slaughtering insects. I thanked her for my gift and asked where my father was so I could thank him too. She gave me a woebegone look and patted me on the head, mussing my hair in which icicles were beginning to form.
“I am afraid your father had to take the dawn train to a secret military establishment at an undisclosed coastal location – towering cliffs, monstrous waves, shingle – where he will be cooped up for the next six months helping to devise counter-intelligence techniques for use against an enemy so powerful, so ruthless, so fiendish, that it beggars belief,” said my mother, and she tapped the side of her nose, indicating that this startling news was to be kept under my hat, had I but a hat to keep it under.
This episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 22nd of Febuary 2006. Please visit Frank Key’s Hooting Yard Website for a complete transcript.
