I had not seen this film, so I cannot comment on the faithfulness of the adaptation, but I had been struck by the fact that, at certain points, some of the dancers had portrayed their characters quite negatively. One of them scowled a lot. Another seemed a bit weedy. A third had contrived to move his body in the manner of a malevolent beetle. I was sure such behaviour had not been at all common on World War Two submarines. There and then I had an epiphany, and I realised that the falsely negative portrayal of U-boat sailors would be the perfect subject for my doctoral thesis.

• On Naming Your Child After Your Favourite Reservoir.
• On The Falsely Negative Portrayal Of U-Boat Sailors.
• Voodoo Athletics
• My Book of Indoor Games: Clarence Squaremann.

This episode was recorded on the 19th of January 2012. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE

I. Please remain seated during the more exciting moments.

II. If for any reason you need to mop your brow, use a dainty napkin.

III. Spillages must be paid for in coinage of the realm.

IV. When the Darning-Needle of Destiny is unveiled, cower.

V. Unseemly pangs may be tempered by moral balance.

VI. Applause should be rendered with unbridled fanaticism.

VII. Drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away (Isaiah, 36 : 16,17)

• The Wooden Lake
• Speaking of Bird Scarifiers…
• Bernard Levin’s Guide to the Beat Combos of the Sixties
• Instructions
• Coverdale, Tyndale, King James
• The Necessity of Puddings
• The Necessity of Puddings: A Postscript

This episode was recorded on the 24th of November 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase

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Obviously I am going to have to ascertain the precise nature of the Poultry Guidance Bureau’s business before I can make a proper fist of the Art Squad. It might be, for example, that our art will consist simply of beautifully-painted directional pointing devices, designed to appeal to the optic nerves of poultry, in which case I will just need to gather about me a bunch of sign-painters. On the other hand, we may need a team of actors to facilitate role-playing exercises for traumatised hens as part of the counselling service. Or, if the Bureau is indeed mainly for human benefit, then an oompah band playing stirring anthems might be more appropriate, although having just written that I can’t think why.

• Two Dinners
• In Which Mr. key Contemplates Moving To North Korea
• Art Squad
• Letter from Mr. Nick Wilsdon Relating to Art Squad Goings On
• Guns Before Butter
• Camp Dabbler

This episode was recorded on the 20th of October 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase

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When the rest of the family returns from the pantry, each in turn must use skill, judgement, and knowledge of ship construction to declare whether the parlour is now a poop deck or an orlop deck. Those who decide correctly are treated to a “feast at the captain’s table”, that is, they are each allowed to go back to the pantry and choose a snack from among the snack items on the pantry shelves. Those who decide incorrectly are “tossed into the sea”, that is, they must clamber out of the open window and wait shivering in the garden until the next round.

• Advice Regarding Eggs
• A Boaty Picnic
• The Fatal Flaw in the Great Escape
• Boobabble
• Bløtzmann Nor Joost Van Donglebraacke
• Poop Or Orlop?
• Nature Notes
• For Want of Fitting Audience

This episode was recorded on the 17th of November 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase

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Against this, one could argue two things. If the cage was constructed from flimsy materials, it might be that the burgeoning ostrich would simply cause the birdcage to fall to bits around it as it expanded in size from budgerigar or canary to full ostrichdom. Or, bear in mind that Blakeston specifically describes an ostrich of fire. Would not the enflamed and blazing bird burn the cage to cinders as it underwent its transformation?

• Dead Or Out Of England
• Two Sparrows
• Levin On Lennon (And Ono)
• Charging Ostrich of Fire
• Vereecke Revisited
• Bo’sun’s Wig
• Stanley Baldwin Quote.

This episode was recorded on the 10th of November 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase.

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On a stormy March day precisely one year after the historic picnic, the Viper Pit of Gaar was officially renamed the Bottomless Viper Pit of Gaar at a special pitside ceremony. The mayor, the beadle, the Grand Vizier, the honest burghers and a gaggle of peasant folk gathered for speeches, the cutting of ribbons, the flying of banners, the relentless pounding of drums, the parping of tootlers, and chanting, chanting, chanting, and other celebratory what have you, including the tossing into the Bottomless Viper Pit of several vipers, and a picnic, with sausages and beakers of invigorating tonic.

• Savile Dabble
• The Bottomless Viper Pit of Gaar.
• The Art of Tagging
• The Breadcrumbs Man
• Societies

This episode was recorded on the 3rd November 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase.

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Yes, sad to say there was a time when I was beset by anxiety dreams, in which I was poised, with a sharp pair of scissors, to cut out “guns” and its definition from a brand new dictionary, the pot of mucilage and a spatula beside the dictionary on the desk, and my hand trembled and I could not make the snip. I had this dream, or nightmare, over and over again for a number of years. In a more alarming variant, I dreamed that I managed to cut out the “guns” entry, but then mislaid it, or dropped it into a wastepaper bin, or it was consumed by flames and I had but a pile of ash, which I then painstakingly tried to paste, atom by atom, into the dictionary, with mucilage, and I would wake up shrieking.

Two Dinners

In Which Mr. Key Contemplates Moving To North Korea

Art Squad 

Guns Before Butter 

Camp Dabbler

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Miss Goosebeak seems not to have considered what became of Pontius Pilate’s “ectoplasmic spirit essence” between the governor of Judaea’s death circa 37 AD and Noddy’s first appearance almost two thousand years later in 1949 AD. Nor did she ever address the inconvenient fact that the wooden boy is a fictional character. Challenged on such matters in radio interviews, her usual tactic was to flail her arms in a melodramatic gesture, thus deliberately knocking over her complimentary cup of tea, spilling the boiling hot beverage into the tweedy lap of her interviewer. After the subsequent kerfuffle she would babble about the tea leaves now visible at the bottom of the cup, explaining how their disposition revealed other mystic insights which might become the subject of another dirge of excruciating length, although so far as is known she never published anything else.

• The Distance Between the Aerodrome and the Zoo
• Lullaby
• Tove Jansson and Her Squirrel
• Fifties Finnish Fairground Fun
• Pie Shop Deep Space Six
• Housekeeping Business Announcements
• Weep, Pontius, For Thou Art Become Noddy
• Camp Dabbler
• Galvanism Throughly Explained

This episode was recorded on the 13th October 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

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N.B.  As an episode of “Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightening” is missing from the audio archive it has been decided, by the Soup Committee members no less, to carry on regardless with the next show that isn’t  “Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightening” hoping that, given the length of the intervening period since the last podcast, no one will notice.

In those days, you see, we were taught such piffle as reading and writing and arithmetic and Latin and history, so my not having a head sent the teachers into a kerfuffle. I’m told there was some kind of emergency meeting in the staffroom – a fug of pipe-smoke then, of course – and I was put in isolation in the sickroom while they worked out what to do. How much more enlightened would things be today! Head or no head, I am sure there would be no attempt to exclude me from the diversity and self-esteem lessons. Indeed, my headless presence would be seen as a benefit, both to myself and to my fellow pupils, and to the teachers themselves. In fact, I would probably get a prize, just for not having a head. On the rare occasions prizes were dished out in those far off days, they were invariably book tokens, and I would certainly not have got one for not having a head. Now, I could expect something useful like a new app for my iPap, or a voucher for Pizza Kabin.

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Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning was published in an edition of twenty-five copies in 1994, under the Hooting Yard Press imprint and – save for a brief, rewritten, extract posted  here some years ago – has never again seen the light of day. It was the last piece of prose I completed before my descent into the maelstrom, or the Wilderness Years, or whatever one wants to call that period of ruination from which I eventually emerged with the launch of the Hooting Yard website in 2003.

F. Key.

Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning Pt. IV

This episode was recorded on the 08th September 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

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