Author Archives: OSM

Hooting Yard: Oubliette Of Fops.

Who but an Englishman, the legendary Sir John Franklin, could have managed to die of starvation and scurvy along with all 129 of his men in a region of the Canadian Arctic whose game had supported an Eskimo colony for centuries? When the corpses of some of Franklin’s officers and crew were later discovered, miles from their ships, the men were found to have left behind their guns but to have lugged such essentials as monogrammed silver cutlery, a backgammon board, a cigar case, a clothes brush, a tin of button polish, and a copy of The Vicar Of Wakefield. These men may have been incompetent bunglers, but, by God, they were gentlemen.

From Ex Libris : Confessions Of A Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (1998)

This episode was recorded on the 22nd April 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Hooting Yard: Six Long Years Of Wittering ‘N’ Babble.

Those of you familiar with the important Hooting Yard Book o’ Days will know that precisely six years ago today, the very first episode of Hooting Yard On The Air was broadcast on ResonanceFM. I will be celebrating by drinking a flask of aerated lettucewater and sacrificing a (vegan, marzipan) goat.

Once upon a time, of course, radio shows were fugitive, ephemeral things, but today, with the wonders of podcasting, untold hours of Mr Key’s babbling remain available for you to download from the ResonanceFM archive. Apparently, thousands of people do, certainly more than ever read this blog.

This seems as good a time as any, then, to note that a new podcast maestro has taken over the reins, whose self-appointed task is to increase the frequency of releases. Past programmes have been issued as podcasts generally about once a fortnight, but the plan now is for them to appear twice a week, until the backlog is cleared.

For an insight into the tremendous technical challenges of the process, I refer you to this piece from the 2006 archives. Little has changed, save perhaps for the metal from which the maestro’s hat has been welded.

My thanks are due to the podcast maestro and his predecessors, and you can make their dedication to this noble cause worthwhile by subscribing, downloading, and listening, for so long and so often that Mr Key’s voice haunts your dreams. And please remember that the very existence of ResonanceFM is a fragile and rickety thing, and your donations to the station will help it to survive.

This episode was recorded on the 15th April 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Hooting Yard: The Terrible Fate Of Mrs. Sludge, The Medium.

Thus the irascible chain-smoking coach took up lodgings at the edge of an ant farm, and spent hours upon hours every day drilling the ants in all sorts of sporty disciplines. So fantastic was his rapport with the tiny insects that they came to worship him as a god, one who wore a Homburg hat and spat out much phlegm. Their weird alien insect brains underwent some kind of Old Haloby modification, and he became their single, simple focus, their one and only, their world.

This episode was recorded on the 8th April 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Hooting Yard: Zoist Spasms.

I strode manfully over to the town gymnasium to throw medicine balls around to no apparent purpose and to spend a while on the simulated bobsleigh machine. At the corner, as luck would have it, I bumped into young Dagobert Stalin, but he was in a frantic hurry, rushing to some newsworthy incident, of which I would no doubt read in tomorrow’s paper.

Zoist Spasms

Daily Bird Challenge

Bird Challenge Rebuke

Chambers And Hiss At The Pumpkin Patch

Fantastic Architecture Of The Burning Cities

Wooden Pig

This episode was recorded on the 4th April 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Hooting Yard: About Ivan Clank.

A hammer thumped thrice upon a panel indicated the good burghers had made a decision, and the townsfolk gathered in the square to hear it pronounced. The grubby man was to be coaxed into a tub of hot water, and scrubbed with soapy brushes, scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed and rinsed until all trace of visible filth was expunged, and he would step from the tub to be enwrapped in a large rectangular towel albino white while the water in the tub was poured down a drain into the sewer.
And so it came to pass.

This episode was recorded on the 25th March 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Hooting Yard: A Duck In A Pond.

I am minded to conduct enquiries into Dr Henry Hall Sherwood of New York, a man with “controversial electromagnetic theories” who “would become known for his ’savage rotary magnetic machine’ which he claimed could cure all manner of diseases from rheumatism to herpes and tuberculosis”. Gosh!

This episode was recorded on the 18th March 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Hooting Yard: Hark!

Back at the house, Dennis sat looking at his mother in her winding-sheet. He was perplexed that she had called him Ivan, for he had not put two and two together. He was soft in the head, and a worrier. If he was Ivan, he wondered, where was Dennis? He decided to set off in search of Dennis.

This episode was recorded on the 4th March 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Hooting Yard: Shade Of Smart.

Bonkers Maisie in her cart, trundling past the madhouse wall. Has she read The Intellectual Part by author Rayner Heppenstall? Yes she has, a hundred times, it is the only book she owns. She can act it out in mimes while juggling several traffic cones. She trundles ‘long the rutted lane, heading for the distant sea. Sprites cavort within her brain, a brain no bigger than a bee. Dainty is her air and mien, though her cap is set askew. She is in love with Lothar Preen, the maestro. He is bonkers too.

This episode was recorded on the 25th February 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Hooting Yard: 77 Today.

It is not, I think, generally known that the notorious killer Babinsky was also a man of letters. So the imminent publication of The Complete And Staggeringly Voluminous Correspondence Of The Notorious Killer Babinsky, in no fewer than forty volumes, is to be welcomed. Babinsky, it seems, when he could tear himself away from the committal of blood-drenched enormities, wrote dozens upon dozens of letters, every day, to a bewildering number of correspondents, some of whom actually replied.

This episode was recorded on the 18th February 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Hooting Yard: One Thousand.

It is at times like these a person’s thoughts turn to cake. It will have to be an enormous cake, to fit a thousand candles on to it. Think of all that burning wax!

This episode was recorded on the 12th February 2010. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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