Author Archives: OSM

Hooting Yard: When Mr. Key And Pansy Went Feral. (re-loaded)

Mr. Key and Pansy Cradledew join Mr. Phil Minton’s Feral Choir for some knock-a-bout sonic japes involving exciting mouth noises.

Mr. Key writes:

‘Incidentally, and quite coincidentally, both Phil Minton and I have contributions due to appear in a forthcoming recipe book, to be sold for charity. I am not joking. I will of course keep readers fully informed, so you can buy innumerable copies when this invaluable tome hits the boulevards.’

This performance was recorded on the 29th May 2010. Details can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

Hooting Yard: 104 Pamphlets (Out Of Print)

To Vange! We set out, the champ, the widow, and me, at break of dawn, hoping to make Vange before nightfall. I knew little about my travelling companions. I had no idea, for example, of what the champ was a champion, nor did I know whose relict the widow was, nor for how long she had been wearing her widow’s weeds. They, in their turn, must have known almost nothing about me, save perhaps that I was a fanatical devotee of Trebizondo Culpeper, whose glorious image shot forth rays of golden light from the badge I wore upon my tunic.

This episode was recorded on the 21st January 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 VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

Hooting Yard: The Philogiston Variations (Bouffant Redux Edition) Anniversary Directors Cut.

To celebrate the publishmentation of Mr. Key’s new collection of  epic old prose We Were Puny, They Were Vapid we revisit The Philogiston Variations.
Pickle your ‘O’ and away we go!

This episode was recorded on the 14th January 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 VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

Hooting Yard: Tear-Stained Letters.

Mainly dry, with sunny or clear periods and very cold. A few light snow showers are possible, especially across eastern parts, but any accumulations of snow will be small. On the whole tonight will be dry and frosty. Aminadab! Aminadab! Burn the pastille, Aminadab!

This episode was recorded on the 7th January 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 VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

Hooting Yard: That Awful Mess At Sludge Hall Farm.

In a cardboard box on a wooden shelf in a broom cupboard behind a door in a corridor on the ground floor of a shabby house on an ill-lit lane winding towards the sea in a land whipped by blizzards and gales, there is an old picture postcard, stuffed in among a jumble of papers and scraps and cotton-reels and bobbins and pins and clinker and orts and scantlings. The picture on the postcard is of a pavilion on a green by the sea. On the other side of the postcard, to which in one corner is stuck a postage stamp, there is scrawled in fading ink an illegible name and address, and a message, written in block capitals and unpunctuated, and it says DO NOT FORSAKE ME O MY DARLING.

This episode was recorded on the 17th December 2009. 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 VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

Hooting Yard: Tull, Cloth, Eel.

Cadmium! So soft, so ductile, so bluish-white, so bivalent, so high in fatigue resistance! And yet so toxic! Is there a better metal with which to electroplate your bird table?

This episode was recorded on the 10th December 2009. 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 VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

Hooting Yard: Five Years Ago.

“Remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. Remember, too, the case of the distressed pig, solved by Special Agent Blot. The distressed pig was found in a rowing boat crossing Tantarabim Lake. Agent Blot swam out to it and fed it with nutritious cake. As the pig grew becalmed Agent Blot took the oars and he rowed to the mud-splattered shore. He hoisted the pig right out of the boat and bedded it down in some straw. Then he plodded his way in his wellington boots to the pig farmer’s hut down the lane, and he felled the brute with a thwack of his fist and bound him up with a chain. Agent Blot dragged the pig farmer off to the prison, bang in the centre of town. And that is why, on November the fifth, the distressed pig did not drown.”

This episode was recorded on the 5th November 2009. 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 VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

Hooting Yard: I Had A Hammer.

I had a hammer. I hammered in the morning. I hammered in the evening all over this land. I hammered out danger. I hammered out a warning. I hammered out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land. They should have seen that coming.

This episode was recorded on the 29th October 2009. 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 VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

Hooting Yard: From The Diary Of Heliogabalus

Monday. I celebrated the rite of the taurobolium, tossing my head to and fro among the castrated devotees of the Great Mother Goddess. I infibulated myself, and did all that the eunuch-priests are wont to do. Also decided to celebrate the rite of Salambo, with all the wailing and frenzy of the Syrian cult.

This episode was recorded on the 22nd October 2009. 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 VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

Hooting Yard: The Ballad Of Sopwith Tim.

He came in a Sopwith, his goggles were tight. He landed among us in dawn’s early light. O say can you see him in the airfield canteen, telling us of all the places he’s been? Widnes and Wivenhoe, a village called Splat – the latter’s in Cornwall but I’m sure you know that – Totnes and Topsham and Snodland and Looe, places without proper airfields too. His goggles are still fastened tight round his head as we hang on to every word he has said. We wonder how long he is going to stay in our pitiful village, so out of the way. He is chomping his breakfast with gusto and vim. He tells us that his name is Tim.

This episode was recorded on the 19th October 2009. 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 VapidGravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy BagsUnspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.