Just as a bus is the best place for abuse, you should ideally perform abasement in a basement. There is something about the subterranean nature of the location which lends itself to the embrace of personal wretchedness.
Abasement in a Basement
The Stinerian Gnomes: An Introduction
L’Homme qui Grogne
Mops Held High
Tonsured Buffoon
This episode was recorded on the 6th [...]
Tags: Hooting Yard
Every so often I receive letters from readers asking for background information on particular features of Hooting Yard. My usual practice is to ignore such enquiries and stuff them into a cardboard box, and to shove the cardboard box into a dark cranny. But sometimes I feel impelled to shine a torch into the cranny, [...]
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I was mistaken, yesterday, to suggest that Dobson wrote a pamphlet entitled Kitchen Groanings, like the late eighteenth century work of the same name penned by an angry cook-wench or discontented housemaid. I was sure there was some kind of Dobson connection, and leapt to the most obvious thought, that it was yet another out [...]
Tags: Hooting Yard
“The terms of a carver be as here followeth. Break that deer – lesche (leach) that brawn – rear that goose – lift that swan – sauce that capon – spoil that hen – frusche (fruss) that chicken – unbrace that mallard – unlace that coney – dismember that heron – display that crane – [...]
Tags: Hooting Yard
With my fife and my drum I wandered in the hills. I tooted my fife and I banged my drum. This was why I was wandering in the hills, for I had been banished from town. My tooting and banging unnerved the good burghers, and the bad burghers too, and I was escorted to the [...]
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It was a rallying cry, and in its wake pigs were strangled, barns were burned, and doh-si-dohs were essayed. How sweet the memory of those dances of my grandparents’ youth. I was not alive then of course, so I have no direct memory, but I recall, as an infant, sitting in a basket slung over [...]
Tags: Hooting Yard
The astonishing thing about the “little placards” displayed by Father Sogol, the Professor of Mountaineering in Daumal’s novel, is how similar they are to the immense card index maintained by Dobson, upon which he relied when writing his out of print pamphlets. Dobson would have approved, too, the Professor’s method of displaying the cards – [...]
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Plump, crumpled, costive gumshoe Smedley Blavelpang was in a proper fix. It was the sort of fix private detectives tend to find themselves in. The wind had blown his hat clean away and his gun was jammed and he was trapped behind some bins in an alleyway and the rough tough thug he had been [...]
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My adoptive parents perished in the Munich air disaster. They had won a raffle to attend the second leg of the European Cup quarter-final between Manchester United and Red Star Belgrade. It was the first time they had left me in sole charge of the pig farm. When the postie came up the lane with [...]
Tags: Hooting Yard
Every now and then I receive letters from readers asking me to give some account of the geography of Hooting Yard and its hinterland. I have a standard reply to such requests, which is to say that through diligent study of the writings you could draw a map yourself. It would involve very close reading, [...]
Tags: Hooting Yard
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