I had my pippy bag and my hiking apparel, and I had a handful of feed for any goats that might cross my path as I wended my way. The sky was blue, and I thought of Ruskin. Well, in truth I thought of both Ruskin and Letta Mbulu. I wondered, as I often have, if Ruskin would have got down with the Hooting Yard groove, had he been born in a different era. We tend not to associate Ruskin with grooviness of any kidney, but that is a mistake, I think. It has not escaped my notice that his very name suggests a Mbuluesque apocopation. What is wrong with Ruskin’?, indeed.

Belshazzar’s Feast.

What Is Wrong With Grooving?

Hooting Yard Chant

Quite Extraordinary

Ghosts

After Belshazzar’s Feast

Solace On The Rack

This episode was recorded on the 29th 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.

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.

• The Terrible Fate Of Mrs. Sludge, The Medium.
• Slobbering Dauphin
• Old Halob, Ant God
• Celebrity Hoofprint Patterns

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.

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.

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.

• About Ivan Clank
• Puff
• Dr Lamp’s Atlas
• More From Chalmers
• The Grubby Man
• Those Cursed Scotch Pebbles

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.

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!

• A Duck In A Pond
• Two Snippets
• Chambers And Hiss At The River Basin
• Chambers And Hiss At The Chamber Of Hissing
• Eggy Apocalypse
• Boosters
• Boogie Woogie

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.

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.

• Hark!
• Variation On A Theme Of Scott Walker
• Being A True Account Of The Discovery Of The Tomb Of Anaxagrotax
• God’s Grandeur
• Boorde On Naps

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.

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.

• Shade Of Smart
• Bonkers Maisie
• A Short Essay Upon Cardboard Breakfast Cereal Packets
• A Tip From A Shaman
• Tiny Enid’s Bathtub Gin
• Odd Dots
• What I Like About A Farm
• Tugboat Tales, Number Two
• Three Types Of Incy-Wincy

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.

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.

• 77 Today
• The Statement Of William Tell
• William Tell: Second Statement Of Particulars
• A Man Of Letters
• Pancake Day
• Uncake Day
• Eggs Soaked In Tea

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.