After I posted the piece entitled Denktash Fugue Syndrome, in which mention is made of Mrs Gubbins and her knitted tea cosies, I was deluged with mail from younger readers who complained that they had no idea what I was talking about. The general tone of these missives was along the lines of “Oi, Mr Key, what in the name of heaven is a tea cosy, for crying out loud, innit?â€
Category Archives: Hooting Yard
Hooting Yard : Lugubrious Dismay
Without wishing to generate further controversy over what is, in any case, a pointless and trivial matter, I should add that I have recently completed a lengthy work, at fifteen volumes just one book short of Sabine Baring-Gould’s Lives Of The Saints. It is a comprehensive study, with lots of illustrations and diagrams, of all Dobson’s known and suspected hats. I conclude that not a single one of them was lined with lead.
Hooting Yard : Forty Years Of Hell In A Bauxite Mine
Bring me a cuppet of foaming grog! And bring me some rags to mop up the spillage! Bring me a lantern to light my way through the gruesome lanes of your gruesome village!
http://audio.resonancefm.com/hooting_yard/2008/Hooting_Yard_-_2008_07_17.mp3 [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadHooting Yard : Van Bronckhorst’s Syndrome
Slipping out of a den of vice through a side door, slinking with surprising elegance along a night alley thick with the leavings of debauchery, he whistled Oh Danny Boy, attracting the attention of police officers.
Hooting Yard : Executive Seating Pod
In a thicket, with a compass, I am thinking about blubber. I use blubber for my candles. I’m the captain of a whaler. Some use tallow, I use blubber. It gets smoky in my cabin. I’m not in my cabin now. As I said, I’m in a thicket. I’m on shore leave for a fortnight. I’ve been hiking with the devil. Satan left me in a thicket on the wild and windy moors. But I’ve got my trusty compass and my pipe clamped in my jaws. I am smoking in the thicket. I hope to see my whaler soon. Don’t go hiking with the devil. Keep your compass in your pocket. I am thinking about blubber. Blubber is my candle light. It’s a comfort in this thicket on the wild and windy moors to think of blubber candle light, for the devil trapped me in this thicket and it is a pitch black night.
Hooting Yard : Riding A Wild Horse
More than twenty years ago, I wrote a short piece in which I described being hunched among shimmerings. Looking back, it occurs to me that I didn’t really know what I was talking about. I was just blathering. I often blathered in those days, both vocally and when doing my scribblings. I think I was simply unclear about what I wanted to say. Much has changed, for now I have a clear, eagle-eyed vision, and am somewhat better able to communicate it. Oh, I still fall prey to blather, more often than I ought to, but I have learned to nip it, if not in the bud, then before too many tendrils have swarmed across the sun-dappled pathway that leads to truth and beauty and insight. You see, there really is a bright magnificent upland upon which we can prance, if we can but reach it. I know that now.
Hooting Yard : Peanuts And Hazelnuts
One has only to consider the records broken by Bobnit Tivol to recognise him for the superb sprinter he was. Leafing through old athletics almanacks, his name appears again and again and again, invariably in capital letters, annotated by one, two, or even three stars, at the top of every list. They say he had to rent a warehouse to store all his cups and shields and trophies. To think that he had won all the major Tyrolean sprinting events before he was twenty years old is to gasp in wonder.
Hooting Yard : Danny Blanchfowler, A Life In Football – Part Two
Part Two of a reading from Danny Blanchfowler, A Life In Football – a pamphlet (out of print) published in 1991 by the Malice Aforethought Press.
Hooting Yard : Danny Blanchfowler, A Life In Football – Part One
Part One of a reading from Danny Blanchfowler, A Life In Football – a pamphlet (out of print) published in 1991 by the Malice Aforethought Press.
Hooting Yard : Nightjars Attack Cattle
32. If you eat roasted swallow, you are likely to be attacked by dragons.