Yes, sad to say there was a time when I was beset by anxiety dreams, in which I was poised, with a sharp pair of scissors, to cut out “guns” and its definition from a brand new dictionary, the pot of mucilage and a spatula beside the dictionary on the desk, and my hand trembled and I could not make the snip. I had this dream, or nightmare, over and over again for a number of years. In a more alarming variant, I dreamed that I managed to cut out the “guns” entry, but then mislaid it, or dropped it into a wastepaper bin, or it was consumed by flames and I had but a pile of ash, which I then painstakingly tried to paste, atom by atom, into the dictionary, with mucilage, and I would wake up shrieking.

Two Dinners

In Which Mr. Key Contemplates Moving To North Korea

Art Squad 

Guns Before Butter 

Camp Dabbler

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Miss Goosebeak seems not to have considered what became of Pontius Pilate’s “ectoplasmic spirit essence” between the governor of Judaea’s death circa 37 AD and Noddy’s first appearance almost two thousand years later in 1949 AD. Nor did she ever address the inconvenient fact that the wooden boy is a fictional character. Challenged on such matters in radio interviews, her usual tactic was to flail her arms in a melodramatic gesture, thus deliberately knocking over her complimentary cup of tea, spilling the boiling hot beverage into the tweedy lap of her interviewer. After the subsequent kerfuffle she would babble about the tea leaves now visible at the bottom of the cup, explaining how their disposition revealed other mystic insights which might become the subject of another dirge of excruciating length, although so far as is known she never published anything else.

• The Distance Between the Aerodrome and the Zoo
• Lullaby
• Tove Jansson and Her Squirrel
• Fifties Finnish Fairground Fun
• Pie Shop Deep Space Six
• Housekeeping Business Announcements
• Weep, Pontius, For Thou Art Become Noddy
• Camp Dabbler
• Galvanism Throughly Explained

This episode was recorded on the 13th October 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

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N.B.  As an episode of “Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightening” is missing from the audio archive it has been decided, by the Soup Committee members no less, to carry on regardless with the next show that isn’t  “Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightening” hoping that, given the length of the intervening period since the last podcast, no one will notice.

In those days, you see, we were taught such piffle as reading and writing and arithmetic and Latin and history, so my not having a head sent the teachers into a kerfuffle. I’m told there was some kind of emergency meeting in the staffroom – a fug of pipe-smoke then, of course – and I was put in isolation in the sickroom while they worked out what to do. How much more enlightened would things be today! Head or no head, I am sure there would be no attempt to exclude me from the diversity and self-esteem lessons. Indeed, my headless presence would be seen as a benefit, both to myself and to my fellow pupils, and to the teachers themselves. In fact, I would probably get a prize, just for not having a head. On the rare occasions prizes were dished out in those far off days, they were invariably book tokens, and I would certainly not have got one for not having a head. Now, I could expect something useful like a new app for my iPap, or a voucher for Pizza Kabin.

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Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning was published in an edition of twenty-five copies in 1994, under the Hooting Yard Press imprint and – save for a brief, rewritten, extract posted  here some years ago – has never again seen the light of day. It was the last piece of prose I completed before my descent into the maelstrom, or the Wilderness Years, or whatever one wants to call that period of ruination from which I eventually emerged with the launch of the Hooting Yard website in 2003.

F. Key.

Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning Pt. IV

This episode was recorded on the 08th September 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

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Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning was published in an edition of twenty-five copies in 1994, under the Hooting Yard Press imprint and – save for a brief, rewritten, extract posted  here some years ago – has never again seen the light of day. It was the last piece of prose I completed before my descent into the maelstrom, or the Wilderness Years, or whatever one wants to call that period of ruination from which I eventually emerged with the launch of the Hooting Yard website in 2003.

F. Key.

•  Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning Pt. III

This episode was recorded on the 01st September 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

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Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning was published in an edition of twenty-five copies in 1994, under the Hooting Yard Press imprint and – save for a brief, rewritten, extract posted  here some years ago – has never again seen the light of day. It was the last piece of prose I completed before my descent into the maelstrom, or the Wilderness Years, or whatever one wants to call that period of ruination from which I eventually emerged with the launch of the Hooting Yard website in 2003.

F. Key.

•  Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning Pt. II

This episode was recorded on the 25th August 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

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Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning was published in an edition of twenty-five copies in 1994, under the Hooting Yard Press imprint and – save for a brief, rewritten, extract posted  here some years ago – has never again seen the light of day. It was the last piece of prose I completed before my descent into the maelstrom, or the Wilderness Years, or whatever one wants to call that period of ruination from which I eventually emerged with the launch of the Hooting Yard website in 2003.

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jespák malý, Zwergstrandläufer, Dværgryle, Correlimos Menudo, pikkusirri, Bécasseau minute, Veimiltíta, Gambecchio comune, nishitounen, Kleine Strandloper, Dvergsnipe, biegus malutki, Pilrito-pequeno, Combatente, pobrežník malý, Småsnäppa, Mazaricu Nanu, S?rç?vari qumluq cüllütü, Ar sourouc’han bihan, Corriol menut, Redonell, Territ menut, Pibydd bach, Pibydd lleiaf, Premavera, malgranda kalidro, Playerito menudo, Väikerisla, väikerüdi, Txirri txikia, Dvørggrælingur, Gobadáinín Beag, Looyran beg, Žalar ciganin, Apró partfutó, Chnchghuk Kttsar, Youroppa-tounen, Stynt munys, Calidris minuta, Ereunetes minutus, Erolia minuta, Mažasis b?gikas, Trul?tis, Rivarel nanin, Kulik-vorobey, Uhcacovzoš, mali prodnik, Gjelaci i vogël, blataric patuljak, Tsititsiti-nyenyane, Chokowe Mdogo, Küçük kumku?u, D? nh?, or R? nh?.

• The Little Stint
• The Care And Feeding Of Pigtapes
• William Tell: Third Statement Of Particulars
• The Cruel Sea

This episode was recorded on the 11th August 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

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Next, acquire a large glob of marzipan. It should be at least the size, if not the shape, of an average adult wolf. If you are not sure what that is, make study of wolves, for example by combing through reference books, preferably illustrated, by watching informative documentary films at the local fleapit, or by stalking the heaths and moors at dead of night. Remember that in moonlight it can be difficult to judge distance, so get as close to any pack of heath or moorland wolves as you possibly can. Wear dark clothing and night-vision goggles, if they are available in your neck of the woods.

• Marzipan Wolf
• Athlete Wrestling With A Python
• Dick Van Dabbler

This episode was recorded on the 4th August 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

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The newspaper cuttings are convincing forgeries, but forgeries nevertheless. By dint of the pincer-like precision of my research, if I mean pincer-like, and I think I do, I can reveal exclusively that the deliberate counterfeiting of details of Urgh the howler monkey’s biography served a malign purpose, but fortunately not one with cataclysmic world-juddering implications. Indeed, if the fiendish scheme had come to fruition, it would have had an effect only within the immediate vicinity of the information centre, and the effect itself, hideously awful as it would be, would have dissipated within a day or so. It makes one wonder why some weedy-brained ne’er-do-wells will go to such lengths, it really does. But perhaps that goes some way to account for the weediness of their brains.

The Missing Murdoch

Dobson And The Pit

Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke

Ambrose And Ploppo

Find The Bailing Bucket

Urgh

This episode was recorded on the 28th July 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

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