Imagine, just for a moment, that you live in ancient Latvia. Now look at today’s date. Gosh! It’s Kazimiras Diena, the festival which commemorates the return of the larks! Being an ancient Latvian, you know full well that larks are passerine birds of the predominantly Old World family Alaudidae, small terrestrial birds with often extravagant songs and display flights. Often, you have pointed out to your ancient Latvian pals that larks nest on the ground, laying between two to six speckled eggs. Sometimes you get into arguments with your ancient Latvian next hut neighbour, who insists that most larks are fairly dull in appearance. Both of you agree, however, that their food is insects and seeds. Now, amity restored, you set off arm in arm with your neighbour for the festival.

“Look, Arvids,” you say, pointing to a nearby bird, “a lark!”

“Indeed it is, Egils,” says your neighbour, “But what species of lark do you suppose it is?”

• Vaporetto or Bus? A review of “Incredibly Detailed Report Of The Commission Of Enquiry Into The Provision Of Public Transport Services In And Around Hooting Yard As Requested By Civic Functionaries Many, Many Years Ago.” by Anon
• Land of Nod News (Emily DIckinson)
• More extracts from “Further Science” by Norman Davies.
• Important Lark Information
• A Recipe for Gruel
• Since You’ve Been Gone
• Suzanne Takes You Down

This episode was first broadcast on August 3rd 2005. All of the prose in this podcast can be found on the Hooting Yard website.

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What is the Groist? Throughout the centuries, or to be more specific, in the summer of 1127, during most of March 1784, and last week, human beings have asked this question. And I should be specific about those human beings too, root and branch. I am not entirely sure that “root and branch” means anything in that last sentence, but it slipped out, soup to nuts, as did “soup to nuts”, just then. This is what thinking about the Groist does, it seems, love in a mist and toffee apples. I am going to stop referring back, chimes at midnight, to the otherwise irrelevant phrases creeping in to this serious attempt to explain to readers what the, force majeure, Groist is, or was, or will be, or all three, throughout the years, on this delightful planet of ours, Henry.

So picture yourself for a moment as a twelfth century peasant scrubbling around in your accustomed muck. Feel that smock. Your hair will as likely as not be matted, unwashed, and you will have several teeth missing, God be praised, Brief Encounter. There you are, on a rain-soaked morning, trudging up or down the hillside to go to tend your pigs, or hens, and all of a sudden the Groist invades your brain. You are understandably startled, and some think this startlement is what inspired some of history’s mystics, lean and fat, that is, a visitation from the Groist.

• Introduction: The greatest radio programme on Resonance at 4.00 p.m. on Wednesdays (probably)
• How to festoon yourself with old netting
• Take me back to Old Plovdiv
• Ugo Goofs Off
• Bronchitis Person’s Helicopter Journey
• The Groist
• Bilingual Comintern Mocker
• Two days in the life of Blodgett
• How to look after a horse

As ever, transcripts of the stories in this week’s podcast can be found on the Hooting Yard website. This episode was first broadcast on July 6th 2005.

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On Thursday, I mentioned in passing Picnic For Detectives. This annual event has become one of the key dates in the Hooting Yard calendar, which is somewhat surprising, given its inglorious beginnings.

The very first Picnic For Detectives was hardly a picnic at all, and the official historian of the event estimates that only a handful of those taking part were bona fide detectives. All we know for certain is that a small group of people, no more than four or five, pitched up in a field with a couple of hampers, and spent an afternoon there. Meteorological records show the day was one of arctic squalls, but the field was in a temperate zone inland. In fact, it was just across the road from Pang Hill Orphanage. This anomaly has fascinated weather-fixated Picnic For Detectives buffs, who are legion.

So, not only do we have just a few people with a couple of hampers, we do not even know what was in those hampers. If you are familiar with ordinary picnics, you would expect to open up a hamper to find sandwiches, savoury flans, some fruit, crackers, cheese-related foodstuffs, cake, and bottles of refreshing barley water. Hardboiled eggs would be likely, too, unless the film director Alfred Hitchcock was one of the picknickers, for as we know from the many biographies, he was terrified of eggs.

• Shem, Ham, Japheth and Minnie Crunlop
• Mrs Gubbins and Mr Smith
• Picnic for Detectives
• Me and My Homunculus
• Blodgett’s Fiendish X-Ray Plot

This episode was first broadcast on June 29th 2005. The entire text of this show can be found on the Hooting Yard Website.

Unfortunately, due to a recording error, the last few seconds of this show have been truncated, additionally there is persistent distortion throuought the entire recording. Sadly there is nothing we can do about this. It is after all an entirely live show. We will make it up to you… somehow.

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O how they clanged, those gubernatorial bells! It is eighty years now since their peals sounded, but still I hear them in my head. They clanged ceaselessly, all day and all night, deafeningly loud, for years on end. Cows stood dazed in the fields around the bell-tower, many, many cows, too many cows to count, all dazed and stunned, and in those days no cowherds came to give them succour.

In your tongue, “gubernatorial” refers to governorship, but in my land at that time the gubernatorial bells were the ever-clanging bells of the ferocious tyrant known variously as the Gub or Guber or Gubernat. Some said the Gub was a fiend in human form, but none had ever seen it, so how could they be so sure, muttering darkly in the corner of the tavern, professing a knowledge they did not have, rewarded with a refilled tankard by some credulous foreign person on an ill-advised visit to our bell-blasted village?

Dobson came here once. He crashed through the tavern doors, a clumsy adventurer – for he was young then – and jabbered at anyone who would listen that he wanted to go up the hill to the castle, to meet the Gubernat face to face.

• Quotation from “A History Of The McGuffey Readers” by Henry H Vail
• The Story of the Lame Dog, The Caged Bird, The Drowned Cat, The Gold Watch, The Whisky Boy and the Insane Boy
• The Taxonomy of Ducks, Swans and Geese is in a State of Flux
• Titans of the Silver Screen (Walt Dinsey)
• Killer Bees: The Mystery Solved
• A Bag on your Foot
• Clot (Ferenc Puskas).

The Quotation alluded to in “Clot” from “What Philately Teaches” by John N Luff can be found on the Hooting Yard Web Site, along with a transcript of all the stories in this episode. This show was first broadcast on the 15th of June 2005.

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