Today it is of decisive importance that I tell you about Blodgettesque farming methods. The techniques pioneered by Blodgett in his heyday are breathtaking. Consider, for example, the uses to which a Blodgettian farmer will put hay. There are many, many diagrams in the manual which show bales of hay being commandeered for all sorts of inventive purposes, all over the farmyard, in all six seasons of the year. That’s right, six seasons. One of Blodgett’s most telling innovations was his calendrical recalibration, if I am using the word correctly. Out go winter, spring, summer and autumn, or fall, as they say in Pining & Pothorst Land; in come tally, spate, the time of mighty remonstrations, tack, hub and bolismus. So, come hub come the haywain, as the saying goes, with his big fat boots stuffed with straw? I mean hay.

• Blodgettesque Farming Methods
• Life and Loves of the Immersion Man
• Four extracts from Dobson’s autobiography
• Petrochemical Shiver-me-Timbers Conclave
• At home with Tanquod Shuddery (A tale of generosity)
• A guide to Pointy Town

This episode was first broadcast on May 11th 2005.

Cuppid is, as you might expect, related to Cupid, although there is a lot more than that extra P to help you distinguish between them. Cuppid is composed of both toxic and non-toxic gases, and tinkles a little golden bell whenever it alights upon the hairy back of a bison, which it often does, for Cuppid’s favourite haunts are the vast plains of North America. I say it because Cuppid is, if not exactly a hermaphrodite, neither male nor female, although sometimes when its gases cool and take on liquid form it can bear a fugitive resemblance to Sonja Henie (1912-1969), the legendary Norwegian figure skating champion. Such moments can be dangerous for Cuppid, for it is volatile, and seeks warmer air urgently to return to its gaseous state.

• Mr Bewg’s Reference
• Two extracts from “A Zest for Crumpled Things”
• Soup (A Chewist Text)
• Frustum, Tang, Sluice (An exciting adventure of Confidential Agent Blot)
• Scenes from the Lives of the Poets Number 1: Maude Abdab
• Cuppid
• A Lecture by Canute Hellhound (An extract from “40 Visits to the Worm Farm”)

This episode was first broadcast on 4th May 2005.

One of the more arresting facts about Dobson is that he spent a five-year period living in an evaporated milk factory in Winnipeg. Such was the hold on him of this location that he devoted no less than sixteen pamphlets to it. According to the statistician Aloysius Nestingbird, Dobson wrote more words about this factory than on any other topic. What was it about the place that exerted such a fascination upon Dobson? How significant is it that, during his stay there, the factory was still functioning, producing thousands of tins of evaporated milk every week, and not, as it is today, an abandoned ruin populated only by screeching birds? Was the workforce aware that the pamphleteer had taken up residence in an unused room on the mezzanine floor, and that he had attached his own design of bolts and latches to the door to prevent his being disturbed? Or that the carefully-lettered sign on the door, reading “S Q Perkins, Janitorial Padré”, was a fake of Dobson’s devising?

• Anaxagrotax
• Pontiff Mnemonic
• Pale Flapper (A Love Story)
• The Blot Family
• Starlings
• Dobson In Residence (An evaporated milk factory in Winnipeg)
• The Tale of Gaspard
• Excessive Revolver Shooting and Other Matters

This episode was first broadcast on April 27th 2005.