A while ago I wrote about hiking pickles, and today I want to address the equally important topic of pudding flaps. Flaps about pudding are rarer than they once were, chiefly because puddings play a less critical role in our diets than used to be the case. Time was when no meal was innocent of a pudding, and though of course not every pudding preparation was the occasion of a flap, the incidence of such flaps was obviously more frequent.

One or two psychoculinary statisticians have attempted to put a precise figure on the occurrence of pudding flaps, and one feels pity for them, pity mixed with mocking laughter. Sooner or later, I think, we are going to have to accept that we will never know how often the making of a pudding was done in a state of flap, certainly not to a statistically significant extent.

• Pudding Flaps
• A Bit Of A Kerfuffle Down By The Bins Outside The Barn
• Being A Robber Baron

This episode was recorded on the 11th October 2007. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the two publications Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.

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Whooper swans whooped on the airport pond. Beyond it, by the grain silo, the airport squirrel skittered and twitched, as if terrified. But it was on home ground, and scared of nothing. As with all squirrels, its twitching was merely the outward sign of its high metabolic rate. A path led from the grain silo to Runway Number Nineteen, where on this fogbound morning a supersonic überjet from a bygone era sat rusting on the gravel.

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