The Tantarabim Carton was recovered from an old potting shed by Dobson, during one of his forays into what he called anarcho-‘patapsychoarchaeolontology. It is a ceremonial carton which was used for unknown purposes during ceremonies prosecuted by the Bleach-Splattered Tantarabim Priesthood. Grim and horrifying these rituals may have been, but not the carton. It is 45 cm. in height, has a jewel-encrusted crimplene base, ivory fluting, ruched silk underbelts, hectic trimmings, a delightful milky-green ribbed spandole, villainous scraping marks, a gutta percha rim, opalescent bison-head motifs, swivelling glutinous beads inlaid with serried gems, fleur-de-lys hatching, precise web-and-tuck dufraiment, talc stipples, a riband nightside opening on the velveteen casing, some rather brusque kaolin relief work, tiny cack-iron clips, berry lagging, a splendid gilt Spode handle, and corky frets on the oversling.

• My Little Blind Crow
• The Windows in the Villa
• Museology (The Discovery of the Tantarabim Carton)
• Crononhotonthologos
• Hoon Hing Boom Bang a Bang
• Notes on Norton the First
• Today’s Soup Recipe
• Mrs Gubbins’ New Publishing Venture
• A Sad Story ( The Tale of Gervaise Birdlip )
• Quotation from “Man From The Wrong Time-Track” by Dennis Plimmer
• Reviews of “Ulysses”
• Quotation from St Bernard of Clairvaux about Jugglers
• Quotation from “The Thing that Dined on Death” by John Knox

This episode was first broadcast on the 26th October 2005. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on the Hooting Yard Website.

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Update: The wrong audio was attached, it’s been fixed now. Sorry!

Some readers will be familiar with the career of the Sino-Dutch artist Ah-Fang Van Der Houygendorp, the man who invented potato-peel engravure. Few people know, however, that he was a keen mountaineer. Keen and inept, that is. Ah-Fang was, if nothing else, a visionary, and he had visions of a haunted mountain, its peak shrouded in inexplicable purple mists like something out of a novel by M P Shiel. Whenever he sat shivering in his tent at base camp, Ah-Fang wondered if this mountain, the one he was about to climb, was the haunted mountain of his mind’s eye. He would poke his head out of the frayed flap of his tent, peer up at the majestic rock formation disappearing into the clouds above, and wonder if this, at last, would be the one he had dreamed of since childhood, where he would come face to face with the uncanny, the ineffable.

Physically, Ah-Fang was not really cut out for mountaineering. He was described by a contemporary as “a figure of untold puniness”, and he was indeed tiny and weak, short-sighted, lanky and prone to swooning fits. He was terrified of gnats, horseflies and fruitbats. He had an oversensitive digestive system and had to subsist mostly on thin soup or broth. It was difficult to find a mountaineering team willing to recruit so wretched a specimen, so Ah-Fang did most of his clambering up sheer rock faces solo, a man alone testing himself against the elements.

• Dobson on Peas
• Quotation from The Lady’s Vase by “An American Woman”
• The Magic Mountain
• Crisis in the Sedge
• My Little Blind Dolly
• Quotation from The Talking Deaf Man (The Human Voice)

This episode was first broadcast on October 12th 2005. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on the Hooting Yard website.

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Today I am going to talk to you – at you – about wisps and clumps. Gaining an insight into wisps and clumps will not give you a complete understanding of the physical universe in all its matchless wonder, but it is a start. Indeed I can think of few subjects which prove a better introduction. Some might talk to you of toads or gazelles or coconut matting, perhaps, or of strange irrefragible lights in the maritime skies, but I stick to wisps and clumps, with occasional forays into bee world.

So, then, what is a wisp and what is a clump? We shall look at each in turn. A wisp might be made of smoke or some other fume, for there are countless fumes, gaseous and otherwise. One guaranteed way of seeing a wisp with your very own eyes is to stand next to a dying bonfire. If you go and stand there too early, while the bonfire is still blazing, perhaps with an effigy of Roman Catholic martyr Guy Fawkes engulfed in the flames, you will not be able to see any wisps, or much else, because the smoke will be billowing, making your eyes water, and if some scamp has placed any noxious substances on the bonfire, such as anything made of rubber or plastic, things will be even worse, and you may feel like choking, indeed you may even choke uncontrollably, and topple to the ground, helpless, helpless, helpless, as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were wont to sing, long ago, on the west coast of America. They say that David Crosby’s moustache is to be preserved as a national monument, but I digress.

Basically, what I am saying is: keep away from the bonfire while it is at its height. You want to go and stand next to it as the last embers are dying, for it is then that you will be able to see wisps of smoke. What are their characteristics, these wisps? They are light, delicate, and fugitive. You will see a wisp rising from the glowing ashes, and it will slink upon the breeze for a few moments, and then it will be gone. All that is solid melts into air, according to Marx and Engels in The Manifesto Of The Communist Party (1848), and this is certainly true of wisps, which are hardly solid in the first place.

• Wisps and Clumps
• The Administration of Lighthouses (The Dobson Memorial Lecture)
• Cemetery Birds (The Lopwit)
• Ukrainian Postage Stamp Bees (An exciting parlour game)

This episode was original broadcast on the 5th October 2005. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard Website.

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