The Life & Times of Captain Cake

“All hands on deck!” cried Captain Cake. He looked so much like Lawrence Welk. His crew were grim. They played ping pong on the poop deck, with spite and hate. But Captain Cake, he hacked and choked, and took his buckets to shops on shore, where he saw Tallulah Bankhead. She was a card sharp in the dockyards.

Now Captain Cake had gone to seed. He looked as if he had been cursed by some bright-fanged Aztec God. I think it might be called Abraxas - either that or Myrna Loy, whose face loomed huge when he shut his eyes. Wracked by palsy, his hands were withered, and all his timbers had been shivered.

Source : scribbled on a torn envelope found tucked inside a paperback copy of Attack of the Zargons from Planet Git by Punter Hoonjaw

Dobson's Commentary on the Above

At a loose end one blustery Thursday morning, Dobson decided to write a lengthy critical analysis of the The Life & Times of Captain Cake. He began, as he always did, by sharpening his pencil. That done, in a single burst of inexplicable enthusiasm, he penned an essay much, much longer than his usual pamphlets. It is a bewildering piece of work, caustic and trenchant even by Dobson's standards, and was issued in fifteen weekly instalments. Flush with cash from the sale of his Big Mysterious Piece of Hardboard, Dobson took out advertisements in the press to announce his new part-work, offering the first issue at a discount price, and including a two-inch high plastic figurine of Captain Cake* as further inducement.

Each of the fifteen instalments addresses a different aspect of the text. So, for example, Volume IV is entitled Welk, Bankhead, Loy : There'll Be A Welcome In The Hillsides while Volumes VIII and IX both concentrate entirely on the game of ping pong. Long out of print, this superb (if unintelligible) essay is ripe for reassessment in the 21st century which Dobson did not live to see. Over the coming months, the Hooting Yard Foundation hopes to publish on this site a hypertext version of the essay. Be in no doubt that it will prove a boon to scholars worldwide.

* NOTE : The distinguished critic and pirate F. X. Gilliblat claims that the figurine bears no resemblancewhatsoever to Captain Cake. He may well be right.

The Cabinet of Doctor Calicagcag

It was a stormy and hideous night. A ferocious gale uprooted sycamores, hollyhocks, and strange unearthly shrubs which grow only in Finland. Thunderclaps deafened the major domo of the orphanage. Lightning bolts blinded the crapulous Stalinist funeral director. Then came the rain, a torrential downpour unleashed by storm-clouds blacker than the blackest thing the human mind can comprehend. The temperature plummeted. Rain turned to hail, assailing with ten thousand merciless pin-pricks the pathetic figure of a man trudging through the streets of Helsinki dressed only in shirt-sleeves and boxer shorts. The man was the notorious forger, quack and charlatan Inigo Hoist. Moments before, he had been denuded of the rest of his clothing and ejected from the hovel of his concubine, who had taken exception to the odour on his breath of sour custard and hibiscus. Hoist managed to reach his doctor's surgery without being crushed by a felled sycamore. He hammered on the door, wailing desperately. At long last Doctor Calicagcag drew back the fourteen bolts on his door and let Hoist in. The good doctor was wearing a rhinoceros mask of beaten bronze. He cackled, and shoved the snivelling Hoist into his sinister cabinet. Then he began to adjust the dials on the control panel…….

To be continued

Crestfallen Dan : An Apology

In an item about Crestfallen Dan published on 27th January (see below), we stated that he “lit his hut with the aid of a single Tilly lamp”. Dan's solicitor has written to us as follows:

“My client takes great exception to being accused of lighting his hut with a Tilly lamp. This is a vile calumny. You should be aware that Crestfallen Dan is not only crestfallen but litigious. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that my practice would have fallen into desuetude long ago were it not for his keen sense of injustice. I have lost count of the number of luncheons we have had in the convivial surroundings of the Cow & Pins tavern, and not a pudding is consumed without my client apprising me of yet further besmirchment of his character. Crestfallen Dan's hut is lit by Wotan and Tantalum lamps. Unless a correction to this effect is published on your site with all due haste, I will have no alternative but to have you set upon by the Men With Whisks & Celery!”

The Hooting Yard Foundation apologises unreservedly for any distress caused by our unfounded Tilly lamp assertion, than which there is no viler calumny, and we are pleased to confirm that Crestfallen Dan uses the lamps advertised below.

Bird-related Ironmongery

It is a curious fact that the crowbar is one of the very few tools to be named after our avian cousins. Things have come to a pretty pass when our habits of nomenclature are so bereft. It is in an attempt to rectify this sorry state of affairs that the manufacturing arm of the Hooting Yard Foundation is working on the production of an exciting new range of ironmongery products, to wit: guillemot bolts; lapwing nozzles; lark basins; coot clips; teal pins; bittern jacks; little bittern jacks; snow bunting tacks; flamingo hasps; grebe locks; moorhen horns; corncrake hinges; raven sticks; tern rotors; buzzard extractors; and pipit wrenches.

No Comment

World O' Cake

Following the item about the sop to Cerberus (see below, January 24th January), reader Ruth Pastry has written as follows: “It is all very well including such nuggets of (questionable) information, but if you are going to whet the readers' appetite in such a manner, please do not stint* when it comes to giving us the full story. I am sure I am not alone in wanting to know what kind of cake is referred to. Chocolate swiss roll? Battenburg? Old Mother Framley's Cherry Surprise?”

Point taken, Dr Pastry. If any readers can help out, I will be happy to publish contributions to this invigorating debate.

*NOTE : A stint is, of course, a bird. What is Dr Pastry prattling on about?

House of Turps

Apparently, the House of Turps is somewhere in the vicinity of Pang Hill on the way to the duckponds. There is a thrilling story of the same name which may appear here at some point, certainly before such time as the earth is a charred cinder and the sun dead, as Carl Sagan so eloquently put it. Meanwhile, your doughty editor is pleased to present you with the chance to Build Your Own House of Turps.

Crestfallen Dan

Crestfallen Dan lived in a hut on the edge of the inaccurately-named Unending Marshes. He had a metal plate in his skull, following a childhood picnic-hamper incident. He was mildly lantern-jawed. Whenever he wrote about being lantern-jawed, or about lanterns, Crestfallen Dan invariably used the archaic spelling, viz. “lanthorn”. He often had occasion to write the word because, shunning human company, he lived alone and ran a lighting-fixture advice service by post. He spent a fortune on postage stamps! Crestfallen Dan did not possess a telephone, but if he had done so it would have availed him not, because there was no telephone pole within miles upon miles of his nondescript hut. He had only a handful of correspondents, or customers, but they were exceedingly loyal to him, for Crestfallen Dan knew more about lighting-fixtures than anyone else, ever, alive or dead, and his advice was always couched in clear and simple language that even a splinterbrain could understand. Crestfallen Dan himself lit his hut with the aid of a single Tilly lamp. He was that kind of man.

Source : Worlds Beyond Sense by Dobson (out of print)

Cedric Spraingue

Cedric Spraingue, Inspector of Lighthouses (see below, 23rd January), ought not be confused with his relative Cedric William Spraingue. Quite why this confusion recurs is quite beyond reason and is a source of misery and teeth-gnashing to their descendants, the Spraingue kin of Blister Lane, who are the only people I know apart from the Kennedy clan to live in a “compound”. In a last ditch attempt to clear up the matter, short of knocking a few heads together, here is a narrative regarding Cedric William. A cursory reading should make quite plain that he was not the same man whose lighthouse inspections have become the stuff of legend. The text is entitled The Phial of Broth.

Captain Snap, the Cheery Bird-strangler

World O' Cake

To be given a Sop. The full quotation should be “to give a sop to Cerberus”. Cerberus was Pluto's three-headed dog set at the gates of the Infernal Regions over which Pluto was King. The Greeks and Romans when burying their dead put into the hands of the corpse a cake. The idea was that the cake was a sop to Cerberus to allow the dead to pass unmolested.

Source : Encyclopaedia of Phrases & Origins by Edwin Radford (1945)

Preamble to a Report on the 26 Lighthouses of Hoon

I am Cedric Spraingue, and I have inspected all the lighthouses of Hoon. This is my report. On the fourteenth of July, having had my crutches freshly varnished, I set out for the Port of Tongs, my knapsack packed with mustard cakes, celery stalks, a flask of slops, my notebook and pencil, several pins, a length of string, a wristwatch with a frayed strap, and many, many other things which at present I cannot divulge.

I had to wait for three hours at the railway station, during which time I shunned the other human beings in the waiting-room, preferring to crouch in an alcove to jot down some prepatory notes for my tour of lighthouse inspection. There are twenty six lighthouses in Hoon, and rigorous planning would be necessary.

I had decided to begin with the Port of Tongs lighthouse for three reasons:

1. It is the lighthouse furthest from my home in Hooting Yard, being precisely forty six and a half motes distant. That figure has been verified - as have all the motages in my report - by Dobson's bittern-robot measuring device. Each time I note the distance from one site to another, you may imagine this splendid metal bird soaring across the sky at unimaginable speed, its beak spewing forth ticker-tape.

2. It is the oldest of the Hoon lighthouses by a good half-century.

3. There is a toad hospital on the outskirts of the port, and Lillian, my toad, is sick. She has been struck by repeated fits of the chumpots, and I will be able to collect supplies of serum, paste, and toad-pills.

The train journey was remarkably eventful. The guard's van was struck by lightning. A pig wandered onto the track and missed death by seconds. A passenger, florid of face and decked out in clerical garb - a Jesuit perhaps - broke his ankle while attempting to step over a suitcase abandoned in the corridor. We suffered a temporary derailment. The toilets were flooded. Seven or eight handkerchiefs, donated by passengers, were needed to stem the ticket collector's nosebleed. A small child frantic with mischief pulled the communication cord, causing a halt of some hours. Bacteria released from a mysterious package made all those in the rear carriage violently sick. A monomaniac with grubby fingernails walked up and down the length of the train declaiming his theories on colourless gases.

There were other incidents, to be sure, but eventually the train arrived at the Port of Tongs. End of preamble.

A Letter From Pansy Cradledew

Dear Mr Key,

I read with some interest your item on fictional characters named after packaging materials (21st January). It put me in mind of excelsior, the small woodshavings used to cushion items in cartons and the precursor of the ‘packing peanuts’ of today. Although I have not yet discovered a fictional character with this name, I hope you will take up the gauntlet. The delight that such a match would afford far outweighs the effort of uncovering it. I eagerly await the next in your thrilling series, and remain your faithful audience, etc, etc,

Pansy Cradledew

P.S. As the word excelsior can also mean upward striving or very small type, maybe you could consider enlarging your remit to include aspiring hotels or publications for ants?

Thanks to Pansy for that. Of course, excelsior is not solely a packaging material, as the photograph below (from the American Excelsior Company) makes abundantly clear.

Fictional Characters Named After Packaging

An Exciting New Series

Number One : Sydney Carton, from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Dobsoniana

News has reached us that Dobson, that indefatigable and infamous pamphleteer, is at work on his autobiography. Telephone calls, faxes and emails requesting further details went unanswered, so we sent the Tatterdemalion Hobbledehoy to ransack Dobson's shed under the cover of a pitch black night when no stars were visible a-twinkling in the firmament. He managed to retrieve these four perplexing excerpts:

My mother's brooch was blue. She took me to the lake and punched my jaw. She threw my breakfast into a pond. I banged my head against a barge the day she showed me the canal.

There were massive shutters in that room, and I had never left it. Ah, I had brilliantine in my hair. There were roses, there were lockets, I was lacking something, so unnerved - but for my hatred she'd've seen it, even eaten it, got it on her eyelash, crushed it, broken it, eked it out of someone's purse or loved it, lusted after it. So here's my signifier - you can read it, you can keep it. You're so fucking thick you don't even know what to do with it. Well … eyebrows, hair, my pastels, then breakfast and a lover. Oh come on, you must be guessing. Or maybe you're just so fetching. I'm done with fleshing out my lying. My hair is in a tangle and I haven't paid the rent. But I had brilliantine in my hair, and yours were better shutters. Damn it, I couldn't even see your rubbish, but I had brilliantine in my hair.

When I stood at the edge of the lake, when I stood on the bridge, when I looked at the water, when I saw the broken fountain, when I broke my neck, when I lay awake all night, when I couldn't see a thing, when my mind began to snap, when I was spoon-fed cocoa, when what I said went askew, when they proffered me jam, when my tongue was hanging out, when I loitered in Ülm, when the diving-board cracked beneath me, when I fell into a pond, when I was all washed up, when I ate too much chocolate, when nothing broke my spirit, when I hosted a TV chat-show, when I went to a wedding, when I broke down in tears, when I was in despair, when bracken snagged my socks, when illness cast a shadow, when death appeared lascivious, when sadness crushed my feelings, when I was struck by lightning, when all I did was worry, when I threw in the towel, when I was scorched in deserts, when no one gave me biscuits, when all I had was breathing, when my gas bill sent me bonkers, when you told me that I'd had it, all I wanted was [illegible]

When the tiny Mexican house on stilts was revealed, behind such rich brocade curtains, and we fell in love, Captain Snap's wooden leg was rammed between us. He was a brutish man, vengeful, hirsute and lewd, prone to piss in vinegar jars and to take our clocks to bits. I remember how he left the parts - dial, hands, cogs and springs - littered about our flat, smeared with marmalade, peppered with talc, and reeking of his dubbin. We walked on either side of him, mouthing words of ire and loathing, as he limped - stump-clunk, stump-clunk, stump-clunk - by the wharf, jabbering and shouting. Oh, he never made any sense. Captain Snap's wooden leg was rammed between us. I took a hunting rifle and shot him through the head.Then we were together, darling, and he was good and dead.

Tiny Decoy Duck of the Week

Music Ho!

That wretched man Ben Elton has carved a career for himself writing appalling musicals, picking over rock music's back catalogues like a vulture over carrion - We Will Rock You based on Queen, Tonight's The Night on Rod Stewart, and so, gruesomely, on. Before London's theatreland chokes on this lethal diet, a corrective is clearly needed. Work needs to begin on Bittern Storm Over Ülm, Pin Back Your Ears! and Perfume Bottle Atomiser Air Bulb Invention, doing for Henry Cow, Charles Ives and Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band what Elton has done for Mercury & co and Stewart.

Science

A while ago I found a truly majestic publication in a secondhand bookshop on Charing Cross Road. It's a 76 page A6 booklet, spineless, with a yellow card cover, entitled Further Science - Book 20, written and published by Norman Davies in 2001. Infuriatingly, there is neither a jot nor tittle of further information - no address, contact details, or anything. The contents include topics such as: Hedge Auras; Dragonflies; World Monkeys; Near Death; World Flag Psychology; and National Bill Hooks. If anyone knows anything more about Norman Davies, or how I could obtain Further Science Books 1 to 19 (and 21 onwards?) please contact me immediately!

As I have no way of asking Mr Davies' permission to reproduce his work, I pondered not doing so; but my resolve was broken. Here, then, is an extract. It is entitled “Ancestral Birds” (sic throughout):

1. That Australian Birds represent Ancestral European species.

2. And insight into their psychological differences, would reveal how species psychologies evolve. - A new science - Psychological Evolution.

3. The Takahe - which equals the coot - once could not fly.

4. Pukako equals the moorhen - was once larger.

5. The Waka equals the corncrake - once flightless / nocturnal in forest / ex predator / burrow.

6. Kiwi equal the starling / always was spotted / solid boned / primitive / large eggs / great smell / top bill nostrils / forest nocturnal / flightless / no tail.

7. The spotted shag equals the cormorant.

8. Black swan equals the white mute swan - once black and rough / intruder aggressive / platform nest.

9. Brolgas equal cranes - once danced / ground nesting / no nest / trumpets.

10. Tui equals the house sparrow - once honey eating / musical mimic.

11. Kookaburra equals the kingfisher - once larger / pro snakes slippery / once laughing / suburb tame.

12. Peewit equals the magpie - once high tree quiet cry / pairs / Winter flock.

13. Apostle bird equals the bunting - tree hops small flocks etc.

14. And so on for Bird of Paradise / crows - bower bird / thrushes - Butcher Bird / shrike - Rock Pigeon / doves - Frogmouth / nightjar - Cockatoo / parrot - Mutton Bird / petrels - Kea Parrot / crossbills and finches - Lyre bird / pheasant - Kagu / bitterns - Mallee Fowl / partridge - Scrub Bird / warblers - Cassowary / domestic hen etc.

A Person From Porlock

Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I know the misery of being inconvenienced by a person from Porlock. It happened thus. It was a Wednesday, I recall, teeming with Hooting Yard's most tremendous rainfall for forty years. I was sat at the kitchen table attempting to insert a new pair of laces into my gleaming big black leather boots. Minnie was at her spinet, as usual, idly tinkling. I suspected that soon the tinkling would cease and she would launch into an impassioned performance of one of her ten thousand and twenty two songs. I hoped she would play my favourite, the Anthem for a Brutish Haberdasher, or perhaps her mangled sea shanty Bring Me Your Winding Sheet, O Mother of Mine. As I fiddled ineptly with the laces, our door crashed open and a hirsute and drenched individual burst into the room. In an instant, a puddle formed at his feet. Minnie continued to tinkle.

“I come,” announced the stranger, in a declamatory roar as if he were addressing a vast crowd of huddled petitioners, “I come not from haunts of coot and hern. Nor do I come in response to your whistle, my lad.”

“I was not whistling,” I replied.

“Precisely!” he continued, “I come from Porlock, and I am going to confiscate your aglets.”

So saying, he withdrew from the pocket of his bright yellow windcheater a pair of garden secateurs, swiftly cut the aglets off the ends of my brand new laces, and charged out into the downpour. He did not close the door behind him. I held my head in my hands and began to weep. Minnie played the pounding opening chords of Dismal Corncrakes.

Babbage

When he wasn't inventing the computer, Charles Babbage spent much of his time getting het up about what he called “street disturbances”. These seem to have consisted almost entirely of what most people call “music”. He wrote a helpful list of “instruments of torture permitted by the Government to be in daily and nightly use in the streets of London”:

Organs, Bagpipes, Brass bands, Accordians, Fiddlers, Halfpenny whistles, Harps, Tom-toms, Harpsichords, Trumpets, Hurdy-gurdies, Shouting out objects for sale, Flageolets, Religious canting, Drums, Psalm-singing.

And apart from the Government, responsible for allowing this mayhem, Babbage knew who to blame: “Tavern-keepers, Public-houses, Girl-shops, Beer-shops, Coffee-shops, Servants, Children, Visitors from the country, Ladies of doubtful virtue, Occasionally titled ladies; but these are almost invariably of recent elevation, and deficient in that taste which their sex usually possess”.

Would Babbage have approved of mp3s? Discuss.

Doctor Fang Is About to Carry Out a Brain Scan

An Old Rhyme

I walked along the filthy street

And knocked at the house of sin

A crone unlatched it, spat at me

And said “You can't come in”

An Exciting Pastime

Frederica Seeger's Entertainments For Home, Church & School (1910) is packed with unbearably exciting diversions. Here, for example, is “Lighting The Candle” :

This feat is a very amusing one, and is performed as follows: Two persons kneel on the ground, facing each other. Each holds in his left hand a candle in a candlestick, at the same time grasping his right foot in his right hand. This position compels him to balance himself on his left knee. One of the candles is lighted; the other is not. The holders are required to light the unlighted candle from the lighted one. The conditions are simple enough, but one would hardly believe how often the performers will roll over on the floor before they succeed in lighting the candle. It will be found desirable to spread a newspaper on the floor between the combatants. Many spots of candle-grease will thus be intercepted, and the peace of mind of the lady of the house proportionately spared.

Fire!

In May 1855, The Eclectic Magazine (London, I think) published the following:

The origin of fires is now so narrowly inquired into by the officers of the Brigade, by means of inquests, that we have been made acquainted with a vast number of curious causes, which would never have been suspected. From an analysis of fires which have occurred since the establishment of the Brigade, we have constructed the following [list]:

Curtains 2,511 - Candle 1,178 - Flues 1,555 - Stoves 494 - Gas 932 - Light dropped down Area 13 - Lighted Tobacco falling down ditto 7 - Dust falling on horizontal Flue 1 - Doubtful 76 - Incendiarism 89 - Carelessness 100 - Intoxication 80 - Dog 6 - Cat 19 - Hunting Bugs 15 - Clotheshorse upset by Monkey 1 - Lucifers 80 - Children playing with ditto 45 - Rat gnawing ditto 1 - Jackdaw playing with ditto 1 - Rat gnawing gaspipe 1 - Boys letting off Fireworks 14 - Fireworks going off 63 - Children playing with Fire 45 - Spark from Fire 243 - Spark from Railway 4 - Smoking Tobacco 166 - Smoking Ants 1 - Smoking in Bed 2 - Reading in ditto 22 - Sewing in ditto 4 - Sewing by Candle 1 - Lime overheating 44 - Waste ditto 43 - Cargo of Lime ditto 2 - Rain Slacking ditto 5 - High Tide 1 - Explosion 6 - Spontaneous Combustion 43 - Heat from Sun 8 - Lightning 8 - Carboy of Acid bursting 2 - Drying Linen 1 -Shirts falling into fire 6 - Lighting and Upsetting Naphtha Lamp 58 - Fire from Iron Kettle 1 - Sealing Letter 1 - Charcoal Fire of a Suicide 1 - Insanity 5 - Bleaching Nuts 7 - Unknown 1,323

NB : Glyn Webster writes (17th January) to comment “It's a good thing we don't need those hazardous dittos any more. I would write more, but my clotheshorse has just been upset by a monkey.”

Dobson

Dobson the pamphleteer, that is, rather than Dobson the playwright (see 22nd December and 1st January). Plans have been announced for a new series of “self-help” titles, which Dobson has apparently been working on with some gusto. They include: Teach Yourself Petulance; Mucking About For Fun & Profit; Idiot's Guide To Moral Turpitude; Fecklessness Made Simple; Learn To Doze In Just 24 Hours!; How To Be In A Bad Mood; Lassitude The Easy Way; Making A Fool of Yourself for Dummies; Idiot's Guide To Social Gaffes; Bluff Your Way to Pomposity; Five Simple Steps To Lying Around Aimlessly; Tomfoolery Made Simple; Teach Yourself Frowning; Make Your Own Faux Pas; and The Seven Habits of Craven & Wretched People.

A Sad Story

And there was a man named Gervase Birdlip resident at that time in Uttoxeter. He hailed originally from Helsinki, where his parents used to polish shields with old rags. Birdlip had lived for many years lived in a caravan on the outskirts of Helsinki. It was a dilapidated caravan. Nobody knew why he had moved to Uttoxeter. Nobody knew whether or not his papers were in order. Nobody knew for how many years he had been alive on this terrifying and miraculous planet. Nobody knew why his teapot leaked. Nobody knew why his left shoulderblade was emblazoned with a magnificent tattoo of a cormorant. Nobody knew why his gas bills were so preposterous. Nobody knew that he was ashamed of his club foot. Nobody knew that he skulked about in the orchard. Nobody knew what he kept in that mysterious iron pail. Nobody knew the angle of his hat. Nobody knew. Nobody knew. It is a sad story.

Recommended Reading

Pond Life

Here is a survey of thirteen ponds which originally appeared last year in an issue of Crunlop! : A Splendid Periodical. Subscriptions to Crunlop! are handled by the Tatterdemalion Hobbledehoy, so send him an email if you require further information. Characters appearing in the pond survey include:

Food Scare

According to Alexandre Dumas in his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, “the young wild duck shot at the end of August is called an albran. Albrans, which are to an ordinary duck as a partridge is to a hen, are broiled on the spit and served on toast soaked in their own juices, to which are added the juice of bitter oranges, a little soy sauce, and some grains of fine pepper”. That being the case, what exactly is contained in those packets of All-Bran sold by the Kellogg people? I think we should be told.

The Windows in the Villa

…the wind in the willows, the wind in the windows, the will in the windows, the wills in the window, Goop, the executor, saw that the will had been lodged in the casement window, it was hidden behind the curtain, although he was not certain, the will in the window, the lady in the lake, the lake like the lady, the lake in the la di da, the break in the lake, the Beak Keepsake, for a keepsake, in her locket, the lady in the lake kept a beak, the beak of a bird, the third bird, the first bird was a chaffinch, the second was a vulture, the third bird was dead, its beak had been detached and she kept it as a keepsake in her locket in her pocket, the quick and the dead, the dead and the sick, the sick and the sad, the sick man was sad, he wrote his will, he plighted his troth, he was as sick as a dog, he was sick in the trough, the tooth of the truth, those shoes of his, his shoes, the truth of boots and shoes, a boot is a shoe, the beauty of boots, the mutiny on the Bounty, a bountiful feast, the test of the best, deceit is a crime, the crime of the tooth, the truth of the crime, in Much Hadham, is that true? I've not checked, the check and the stripe, the striped and the hooped, the patterned and plain, the brain drain, the drain at the kerb, the kerb of the path, the path of life, the death of earth, the dearth of crime, the crime of passion, the scarlet pimpernel, the pimpled and sick, the sickness unto death, rude health, untold wealth, pelf, filthy lucre, Lord Lucan, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the raid of the brigade, the raid was made, the maid was late, the tale was told, as bold as brass, the caste system, a Shropshire Lad, baize, the toll of bells, the bells of hell, Beelzebub's bells, that swelling brogue, that broken shell, a-wassailing we will go…

Hell, Entrances To

Reader Tim Drage has drawn my attention to a hugely informative website which provides photographic documentation of Entrances to Hell in the UK. Were I in the habit of handing out awards, trophies & cups - other than the Tin Badge of Tantarabim or the Button of Beb - I have no doubt this site would win one.

Milk

Sir Atholl Oakley (1900-1987) was a champion wrestler, an impresario of giants, organiser of “rugged holiday cruises” and an authority on Lorna Doone. His wrestling career began after he was beaten up by a gang of thugs. He built up his physique by drinking eleven pints of milk every day, a regimen designed by the giant wrestler Hackenschmitt, who later told Oakley that the quantity of milk prescribed was “a misprint”.

Source : The Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries

Folk Wisdom

Authors' Nicknames

Reader Glyn Webster writes to broaden the topic of authorial nicknames (see below, 7th January):

Dr. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger. His nickname “The Forest of Incandescent Bliss” was given to him by his godfather, the Chinese Nationalist leader Sun Yat Sen; it is a Chinese pun on “Paul Linebarger”. He wrote his sci-fi under the pseudonym “Cordwainer Smith”. Disappointingly “Paul ‘Forest of Incandescent Bliss’ Linebarger” never appeared on book covers because he had a respectable day job devising pyschological warfare techniques for the American army:

“While in Korea, Linebarger masterminded the surrender of thousands of Chinese troops who considered it shameful to give up their arms. He drafted leaflets explaining how the soldiers could surrender by shouting the Chinese words for love, duty, humanity, and virtue - words that happened, when pronounced in that order, to sound like I surrender in English. He considered this act to be the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his life.”

“The Forest of Incandescent Bliss” is a marvellous nickname, almost on a par with the title adopted by ex-President Mbuto of Zaire, who, in the 1970s, dubbed himself “The All-Powerful Warrior Who Because Of Endurance And An Inflexible Will To Win, Will Go From Conquest To Conquest Leaving Fire In His Wake”.

Personality Profile

Are you an urchin or a wastrel? How bravely would you face up to an Antarctic blizzard? Are you kempt or unkempt? Find out the curious byways of your character by taking this special Hooting Yard Personality Profile Test!

1 The boot is on the other foot. Yes or no?

2 Put the following birds in vital order: corncrake, auk, lopwit, bufflehead, shrike.

3 Were you to be beset by uncanny rotating things, would you a) gnash your teeth, b) harangue your priest, or c) take on the appearance of a beetle-browed ingrate?

4 Who said “the carapace of reason has been submerged in a puddle of confusion”?

5 Complete the following series: lascivious, vain, obtuse, preening, splenetic, mud-splattered…..

6 If you had a bed of straw, would you lie in it?

7 Let us assume you have been elected Pope. Would you be a Pius or a Gregory? Justify your answer with reference to incredibly arcane theological disputes best consigned to the dustbin of history.

Send your answers to Doctor Fang at Hooting Yard.

Sci-fi

Rummaging through the latest acquisitions in the secondhand books section of my local charity shop, I noticed that someone had donated a large number of sci-fi paperbacks, including quite a collection of E.E. “Doc” Smith. I'm not much of a science fiction buff myself - I didn't buy any of them - but I was reminded how rare it is for an author to be published under what is basically a nickname. This ought to be encouraged: double initial, abrupt three-letter nickname, surname. So I look forward to new editions of the work of M.M. “Nap” Proust, S.S. “God” Beckett, even M.M. “Git” Amis. Readers are invited - even cajoled - to send in their own suggestions.

While we are on the subject of sci-fi, sort of, it is worth mentioning Hugo Gernsback, the man after whom the Hugo awards were named. Long, long ago, the science fiction critic Dave Langford wrote a piece about my work, Key Reading,* in which at one point he compared me to the bastard offspring of Samuel Beckett and Hugo Gernsback. At the time, I had not read any Gernsback - indeed, I am afraid to say I had never even heard of him: I had to ask Dave for information. The years went by and still I never read anything by the man. Now, at last, I have done so. Towards the end of 2003 I found a copy of Ultimate World. What can I say? Here is a brief extract from chapter one:

It was 2330 when Dubois and his wife went to bed that night. Reclining on their auto bedprop, they were watching the late Color Picture News as it flashed on the large bedroom mirror, when without warning, the dateline, June 24 1996, the picture, sound and news all disappeared together. Simultaneously, a small tornado roared into the bedroom from the open west and south windows. The flimsy nightgown of Duke's wife was neatly ripped off her and disappeared through the west window, leaving her completely nude. Duke, wearing the latest style one-piece abrijama fared better-at least he stayed dressed. He immediately noted that his normal weight of 180 pounds had almost vanished and that the tornado-like wind was not the reason. He and Donny held on desperately to the top of the bed while all sorts of light household objects sailed past them, some of them colliding painfully with their bodies. Donny's array of perfume bottles seemed to explode as the glass stoppers, popping like champagne corks in the rarefied air, sucked the perfume out in colored, miniature comet-tails which disappeared through the window. Duke and Donny had a hard time breathing. Their bodies by now were floating horizontally while they were still frantically clutching the top of the bed. Donny's screams sounded faintly in the tornado's roaring blast, as did Duke's shouted encouragements.

“The house must be in a near-weightless, negative gravitational field,” he yelled. “I can't weigh more than 20 pounds. There are some 20,000 cubic feet of air in the house that normally weighs 1,600 pounds…but now weigh only 150 or 160 pounds. Heavy new outside air is being sucked in with a weight difference of some 1,400 pounds…That creates the tornado, since lighter air is pushed out violently.”

While he spoke, the air suddenly calmed down and both Donny and Duke sank gently, like two falling leaves, exhausted on their large bed. Duke, always the man of science, suddenly jumped from his reclining position, but instantly regretted the move, as his head collided with the ceiling. Ruefully rubbing his forehead, he slowly landed on his feet, then cautiously made his way to the bathroom.

What genius! What melodrama! What technical data!

* NOTE : The links & postal address details in Dave's article are no longer valid.

Stamp Collecting

To commemorate something or other, here is a picture of an extremely rare postage stamp (unfranked).

Lars Talc

Plans are afoot to place the entire text of Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning on this site. Meanwhile, here is an extract.

Elsewhere on the Web

This is diverting - the Brain Alphabet.

Correspondence Received

Sir,: Idly scanning your website today I couldn't help noticing the similarity between the parlour game Costner! (see below, 2nd January), and the ancient East Anglian game of Tull!, which helped me pass many a cold Norwich evening back at the start of the 1980s. They appear to be alike in many respects, except for the fact that Tull! contestants would have no use for such phrases as “Field of Dreams” or “Table for Five”, since the object of the game was to torment one's opponent beyond the point of exhaustion with old Jethro Tull album titles. A typical opening gambit might be, “Heavy Horses”, prompting the reply “Songs from the Wood”. “Minstrel in the Gallery” would very likely follow, then maybe “Thick as a Brick” or “Too Old To Rock n Roll, Too Young To Die”, until, as with Costner!, someone would inevitably play the trump card: in this case, “Aqualung”. Whoever managed to dredge up the most examples of codpiece-wearing, standing-on-one-leg-style flute-infested tomfoolery was declared the winner. Indeed, perhaps the two games are more closely connected than previously imagined, since Ian Anderson of the Tull was renowned for his “interesting” stage gear of medieval tights and pointy boots - an outfit later modelled to no good effect by our Kevin in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

I beg to remain, etc etc,

Max Decharne

Decoy Duck of the Week

The Bufflehead

What's in a Name?

At Hooting Yard we have a pantheon of saints, characters past and present, fictional and factual, to whom we award the Tin Badge of Tantarabim, or even the Button of Beb. Every now and then potted biographies of such figures will appear here. One lost hero to whose cult we have never subscribed, however, is James Dean. It's not so much active dislike as indifference - sorry, James. I mention this only because, apropos of nothing at all, I have always been delighted by the name of the other driver involved in Dean's fatal car crash in 1955 - one DONALD TURNUPSEED, no less. (Turnupseed survived the crash and died peacefully forty years later.)

Grassy Knoll Bulletin

Today I was idly glancing through the Sunday morning television schedules, as I so rarely do, when I noticed something quite intriguing on Channel 5:

6.35 Dappledown Farm. 7.00 The Save-Ums! 7.30 Oswald. 7.45 Make Way For Noddy. 8.00 The Book of Pooh.

Sadly it was already past 7.30 by the time I read this, so I missed the programme, but how interesting that the channel throws in a fifteen-minute documentary about JFK's alleged assassin among all those children's shows. I fully expect in future weeks to see the slot filled with shows such as Wilkes Booth, Princip, Sirhan and Tsafendas.

Our Ancestors

Patrick Delany was an 18th century Irish clergyman, a friend of Jonathan Swift, who - among other writings - produced fifteen issues of a weekly entitled The Humanist in 1757. Among topics addressed in its pages were: the renouncing of docked tails for horses; the lawfulness of eating blood; the procreation of man after the Flood; and the advantages of polygamy.

Was The Humanist a forerunner of Hooting Yard? I think it was! Here is Delany announcing his intentions in the first issue: the paper “would interest itself in all the concerns of human nature … which means not only amusement … but likewise something more than mere amusement … being calculated to convey some little useful and entertaining knowledge of various kinds, historical, classical, natural, moral, and now and then a little religion”.

One other note about Delany: he was highly ambitious and lived extravagantly beyond his means. At his parish outside Dublin, he decided to improve the grounds, and the few acres of land were subjected to an attempt to show how “the obdurate and straight line of the Dutch might he softened into a curve, the terrace melted into a swelling bank, and the walks opened to catch the vicinal country.”

In An Epistle Upon An Epistle (1730), Swift recounted his follies:

But you, forsooth, your all must squander
On that poor spot, call’d Dell-ville, yonder;
And when you've been at vast expenses
In whims, parterres, canals and fences,
Your assets fail, and cash is wanting;
Nor farther buildings, farther planting;
No wonder when you raise and level,
Think this wall low, and that wall bevel.
Here a convenient box you found,
Which you demolish'd to the ground;
Then built, then took up with your arbour,
And set the house to Rupert Barber.

A Drawing of a Man Whose Head Resembles a Fire Extinguisher

Parlour Games

One of the more profound mysteries of modern Hollywood is the career of Kevin Costner. He makes a hugely expensive, brainless film - as actor, director, producer or any combination thereof - which is critically reviled and commercially disastrous, and lo! rather than being cast into the outer darkness, gets to do the same thing again - and again. Truly puzzling.

Which is by way of preamble to one of our favourite parlour games, Costner! Players take it in turns to name Kevin Costner-related films ad nauseam, the winner being the last one to raid their memory-banks successfully. Tactics are crucial - how long should one delay playing a triumphant “Tin Cup!!!”?

Pedagogy

Here at Hooting Yard we are always keen to find novel and exciting ways to enhance the education of little ones. Hence this charming tale, which can be read and enjoyed as a story in itself, or be used as an aide to learning.

Angling News

According to John George Hoffman in 1820, a sure way to catch fish is to “take rose seed and mustard seed, and the foot of a weasel, and hang these in a net, and the fish will certainly collect there”. First, catch your weasel….

One Hundred Years Ago

Archival Rescue Service

Here is another classic from the vaults, By Aerostat to Hooting Yard. The original text has not been tampered with, even though it probably ought to be. Please note that the character Dobson in this story is not related to Dobson the playwright (see below, 22nd December), nor are either of them connected to either of The Two Dobsons, protagonists of that classic British chiller of 1947. The British Film Institute maintains its bizarre refusal to acknowledge the existence of this cinematic masterpiece. That doyen of film historians, Thorold Dickinson, always used to make his excuses and leave whenever anyone attempted to mention it in conversation. My father said that if he had had a penny for every time he had seen Dickinson sweeping off with his greatcoat about his shoulders, he would have been a very rich man.

Today's Recipe

To make Patis, or Cabbage Cream. Take thirty Ale pints of new milke, and set it on the fire in a Kettle till it be scalding hot, stirring it oft to keep it from creaming, then put in forth, into thirty Pans of Earth, as you put it forth, take off the bubbles with a spoon, let it stand till it be cold, then take off the Cream with two such slices as you beat Bisket bread with, but they must be very thin and not too broad, then when the Milk is dropped off the Cream, you must lay it upon a Pye-plate, you must scour the Kettle very clean and heat the Milk again, and so four or five times. In the lay of it, first lay a stalk in the midst of the Plate, let the rest of the Cream be laid upon that sloping, between every laying you must scrape Sugar and sprinkle Rose-water, and if you will, the powder of Musk, and Amber-greece, in the heating of the Milk be carefull of smoak.

The Compleat Cook, Nath. Brook 1658