INSTRUCTIONS FOR MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE

I. Please remain seated during the more exciting moments.

II. If for any reason you need to mop your brow, use a dainty napkin.

III. Spillages must be paid for in coinage of the realm.

IV. When the Darning-Needle of Destiny is unveiled, cower.

V. Unseemly pangs may be tempered by moral balance.

VI. Applause should be rendered with unbridled fanaticism.

VII. Drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away (Isaiah, 36 : 16,17)

• The Wooden Lake
• Speaking of Bird Scarifiers…
• Bernard Levin’s Guide to the Beat Combos of the Sixties
• Instructions
• Coverdale, Tyndale, King James
• The Necessity of Puddings
• The Necessity of Puddings: A Postscript

This episode was recorded on the 24th of November 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase

Obviously I am going to have to ascertain the precise nature of the Poultry Guidance Bureau’s business before I can make a proper fist of the Art Squad. It might be, for example, that our art will consist simply of beautifully-painted directional pointing devices, designed to appeal to the optic nerves of poultry, in which case I will just need to gather about me a bunch of sign-painters. On the other hand, we may need a team of actors to facilitate role-playing exercises for traumatised hens as part of the counselling service. Or, if the Bureau is indeed mainly for human benefit, then an oompah band playing stirring anthems might be more appropriate, although having just written that I can’t think why.

• Two Dinners
• In Which Mr. key Contemplates Moving To North Korea
• Art Squad
• Letter from Mr. Nick Wilsdon Relating to Art Squad Goings On
• Guns Before Butter
• Camp Dabbler

This episode was recorded on the 20th of October 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase

When the rest of the family returns from the pantry, each in turn must use skill, judgement, and knowledge of ship construction to declare whether the parlour is now a poop deck or an orlop deck. Those who decide correctly are treated to a “feast at the captain’s table”, that is, they are each allowed to go back to the pantry and choose a snack from among the snack items on the pantry shelves. Those who decide incorrectly are “tossed into the sea”, that is, they must clamber out of the open window and wait shivering in the garden until the next round.

• Advice Regarding Eggs
• A Boaty Picnic
• The Fatal Flaw in the Great Escape
• Boobabble
• Bløtzmann Nor Joost Van Donglebraacke
• Poop Or Orlop?
• Nature Notes
• For Want of Fitting Audience

This episode was recorded on the 17th of November 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase

Against this, one could argue two things. If the cage was constructed from flimsy materials, it might be that the burgeoning ostrich would simply cause the birdcage to fall to bits around it as it expanded in size from budgerigar or canary to full ostrichdom. Or, bear in mind that Blakeston specifically describes an ostrich of fire. Would not the enflamed and blazing bird burn the cage to cinders as it underwent its transformation?

• Dead Or Out Of England
• Two Sparrows
• Levin On Lennon (And Ono)
• Charging Ostrich of Fire
• Vereecke Revisited
• Bo’sun’s Wig
• Stanley Baldwin Quote.

This episode was recorded on the 10th of November 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase.

On a stormy March day precisely one year after the historic picnic, the Viper Pit of Gaar was officially renamed the Bottomless Viper Pit of Gaar at a special pitside ceremony. The mayor, the beadle, the Grand Vizier, the honest burghers and a gaggle of peasant folk gathered for speeches, the cutting of ribbons, the flying of banners, the relentless pounding of drums, the parping of tootlers, and chanting, chanting, chanting, and other celebratory what have you, including the tossing into the Bottomless Viper Pit of several vipers, and a picnic, with sausages and beakers of invigorating tonic.

• Savile Dabble
• The Bottomless Viper Pit of Gaar.
• The Art of Tagging
• The Breadcrumbs Man
• Societies

This episode was recorded on the 3rd November 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke and Brute Beauty And Valour And Act Oh Air Pride Plume Here Buckle! are available for purchase.

Yes, sad to say there was a time when I was beset by anxiety dreams, in which I was poised, with a sharp pair of scissors, to cut out “guns” and its definition from a brand new dictionary, the pot of mucilage and a spatula beside the dictionary on the desk, and my hand trembled and I could not make the snip. I had this dream, or nightmare, over and over again for a number of years. In a more alarming variant, I dreamed that I managed to cut out the “guns” entry, but then mislaid it, or dropped it into a wastepaper bin, or it was consumed by flames and I had but a pile of ash, which I then painstakingly tried to paste, atom by atom, into the dictionary, with mucilage, and I would wake up shrieking.

Two Dinners

In Which Mr. Key Contemplates Moving To North Korea

Art Squad 

Guns Before Butter 

Camp Dabbler

Miss Goosebeak seems not to have considered what became of Pontius Pilate’s “ectoplasmic spirit essence” between the governor of Judaea’s death circa 37 AD and Noddy’s first appearance almost two thousand years later in 1949 AD. Nor did she ever address the inconvenient fact that the wooden boy is a fictional character. Challenged on such matters in radio interviews, her usual tactic was to flail her arms in a melodramatic gesture, thus deliberately knocking over her complimentary cup of tea, spilling the boiling hot beverage into the tweedy lap of her interviewer. After the subsequent kerfuffle she would babble about the tea leaves now visible at the bottom of the cup, explaining how their disposition revealed other mystic insights which might become the subject of another dirge of excruciating length, although so far as is known she never published anything else.

• The Distance Between the Aerodrome and the Zoo
• Lullaby
• Tove Jansson and Her Squirrel
• Fifties Finnish Fairground Fun
• Pie Shop Deep Space Six
• Housekeeping Business Announcements
• Weep, Pontius, For Thou Art Become Noddy
• Camp Dabbler
• Galvanism Throughly Explained

This episode was recorded on the 13th October 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

N.B.  As an episode of “Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightening” is missing from the audio archive it has been decided, by the Soup Committee members no less, to carry on regardless with the next show that isn’t  ”Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightening” hoping that, given the length of the intervening period since the last podcast, no one will notice.

In those days, you see, we were taught such piffle as reading and writing and arithmetic and Latin and history, so my not having a head sent the teachers into a kerfuffle. I’m told there was some kind of emergency meeting in the staffroom – a fug of pipe-smoke then, of course – and I was put in isolation in the sickroom while they worked out what to do. How much more enlightened would things be today! Head or no head, I am sure there would be no attempt to exclude me from the diversity and self-esteem lessons. Indeed, my headless presence would be seen as a benefit, both to myself and to my fellow pupils, and to the teachers themselves. In fact, I would probably get a prize, just for not having a head. On the rare occasions prizes were dished out in those far off days, they were invariably book tokens, and I would certainly not have got one for not having a head. Now, I could expect something useful like a new app for my iPap, or a voucher for Pizza Kabin.

Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning was published in an edition of twenty-five copies in 1994, under the Hooting Yard Press imprint and – save for a brief, rewritten, extract posted  here some years ago – has never again seen the light of day. It was the last piece of prose I completed before my descent into the maelstrom, or the Wilderness Years, or whatever one wants to call that period of ruination from which I eventually emerged with the launch of the Hooting Yard website in 2003.

F. Key.

Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning Pt. IV

This episode was recorded on the 08th September 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

F. Key.

•  Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning Pt. III

This episode was recorded on the 01st September 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning was published in an edition of twenty-five copies in 1994, under the Hooting Yard Press imprint and – save for a brief, rewritten, extract posted  here some years ago – has never again seen the light of day. It was the last piece of prose I completed before my descent into the maelstrom, or the Wilderness Years, or whatever one wants to call that period of ruination from which I eventually emerged with the launch of the Hooting Yard website in 2003.

F. Key.

•  Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning Pt. II

This episode was recorded on the 25th August 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning was published in an edition of twenty-five copies in 1994, under the Hooting Yard Press imprint and – save for a brief, rewritten, extract posted  here some years ago – has never again seen the light of day. It was the last piece of prose I completed before my descent into the maelstrom, or the Wilderness Years, or whatever one wants to call that period of ruination from which I eventually emerged with the launch of the Hooting Yard website in 2003.

jespák malý, Zwergstrandläufer, Dværgryle, Correlimos Menudo, pikkusirri, Bécasseau minute, Veimiltíta, Gambecchio comune, nishitounen, Kleine Strandloper, Dvergsnipe, biegus malutki, Pilrito-pequeno, Combatente, pobrežník malý, Småsnäppa, Mazaricu Nanu, S?rç?vari qumluq cüllütü, Ar sourouc’han bihan, Corriol menut, Redonell, Territ menut, Pibydd bach, Pibydd lleiaf, Premavera, malgranda kalidro, Playerito menudo, Väikerisla, väikerüdi, Txirri txikia, Dvørggrælingur, Gobadáinín Beag, Looyran beg, Žalar ciganin, Apró partfutó, Chnchghuk Kttsar, Youroppa-tounen, Stynt munys, Calidris minuta, Ereunetes minutus, Erolia minuta, Mažasis b?gikas, Trul?tis, Rivarel nanin, Kulik-vorobey, Uhcacovzoš, mali prodnik, Gjelaci i vogël, blataric patuljak, Tsititsiti-nyenyane, Chokowe Mdogo, Küçük kumku?u, D? nh?, or R? nh?.

• The Little Stint
• The Care And Feeding Of Pigtapes
• William Tell: Third Statement Of Particulars
• The Cruel Sea

This episode was recorded on the 11th August 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

Next, acquire a large glob of marzipan. It should be at least the size, if not the shape, of an average adult wolf. If you are not sure what that is, make study of wolves, for example by combing through reference books, preferably illustrated, by watching informative documentary films at the local fleapit, or by stalking the heaths and moors at dead of night. Remember that in moonlight it can be difficult to judge distance, so get as close to any pack of heath or moorland wolves as you possibly can. Wear dark clothing and night-vision goggles, if they are available in your neck of the woods.

• Marzipan Wolf
• Athlete Wrestling With A Python
• Dick Van Dabbler

This episode was recorded on the 4th August 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

The newspaper cuttings are convincing forgeries, but forgeries nevertheless. By dint of the pincer-like precision of my research, if I mean pincer-like, and I think I do, I can reveal exclusively that the deliberate counterfeiting of details of Urgh the howler monkey’s biography served a malign purpose, but fortunately not one with cataclysmic world-juddering implications. Indeed, if the fiendish scheme had come to fruition, it would have had an effect only within the immediate vicinity of the information centre, and the effect itself, hideously awful as it would be, would have dissipated within a day or so. It makes one wonder why some weedy-brained ne’er-do-wells will go to such lengths, it really does. But perhaps that goes some way to account for the weediness of their brains.

The Missing Murdoch

Dobson And The Pit

Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke

Ambrose And Ploppo

Find The Bailing Bucket

Urgh

This episode was recorded on the 28th July 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

When faced with such quandaries I have stalked off into the deep dense dark woods of Woohoohoodiwoo and sought the counsel of the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman. That freakish crone is a dab hand in the arts of recovered memory syndrome, and more than once she has brought bubbling to the surface of my cranium material which might otherwise have remained forever obscure and buried. On this occasion, however, my people learned from her people that the Woohoohoodiwoo Woman had gone on her holidays, to some benighted and dilapidated seaside resort, to suck sticks of rock and commune with seagulls in bird-language from the balcony of her seashore chalet. It came as something of a surprise to me to learn that the eldritch hag took holidays, like normal people do, and as I am ill-equipped to deal with surprises of any nature, I took to my bed for forty-eight hours, tossing and turning and whimpering weakly, as illusory phantasms gambolled and frolicked across the ceiling of my boudoir

Depressed Horse Never Never Knew Saucepans

Further Science Book 20 (extract): World Proverbs

Unhinged By Cream Crackers

This episode was recorded on the 14th July 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

I would sing to you of Tarleton, of the gleets, of the balcony, if I could. If I could sing I would. But how can I sing, mouth crammed with pebbles, penned in a pound, atop the tor? And what an irony that it was Tarleton who bustled me hence, arms flapping, half blinding me with the glint of his shiny shiny epaulettes? I would have sung of him surely, and without smirking. Cars passed below as we climbed the tor. I would have waved to them, to their drivers, for help, if I thought help would come. My mind was a chaos. The higher we climbed, the tinier the cars appeared, until they seemed like motes of dust. They put the pound at the top of the tor to discourage attempts to escape. As further discouragement, the fence was electrified. Tarleton had keys to the panel upon which a lever or knobs or whatever could be pulled or depressed or whatever to cut off the circuit, temporarily, to allow the gate to be opened. He crammed my mouth with pebbles before he pushed me into the pound. I thought of the gleets, and of Krakatoa.

Further Science Book 20 Extract: Local Recipe Map

Tarleton

Further Science Book 20 Extract: British Psychology

10,000 Nails In The Coffin Of Imperialism

Farmers In The Coalition

Further Science Book 20 Extract: Dog Psychology

Further Science Book 20 Extract: World Monkeys

Stubbings

This episode was recorded on the 7th July 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

When first this desire consumed me, I did not bother myself with such niceties. I might be at an elegant and sophisticated cocktail party, and I would take someone aside, steer them to a corner where we would not be overheard, and say:

“Can I have your head? I want to take it across the sea, and drop it like an apple of discord.”

There would then follow a discussion in the course of which the familiar objections, of criminal intent and physical harm, would be raised. I blustered my way through these by wearing a fixed grin and waving my arms a lot, but the difficulties would not go away.

The Lobster’s Tune (Conclusion)

Hudson’s Head

Hudson’s Head Revisited

Bonkers Alibis

Variation On A Theme Of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Do The Dabble

This episode was recorded on the 30th June 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Stories and Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

Like Spandau Ballet, I bought a ticket to the world. I wish I had paid more attention at the counter, however, because there was a misprint – I hesitate to say whether it was accidental or deliberate – and what I had actually bought was a ticket to the wold. Now, I am as much an aficionado of ranges of hills consisting of open country overlying a base of limestone or chalk as the next man, but my ticket did not specify which wold I could gain admittance to. I assumed it would be a wold within the Lincolnshire Wolds or the Yorkshire Wolds or the Cotswolds, but could narrow it down no further. I suppose I could have gone back to the kiosk where I bought the ticket, but frankly the person behind the counter frightened the wits out of me. Without going into details, just imagine a combination of Rolf Harris, Douglas Bader, and Beelzebub, and you will have some idea why I hadn’t stopped shuddering for a week.

Bashed On The Bonce With A Sap By A Copper

Eelworm In Phlox, Etc

A Ticket

A Note On Bags

The Boot Is On The Other Foot

The Lobsters Tune

This episode was recorded on the 23rd June 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

I thought I was getting on quite well, and was certainly showing no signs of delirium or derangement or discontent. Then I happened to mention the business to a colleague, who suggested that it was perhaps the contents of the inner glove compartment, the stuff I had crammed into it, with which I needed to get in touch. This was a revelation which necessitated a further round of metal tapping machine messages. From the responses I received I was able to draw up a lengthy list of items. Granted, this was a list of the things my car-owning acquaintances kept in their actual glove compartments, rather than the contents of my own inner one, but it gave me something to work with. And work I did, my mental cogs whirring away, greased and thrumming.

• Two Monks Took The Blood of a Duck (revisited).
• Skew, Wiff
• Bird Binder
• My Inner Glove Compartment
• Am I So Poised?
• Troilus and Cressida Quotation

This episode was recorded on the 16th June 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

There was no sign of the twinkly-eyed ancient, but I saw the quantity surveyor, heading home from work. I accosted him, and told him I had got my lost rag back. I thought he would be pleased, but his eyes filled with tears, and he said:

“What does it profit a man, that he regains his rag but knows not the measure of the quantities he has surveyed?”

And he swept past me, hugging his briefcase to his chest, and trudged away into the salt and sand-strewn streets as night came crashing down.

• (Two Broken)
• I Lost My Rag
• The Forty Thieves
• Two Monks Took The Blood Of A Duck

This episode was recorded on the 9th June 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

No longer at a loose end, I tracked down, within my quarters, a pot and some soil. The soil was dry, so I added, from a spigot, a spot of water to endamp it, and I placed the pot of soil on a shelf. Then I pressed the bud into it, to reverse iceberg depth. That is, one-eighth of the bud was submerged in the soil while seven-eighths remained visible. Now I would wait for it to grow. Reasoning that it might be intimidated by the glint in my eye if I peered at it for hours upon end, I took off my jacket and hung it upon its hallway hook and went upstairs to bed, where I soon enough fell into a deep sleep, troubled only by a couple of occasions, in the depth of night, when I woke suddenly, barking and howling.

Hop With Tongs

The King’s Speech

The Worm In The Bud

The Worm In The Bud: Notes For Your Reading Group

Those Reading Groups

Useless Phrases.

This episode was recorded on the 2nd June 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

I am fairly sure that Dobson was at one time a member of his local Moorhen Appreciation Society. The out of print pamphleteer joined it for reasons we can only guess at, for as we know the space in the human brain devoted to ornithological matters was in Dobson’s case either utterly vacant or so clogged up the synapses misfired. He was forced to resign his membership when it became clear that he could not tell the difference between a moorhen and a heron, and embroiled the Society in legal entanglements in the bird courts. His pamphlet Well, They Both Have Beaks And Feathers, For Christ’s Sake! (out of print) recounts the whole sorry saga, though it is quite an exasperating read for those of us who are more engaged with the avian world than Dobson was.

• Quiz Time At The Dabbler
• Service Pack 6
• The Moorhen Appreciation Society
• Pang Hill Plop Pit
• The Glass Man
• Git On A Bough

This episode was recorded on the 19th May 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

I was almost blind with tears, but that did not stop me thrusting the point of my poniard through the giant’s gigantic heart. Its foul impure giant’s blood gushed, splattering me from head to toe. It crashed to earth, writhed, and perished. I was in no fit state to sort out my business at the viaduct. Sheathing my bloody poniard, I wended my way home, past the spinney and the duckpond. When I had hosed the giant’s blood off my coat and my cardigan and my shirt and my scarf and my trousers and my underpants and my socks and my shoes and my Homburg, I sat in the bath for an hour. Then I took five fresh leeches out of the leecharium and affixed them one by one to my torso. The first four I named Fee and Fi and Fo and Fum. The fifth, I decided, would remain nameless, like the nameless horror in the eerie barn at Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard. Thus I paid tribute to my lost leeches, my lost blood.

Anniversary

Fee Fi Fo Fum

Q & A: Lothar Preen

P.S.

P.P.S.

Swamp Demons

This episode was recorded on the 21st April 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase

News just in that weedy versifier Dennis Beerpint has been appointed Poet In Residence at Beppo Lamont’s Travelling Big Top Circus. Chief among his duties is to write a life in verse of the circus strongman, Lars Tax, also known as The Mighty Lars. So strong is Mr Tax that he has been known to hoist o’er his head a container lorry cram-packed with smithys’ anvils while pulling a concert hall across a field with his teeth. For the duration of his residency, our fey poet has been billeted in Lars Tax’s caravan, a flimsy construction of balsa wood and straw regularly subject to ruinous damage when the strongman engages in such mundane activities as yawning or combing his hair. By more or less imprisoning him with his subject, it is hoped that Beerpint will dash off a vivid “Life” fairly quickly, after which he can concentrate on other Big Top topics, including clowns and bears and trapeze artists and lions.

• Notes and Queries
• Libyan Proverbs
• The Pillow Pamphlets
• Lars Tax, The Circus Strongman
• Ornithological Dabbling

This episode was recorded on the 7th April 2011. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the six publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars, Befuddled By Cormorants , Inpugned By A Peasant And Other Storiesand Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke are available for purchase