Light Years, Dark Ages

AD 449 and the staff at the Daily Tablet are covering the Saxon invasion of Britain. Ace reporter Gallo comes back without a story to furious editor Brennius. “Hey!” says Gallo, “I’m still looking for an Angle.” Finally the team get some copy down, but Brennius says it’s far too dull. “What!” gasp the team, “are you suggesting Saxon up the document?” (Click here, to see the document after Saxon up.)

(This was a disastrous day of reporting for the Daily Tablet team, but nothing as bad as their coverage of the Jute invasion: that resulted in all-round sacking.)

The Hawker's Pot Song.

(For what is a website without a song?)

The hawker’s pot is full tonight,
The moon rides high, the tides delay.
As gay as larks, as wild as hawks!
The hawker rides the old high way.


The hawker travels down the lanes
Where farm dogs growl beneath the trees.
He has sharp words, the dogs sharp teeth,
The hawker finds it best to leave.


The hawker walks long paths by night
And blows his nail and blows his horn.
He hawks his wares, but where’s his hawk?
It rides the ancient airs forlorn.


The hawker’s pot is full tonight.
(Cry fol-de-rol for what is not!)
As wild as larks, as gay as hawks!
(All in, all in, the hawker’s pot!)


*For further information concerning the Hawker figure in the folksongs of Dorsetshire and the mysterious identity of his Pot, see the pamphlet by Percival Tredinnick: The Hawker figure in the folksongs of Dorsetshire and the mysterious identity of his Pot (collected in the Transactions of the Worshipful Company of Hawkers and Potters, To me Hip! fol the day, Hip! fol the day, To my Hip! fol the day, fol the digee, oh; Beaminster, 1973)

Goldilocks and the Forebears.


That's level, crossing.

Time for some Smut

Chimney Smut.

One for the connoisseur. Authentic Victorian Chimney Smut:


Those Victorians knew what they were about, eh?

And, if that wasn't enough for you: some Pure Unadulterated Smut.



Good Lord!
(Reasons of decency prevent me from showing you the chimney flashing.)

imho

standing for: in my humble opinion

as in:


In my humble opinion they’re excellent pyramids.

(or: imhotep.)

Show Your Workings

You may have noticed that Hawker’s Pot has been absent for some months. Perhaps you thought we were all on a pleasant holiday, but no! Not us! We were working hard: it was simply our jokes that weren’t working for us. Witness these witless exempla! They just wouldn’t come out.

On their fag-break in the cloisters, the monks stood around chanting ... (No, doesn't work.).... having a chant ... (No.)

The malfunctioning hospital robots were acting like metal patients.

What a change! The care-worn cafe owner walked along the street whistling, as if he didn’t have a cafe in the world.

(NO! The words can’t just look similar on the page. They have to sound similar too!)

The AI robots were suffering from metal fatigue.

(No, still doesn’t work.)

Those overweight stagehands, those sconeshifters!

Tin Girl ...

(What of her?)

... Tin Girl had trouble fighting her enemies on her own, but Pewter Boy proved a useful alloy.

(Nearly ...)

The conifers at the bottom of the garden miss my Love when she is gone. They grieve and drop their leaves. But my Love will not be gone for long. They pine needlesly.

(Oh dear, we have worked on this joke for many, many years, but now we have to face facts: I don’t think it is ever going to work out.)

Crashaw's Diary (part viii)

Wednesday, 1st March
Old Mrs Price told me an amusing story today. Every night for the last forty years Price has woken her in the night to tell her something that struck him as funny. It never was. Last night Price had woken her and told her something that actually was funny and they had both roared with laughter. However, when she told me, she could not remember for the life of her what it was.

High Jinks, Low Jokes

A man of Low Church leanings was visiting Bath in the 1850s and was distressed to see how many of the churches there had gone over to ritualistic practices. Here were altars decked with coloured cloths, where priests officiated in ornate vestments, swinging censers and chanting. In some churches there were even confessional boxes. Finally the man retired to his lodging where, in contrast, he found everything to his liking. There were upright chairs and simple furnishing and, best of all, no dried flower petals in little baskets. “I trust you find everything to your satisfaction?” his landlady asked. “No pot-pourri!” he beamed.

What I like best about the United States of America

... is the way they look like they were drawn by a schoolchild for a homework project.

1. Really enjoying this project. Putting in a lot of detail.

2. This is taking ages.

3. I think I'll use my ruler:
4. That’s better. A few last squiggly bits and ...Finished! Can I go out now?

The Twelfth Dog of Christmas

The season for supernatural tales is not yet over at Hawker’s Pot. Last night, we drew our chairs up to the fire and the Reverend Hawker told us one of the most terrifying yet:

“It was on a winter’s night a few years ago. I was walking back from a lonely cottage to whose poor inmate I had been offering words of spiritual encouragement, and was profiting from a high full moon to walk across the moors. Suddenly, I found my way barred! In the moonlit strip of the track, hackles raised, growling vehemently, a mere few feet away from me, stood a dog! Shadowy its form was, certainly, horrible and uncanny, but I recognised the creature. It was none other than the dog of Farmer Hackpen, an old acquaintance of mine. And yet it could not be! For Farmer Hackpen lived twenty miles hence, and I had passed through his farmyard that very morning and seen the dog there! Thinking fast, I bent down, picked up a stick and threw it -- threw it with all my might! The dog bounded after it, of course, yelping and yipping as it careered headlong over the uneven moorland. And so I went quickly on my way.

“How did I know to throw a stick? you ask.

“Because I had recognised it was a fetch, of course.

“These apparitions bode ill, as I’m sure you know, and, seen in the evening, presage the death of the one whose form they take. It came as no surprise, therefore, when I saw Farmer Hackpen two days later and he told me his dog was dead. But worse was to come. The dog would not lie in its grave! The night it was buried, its re-animated corpse scratched its way out of its grave and spent the hours of darkness sniffing and scratching and howling around the farm house. “The wife an’ me were terrible afeared,” the farmer said. “‘She said to me, you should’n’t never have done shot that ol’ dog, no matter how bad ‘e was.” Taking spades and mattocks, the farmer and I dug a far deeper grave and laid the dog in it. After we had tamped the earth down solidly over the corpse, I performed a brief ceremony, and then showed the farmer the way to leave the grave of a dog to ensure that it remained buried. Walking backwards, we took five steps, stopped, commanded ‘Stay!’; took another five steps backwards, stopped, said ‘Stay!’; continued so, saying ‘Stay!’ at every five paces, backwards all the way to the farmhouse, which haven reached, we stepped inside and slammed the door.

“‘And will that do it?’ asked the farmer. ‘‘E never would lie still, ol’ Shambles.’
“I assured him that the ceremony would ensure that even the most dogged spirit, or spirited dog, would not return. ‘But why did you shoot him?’ I asked.
“‘‘E started worrying sheep, that’s why,’ the farmer said.
“‘He certainly worried me,’ I replied.”