The Sniffer - Issue No. Five

8/9/2019 The Sniffer - Issue No. Five

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The

nifferAPERIODICAL FOXYCOMPENDIUM

ISSUE NO.FIVE17JUNE 2010

FROM THE SNOUT

We are now a quarter of the way through

Cockys urban odyssey and the faint tremor

of dread we felt at the end of Fit the First

has now reverberated off some rocky crust

deep in the bowels of the earth and returned

to us as a full-blown quake. They are back.

First Corvin, a ghastly black shark-finflicking back and forth through a sea of

gore. And then his brother Randall, the

diabolical architect of things we dont yet

know or understand. This reappearance feels

uncomfortably significant.

So we are standing at a shiny black signpost

that has one arm and two hands, both of

which point in the same direction. But when

we look ahead at where the hands point we

see nothing but thick fog. We know there is

a road ahead and we know it will be

treacherous. But we dont know how. And, if

youre like me, you dont want to know how.

A looming vagueness is a pleasurable pain.

Im not in the business of predicting what

the bones of this beastly fable will look like

as Parker peels back the skin and, with the

precision and maniacal glee of a pilled-up

pathologist, slices out the flesh. Ill let his

cadaverous demonstration take its course. I

will, however, draw your attention to an

undercurrent of the ballad. This

undercurrent spent the first few fits as an

infant trickle and has now grown into a

youthful gush. A gush that needs acknowl-

edging.

Parker is, like me, a heavy metal veteran.

He laps up metal in many of its different

forms: thrash, drone, power, speed, death,

black, stoner, doom. He listens to it as he

ghost-writes Cockys memoir. Its pull has

been there implicitly in the work from its

beginning. Take just one album that has

been spinning constantly on the Parker

deck, the majestically loud and dark debut by doom-sludge duo Eagle Twin. The

Unkindness of Crowsrecasts the animal po-

etry of Ted Hughes against a backdrop of

dour, savage riffing and attenuated, guttural

moans. As soon as we hear it, we mark out

Eagle Twin as a vital Parker muse.

Ex-Iceburn maestro, Gentry Densley, is the


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primitive ringmaster here. With

groaning gargles from his bearded maw he

tells us of the beasts and paints their

likenesses with granite slabs from his guitar.

These dense strata of verse and tone inspire

Parker and give his lungs the wind tobreathe such vivid life into his Cocky cast.

A looming vagueness is apleasurable pain

Now, as the autumn of this episodic process

becomes winter, the debt to metal becomes

explicit. Fit the Fifth is called Rat Salad.

Not only does this describe the rodent mash

on which the fit converges; it is also the

name of an instrumental on Black SabbathsParanoid. The track is dark and jaunty like

the rat and when the drums go solo it feels

like a fury of furry bludgeoning. With this

brief wink at Ozzys boys, Parker seems to be

saying that riffs and rolls, while not his

stock in trade, are a nice little earner on the

side.

Now the shiny steel has been exposed.

Hereafter it will stay on show. Expect more

metal in The Sniffer. And if thats not your

cup of tea or aftershave, it will be.

OVE R A PINT The author ofThe Ballad of Cocky the Fox

and the editor of The Sniffer are known to

enjoy a chinwag over a pint. In each edition,

The Sniffer eavesdrops on their beery

blathering and presents a randomly chosen

chunk of it to the readership.The Editor: I know you own a catThe Author: Yes. Kenmore the cat.The Editor: Right. Kenmore the cat. Andyet you portrayed French Edward as a bit of

an annoying ponce. At least, thats how I saw

it. And you killed him off so soon after

introducing him.

The Author: Ha!The Editor: On the other hand, you dontown a dog. And yet I see Otto as this

immaculately dressed, fearsome hard nut.

Like an East End bad boy in the Dave

Courtney mould.

The Author: Hmm. Maybe. Otto is posh,though.The Editor: Thats true. Anyway, thereseems to be this cano-feline discrepancybetween life and art. Any thoughts on where

it might have come from? Why do you think

you killed off Edward?

The Author: Well, I definitely dont wantto see my cat eaten by rodents. I love my cat.

It was actually Joshs idea to do away with

Edward.

The Editor: Wow. OK. So Josh doesntlike your cat, then?

The Author: Right. Hes not into cats atall. Hes never had one in his life, I dont

think. Hes very much a dog man. Anyway, I

was talking through some ideas and I kept

going on about how I envisaged French

Edwards owner calling for him. And Josh

said: Something about that makes me think

that Edward is dead. The plaintive, loving


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call. Meanwhile, his lifeless body is just

lying somewhere. There was this odd spar-

kle in his eyes as he said it. And then he

chuckled.

The Editor: What a sick bastard.The Author: Yeah.[The Author and The Editor both takelong, winsome sips of their pints.]

THE INFOXICATORThe Infoxicator is a tribute to our foxy

protagonists occasional tendency to get off

his tits on aftershave and glue. In each in-

stallment, a Cocky-related drink or pub is

put under the alcoscope with the result thatyou are gradually furnished with a complete

compendium of boozy dos and donts, as

filtered through a vulpine sieve. In this

instance, you are beckoned into the corner of

a dark speakeasy by a bearded hunchback

with a severe squint, and invited to consider

a foreboding imperial stout called Ravens

Eye.

I wish there were a reliable correlation

between the attractiveness of a label on a

bottle of beer and the quality of the beer

therein. When I first made the switch from

cold, fizzy urine (Fosters, Kronenbourg,

Carling) to proper beer (ale, porter, stout), it

was because I had moved into a rural area

where to order a pint of lager in a pub was

tantamount to loudly insulting the barmans

dead grandmother. So I immediately learned

to turn my attention away from the black,

plastic dribble-taps of piss and towards the

curvaceous, frothy flavour-pumps. Similarly,in supermarkets I began to walk past the

stacks of special-offer Dutch hooligan fizz

and made straight for the shelves of

individual dark brown bottles of ale without

having any idea what I was looking for. And

I hit the jackpot straightaway. Based on

their London-ness and their noble labelling,

I plumped for a Youngs Special and a Lon-

don Pride. They remain, all these years

later, at the very top of my shopping list.

But as I spread my bibational wings over the

years, I soon realized that a label tells you

bugger all about what you might end up with

once you crack open a bottle. Take Hobgob-

lin, Fiddlers Elbow or any of the other

Wychwood Brewery beers. Appearance:

stupid! They dont look like bottles of serious

beer; they look like Terry Pratchett books.

And, yet, what a delightful array of nectars

the Wychwood brewmaster serves up.

Conversely, have a gander at Bombardier.

Bold, solid colours, an elegant typeface and

some stirringly English imagery. Quite the

cock-tease for a patriotic alehead. But the

gear inside? Crikey. What an affront to my

tastebuds; the poor little sods nearly drowned

in a tarry mess of unidentifiable chemicals

and dirty dishwater.

So what does the preceding biographical

booze cruise have to do with Ravens Eye? It

explains why I so desperately wanted to like

this California-brewed imperial stout: the

label is fucking fantastic. There he is, the


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dark and angry red-eyed monster, not

staring at you but aware of you. And his

tribe has been overseeing that mountain for

decades, or so the calligraphic font would

have us believe. A few glugs of this stuff, we

hope, will transport us into a world of gothicportent and horrifying cosmic revelation.

Reacting so effusively, I was almost tempted

to write how lovely the stuff tasted without

even opening the bottle. And then I glossed

over my chequered beer history. I

remembered all the times Id been burned. A

lovely label, yes, but what about the wallop

inside?

I poured half the Ravens Eye into a glass

and took a look. Barely any head, but thats

what you come to expect with bottled

imperial stouts. Just a low-profile crown of

bubbles. But hang on a moment. Why in

Arthur Guinnesss name do the bubbles look

green? Did this glass have Fairy Liquid in it

before the pour? Ominous, but not in a cool,

evocative, ravenish way. Next up, I stuck my

giant nozzle down into the glass and took a

lungful. The second warning sign: nothing. I

took another sniff and got the barest trace of

chocolate. I thought back to a fairly recent

encounter with Old Rasputin Russian

Imperial Stout. Stick your nose in for a sniff

and you get punched with a fistful of

chocolate, coffee and malt. And then the

final damnation: . Thats not atypographical error. Thats a deliberate inch

of blank space. Its the easiest way to convey

how insipid and nothingy the Ravens Eye

tasted. Take a pinch of cocoa powder and

sprinkle it into a pint of club soda. Have a

glug. Now were all in the same boat. On a

more positive note, there was a weighty kick

lurking behind the initial void that warmed

the chest. But its an imperial stout, not a

brandy. It should be flying the imperial flag

of strong flavour, first and foremost, notwarming up a pneumonic old fart in a

London gentlemens club.

In summary, then, the Ravens Eye should

be avoided. It offers nothing to the nose or

the tongue. And it looks like the result of

squirting dish soap into the turd-water of a

blocked and twice-flushed bog. But it does

work well as an empty bottle. So dont bother

drinking it. Just buy one, pour out the

contents and then keep the bottle on a shelf

in your study. It will look great next to that

Poe first edition.

FOX FACT If you happen to overhear a conversation in

which one of the speakers utters the phrase

Fox and Sac, you might be inclined to

assume he is talking about an English pub

whose name celebrates the wonderful

resilience of the vulpine testicular appara-tus. But you would probably be wrong in this

assumption. The Fox and the Sac (or the

Meskwaki and the Sauk as they are more

properly known) are two distinct tribes of

Native Americans who were lumped together

by the United States government in the

1830s, uprooted from their land and then


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dumped on a reservation in the middle of

nowhere (Kansas).

THE COCKY COMPANION

Each edition of The Sniffer features anextract from The Cocky Companion, a Ro-

setta Stone for decoding the less obvious

elements of Cocky's London vernacular. This

extract washes out the foul mouth ofFit the

Fifth with soap and leaves a scum of sleep,

shit, tear-ups and traffic around the rim of

the bathroom sink.

BLOODY HEL L Just as there areconjectures in mathematics that elude

proof by even the sharpest Cambridgeminds, so there are phenomena in

linguistics that defy, and will continue to

defy, explanation by even the most

talented of polyglots. To wit: Why does it

sound so wrong when an American utters

the profoundly British ejaculation

bloody hell? Is it that the American

renders the oo too roundly and the d

without a scintilla of sibilance? Perhaps.

So distressing to the English ear is this

insipid American facsimile, that manyBritons have fled the burning Troy of

bloody hell and settled in the embryonic

Rome of shitting hell.

TEA R-UP Hyphens are everything. In thiscase, the humbly horizontal connector

tells us that were dealing with fighting

and not crying (although the fighting

might lead to crying if it involves the

testicles). Should you ever find yourself

in a tear-up, dont stand around wonder-ing when the tearing happens and what

gets torn. Just kick your fellow tearer in

the bollocks.

SOD IT There are no two syllables that better capture the laissez-faire defeatism

and resignation of an island nation of

post-imperialist discontents than sod it.

Germany vs Argentina in the final? Sod

it. Im going fishing. Shes not

interested? Sod it. Give us another Stella,

Gary. Nuclear catastrophe? Sod it. Got

any peanuts?

CACK When an American gentlemanannounces to an English gentleman over

the telephone that he is wearing khaki

pants, the English gentleman stifles a

guffaw. For he has heard cacky and he

has taken pants to mean underpants.

Ha! Not only has this American oddball

gone and shat himself, but hes actually

tellingme about it!

NORTH C IRCULAR The best description ofthe North Circular, that miserable semi-

circle of solid traffic that was strangling

London when the M25 was still a sketch

on the back of a town planners envelope,

is actually a wordless description. Its a

piece of music by the East London elec-

tronic experimenter, Squarepusher.

Called simply North Circular, this six-

minute agglomeration of beats, bleeps and

analog farts is monotonous, claustropho-


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bic, unsettling and occasionally scary.

Most appropriately, it lasts three times as

long as it should.

KIP On Boxing Day of 1965, Ronnie andReggie Kray sit down opposite Eddie andCharlie Richardson in the upstairs

function room of a Soho boozer for the 5th

Annual East London vs South London

Gentleman Gangster Scrabble

Competition. During the third game,

Ronnie whispers to Reggie, receives a nod

in response, and then lays down the word

KIP on a triple-word square. The word

doesnt yet exist and Ronnie knows this.

As he places the tiles on the board, he

stares straight into the Richardsons facesand awaits the inevitable. KIP? What

the fuck does KIP mean? Are you taking

fucking liberties? Ronnie doesnt blink.

A moment or two of silence. It means

Another pause. His eyes dart around and

let the cat out of the bag. It means

sleep. On the other side of the table,

brows furrow and lips curl. Fuck off it

does. Charlie Richardson flings the

board up in the air and, under a

hailstorm of plastic letters, it all kicksoff. A brawling mess of brother bosses

and their sidekicks. The ruckus rumbles

down the pub stairs and out into the

street. There is blood and shouting and

fleeing. But eventually, Greek Street

settles down again and the hiding

bystanders rear their heads. Before the

night is out, London begins

commemorating this electrifying brains-

and-brawn showdown by replacing all

talk of sleep with that of kip.

GET FOXEDIn the last Get Foxed, you were invited to

separate four Cocky characters who had

become fused in the following carnal tangle:

A WREN ASTRADDLE LION RUMP

Having thrown a bucket of cold water on

this writhing mess, you can now make out

four distinct and drenched beastlinesses:

EDWARDMINSTREL

NORA

PAUL

In the latest installment of Get Foxed, we

are perched above a table upon which

Randall and Corvin, the thuggish raven

brothers, are playing that game so beloved of

illiterate gangsters, Scrabble. So far, all the

words laid down happen to be entries that

have featured in The Cocky Companion. It is

now Corvins turn and he is keen to put down

a real ripsnorter. The board and Corvins

rack are shown below. Whats the maximum

score he can achieve in this turn?

Note: All words should be listed in the offi-

cial Scrabble Tournament Word List

(TWL).


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Again, the only prize is a cup of your own

smugness. The answers will be published in

the next edition of The Sniffer. And now I

bid you Get Foxed.

BALLAD OF A HARD FOX(adapted from Ballad Of A Hard Man byScott Gorham, performed by Thin Lizzy)

I've been mixed up, cut upSo sit down and shut up'Cause I'm a hard foxI was hung up, strung outBut I can't take no more junkEven if you can

No rocker, doctor,Show stealin' teeny bopper

Gonna get a thing from himNo fat, blackBack scratchin' pussy catGonna get her claws on him

If you been held back, put downThrown out, hung upStrung out, picked onRipped off, kicked outSpit on, set up, ripped offLocked up, sent downMaybe you're as hard as I am

Cause Im a hard fox.

TO THE SNOUT Sir,

I always start at the end ofThe Sniffer, with

Get Foxed, before reading the rest. You are a

master of puzzles one might even say,

following Herman Hesse, that you're a

Magister Ludi. I'm hoping that you will

eventually give us a crossword. Too much to

ask for?

Yours faithfully,

Al Hung-Jones

***

Dear Mr. Hung-Jones,

Like Parker, the author of The Ballad of

Cocky the Fox, I frequently find myself in aramshackle little rowing boat trying to

plough my way through the choppy seas of

the Atlantic; I have adopted many American

customs and I retain many English ones.

This admixture regularly leads to cultural

conflict.

Crosswords are a perfect example. Take the

American crossword, as published by The

New York Times. Scores of interconnections;

dark and light squares grouped together in

large chunks; short, definitional clues. Tryas I might, I just cant develop a taste for

these straightforward exercises in clerical

triviality. It is the British crossword. as

espoused by The Times and The Guardian,

that has always been and always will be my

cruciverbal cuppa. Fewer interconnections; a

more variegated layout; cryptic clues that

stretch the brain on many different planes;

and a fine espionage pedigree that includes

the Bletchley Park codebreakers and Ian

Flemings original incarnation of James

Bond.


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So Im in a bit of a spot. I understand that

theres a thirst for a Cocky crossword. But

what should I do about it? I cant bring

myself to publish an American example for

fear of diluting the distinct Britishness ofThe Sniffer. And yet a British example

would be too unfamiliar to the American

puzzling palate.

After a long chew on my pencil, I came up

with a compromise. In this issue of The

Sniffer , I have decided to celebrate that

great uniter of nations and leveller of class

hierarchies, Scrabble (see Get Foxed ). In

tandem, I have asked my alter ego, the

Magister Ludi, to begin introducing

elements of the British cryptic crossword tothe HiLobrow.com readership. When I deem

this exposure to be sufficient, I will publish

a British cryptic inThe Sniffer.

I hope you find this to be a satisfactory plan.

Yours sincerely,

The Editor

***

If there are questions you would like to ask

or remarks you would like to make, you can

do so by emailing the editor of The Sniffer

([email protected]).

THE SNIFFEREDITOR & WRITER

Patrick Cates

PUBLISHERSMatthew Battles & Joshua Glenn

of HiLobrow.comILLUSTRATIONKristin Parker

WITH THANKS TOGenerous backers ofCocky the Fox

& Kickstarter.com

please direct all enquiries [email protected]

The Sniffer - Issue No. Five

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