The Sniffer - Issue No. Thirteen

8/8/2019 The Sniffer - Issue No. Thirteen

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The

nifferAPERIODICAL FOXYCOMPENDIUM

ISSUE NO.THIRTEEN11NOVEMBER 2010

FRO M THE SNOUTThere is an apocryphal story about the BBC

Home Service (the World Services domestic

arm that was neutrally retitled Radio 4 in

the 60s) that I like to dust off whenever

there is a discussion about the triviality of so

much television and radio news nowadays.

One evening, the hour arrived for a news

bulletin. The chimes sounded and the

newscaster spoke along these lines: Goodevening. This is the Home Service at 6

oclock on August the 14th. Today, there is

no news.

penetratingly

The days of no news are long behind us,

sadly. But in the spirit of nostalgia, and in

the spirit of not having to come up with

something penetratingly analytical to say

about the latest Cocky installment in theweek that the Sniffers editorial offices are

moving up hill and down dale, I direct your

attention to the next paragraph.

Hullo. Welcome to From The Snout. Today

there is no meaningful content.

HIS MASTERS CHOICEEach installment of His Masters Choice

considers a single album that has graced the

gramophone of Cockys creator and master,

James Parker. On this occasion, we attach

bells to our legs, dance around a maypole

and celebrate Songs From The Woodby the

impossibly unfashionable folk rock troupe,

Jethro Tull.

A man with a head of hair on his chin and a

beard on his head prances around in raggedy

clothes like a homeless jester. His eyes bulge;

he screeches through his flute and he breaks

away periodically to mumble something. All

throughout, he twitches and laughs to

himself. Is there a more appropriate

standard-bearer for an earthy, bucolic tale

about talking animals than Jethro Tulls

front man, Ian Anderson?

Let may breng ye-hoo songs frum the werd, begins Anderson in that curious folk accent

where random vowels are replaced by other

vowels in an attempt to conjure up a time of

madrigals, maidens and mead. His band

mates join in a capella and, before you know

it, the flute pipes up and the rest of the

instruments dive in. Is that a harpsichord in


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the background? Of course it is! But if you

hate folk music, dont panic. Keep at it until

the two-minute mark. Youll be treated to an

intricate prog breakdown wherein Tull

reveal themselves to be a bunch of highly

original and highly talented oddballinstrumentalists.

So the opening track just described is a

microcosm of the whole album. Folky

her-di-diddly-hi-ho voices and acoustic

strums that give way to off-centre grooves.

And this is the schizoid influence I divine

when reading the Ballad. I imagine Parkerclosing his eyes in Starbucks to shut out the

blinking cursor. He cranks up Songs From

The Wood and listens. Before he knows it,

hes sucking dryad tit and stroking druid

staff. Hes in the eclogue zone: gardens,

fields and summer rain. And Parker must

see himself in this couplet:A singer of these

ageless times / With kitchen prose and gutter

rhymes.

But then the electrics arrive. A whole new

energy. The lilting drive of the drums andthe propelling precision of the bass. The

flute, the harpsichord, the chimes, the

handclaps, the analog synths. Its enough to

shake Parker from his Arcadian reverie and

throw him into the circus ring of word

acrobatics and narrative sword-swallowing.

Hes on fire because hes eating fire.

I personally dont care for Andersons

bearded Wicker Man malarkey. But Im

happy to let his band of merry men carry me

off into the land of prog every few minutes.

Most importantly, though, I see how both of

these disparate strands are knotted togetherin Parkers prose.

OVER A PINTThe 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: In a recent Sniffer, I definedEssex as this Jekyll and Hyde county. Uglyand dangerous near London, picturesque and

wealthy further out.

The Author: Yes. I remember that.The Editor: Well, I know you used to livethere. So how do you view it? What do you

think of when you hear the word Essex?

The Author: For me, Essex is rural. Tidyrural. All of the English countryside was

tamed thousands of years ago and nowadaysits just cultivated wilderness. Although,

between all the carefully manicured

hedgerows, there are still these nutty little

pockets of the wild. Ferrety woods, rookeries,

that kind of thing. And it seems even tidier

than when I was a boy growing up there.

When I visited this summer, it all looked a

lot more managed.

The Editor: And the trees were smaller?The Author: Yes. Exactly. Im sure being alot older now made a difference. But I was

still able to surrender to the wilderness. And

having Harry with me helped.

The Editor: You mean you were able tosee the countryside through his eyes?

Childhood by proxy?


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The Author: Yes. He was my conduit backin.

The Editor: So what did he make ofEssex?

The Author: Oh, he loved it. He absolutelyloved it. He trotted about all over the place.He was so happy.

The Editor: Great stuff. And given yourrecent visit, perhaps an answer to this

question will be right near the surface.

What do you miss most about the old gaff?

The Author: What do I miss most aboutEngland? I miss... I miss a certain

The Editor: Packet of Quavers?The Author: Yes. No. A certain dryness.Now, I dont mean wittiness. Because, as we

all know, American humour is as complex

and sophisticated as any other brand of

humour. But when youre with a bunch of

Englishmen in a pub, everything feels

low-key and droll. People are careful about

what they say. And this is a good thing. You

dont just come in and blurt out all your shit,

like people do over here. When I first

arrived in the States, I thought most people

were insane. All this information that gets

volunteered as soon as you meet somebody. It

takes you a while to realize that this is just

the American way. Randoms telling you

their life story on the bus, on the train, in

the street and so on. And you have no

comeback because, as an Englishman, youre

not trained to do the same. You just stay

quiet and nod politely. I miss the English

reserve.

The Editor: [Stays quiet and nods polite-ly.]

THE INFOXICATORThe Infoxicator is a tribute to Cocky's

occasional tendency to get off his tits on

aftershave and glue. This time round, you

will learn about a puritanical-sounding

London wine bar called The Fox Reformed.

Amidst the yardie crack houses, white

underclass drinking schools and

back-of-the-shop bush-meat freezers that

characterize Hackney, you will find a littleupper-middle-class oasis called Stoke

Newington. The backbone of this upmarket

enclave is Stoke Newington Church Street, a

narrow, curvy thoroughfare full of bourgeois

boutiques and Fairtrade coffeeshops. If you

start at the eastern end and walk west

towards the church, the sea of off-road

strollers will eventually dry up and you will

come upon a windowed wine bar with a dark

red fascia. This is the institution known as

The Fox Reformed.

To get me into a wine bar under normal

circumstances, you would have to bludgeon

me over the head repeatedly with a bottle of

Chateau Lafite Rothschild and then drag my

unconscious corpse inside. If you wanted to

complete the pretence, you could prop me up

at a table and curl my lifeless knuckles

around the stem of a burgundy balloon. But

nobody would believe you. I live a life of real

ales and low-brow pubs, and thats obvious

from my demeanour.

And yet I used to love The Fox Reformedback in my Hackney days. Maybe it was the

bar full of veteran cruciverbalists poring

over several tough cryptics at once and

periodically thumbing through the house

copy of Chambers for inspiration. Maybe it

was the charming welcome always offered by

Robbie, the Einstein-haired, plummy-


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voiced, bowtie-wearing landlord. Or maybe it

was the dedication of the establishment to

the strategic art and probabilistic science of

backgammon (The Fox Reformed has, for

many years, had a reputation as a breeding

ground for champions of the game).So if you like wine, crosswords,

backgammon or old English eccentrics, pop

along for a visit. If you like all four,

consider renting the flat upstairs.

FOX FAC TWhen Peter Criss was kicked out of

proto-hair-metallers, KISS, by his band

mates in 1980, Eric Carr took up position

behind the drum kit. Nobody really knowswhy they painted Carrs face to look like a

fox or why they started calling him TheFox . But there are rumours. Apparently, heused to drench his snare drum in sweat

during rehearsals and concerts, and this

sweat smelled uncannily like fox piss.

THE COCKY COMPANIONEach edition of The Sniffer features an

extract fromThe Cocky Companion, a Roset-

ta Stone for decoding the less obviouselements of Cocky's London vernacular. This

extract rustles up a chap/champard sandwich

on come on, my son rye.

COM E-ON-NES S The come on evidencedin come-on-ness relates to fight not

fuck. A seducer gives his prey the

come-on with various peacock-like

physical gestures: the Roger Moore

eyebrow, the George Clooney smirk, the

Vic Reeves thigh-rub. An assailant, onthe other hand, gives his prey the

come-on with an angry shout of Come

on! or Come on, then! This fisticuffal

foreplay is often accompanied by a

stretching out of the arms and a

beckoning flap-into-palm of the fingers

of each hand. And it is not

uncommon/un-come-on to hear the

come-on=ness embellished with the

rhetorically marauding You want some?

Often, however, all of this prancing and

shouting leads to nought. Nobody comesor goes anywhere.

CHAP Chap is the shortened form ofchapman. That sounds like a nugget of

bullshit a struggling writer would scoop

up while searching the cobwebby creative

recesses of his noggin for something to say

about chap. But its true. Chaps were

once chapmen, salesmen of cack, peddlers

of tat. At some stage the man and menwere dropped. And at a later stage, you

didnt have to sell stuff to be a chap; any

old bloke could be one. But then the posh

set stole it and gents, fellows and sirs

became chaps overnight. Hello, old chap!

Care to look at the series of ancestral

portraits in the library that show Im the

fuckwitted product of centuries of

inbreeding? Id love to, my dear chap!


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FRANK CHAMPARD Chelsea fans willdisagree with what I am about to write.

Good. Frank Lampard is the name of a

gangly, entitled midfielder with an

overbite who has operated as the diseased

heart of the English football team forwhat feels like the last 40 years. How

many times have we had to watch him

slap his hands to his forehead in

unjustified disbelief as one of his poorly

aimed free kicks from 30 yards away flies

off into the crowd? Frank Lampard: the

overpaid, overrated overbite. I can only

imagine that Cocky the Fox is a Chelsea

fan. Why else would he bestow this term

of ensmearment on the comfortably dumb

cony, Champion?

MY SON For many years, I thought theCockney moniker, my son, was exclusive

to horses. Every Saturday, my father

would lean forward on the edge of his

armchair and, with a hand clutching a

betting slip, gesticulate wildly at the

television, in the hope that an outburst of

momentary lunacy would encourage his backed nag to poke its head over the

finishing line first. Go on, my son! Go

on, my son! Go on! There usually

followed a second or two of suspended

animation. And then: Fuck. Fucking

bugger it. More often than not, he lost.

GET FOXEDIn the last Get Foxed, you were asked to

identify the missing two letters at the

beginning of eleven words such that the

initial letters taken in sequence yielded the

name of a character from The Ballad of

Cocky the Fox. The problem with thisrequest was that only ten words were listed.

(An errant fox urinated on one of the words

after the puzzle had been constructed

thereby rendering it illegible to the printer.)

Accordingly, The Sniffer apologizes to you.

Here is the complete list of completed words:

B L A T A N TA S C E T I CR E P R O V EEC L I P S EL A C O N I CY A W N I N GT E N U O U SH A P L E S SE P I T O M ER E S P I T EE M U L A T EYou will notice that the list acrostically

identifies Barely There as the Cocky

character in question.

In this Get Foxed, you are cordially required

to wrap your cerebrum around a teaser that

involves Cocky the Fox and Shakes the

Badger dancing an ambivalent travel tango.

The distance between Cocky the Foxs hutch

in the Borough and Shakes the Badgers sett

on the Northside is 7.8 miles. Cocky starts


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off running towards Shakess sett at 7 miles

per hour. At the same time, Shakes starts

running towards Cocky at 6 miles per hour.

As soon as Cocky runs into Shakes, he turns

back and heads home to his hutch. When he

gets there, he turns round again and runsback to Shakes. When he reaches Shakes, he

turns round and heads home. Cocky repeats

this love-hate back-and-forth until Shakes

arrives at his hutch. By this time, how far

has Cocky run in total?

HOW THE RAVENSFEE L ABOUT COCKYSnared, suspiring, condemned

to be who you are, wherever you are,

stuck in your fur, caged in your bones,you do what you have to do.

Its entertaining!

Run over here, run over there,

breathless and bright with despair.

We love it!

Wriggle you may, twitch you might,

but know this -

the trap was set by you,

and not by us.

James Parker

TO THE SNOUTSir,

In my field (Evolutionary Biology),

"allopatric," "peripatric," "parapatric," and

"sympatric" are commonly used terms

referring to organisms whose ranges or

distributions are respectively non-overlapping/isolated, closely adjacent but

non-overlapping, immediately adjacent but

not significantly overlapping, and

overlapping/identical. Clearly, the author of

"Cocky the Fox" has made a close study of

such distribution patterns, and what's more

has familiarized himself with the latest

thinking in Biogeography. Bravo to him for

doing so. I write, however, because it has

occurred to me that this newsletter is edited

and written pseudonymously: "Patric(k),"

eh? A weak pun, at best. Unmask yourself

a pseudonym is a coward's resort!

Tsk-tskingly,

(Dr.) Jonah Lunges

***

Dear Dr. Lunges,

Shit. You are right in thinking that there is

no such person as Patrick Cates. PatrickCates is a hastily concocted nom de plume

that I use to dissociate myself from any of

my writing that I consider vulgar, tawdry

and of low quality. But I beg of you: Keep

this revelation to yourself. I dont want

readers of The Ballad of Cocky the Fox

thinking that I would sully my lofty

authorial standing by pulling together a rag

of such amateurism and unseemliness asThe

Sniffer.

Yours sincerely,

James Parker

***

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]).


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THE SNIFFER EDITOR & WRITER

Patrick Cates

PUBLISHERSMatthew Battles & Joshua Glenn

of HiLobrow.comILLUSTRATIONKristin Parker

WITH THANKS TOGenerous backers ofCocky the Fox

& Kickstarter.com

please direct all enquiries to

[email protected]

The Sniffer - Issue No. Thirteen

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