BJ's SOLSL: HOOTING YARD is the opening post!!

So, in case you wondered what on earth BJ's SOLSL was at the beginning - get used to it, it refers to the previous post where I said we'd be having a Season of Guest Voices of People I like.  Since then I've widened it a bit, in that I am having a couple of visual pieces too, also people I like...obviously.  So you know there are pictures coming too.

To begin then!  As you all well remember as though it were yesterday and we were not all so much older and more cynical now - were it not for Mr Hooting Yard nagging me something relentless to start a blog, you would not be here with me today, suffering as you are.  To thank him for this honour, chore and general wastage of our time, I thought who better to begin my Season of Late Summer Love of Voices I Like, than the man who brought me here??

If you haven't already perused his legendary website, please do (see my blogroll).  When I go on, as I woesomely do, about life not making any sense and boiling my head and feeling overwhelmed; Mr Hooting Yard is approaching the whole quandary in a completely different way.  He is simply and gently mocking the whole thing, loving the whole thing, and having fun with it all.  Via words.  Some people say what he writes is nonsense, joyful joyful nonsensical waffle.  Other people find it incredibly soothing and aren't sure why.  Some people (myself included) find themselves laughing out loud one moment and wandering why he doesn't write polemic in the next.  (I think he slips into serious sometimes when he's not aware of it, and while still talking in humourous code).  Its nothing in particular, ad infinitum, in detail, and I have always loved it.  It cheers me up.  He has books too, so you should go to his website and buy them; then you can be amused on the Tube.  And then there's the podcasts...

I've known Mr Hooting Yard some many years now (along with his Esteemed and Wondrous partner, the Ms Pansy Cradledew), and I think he uses words to cope with life a hell of a lot better than I do.  His words make smiles, laughter and relieve pressure.  Also, his posts are way shorter than mine so you have the added bonus of not having to get camped out before you start.  Once you read one, you'll want to read more, so dip your dusty toes here, then go to the website and smile for the rest of the afternoon, while your insides get a polishment of happiness and amusement...

Here in a previously unpublished (and indeed only composed on Friday!!  Excitement!!) post, is a taster of the World of Mr Hooting Yard:
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The World of Breakfast: POPTARTS

It is an exciting time in the world of breakfast. I learned as much last week, when I had the good fortune to be invited to a new product launch. The do took place in a swish and sophisticated hotel, and as I am neither swish nor sophisticated I was a bit worried that I would be thrown out on my ear, if indeed I was allowed in at all. I decided that I would cut something of a dash by wearing spats. Unfortunately, my footwear adviser misconstrued what I said, and I arrived at the swish and sophisticated hotel wearing galoshes. But I need not have fretted. Such was the atmosphere of new-breakfast-product excitement and hubbub that I made my way into the throng without incident.

And what a throng! The hotel ballroom was packed to the rafters with the great and the good, the movers and shakers, the glitterati, and Krishnan Guru-Murthy from Channel 4 News. I grabbed a glass of aerated lettucewater from a tray held by a minion, and leaned against a mantelpiece in what I hoped was an insouciant manner.

After a series of speeches from big names in the breakfast world, the new product was eventually revealed – smokers' poptarts! After we had oohed and aahed at the gorgeous packaging, we were treated to a demonstration of how best to prepare this toothsome breakfast-related snack item. Apparently, you remove the smokers' poptart from its greaseproof-paper wrapping, pop it into a toaster, and wait. It was rather unfortunate that the toaster used at the launch was a 1972 model from the former Soviet Union, for it malfunctioned, with a lot of buzzing and hissing noises, before a billow of black smoke rose from it and choked several celebrities standing nearby, one of whom I think may have been Yoko Ono. The smokers' poptart itself was burned to ashes, of course.

By this time we were all growing very peckish, and had been looking forward to munching this delicious new breakfast product. Instead, the hotel chef rustled up a vast quantity of bubble and squeak. It was rather like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes (Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15), except with bubble and squeak rather than bread and fish.

By the time an oompah band started up, we were all stuffed to the gills, albeit not with smokers' poptarts. But we accepted our brochures, information sheets, and balloons with good grace, and it was a reasonably happy crowd that spilled out into the hotel carpark. Interestingly, the carpark was pitted with puddles, oh! puddles innumerable, and all the great and the good and the movers and shakers and glitterati got their shoes and socks soaked through. I thanked the Lord for my galoshes, and Krishnan Guru-Murthy thanked the Lord for his galoshes, thoughtfully provided by an unpaid intern from Channel 4 News.

As I wended my way home through certain half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells, I resolved to buy a carton of smokers' poptarts for my breakfast at the earliest opportunity. Alas, I have yet to see them on the shelves of the local poptart shop. As Jagger once observed, you can't always get what you want.