Friday, June the 3rd, 2005

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Misprints

Yesterday's piece by Professor Bindweed, How I Plunged Into The Bottomless Viper-Pit Of Gaar, contained a number of errors. These were due to production problems, escaping gas, an unexpected teabag mishap, and the distractions of a choir belting out Shenandoah at top volume. At Hooting Yard, however, we pride ourselves in setting the record straight at the very earliest opportunity.

There were three misprints, and they were of a kind. As several readers have pointed out with commendable promptness, there are no bottomless viper-pits at O'Houlihan's Wharf or at Shoeburyness, and there is no such place as San Christoboole. Let us take each one in turn, in reverse order.

San Christoboole does not exist, at least not in any atlas I know of, and it is difficult to know which bottomless viper-pit Professor Bindweed had in mind. It may be an anagram of Basoonclotshire, but my well-thumbed gazetteer of that bosky paradise-on-earth states specifically (page 1,249) that “there are no viper-pits in the county, bottomless or otherwise”. Incidentally, the name of the shire has nothing to do with bassoons, hence the spelling. The derivation is from basin. I am reminded that readers have long been promised a series of articles on the important topic of basins, and these are currently in preparation, so please stop sending those pleading emails.

For Shoeburyness, read Lytham St Annes.

To think for one minute that there could be a bottomless viper-pit at O'Houlihan's Wharf is so preposterous I am surprised the globe kept spinning on its axis after this howler appeared here yesterday. As soon as the error was brought to my attention, I fired off an apology to the Five Fiendish Burghers of O'Houlihan's Wharf, terrified as I was of swift and brutal reprisals. I received a very gracious acknowledgement, which I am happy to reprint below:

“O Key! We, we, we, we, we, the Five Fiendish Burghers of O'Houlihan's Wharf, that is, first Godsoke, second Pardew, third Cansegmabulbadette, fourth Pip, and fifth Billy Strayhorn, do hereby say to you in arch lewd monstrous grating swinish implacable hoarse declamation, and then in the ululatory incantation of a muezzin, that we, we, we, we, we have taken unto our bodices and tunics the sentiments of your piteous grovelment and we, we, we, we, we have pronounced it good. The battalions of the O'Houlihan's Wharf Avengement Platoon have been called off, before they even had time to mount their hideous macroencephalic horses, yes!, the hideous macroencephalic horses, with their fierce biting spittle-flecked fangs, that gallop at double the speed of light! Don't let it happen again.”

I have promised my new pals, the Burghers, who are coming round for tea later on today, to write something accurate and complimentary about O'Houlihan's Wharf in the near future.