Old Key’s Almanacke

For over four centuries, Old Key’s Almanacke has proved a spookily unerring guide to the coming twelvemonth. This year, the mysterious figure in the black cape who, it is said, communes with Old Key himself, has granted The Dabbler exclusive permission to publish these oh-so-cogent utterances.

In the year of Our Lord MMXI…

January : “Cones” appear at the site of a road closure.

February : Scientists discover a new anagram of Pol Pot.

March : A scribbler publishes a fatuity in The Guardian.

April : Down at the docks, noisome ooze and bilgewater.

May : The De Botton Conundrum is solved, to universal rejoicing.

June : In a hotel, a doctor demands his sausages.

July : Vince Cable stands windswept upon Westminster Bridge.

August : The mighty look on the works of Ozymandias and despair!

September : The crystal ball is cloudy, but we descry something about a footballer and his hamstring.

October : Eggs hatch on a farm.

November : The iFry is launched, a simulacrum of Stephen Fry that witters incessantly and is small enough to be placed in a wastepaper basket.

December : Jesus Christ returns, his image appearing on a slice of toast.

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About Author Profile: Frank Key

Frank Key is a London-based writer, blogger and broadcaster best known for his Hooting Yard blog, short-story collections and his long-running radio series Hooting Yard on the Air, which has been broadcast weekly on Resonance FM since April 2004. By Aerostat to Hooting Yard - A Frank Key Reader, an ideal introduction to his fiction, is published for Kindle by Dabbler Editions. Mr Key's Shorter Potted Brief, Brief Lives was published in October 2015 by Constable and is available to buy online and in all good bookshops.

7 thoughts on “Old Key’s Almanacke

  1. wormstir@gmail.com'
    December 31, 2010 at 08:37

    also in March – Slamblogging takes off in a big way

  2. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    December 31, 2010 at 10:34

    The absence of any reference in July to the public hanging and quartering of shagaSwede Julian in Boras market square is puzzling, does old Alma Key know sumfink that we don’t.

  3. peter.burnet@hotmail.com'
    Peter
    December 31, 2010 at 12:40

    Also in February, Brit treats us to clips from long-forgotten rock bands and tells us we should take them very seriously because they don’t.

  4. wormstir@gmail.com'
    December 31, 2010 at 12:57

    unlooking services and listening clouds also become possible sometime in the summer, round about the same time that cravats go supernova

  5. dave_lull@yahoo.com'
    Dave Lull
    December 31, 2010 at 14:34

    “June : In a [British not Spanish] hotel, a doctor demands his sausages.”

    ========

    “June

    “By June, finally, after months of darkness and reversals of temperature, one can dare to live in hope that this country is not the land of perpetual gloom, ugliness and fear. By the middle of the month, one might have had five days of meaningfully warm and clear weather, and stepped out without any socks on. Suddenly, all kinds of emotions that we’d ­resigned ourselves to no longer seem to fit quite so well: being sad, for a start, but also living huddled in layers of clothes, shutting yourself off from nature, longing to live in Alicante. The weather gives us something to emulate. To think of going abroad now would be insanity. It’s a dereliction of duty to leave. Stay and dare, for once, to be happy in Britain.

    “Alain de Botton”

    From “What the months of the year mean to me”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/17/2011-calendar-what-months-mean

  6. russellworks@gmail.com'
    ian russell
    December 31, 2010 at 15:54

    So these ”cones” are not as we know them? And the Christ; what is toast if not burnt bread?

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