Docking Hack

Key's Cupboard

This week Frank gets misty-eyed and nostalgic about something or other.

Hats are off in Docking; caps are being doffed. The council’s got a town plan. The maths are on a chart. Pips have been spat out and drudgery is bye-byed. Chocolate puddings seem to be in everybody’s pantry. And here comes Pebblehead père. He caught a shark in waters. His sou’wester’s been askew since 1954-ish. Bubbles surge from froth. The chemist’s shop is shut. There’s pills & pills & pills that no Docking man could swallow. Suffering aborted. The council in a caucus. The shaven heads of heads of state are battering the doors down. The city gates, the turrets, the alleys, roads & mews: Docking has its ears all go for red alert decisions. Language has been no-no’d, the bamboo men are wailing, the breakage rate is scheduled: the system has been broken. Crayons pink & stacked, the burnt sienna packaged. Vandals clash at nightfall, but Docking has its crackers. Plastic wrapped in plastic. The Docking coffers emptied. Idiot brawl saloon bar, a gorgeous snag-tooth babble. Prepared to dance a hoo-cha, not a tear or boo-hoo. Thousands of museums stacked with golden maps. Misshapen trunk road closures. Big stone reconstructions. Docking’s cottoned on: it’s a town about a tower. The frame is out of kilter, the coughing’s filling coffins. Oh, but I want to go back to that Docking, Docking hack.

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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.

5 thoughts on “Docking Hack

  1. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    January 13, 2012 at 09:50

    The more I stumble and stutter, chortle and mutter through the Bealach na Ba that are your posts Frank, the more I am convinced that you are a reincarnated Salvador Dali.

  2. Gaw
    January 13, 2012 at 18:01

    Nice place, Docking. Near the north Norfolk coast.

  3. andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
    January 13, 2012 at 22:51

    Pox Pop, Docking Hack,
    Pox Pop, Docking Hack
    Eine Kleine Rammsteinmusik,
    Triumph of Norbiton, Saunton Sands.

  4. Gaw
    January 14, 2012 at 08:18

    There was a little place called Docking
    whose new town plan needed some blocking
    the new zoning’s a mess
    more is really much less:
    the Key exposé is quite shocking.

  5. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    January 14, 2012 at 13:30

    There was a young vicar of Docking
    Who’s snoot he was frequently cocking
    At the antics of Key
    And his cupboard so glee
    Truth to tell he needs a defrocking

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