The
niffer
A PERIODICAL FOXY COMPENDIUM
ISSUE NO. ONE — 22 APRIL 2010
F ROM TH E S NOUT
With a shrill, pre-dawn succession of barks,
I would like to welcome you to the first edi-
tion of The Sniffer, the unruly younger
brother of The Ballad of Cocky the Fox. Be-
cause installments of The Ballad only ap-
pear every two weeks, it was felt necessary to
slake the vulpine thirst in the fallow days in
between. And slake the vulpine thirst I
shall. Each edition of The Sniffer will skulk
around the edges of a large English meadow
looking for small rodents, dead birds and the
remains of family picnics. There will be:
poetry, puzzles, commentary, conversation
and trivia, all of it related, directly or indi-
rectly, to Cocky and his escapades.
So how did I come to edit this esteemed
organ? Being a writer and being a friend of
Cocky's creator would not have been enough
on their own to guarantee my appointment.
No, the publishers engaged me for a differ-
ent reason: I was once a human fox.
In the fifth and sixth years of the mil-
lennium, I lived on the estate of Viscount M.
in the rolling greenery of West Sussex. The
–1–
estate was the venue for assorted sports that
were focused on chase, track, bait and kill:
fishing, pheasant shooting, deer hunting,
beagling. The most popular of these pulled
participants in from miles away: the
monthly fox hunt. Red-coated riders would
gather at the House, take a sip of something
strong from the stirrup cup and, with a blast
of the bugle, send the pack of hounds off on
the trail of a plucky reynard.
In February of 2005, however, the Brit-
ish government put a stop to it all. It now
became illegal for more than two dogs to
chase and kill a fox. The early days of the
ban were a cause of depression for the hunt-
ers; they weren't able to squeeze around the
edges of the law so easily then, as they can
now. Houndsmen and huntmasters scratched
their heads looking for loopholes and
alternatives.
One night, during a session of beer-
fuelled bravado with the local huntfolk, a
sozzled somebody made a suggestion. «Pat-
rick's a runner. Why don't we get him to
drag a foxtail soaked in piss through the
woods? We'll give him a headstart and then
set the hounds on him!» As stupid as this
idea sounded, it was given sober reassessment
the following day and all were in agreement
that it might just fly. Above all, I was game.
And so, for the few hunt meets that hap-
pened before I moved back to London, I be-
came a human fox. In my memory, these
meets no longer have their own narratives.
In my time as quasi-brushed
quarry, I learned to empathize
with the common red fox.
Instead, everything merges into one mess of
sense data and emotion. The sweet and sour
stench of fox urine; the crack and rustle of
the woodland floor; the distant, hungry bay-
ing; the tightening sphincter; the sting of
nettle; the prick of bramble; the hammering
of heart through ribcage; the dribble of hu-
man urine into running short. It was ex-
hausting and terrifying. And I would do it
all over again.
In my time as quasi-brushed quarry, I
learned to empathize with the common red
fox. I bear his burden; I cry his tears; I know
his mind. This is why I've been chosen to
rabble-rouse and proselytize on behalf of
Cocky, that princely spiv among furry ur-
chins.
—Patrick Cates, ed.
O V ER A P INT
The author of The Ballad of Cocky the Fox
and the editor of The Sniffer are known to
enjoy a chinwag over a pint. Conversation
hops between the literary, the musical, the
geographical and the scatological with lu-
bricated abandon. Most of this natter is un-
intelligibly slurred and repetitive. But some
–2–
of it, once pulled apart, parsed and sensibly
reassembled, may be of interest to keen fol-
lowers of Cocky's trajectory. In each edition,
The Sniffer will present a sniffet of this
decoded babble.
The Edit o r: You used to be a baker, which
I'm guessing inspired the scene behind the
bakery. Cocky goes looking for leftovers in
the bins, only to find that a couple of other
foxes have beaten him to it. Did you ever
have any fox-related experiences when work-
ing in the early hours? Did you ever catch a
Hughes or a Hayes out back having a nib-
ble?
The A utho r: Never. I've never seen a fox
in Boston and I worked at the bakery for
five years. I did see a naked girl jumping up
and down on a mattress, though. I was
standing by the bin holding a bag of rubbish
in my hand and she was doing gleeful star
jumps. I watched for a couple of minutes
and then went inside.
The Ed ito r: Was she eating macaroons?
The Aut ho r: No.
T HE I NFO XICATOR
Cocky loves a glug of aftershave to spice up a
night out. It seems fitting, then, that The
Sniffer pay tribute to this predilection by
recognizing the long-standing link between
the fox and the piss-up. Each installment of
The Infoxicator will breathe at the reader a
boozy monologue about a different example
of this connection, be it a pub, a beer, a wine
or a hunting tradition. The series will begin
with a trip to the appropriately named
Intrepid Fox.
The Intrepid Fox spent most of its life
in Soho proper, nestled between the strip
clubs, bondage shops and editing suites of
Wardour Street. A few years ago, it moved
half a mile east into the Stygian dinge of St.
Giles, the scribble of shady streets tucked
beneath Centrepoint. And some would say it
fits in better here. St. Giles has always been
the black sheep of London parishes, home to
the homeless, back garden of beggars, booz-
ers and con-artists; and The Intrepid Fox
has always been the grubby, scuzzy destina-
tion pub for anyone who wants a deafening
assault of old-school rock washed down with
a few pints of cider. Sticky floors and poster-
mosaic walls house a no-nonsense clientele
of hedonistic pint-guzzlers: grubby Levi's,
big belt buckles, Great Frog jewellery, tat-
toos of eagles. If you imagine, like I do, that
Motörhead's Lemmy was never a baby, and
popped, fully formed, out of a subterranean
smokehole somewhere, then this smokehole
would probably be hidden beneath the floor-
boards of The Intrepid Fox.
F OX F A CT
In 17th- and 18th-century Europe, fo x
tossin g was a popular competitive sport.
Two tossers would hold either end of a sling,
wait for a newly released fox to cross it, and
then fling the poor beast up into the air as
high as possible. If not dead upon landing,
the fox would be rendered so by a battering
at the hands of bloodlusty spectators.
–3–
D EAT H S PEA KS TO C O C KY T HE F OX
The .22 splits a grass-blade, half an inch
from your nose:
its sound, a second later, shakes the rooks
from their cawing
and their old-school jawing
and scatters them into the sky like seeds.
I had a taste of you when that pitbull
chewed you up.
And when the half-brick thrown by the loud
girl
clonked you into momentary satori
I smiled at you, emptily. Remember?
Other dogs have gone for you—some cats,
too.
The wheel of a shopping cart broke one of
your ribs:
a nudge from me, a hint.
The pigeon with the poisoned breast,
the snare where Agony makes her nest.
Stand by, fox:
I’m arriving.
—James Parker
T HE C OC KY C O MPAN ION
Cocky is an English fellow and, naturally,
he sings his ballad in the Albion vernacular.
Not all of the vocabulary he uses may be fa-
miliar to his globally dispersed fan base.
Accordingly, each edition of The Sniffer
will feature an extract from The Cocky
Companion, a lexical tour guide that decodes
and dismantles some of his barks and cack-
les.
Q UAV ERS Curly, cheesy slivers of reconsti-
tuted potato sold in bright yellow packag
ing to attract the attention of
children. They are the English
playground equivalent of Flaming Hot
 Cheetos, coating youthful lips with a
sticky mulch that is yellow rather than
red.
M E GA - PRAM «Pram» is short for «peram-
bulator», a wheeled device for carting
around babies and toddlers. The pram,
once an elegant, fabric-covered chassis
sitting horizontally atop spoked wheels,
now often resembles a Landrover in size,
design and complexity.
B OLLO C KS A testicular expression of an-
noyance often drawn out by especially re-
sentful Londoners into «Bollerrrrrrrrks!».
(It can also be modified with the prefix
«silly» or «soppy» and used epithetically,
as in «Oi! Soppy bollocks! Gimme some of
them Quavers!»)
J APES Pranks, high jinks and general tom-
foolery (of the kind practised by the stal-
wart comic schoolboy, Dennis The Men-
ace, and, most recently, by urban omni-
vores off their nut on aftershave).
S HAT - UP While the directionality of «shat-
up» might imply constipation, it actually
refers to an emotional state that stimu-
lates the opposite physiological reaction.
It can be thought of as a shorthand syno-
nym for «scared enough to warrant almost
crapping one's pants» (or, in Cocky's case,
«scared enough to warrant almost crap-
ping one's furry haunches»).
S LA G O FF This has nothing to do with cre-
ating waste products in the metal indus-
try and everything to do with being abu-
sive. If one were to cloak the offensive
term «slag» in euphemism, one might end
up speaking of a «termagant» or coining a
word like «vituperatrix».
–4–
G ET F O XED
While the primary purpose of The Sniffer is
to inform and entertain, it has another
mandate: to infuriate, puzzle and otherwise
befuddle the brainy reader. Get Foxed is the
medium and «get your noggin around this
conundrum» is the message.
In the inaugural foxing, you are invited to
consider the following formulaic opinion on
how strong Cocky's two back-of-the-bakery
opponents are:
HUGHES + HAYES = BADGER
Assign a number between 0 and 9 to each of
the ten letters that appear in the sum so that
sum is mathematically correct.
The only prize is a cup of your own
smugness. The answer will be published in
the next edition of The Sniffer. And now I
bid you Get Foxed.
5
T HE S N IFFE R
EDITOR
Patrick Cates
P U BL ISHE RS
Matthew Battles & Joshua Glenn
of HiLobrow.com
I L LUSTRAT ION
Kristin Parker
W ITH THAN KS TO
Generous backers of Cocky the Fox
& Kickstarter.com
please direct all enquiries to
sn iffer@hi lob row.c om