The
niffer
A PERIODICAL FOXY COMPENDIUM
ISSUE NO. SEVEN — 15 JULY 2010
F ROM T HE S NOUT
You have just begun to read a very special
Sniffer. We enjoy a break in our voyage
down the wide and winding urban river of
Cockular exegesis and sail up a narrow, pic-
turesque tributary, where we can moor our
craft and take a spot of afternoon tea. In this
edition, imagery and illustration are the
everything. Some of the usual serials have
stood to the side. In their place we have pic-
tures aplenty and a lengthy pint-based chat
with Kristin Parker, the illustrator of Cocky
and his cadre. The Cocky Companion and a
smidgeon of fit-focused foxxerel remain but,
beyond that, we throw out The Text and es-
pouse The Image.
T HE C OCKY C OMPANION
Each edition of The Sniffer features an ex-
tract from The Cocky Companion, a Rosetta
Stone for decoding the less obvious elements
of Cocky's London vernacular. This potty
extract knocks the knackered Fit the Sev-
enth arse over tip with a gym shoe as it
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walks along the pavement and then whacks
it in the cobblers with a gym shoe.
P AVEMENT The difference between the
American “pavement” and the British
“pavement” is the reason why so many
American visitors to Britain, getting be-
hind the wheels of their rental SUVs and
trying to drive on the pavement, find
themselves mowing down scores of pedes-
trians. For the pavement covering the
sizeable suburban spread of this quaint
island is not the roadway; it is the side-
walk. If you are American, and worried
that you might end up on the criminal
end of an automobilic massacre, it might
help you to remember the phrase “pave-
ment pizza”. This is a roughly round splat
of envegetabled vomit delivered to the
ground by a pub- stumbler (strictly after
11pm). Think of the pizza, think of the
drunk. You’ll quickly conjure up the
scene of his stumbling and save yourself
15 years in the slammer.
G YM S HOE The only people in Britain who
refer to trainers as “gym shoes” are teach-
 ers over the age of 50. These stalwarts of
the profession began plying their peda-
gogic craft in an era when nobody would
have considered wearing such a common
abomination outside the walls of the
school gymnasium. And for many teach-
ers of that era, gym shoes served a dual
purpose. Yes, they enclosed the feet of
Sir’s young sprung-floor scamperers. But
the gym shoe, when widowed and aban-
doned in a musty changing room, could be
recovered by a particularly sadistic fucker
and kept on standby as a weapon for blis-
tering the backsides of little boys. I will
never forget Harold. With his name em-
blazoned upon his sole, he hung on a nail
by the classroom door, awaiting orders
from Mr. Easterfield, the evil alcoholic
Latin master who liked Extra Strong
Mints, farting and transgenerational vio-
lence. Even now, thirty years later, my
neurons flush with the teary-eyed sting of
Harold’s ministry.
C ONKER One of the first playground lessons
a young prep-school lad learns is that
war, capitalism and unfairness are locked
forever in a lusty ménage à trois. He
learns this through his experiences play-
ing the game of conkers. In conkers, you
begin with a horse-chestnut (“conker”)
that you believe will be able to smash ri-
val horse-chestnuts to smithereens. You
skewer a hole in this brown, shiny fellow
and thread through some string. You then
take your prized nut into battle. You
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swipe at your rival’s conker and he swipes
at yours. You swing and bash away until
one of the tough nuggets splinters into
pieces. And then the winner inherits
whatever “score” the loser’s conker has ac-
cumulated. But what seems like a fair
contest that honours human dexterity and
horticultural resilience becomes an exer-
cise in diabolism when you note the
“stampsies” rule, in which any conker
that slips out of a player’s hand can be
stamped on by spectators, and the “en-
tropy” rule, in which the school sociopath
who sets fire to ants using a magnifying
class walks up to you, punches you in the
face and steals your nutty pride and joy.
K NACKEREDNESS Let’s build up towards
the attractively consonant-heavy “knack-
eredness” in stages. What is a “knacker”?
Simply put, it’s a bollock. But it has also
come to refer to a horse (or human) who
is past his prime (and who may or may
not resemble a testicle). If you are a race-
horse trainer and send one of your aging
stallions to the knacker’s yard, the out-
come for this equine unfortunate will be
a retirement spent giving children rides
around urban farms or contributing to
the chemical composition of glue. What,
then, does “knackered” mean? If you, as
horse, human or otherwise, are knack-
ered, you’ve over-exerted yourself and now
need a lie- down. But don’t take a
knacker at face value. A complaint of “I
can’t! I’m knackered!” is often the cry of a
lazy bastard. And so to “knackeredness”.
Where “tiredness”, in its bisyllabic sim-
plicity, is a run-of-the-mill rump steak
served in a roadside diner, “knackered-
ness”, with its alliterative knock and high
letter-to-syllable ratio, is a filet mignon
gracing the table of a Parisian brasserie.
A RSE O VER T IP “Arse over tip” is the
more puritanical cousin of “arse over tit”.
 But, for all their philosophical differ-
ences, both these arsey relatives see eye to
eye and do a decent job of conveying the
state of silly buggerhood that tripping
over your shoelaces might bestow upon
you. Yes, you could trip over your shoe-
laces and fall head over heels. But that
sounds prudish, elegant and, for comic
purposes, plain wrong. To many readers,
falling head over heels invokes all-
consuming love and meadowland tumbles
instead of slapstick and pratfalls. Did
“arse over tit” arrive first, only to have its
tit punctured and deflated into a mere
tip? Or did some doughty oath-utterer de-
cide that tip should grow pendulously and
majestically into a tit? We may never
know.
P OTTY An English speaker who hears tell
of “potty” will quickly hop to thoughts of
poo and pee. Mashed-up ravers and
pumped-up runners drop poos in porta-
potties. Toilet-trained toddlers take tin-
kles in plastic potties. But to British
mouths and ears, “potty” does double serv-
ice. As a noun, it props up a human un-
dercarriage and temporarily stores the
waste products that issue thence. As an
adjective, however, it means “nutty”. Why
would you use “potty” instead of “nutty”?
“Nutty” enjoys a sheen of menace. If you
lean over to me in the pub and whisper
that the bloke standing over there is well
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nutty, I would be wise to watch out for a
temper tantrum and a glass in the face.
But if, instead, you tell me that the same
gentleman is “potty”, it probably means
that he argues with himself and tries to
pay for his drinks with buttons.
C OBBLERS In the twee and generically
European parlance of fairy tales, cobblers
mended shoes. In the dismissive pub-talk
of Jack-the-Ripper London, cobblers be-
came pluralised bullshit. How did we get
from shoemakers to shit-talkers? Via the
linguistic mangle that is Cockney rhym-
ing slang. A cobbler would have used an
awl to poke holes in the leather of his
trade. A Cockney chap, looking for a way
of referring to his “balls” without raising
eyebrows or hackles, once dropped “cob-
bler’s awls” into conversation: “Oof. These
trousers ain’t half tight around me cob-
bler’s awls.” Eventually, tired of this
mouthful, he shortened it to “cobblers”: “I
was behaving like a right tit, so he kicked
me in the cobblers.” And before long, with
“balls” sitting at one end of the well-worn
path to “bullshit” via “bollocks”, “cobblers”
came to stand for nonsense, balderdash
and poppycock: “What a load of old cob-
blers!” (When I retire as editor of The
Sniffer, I hope to follow in the steps of
the mythical royal shoemaker who adver-
tised his shop with a big sign that said
“Cobblers To The Queen”.)
O VER A P INT W ITH M RS . P ARKER
In keeping with the pictorial focus of this
edition of The Sniffer, a few days ago the
Editor tilted his elbow and wagged his chin
with Mrs Parker, the illustratrix of The
Ballad of Cocky the Fox. A liberal tran-
scription of their boozy babble is presented
here.
The Editor: So can you talk about how the
Cocky drawing process works? Do you get a
draft ahead of time to work from?
The Illustratrix: At first I did. James
had three installments prepared so I had
time to read and think. As we move along,
and as the production schedule has in-
creased, I receive an installment the day be-
fore it’s due. And then I start scrawling. I
had a vision of taking time to make over-
sized fox paintings on the wall; I imagined
Cocky and friends as being huge. That’s how
I used to work in the old days. But timing
and physical space completely changed my
work methods. I guess they dictate the style,
in a way.
The Editor: I really like the miniatures
that accompany the novel. They remind me
of the illustrations that Hablot Knight
Browne (“Phiz”) produced in collaboration
with Dickens. And what I especially love is
that I can imagine a collection of them in
small oval frames on my bog wall at home.
(I speak of the British bog, not the Irish
one.)
The Illustratrix: I like that idea a lot!
The Editor: So when you read the Cocky
text, are you consciously looking out for
things? Or do you try to wipe the canvas of
your mind clean?
The Illustratrix: A few days before each
fit, James will share a little of what’s going
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on. And I find that I fixate on an image in
my mind before I’ve even done any actual
reading. His storytelling – his sharing of the
idea – implants a little dreamlet.
The Editor: Interesting. And James and I
were recently discussing the suggestiveness of
the images. That’s something I love about
them. The ambiguity of pose and expression.
Is Cocky taking a shit or readying himself
for a fight? Or both?
The Illustratrix: Thank you! Yes, I want
the viewer to fill in the blanks. James’s prose
is so rich that an illustration couldn’t hope
to compete with what he sparks off in the
reader’s imagination.
The Editor: Right. I see your drawings as
the diamond jewelry on the beautiful bride.
The Illustratrix: That’s a nice analogy.
My boss, who is an artist and former art
teacher, took a look at some of them and said
“there’s just enough information”. And I
really held on to that.
The Editor: That’s a good bit of feedback
to hear. Aim successfully achieved.
The Illustratrix: Yes. When the book is
eventually complete, I envisage responding
to the story with a set of more “finished” il-
lustrations. Something Arthur Rackham-
ish, perhaps. But in the meantime, the im-
ages are meant as little addenda.
The Editor: And as part of your process,
do you ask James for any comments and does
he offer you any?
The Illustratrix: Yes. James wants some-
thing very specific. And at first this was dif-
ficult because I hadn’t picked up a pen in ten
years. I was very nervous and didn’t yet have
my hand. I tried be “formal” somehow but it
was insane and time-consuming. James had
seen my work and knew what he liked, and
he just told me to play, to loosen up. He
wanted my kooky line drawings. So, yes. He
tells me when he thinks things work or magazines and that kind of thing. Just for
don’t. And, likewise, I give him feedback fun.
about the writing, usually after the fact be-
The Editor: As we down these last dregs of
cause of deadline pressures. We have these
our drinks, I have a couple more quick ques-
fantastic chats.
tions to throw at you. Firstly, apart from
The Editor: What I’d give for a transcript Cocky, who is your favourite character in the
of one of those chats. Maybe you’d consider Ballad and why?
contributing to a future Over A Pint marital
The Illustratrix: It has to be Corvin. I
special.
just love the illustrative potential of ravens.
The Illustratrix: That’s a great idea! Probably because of the Baskin and Hughes
We’ll have a talk and tape it. crow series.
The Editor: Excellent. Let’s move to the The Editor: There’s no doubt about it, ra-
past now. You mentioned that you used to vens are fucking cool. And why Corvin
paint on a much larger scale. Can you talk a rather than Randall?
bit about how your life as an artist began
and when/why it stopped for a while?
The Illustratrix: I’ve been a doodler all
my life and when I got to college I dabbled a
bit there too. I used to cover walls with paper
and make oversized portraits of people in oil
and pastels. But printmaking and illustra-
tion was, I guess, my strength. In fact, I once
had a tutorial with Leonard Baskin who
worked with Ted Hughes. Meeting him was
nerve-wracking. But when I showed him my
work, he took me on. He was an amazing
mentor.
The Illustratrix: A lot of these characters
The Editor: What splendid preparation
have been swirling around in James’s head
for your work on Cocky. So did you major in
for years and I met Corvin way back in the
fine art?
day as soon as he was born. So I feel be-
The Illustratrix: No, as it happens. I ma- holden to him.
jored in anthropology. Art was just a side-
The Editor: Corvin has a cooler name, in
line. But my senior project did involve mak-
my opinion. Randall was the name of a
ing art. I created contemporary masks based
creepy old history teacher I used to have who
on styles similar to those used by tribes on
would scrape out his earwax with a biro and
the Pacific Northwest coast. Eventually,
then eat it. And I can’t shake the association.
though, I had to decide: Did I want to be an
OK. One last question. Have you ever met
artist or an anthropologist? I ended up
any of the species that feature in the Ballad
choosing anthropology and archaeology. And
out in the wild?
I found that I was really good at supporting
other artists. So I stopped making art seri- The Illustratrix: Not exactly. When we
ously at that point, although I continued to visit England, I get to see the fields that in-
doodle, make flyers for bands, illustrate for spired the story originally. We follow the

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rabbit warrens in the field buggy and listen
out for shotguns. And sometimes a man
shows up during supper time with a huge
rifle and asks permission to shoot the geese.
The Editor: Permission to shoot the geese?
I love it. And thinking of the latest fit, have
you seen any badger action? (Which sounds
like sexual slang for something or other. “I
badgered him right up the squirrel.”)
The Illustratrix: Heh. No badgers but I
keep drawing them.
The Editor: Right then. One last question.
I once asked James this and he refused to
answer it. You, as his wife, muse and emo-
tional auditor, may care not to refuse. How
similar are Cocky the Fox and James the
Man?
The Illustratrix: Ha! I love them both
dearly. And they both have a great affection
for slathering aftershave on themselves.
T HE W ITCH I N T HE D ITCH
The Editor: Splendid.
The Illustratrix: I see Cocky as an exten- I dine tonight with the witch in the ditch
sion of his creator. Cocky comes straight out at her place beneath the copse,
where the badger will pause and test his
of James’s head and on to the page. So in the claws
same way as you might be able to conclude and the sad frog feelingly flops.
something about an illustrator from an il-
lustration, so you might be able to conclude I do not like the witch in the ditch.
something about James from his depiction of Her eyes are drowned and white.
She garnishes her ugliness
Cocky.
with frogspawn, foam and fright.
The Editor: That’s a suitably intriguing
response on which to end. Thank you, Mrs. Her breath is bog, her mind!s a log,
and down between her thighs
Parker, for this pleasurable natter. There she drags the pearly babies
will be more of this in the near future. like bubbles that cannot rise.

—James Parker

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T HE G ALLERY

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 T HE S NIFFER
EDITOR & WRITER
Patrick Cates
P UBLISHERS
Matthew Battles & Joshua Glenn
of HiLobrow.com
I LLUSTRATION
Kristin Parker
W ITH THANKS TO
Generous backers of Cocky the Fox
& Kickstarter.com
please direct all enquiries to
sniffer@ hilobrow.com

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