The

niffer
A PERIODICAL FOXY COMPENDIUM
ISSUE NO. SIXTEEN — 4 JANUARY 2011

F ROM T HE S NOUT title, In the Beginning was the Scream, is a

Intestines are blocked, livers are shrivelled,
girths are ample. Christmas is a foggy
memory of mince pies, brandy butter and
fa-la-la. It’s almost the Epiphany. Which
means it’s the epiphany of ennui. To
celebrate the perennial doldrums of this
grimmest month, you are invited to cast an
eye over a multiple amputee of a Sniffer.
There is music, vocabulary and prosody. But
that’s your lot. Visit the newsstand again
next week for something more spirited,
optimistic and celebratory of a new decade.
flaccid and misleading summary of the
multi-faceted, screamless, sledgehammer
sludge that awaits the interested ear.
The entire album is a grim and murky
miscellany of gurgles and riffs based on the
animal poetry of Ted Hughes. It is slow,
dense, blurred, angry, scary and unhinged. It
takes the crow, that bastard of bird-dom, as
its subject. You hear the titular unkindness
in the drums and the guitar (for there are no
other instruments). And you hear brooding
violence in the voice.

H IS M ASTER ’ S C HOICE
Each installment of His Master’s Choice
considers a single album that has graced the
gramophone of Cocky’s creator and master,
James Parker. On this occasion, we let a
little bit of frightened wee dribble out of our
bell-ends because of the words and noises in
Eagle Twin’s The Unkindness of Crows.
In the Beginning was the Weird Mongolian
Throat Growling and Down-tuned Bass
Fuzz and Bombastic Drum Thrash. That’s
the name I’m going to give the opening track
of The Unkindness of Crows. Its official

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As I wade through the metallic molasses of
this wonderful concept album, I envisage
just a single crow. He stares at me
insolently. He wants to gouge my eyes out
with his shiny scythe of a beak. He then
wants to cackle about it. But Parker, not
content with the pant-shitting literary power
of one ordinary crow, hears two ravens. They
are bastards. They are brothers. They are the
Du Noirs.
“And all of a sudden I feel it, and know that
I’ve been feeling it for days: an eye, up in the
dark blue midnight terraces, a dark eye that
opens and closes, wingbeat by slow wingbeat,
watching us.”
T HE C OCKY C OMPANION
Each edition of The Sniffer features an
extract from The Cocky Companion, a
Rosetta Stone for decoding the less obvious
elements of Cocky's London vernacular. This
time round, you will be held captive as the
editor reminisces ambivalently about his
British childhood.
J ACKANORY For a child of 70s or 80s
Britain, remembering Jackanory
amounts to opening a Pandora’s box of
assonance and alliteration: boring and
snoring; yawning and ignoring; lacklustre
cack. Flip up that lid and the tedium of
the Jackanory formula materializes
instantly: somebody is sitting in a chair
in front of the camera; they are reading a
story; it goes on for days. Back then, this
laughably simple and optimistic approach
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to pre-teen mind control would elicit
groans of protest and a ripple of
channel-hopping up and down the
country. If broadcast at today’s
population, ravaged by Attention-Deficit
Disorder and ravenous for everything
loud, fast and gaudy, Jackanory would
spark a violent revolution.
W HITE V AN White vans aren’t just
commercial transportation vehicles; they
are a collective motif of moral ugliness.
England’s roads have been infested with
them for several decades. And like a
colony of termites scoffing down the
floorboards of a Craftsman house, white
vans have gnawed hungrily away at the
foundations of English civility and
decorum. Drive for just a few minutes in
any urban area and you will encounter
one. The lower back and sides will be
filthy (probably with the legend “Clean
Me” or “I wish my wife was this dirty”
fingered into the grime). There will be a
St. George’s Cross or a Union Jack
fluttering from the radio antenna. There
will be another Cross or Jack stuck in the
rear window. In the cab at the front,
there will be a driver and his two
workmates. All of them will have shaved
heads, England tattoos and cuntish
sneers. God help you if you catch their
attention. You will be barked and cackled
at in a babble of invective. “Wotchoo
lookin’ at you cunt ha ha ha ha ha.” If
 you are female, you will be verbally
abused for your beauty, your ugliness or
both. As the van pulls away, one of the
passengers might throw an empty Coke
can at your car and ram two fingers up at
you, as if trying to poke your eyes out via
your nostrils. This is England.
S USS “Suss” is one of those contractions that
allow grumpy Brits to communicate in a
variety of different situations with
minimal facial movement and energy
expenditure. I can step inside a new pub
to suss it out and see if it’s worth staying
for a pint. I can glance at the bloke who
has a big scar on his cheek and a thick
wad of fivers in his sovereign-bedecked
hand, and I can conclude that he looks a
bit suss. Later, after a few Stellas, I can
make a mouthy and rowdy sportsman’s
bet with the barman that Chelsea will
equalize before the final whistle. If they
do, I will be able to lean over the bar and
shout an obnoxious “Sussed!” at him
while, optionally, slapping first and
second fingers of one hand together
rapidly in his face. (This happened
regularly to Phil Collins in his days as a
pub landlord and inspired him to write
the hit song “Sussudio”.)
C LOCK In the Anglo-American vernacular,
“clock” means to spot or to see. But in the
strictly Anglo vernacular, “clock” can also
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mean to hit. This usage derives from the
Victorian drinking game in which
boozed-up aristocrats would smash each
other in the face with clocks. That’s the
kind of lie I would have told a gullible
visitor to London when I lived there. And
it’s the kind of lie I will now try to sneak
into a glossary of British slang.
R UMPY ’ S L AMENT
(A S W RITTEN B Y P OPJOY )
Slow moves the hour, and thick is my heart¹s
blood
with grumpiness, and sad rememberings,
because they took my Holiday away
and left me here, at the back end of things.
Life is nowhere, nothing now has fire,
but only flickers in a mocking show -
because they quenched my flaming Holiday
in waters that are black, and never flow.
At his command I let my rage expand:
I hammered all our foes into a haze.
And now I live alone in these cold woods
‘til some avenging slag should end my days.
All those great battles, all the beasties
bashed
when Holiday and I were stepping strong!
The gruntings and the glory! They have left
me
powerless to move this hour along.
—James Parker
 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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