The

niffer
A PERIODICAL FOXY COMPENDIUM
ISSUE NO. NINE — 16 SEPTEMBER 2010

F ROM T HE S NOUT

Some Sniffers ago, mention was made of
James Parker’s metallic muse. Names like
Eagle Twin, Zoroaster and Black Sabbath
were bandied about as a prelude to a promise
of further discussion. That discussion will
begin when The Sniffer hits double figures.
But, for now, let’s play taxonomist and
classify Parker. He is no fox, badger, weasel,
squirrel or rat. He is a crustacean. A
whopping great Atlantic lobster. The
antennae and legs of his fearsome intellect
wave, dangle and scramble in so many
different directions. His sharp, serrated
prose will pinch you in the arse and it will
tingle for days. And, musically, he wears a
rock hard shell. (In human form, Parker
often advertises his crustacean status; one of
his favourite t-shirts has emblazoned upon it
the hard, shiny and spiky Motörhead logo.)
But throw Parker in a pot, warm him up
and then pull off his tail. Inside you will
find tender and sweet clouds of flesh. He is
no bastard rocker who’ll headbutt you for
looking at him the wrong way. He’s a big
softy who’ll charm your grandmother. And
I’ll go further in my thesis. That whole
metal thing? It’s all an act. He doesn’t like
metal at all. He likes easy-on-the ear
rubbish. And, unfortunately for him, he lets
his embarrassing musical penchants slip
unconsciously through the textual net.
Consider the latest Fit. We are introduced to
two nasty vulpine pieces of work, Maurice
and Gibby. Where could Parker have come
up with these two names? He was, of course,
listening to the Bee Gees as he wrote. These
two foxy buggers between them make for
Maurice Gibb, that colossus of toothy,
bearded disco warbling. What of Shakes the
badger? Our esteemed author didn’t pluck
that name out of thin air; he plucked it out
of air thick with the Welsh easy-listening-
rockabilly bilge of Shakin’ Stevens, known
to Parker and his other fans, as “Shaky”.
And all the Cocky action has now moved to
the Northside. Does anybody remember the
dismal, sub-par, Madchester jangle-pop
offered for all of five minutes at the end of
the 1980s by the band Northside? I needn’t
tell you what was playing on Parker’s

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turntable as he formulated this geographical The Editor: Right. Everything is
detail. Dickensianly essential to either plot or
character evolution.
His sharp, serrated prose will The Author: Exactly. Each line has to
pinch you in the arse carry its share of the weight.
So I introduce you to James Parker the [Pause during which both interlocutors take
Atlantic lobster. Tough, many-legged and a glug and gaze at their navels for a
awesome to behold. But with an inside as moment.]
soft as baby shit. And with a soundtrack The Author: I feel like a bit of a wanker
akin to a baby’s rectal gurgling. talking about all this, really. I’m only now
beginning to figure out some of these basic
O VER A P INT things about the craft that other people have
The author of The Ballad of Cocky the Fox known for ages.
and the editor of The Sniffer are known to The Editor: But you’re doing it in your
enjoy a chinwag over a pint. In each edition, own inimitable way. The results of this
The Sniffer eavesdrops on their beery journey are indisputably Parkerian. You’re
blathering and presents a randomly chosen not just another chancer writing some shitty
chunk of it to the readership. In this airport hardback. It’s meaty, clever stuff.
instance, the two Englishmen have drunk And you can tell from people’s reactions so
enough to dissolve their customary reserve far that I’m not alone in that opinion.
and are now tearfully declaiming emotional
gibberish and waxing each other’s wickets
with bromantic abandon.
The Author: I’ve never done this before.
It’s all new to me. I feel like I’m learning a
trade or something. It’s like a weird
apprenticeship.
The Editor: It’s a fascinating experiment
and I’m delighted to be part of it.
The Author: A lot of stuff happens when
you’re doing dialogue. You have a couple of
characters talking to each other and then
you start thinking much more deeply about
[Both interlocutors take another glug,
what they mean, what might be motivating
spontaneously rise to their feet and then
them to say the things they say. And then if
burst into a tear-drenched rendition of Sir
something doesn’t sound right, you begin
Cecil Spring-Rice’s I Vow To Thee, My
wondering why it doesn’t sound right. What
Country.]
should the character be saying instead? And
why? This is especially important in the
T HE I NFOXICATOR
Cocky format because we need to keep things
moving. Everything has to serve a purpose. The Infoxicator is a tribute to Cocky's
There’s no farting about, really. occasional tendency to get off his tits on
aftershave and glue. In this installment, you

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will learn about a pub-in-turd’s-clothing and then seek refuge in the dissimulatory
called the Fox & Hounds. booze oasis that is the Fox & Hounds.
The San Fernando Valley. A hot sprawling
grid full of slurring bimbos and porn shoots.
Like all British pubs that I’ve been to in
Block after block of identimalls, banks and
Southern California, the Fox and Hounds is
office suites. Pick a Starbucks (there are
a wonky jumble of ideas based on the rose-
dozens). Here’s a male actor with neither
tinted memories of a long-exiled expatriate.
shirt nor job, twitching his tanned pectorals
Football shirts, brewery signs, beer mats, a
and elocuting loudly into a cellphone about
dartboard and other self-conscious “This Is
an audition that probably doesn’t exist.
England” symbols. But it’s a comfortable
Here’s an ageless simulacrum of a woman
cushion and it breaks the hard Valley fall.
who tilts her head, pouts her botulised lips
Moreover, the proprietor throws in a
for the benefit of an imaginary
footstool and a pair of cosy carpet slippers.
photographer and ignores the tiny dog that
The pub has taps that serve the Fuller’s sta-
sits yapping in her Hermès handbag.
ples, London Pride and ESB. They plate up
According to Tom Waits, Frank settled
a magic scotch egg (complete with sharp
down out in the Valley. But it sent him
cheddar, giant pickled onion and equally
bonkers and he ended up burning down his
giant dollop of Branston). And, best of all,
house.
they have a pub quiz on two nights of the
week. Not one of these insipid syndicated
trivia offerings, either. A proper celebration
of nerdery put together and presented by a
suitably sardonic Englishman.
The Fox and Hounds is a corner of a foreign
field that is forever England; in that poor
Valley dirt there is a richer dust concealed.
Not in the Rupert Brooke dead World War I
Knowing all of this, why would you ever soldier way. But in the bloody decent pub
visit an English pub in the Valley? way. The next time I visit the Valley, it
Especially an English pub that presents it- might not even be an accident.
self as a grubby mock Tudor shoebox. Let’s
imagine that you end up in the Valley by
F OX F ACT
accident (how else?) You mean to get off the
101 in Hollywood but you fall into a reverie
If your line of work or line of leisure brings
for five minutes. When you snap back into
you into contact with things made of old
consciousness, you realize that you’ve crossed
paper, you will probably have been perturbed
the great divide. You get off the freeway.
at some point by foxing. Foxing is the name
But now you have a choice. You can close
given to the staining that appears on such
your eyes for a few minutes so you don’t have
material as it ages. Some have suggested that
to expose yourself to any local horrors, while
ferric oxide is the culprit; others that a
relying on the polite GPS robot to talk you
fungus is to blame. Whichever is the case,
back onto the freeway in the right direction.
the name is appropriate. For paper that is
Or you can slip onto Ventura Boulevard for
foxed looks rather like an impudent member
a moment or two, park down a side street
of the species has come along and, showing

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utter disregard for humanity and its K ETTLE There are more electric kettles in
reverence for the written word, urinated England than there are televisions. That
upon it. may or may not be true, but it certainly
sounds plausible. If England is the poorly
T HE C OCKY C OMPANION maintained body whose flabby triceps,
floppy breast and stinky armpit were just
Each edition of The Sniffer features an delineated, then tea is the blood that runs
extract from The Cocky Companion, a boiling through its veins. Tea is a
Rosetta Stone for decoding the less obvious panacea; it cures stagefright, misery and
elements of Cocky's London vernacular. This broken legs. Tea is a leveller; architect
extract feeds Fit the Ninth into an Enigma and builder, doctor and nurse, teacher
Machine in the hope of deciphering what and student -- all will gamely clink cup
the Dickens these hairy mammals are and mug. And the kettle is the crucible
talking about. and capillary of this liquid goodwill. It is
fount, idol, icon and altar in an island
E SSEX Essex is a Jekyll and Hyde of a
church where tea is worshipped.
county nestled in England’s armpit, stuck
between the saggy tit of East London and
the bingo-wingèd arm of East Anglia.
The London side of Essex is victim to a
nasty rash of towns that end in -ford:
Stratford, Ilford, Romford. These
pestilential pustules are singlehandedly
responsible for giving Essex the bad name
it has had for many years. Slovenly
speech, sovereign rings and souped-up
Vauxhalls. Pitbulls, pub aggro and
ponytails. But keep on travelling East
until Hyde runs out. Then you’ll meet
Jekyll. Shire horses, cosy pubs and
country piles. This Essex is home to old
money and landed gentry. And the old
money and landed gentry wish it had a
H ULA H OOPS Hula Hoops are precision-
different name. Even Upper Essex would
engineered annular potato snacks that fit
do.
perfectly on the tips of a prepubescent’s
fingers. Find me a lad of 70s or 80s
Britain who hasn’t dunked his hands in a
bag, donned ten crunchy fingernails and
then taken great delight in gobbling each
one off in quick succession, and I’ll
barrack that lad for being an impostor.
For to have grown up then and there is to
have had hands permanently and
gleefully drenched in crumby slime, and
to have been enchanted by the tangy smell
of chemically modified potato (“Origi-

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 nal”), chemically manufactured beef
(“Beef”) and chemically dangerous acid
(“Salt & Vinegar”).
D O Fucking and fighting. The Castor and
Pollux of the animal condition. And “do”
does for both. If a lecherous beer guzzler
flops his belly on to the bar, leans into
the barman, points at the attractive
woman sitting nearby and offers the
following into the poor barman’s tolerant
earhole – “ I’d do ‘er” – he is indicating
his never-to-be-requited desire to engage
in the former of these two beastly
pursuits. But if the same guzzler, having
guzzled his shoe size in pints, blearily
misinterprets a friendly request to step
aside so that the requester may pass, and
then shout-slurs this in response – “‘Scuse
fuckin’ wot? Fuck off or I’ll fuckin’ do
you” – the doing will involve an act of
extreme violence, mediated by fist, head
or broken pint glass. Advice for the virgin
doer: Don’t get your do’s confused or you’ll
be done for.
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T ASTY Here is a gentleman. You may have
fellated him and found the flavour to be
appealing. But if, in describing him to a
streetwise friend, you call him “tasty”,
this friend will take you to mean a
different trait. If you are tasty, you are an
aficionado of the punch-up. You are
handy and hardy and always ready for a
ruck. You can jump in the ring with the
fairground prizefighter, knock the hulk-
ing bastard out with a quick one-two and
take the jackpot. Stay away from tasty
blokes. Unless you’re looking for a man
with a toothsome member.
G ET F OXED
Cast your mind back to the sixth Sniffer. In
that issue, Get Foxed invited you to consider
eight pairs of definitions and derive eight
Cocky-related pairs of words, each word in a
pair differing by only one. Allow me to put
you out of your misery (or into your misery
if you weren’t there to begin with):
1) Bellow. A fox nose. SHOUT. SNOUT.
2) Head bone. A pack of foxes. SKULL.
SKULK.
3) Plaything. A fox (in Scotland and the
North of England). TOY. TOD.
4) Whacked. A dog, broadly and
taxonomically speaking. CANED.
CANID.
5) A plant in the parsley family. A
large-eared African fox. FENNEL.
FENNEC.
6) Breast. A young fox. TIT. KIT.
7) To percolate. A brace and a half of
hunted foxes. LEACH. LEASH.
8) A long, slender branch. A female fox.
VIMEN. VIXEN.
This installment of Get Foxed requires you
to engage in more lexical wrangling. Dig
your hands into the hedgerow of letters
below and rummage around for the follow-
ing twenty Cockular words that are hidden
therein:
BADGER BOB BOROUGH CHAMPION
COCKINATOR CORVIN FOX GUMMA
KNACKERED MAURICE MUSHROOMS
NORA NORTHSIDE OTTO PAUL
QUAVERS SQUIRREL VIXEN
VULPINE WEASEL
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C OCKY ’ S M ESSAGE T O T HE P EOPLE
We walked abroad, we two, at harvest time,
And heard the engines roar, and saw the
clouds
Of chaff and dust diffuse into the woods,
And saw the black rooks peppering the field
And going for the gleanings with their
beaks,
And thought, so bloody marvellous were we,
that all of of life would bend before our
Love.
The very sky seemed moulded to our minds!
But no, oh dear, it seems we were mistook.
Blank verse, blank verse, blank verse. The
poem ends.
—James Parker
T O T HE S NOUT
Sir,
Is Champion brain-damaged, or what? He
talks like a 5-year-old. Or is it just that
Cocky never gives him a chance to say
anything?
Sincerely,
Jeans Hung Lo
***
Dear Mr. Lo,
Champion is a Delphic oracle for modern
suburban England. His pronouncements
may come off as cryptic, nonsensical and
childish. But buried in the middle of the
idiot there is a dense kernel of savant.
“Pylons. Buttery wedges. Nora will collapse,”
he pronounces in the latest Fit. But take
some time to look closely and read deeply.
You will come to realize that these apparent
non sequiturs are gravid with earthly
portent. And in realizing this, you will be
amazed at our leporine friend’s prophetic
prowess. He has keys for locks that don’t
even exist yet.

The world – animal, human and in-between

– genuflects before him and kisses his fluffy,
chubby paws. You think he knows nothing.
But he knows everything. It’s no wonder that
he can lollop through the Borough and
beyond without a worry for his wellbeing.
No creature would dare dig tooth into fur
and upset the cosmic balance.

Yours sincerely,

The Editor

***

If there are questions you would like to ask

or remarks you would like to make, you can
do so by emailing the editor of The Sniffer
(sniffer@hilobrow.com).

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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