Press Release: Who Killed Cock Robin?

This is a ‘Norfolk Noir’ – part detective; part ghost story - that sends up everything in sight, especially itself. Along with its sequel, Covid's Metamorphoses, peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/covids-metamorphoses-the-tale it is set in 2020 in the fictional village of Little England in the Styx, a locked down backwater of Breck’s Isle, and told through a ‘Clued Ouija Board’ by a Dead Author. The tiny Norfolk village of Little England in the Styx, peopled by archetypes from Cluedo board, English folklore and fiction, attempts to solve who is using the global Covid virus as a devastating postmodern murder weapon to seize first Little England in the Styx and tomorrow the world.

Squire Robin Peacock of Haunted Cock Hall, a personification of Public Service and One Nation Britain, is murdered three weeks after the Author himself (pen name Dr Blak) is beheaded in an unprovoked scythe attack at a Norfolk noir conference and his body hidden on the cellar steps. Being dead and the victim of a previous crime doesn’t stop Blak being accused of the Squire’s murder by the baddies: millionaire climate change-denying viral capitalist Colonel Mustard (who wants to privatise everything in sight) and the racist Cock Hall housekeeper Mrs “Self-Island’ White.

The village is peopled by archetypes from Cluedo, English folklore and Agatha Christie. Punning references to Norfolk places - DI Ken Hill; Chief Constable Melton; DS Len Wade; “jumpy as a poulter in Geist” will not be lost on locals. Postmodern Post-Man Pat is a ghost village Ghost Office worker. The Prologue is spoken word interwoven with songs evoking Norfolk ghosts like Boudicca, Anne Boleyn and The Brown Lady (said to haunt several Houghton and Raynham Halls.) The Tale is rapped over drum and bass, haunting hums and a rural soundscape recorded during the quiet of the first lockdown. And it’s no ordinary rap. Mrs ‘Self-Island’ White is described receiving scary Amazon multi-deliveries in her “self-unconscious-authoritarian-past-tense-straight-linear-cause-effect-oxygen-supply-demand-
semi-detached bourgeois-realist-plot-in-my-beginning-
is-my-Middle-England-ever-after-revenge-narrative
planetary-extinction-with-farm-views-cul-de-sac…”

DI Ken Hill doesn’t just come to work in a trilby or an exotic moustache but in a long Saxon cloak of Robin Hood Green and plays a bodhran in the woods as an aid to reflection; a postmodern deer stalker/violin trope. Ken (as in kenning) is also a personification of place and of Green farming opposed to planetary extinction, following a Critical Theory learned at UEA. He is taken off the case by “Super ‘Market’ Law of Bourgeois Realist Plod”, at the behest of the Super’s Old School pal Colonel Mustard. The Green detective is replaced by the Freud Squad (Poirot and Marple of AC/OCD) who pursue the Red Herring of Professor Plumski and Miss Scarlett until themselves replaced by Frank and Mark Adams of the CIA, “Government contracted on a private number,” when they also see through Mustard to the Truth.

The Cock Hall Murder Scene is overrun with visitors chasing the Norfolk Paradise up a gridlocked Boudicca Trail. These self-escape pilgrims are drawn instead by the spirit of the age and their own demons down the “B666 to Dis.” As the Last Trump subsides, we hear the late Squire’s unhinged prophesy of another global virus to come – Love - which will spread from heart to heart; embrace the whole world and redeem humanity. peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/covids-metamorphoses-the-tale



Backword by General Mustard, PDQ and Cocktail Bar. (Please note that the General's pre-coup rank of Colonel is erroneously retained in early editions of this album)

When I took over this album, it was a spineless deconstruction of bleeding-heart-Green-behind-the-ears-PC plots about war-fleeing Belgian refugees sleuthing over here to take our jobs and our Little Old Maids from St Mary Mead. I imposed an immediate bourgeois realism, privatising its uncompetitive social criticism into a drama of Author's deconstructing psyche. I rebranded it 'Who Killed Cock Robin?' after our ancient Breck's Isle nursery rhyme. I sold it to Heritage and funded the adverts by closing down local children's centres. I eliminated the visionary and inclusive nonsense of spelling 'Blak' the old way ('Blake', with a silent e) in an effort by the enemy to make him seem less foreign.

The Public-Eyed claim made in the refrains of peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/covids-metamorphoses that The Brown Lady embodies the haunting debt of our Empire to the East and West Indies is given short shrift here. The listener will deduce (see Chef 'Gammon' White's traditional 'Castrated Cock with Mashed Brussels Christmas Cooked Book') that, on the contrary, 'The Brown Lady' (reputedly the ghost of 'Turnip' Townshend's wife and Robert Walpole's sister murdered by the former when the Whig family firm of Walpole and Townshend was expanding British colonial investments as Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in the early 18th century) represents the menace of dark races and foreigners to our national heritage.

This plain account of the facts ends with eco-farmer/warrior Jack Green 'wanted' by the police, his self-extinction rebellion tipped over the edge by young Miss Scarlett's rejection. If that's not a motive for killing her father the Squire - and it isn't - I don't know what is! As for the preposterous allegation in peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/covids-metamorphoses that 'Jerusalem' our national hymn was written by a socialist, see my "m-memoirs of Empire Volume 6 1956- 1969: From Eden to Aden" (available on the Church of Little England bookstall). Pshaww!

Hell (formerly Cock) Hall, Little England in the Styx, December 25, 2020.

Foreword by D.I . Ken Hill

Author Ransome, better unknown by his pen name Dr Blake (pronounced 'Black'), suffered an -

REVIEW "Proper bourgeois realist storytelling narrated in a Radio 4 lady voice with pleasant tonal musical interludes." Dick Sparrow, Mustard's Holiday Hearth Review.