The Evening Tickler

Who's walking down the streets of the city? Smiling at everybody she meets? Who's giving thoughts that touch what is tender? Everyone knows it's Perquina Lovely.

Become the woman/man you always were afraid to be with these real life lessons in living an achievable perfection.

It took us more than a year; we ran, hid behind bushes, applied aboriginal makeup to our faces and genitals, whetted our flint-tip upon Catskill bluestone. And now, finally, we're poised on one leg, ready to throw a Tickler spear at the unsuspecting wallaby that is the Catskills Food Scene. You can hardly blame us for keeping quiet when every other fucker north of Canarsie has been giddily blowing bubbles through the Kool-Aid for the last five years. But hey, we're here. And what more charming marsupial to inaugurate our hunter-gatherer javelin upon than Katie Phelan, chef, baker, finder, farmer, forager, recent transplant, mover and shaker at Delaware County's latest gastronomic phenomenon, Goldenrod. Muddle yourself a misshapen ceramic bowl of fermented chive buds and lend an ear.

'He holds him with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he ...' Except it wasn't skinny. It was firm and tanned and its wrist likely bore a ’40s Gallet Chronograph. The Tickler invites Jon Bowermaster to its wedding and he arrives sporting an albatross. Surprisingly, it's a stylish bird, all the better to eat us with. And thus, ornithologically attired, with sloping masts and dipping prow, he takes us on a voyage down the slippery Inferno of the Hudson River. Death, derision, crude oil, hissing seams of shale, oozing rods of plutonium, CFC's, PCB's, BBC's, the AM, the FM, the PM too. It's a fuckfest of ice and fire and slimy things that crawl with legs upon the slimy sea. And yet, from the lips of Jon Bowermaster, the tale is furred to velvet and somehow reassuring. Hop on his Raft of the Medusa. You're going to be okay.

'He holds him with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he ...' Except it wasn't skinny. It was firm and tanned and its wrist likely bore a ’40s Gallet Chronograph. The Tickler invites Jon Bowermaster to its wedding and he arrives sporting an albatross. Surprisingly, it's a stylish bird, all the better to eat us with. And thus, ornithologically attired, with sloping masts and dipping prow, he takes us on a voyage down the slippery Inferno of the Hudson River. Death, derision, crude oil, hissing seams of shale, oozing rods of plutonium, CFC's, PCB's, BBC's, the AM, the FM, the PM too. It's a fuckfest of ice and fire and slimy things that crawl with legs upon the slimy sea. And yet, from the lips of Jon Bowermaster, the tale is furred to velvet and somehow reassuring. Hop on his Raft of the Medusa. You're going to be okay.

Mothers Day. Join The Tickler as we compose our own audio accompaniment to all those Instagram Mama posts that touched your heart. Nature Mama, Mountain Mama, Hip Mama; sage down your beanbags, stuff Banyan and Linden under the Tiny Love Meadow Days Mobile and namaste over to the wireless, where Siobhan Barrett will be tearing the covers off Spiritual Midwifery, Birthing from Within and What to Expect When You're Expecting and stuffing them in the blender with a pint of bottom-shelf tequila and a couple of strips of Sudafed Pain and Mucus. Suck it through a straw, snort it, make a poultice for throbbing meatloaf nipples. Multi-purpose. In a jar. If you ain't ill it'll fix your car. You baldie birth-partners too. Come one, come all, grab two fistfuls of pubes and hold on tight. The Tickler's going bareback.

Mothers Day. Join The Tickler as we compose our own audio accompaniment to all those Instagram Mama posts that touched your heart. Nature Mama, Mountain Mama, Hip Mama; sage down your beanbags, stuff Banyan and Linden under the Tiny Love Meadow Days Mobile and namaste over to the wireless, where Siobhan Barrett will be tearing the covers off Spiritual Midwifery, Birthing from Within and What to Expect When You're Expecting and stuffing them in the blender with a pint of bottom-shelf tequila and a couple of strips of Sudafed Pain and Mucus. Suck it through a straw, snort it, make a poultice for throbbing meatloaf nipples. Multi-purpose. In a jar. If you ain't ill it'll fix your car. You baldie birth-partners too. Come one, come all, grab two fistfuls of pubes and hold on tight. The Tickler's going bareback.

“A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.” Listen, Stranger, as The Tickler dons Agatha Christie's twin-set and pearls, sets out across the moor to discover what dark Illuminati tentacles caused a stocky, tousle-haired gentleman from the flatlands of Suffolk to be consigned by history to tell the tale of a mountainous region of upstate New York replete with mad-eyed Scotsmen whose toothlessness rattled down the generations like a golfball on the stairs. Tim Duerden - historian, lecturer, semi-professional Englishman, 1970's apprentice centre-half for Grimsby Town, dead-ringer for Charles Ingalls and author of 'A History of Delaware County, New York' along with the recently published 'Lewis Hine: Photographer and American Progressive' - graces the Tickler table with wry smile, moist sporran, and the smell of three-day old fish 'n chips on his fingers.

“A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.” Listen, Stranger, as The Tickler dons Agatha Christie's twin-set and pearls, sets out across the moor to discover what dark Illuminati tentacles caused a stocky, tousle-haired gentleman from the flatlands of Suffolk to be consigned by history to tell the tale of a mountainous region of upstate New York replete with mad-eyed Scotsmen whose toothlessness rattled down the generations like a golfball on the stairs. Tim Duerden - historian, lecturer, semi-professional Englishman, 1970's apprentice centre-half for Grimsby Town, dead-ringer for Charles Ingalls and author of 'A History of Delaware County, New York' along with the recently published 'Lewis Hine: Photographer and American Progressive' - graces the Tickler table with wry smile, moist sporran, and the smell of three-day old fish 'n chips on his fingers.

Legend tells of a child that tumbled from the rear door of a 1968 wood-sided Ford Country Squire, barreling along the red roads of a Catskills summer; that vanished into the wild parsnip, its absence only noticed by Mr and Mrs Finn the following Thursday when young Danny failed to turn up at Mrs Hilson's for his Bach cantata. Dan Finn. Raised by Fisher Cats in the hills above Crescent Valley, escaped to Brooklyn on a raft made of knotweed stalks bound with ladies' smalls stolen from the Burns sisters' washing-line. The only convict known to have willingly returned to the scene of his incarceration. Dairy farmer, lead-guitarist and frontman, carpenter, beard-grower, backwoods libertine, pig-raiser, bull-whisperer, syrup-cooker, menopausal father and custodian of the wry Dan Finn smile that means either you're full of shit or he's full of beer. Swam upstream, leapt up waterfalls and fish-ladders - his tail pummeling the air like a propellor - to a limpid pool behind the Creamery, where he spawned and will now live out his dotage making babies and cheese. At last, Steve and Julian get to tickle the Leviathan of the Little Delaware.

Legend tells of a child that tumbled from the rear door of a 1968 wood-sided Ford Country Squire, barreling along the red roads of a Catskills summer; that vanished into the wild parsnip, its absence only noticed by Mr and Mrs Finn the following Thursday when young Danny failed to turn up at Mrs Hilson's for his Bach cantata. Dan Finn. Raised by Fisher Cats in the hills above Crescent Valley, escaped to Brooklyn on a raft made of knotweed stalks bound with ladies' smalls stolen from the Burns sisters' washing-line. The only convict known to have willingly returned to the scene of his incarceration. Dairy farmer, lead-guitarist and frontman, carpenter, beard-grower, backwoods libertine, pig-raiser, bull-whisperer, syrup-cooker, menopausal father and custodian of the wry Dan Finn smile that means either you're full of shit or he's full of beer. Swam upstream, leapt up waterfalls and fish-ladders - his tail pummeling the air like a propellor - to a limpid pool behind the Creamery, where he spawned and will now live out his dotage making babies and cheese. At last, Steve and Julian get to tickle the Leviathan of the Little Delaware.