The Mook:
A very real, imaginary portrait.
The night before Kip arrived at The Lost Penguin, the wind had already whispered his coming to the trees, and the ocean, too, had its say. The pub wasn’t much to look at from the outside. The tall and forlorn building - standing isolated on the edge of a storm. To those that knew it, though - It was perfect, in a way, that only Cornwall could be: a remote refuge between the gorse bush and the sea, between reality and something akin to a dream.
There were stories. Of course, there were stories. There always are, when people gather in dark corners and swap words over beer. You don’t need much—just enough time and the stories—the adventure will come, like the tide, rising when you least expect it.
And this was the thing about The Lost Penguin—it wasn’t just a place to drink. No, it was a place where the world began to make sense again, if only for a little while. The patrons and staff alike believed in things here. Things that, in another place, might be dismissed as nonsense. But here? Here, they were something more.
‘You’ll hear about him soon enough,’ said Huggy, his voice thick with a kind of gentle certainty. He was looking at Kip over his glass of something intoxicating, a smile in the corner of his mouth. ‘The Mook, I mean. But don’t go looking for him. He will find you.’
Kip focused on his new friend, more out of politeness than curiosity - fatigued after his journey. ‘What’s a Mook?’
Huggy didn’t answer at first. Instead, he looked around, as if checking to see if the Mook was lurking in the rafters, listening. ‘Ah, you’ll see. He is a pooka - one of the fey,’ he whispered. The more you believe, the more he’s real - I believe - do you, Kip - do you believe in the Mook?’
Kip didn’t believe in stories like that, at least not in the way Huggy meant. He believed in the grind of life, in people - both the good they bring… and the not-so-good! Kip needed roots and to belong - after all, there was enough chaos in his life. The Mook, a pooka - a creature from the land of Faerie - wasn’t something Kip had the luxury of thinking about - let alone believing in.
Yet, something about the way Huggy said it, with the faint flicker of hope in his eyes, made Kip pause. There was more to this place than the penguin-enriched décor and the surfboards stacked in the corner of the old wooden bar. Maybe it wasn’t about what you believed—it was about what you allowed to be real.
And so it went, night after night. Kip didn’t believe in the Mook. He didn’t have to. But the more he listened, the more he wondered. The pub, the people—Huggy, Clem, Jori, and the ever-constant regular crowd—were all a part of something he didn’t fully understand. But one thing was clear: the Mook was always around. It didn't need to be anything more than a story to Kip—stories shaped the world. The question was not if he believed but how this story would shape him. Chaos was inevitable—love, death and entropy.
Do you believe in the Mook? And more importantly - do you want to listen to some Mook related music? Of course you do - click this link (and scroll down to ‘Music from The Lost Penguin)
The Mook is a book by Wayne Hudson - being adapted to screen by Wayne Hudson and Dave Clarke.