Sunday, October 16, 2005

The day after Plum's birthday

This is a little weird, posting on a Sunday morning, but I was up early, and I missed posting yesterday.

Oh, I wrote a post yesterday. Blogger just killed it as soon as I hit the Publish button. And, no, fellow Blogger users, the Recover Post feature didn't save me. It didn't even try, blast it all. And as it was a really good post (for this blog, anyway), I was just too bummed to try again until now.

I mean it when I say it was a good post. I'd made a fairly strenuous effort because yesterday was Plum's birthday (he was born in 1881) and I wanted to offer my best work as a tribute to the memory of one of my literary heroes.

Who's Plum? Oh, sorry. I'm talking about P.G. Wodehouse. Pelham Grenville was his name, which explains why his pals called him Plum. And by the way, the name is pronounced "Woodhouse." (Yeah, I know. I can never quite decide whether to laugh at British spellings or British pronunciations. I mean, really. Who can pick up a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and not giggle?)

To mark the inimitable comic's birthday, I thumbed through some of my favorite Wodehouse stories and chewed on juicy lines like:

Behind every poor, innocent, harmless blighter who is going down for the third time in the soup, you will find, if you look carefully enough, the aunt who shoved him into it.

The Code of the Woosters (1938)

and
Rodney Spelvin was in for another attack of poetry. He had once been a poet, and a very virulent one too; the sort of man who would produce a slim volume of verse bound in squashy mauve leather at the drop of a hat, mostly on the subject of sunsets and pixies.

Rodney Has A Relapse (1950)

and
Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad.

The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)

and
Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing glove.

Very Good, Jeeves (1930)


Very good indeed, sir.

3 comments:

Pilgrim said...

I went through a JEeves phase, years ago. Wish I'd kept those books.

Sela Carsen said...

You missed one of my favorites! If there's one thing circumstances weren't, it's different from what they were. It takes some backward thinking to get it right.

Brenda Coulter said...

Oh, Sela, we could never hope to list them all.