Random Neural Update

Hallos! Just thought I'd do an Everyday Here's What's Up post.

WEEDING!

I've started clearing out parts of my mother's yard, for eventual sale. This part of BC is rainforest, so man does that yard GROW. If something gets left in the grass, the rainforest reclaims it. The vines and weeds grow in between and twist all around the object, and layers upon layers of vines grow over top. I feel like Indiana Jones excavating treasure! (It's a big yard, and the back corner used to have a greenhouse, so there's all sorts of strange things that were left behind and grown over.)

So then I got all interested in invasive plants. We have some thistle, some dandelions, but the real invaders are:

Buttercups! Adorable but they're EVERYWHERE.

Blackberry - Look at those spikes! We have them as high as my face, so I have to cut those down first so I don't get scratched up when I clear the ivy.

English Ivy - Holy crap this stuff grows and GROWS. It creeps across the lawn, sucking in everything in its way. It's beautiful but man! Takes forever to find where the plant starts!

Luckily we do not have (though it's common in this area) Giant Hogweed. The juice and pollen get on your skin and when expose to sun starts burning and bubbling, getting worse every hour. And that same spot will burn in the sun for years afterwards. When hogweed is spotted the city ropes it off, and you have to wear hazmat or similar  clothing to take it out. Neat! It's so Star Trekian!

So you can see I'm having a fun time. I like novelty.

SUNBURNING!

In Montreal I lived in an apartment and never went out--I need a yard in order to venture out. And my balcony gets invaded by yellowjacket wasps almost the entire summer--they won't leave me alone! So here at mum's, when sunny, I sit out and write or weed. But I'm not a good sunblock applier. Lack of experience I guess.

First I burned my face and top of my head. Not too bad, you can see I just look like the ruddy Anglo-Saxon I am.

Then I burned an exact triangle on my chest. It's fading now.

Then a patch on my right shin, but it's hard to see now.

None of these hurt. But today I was weeding from 2 PM - 5 PM and didn't realize my skin was poking out between my t-shirt and yoga pants. So now I have a real burn, the ouchy kind.

It's all très cool.

WRITING!

In the evening I watch some TV with mum, then go upstairs to the little attic apartment. With its sloping ceiling, and my foamee bed, I feel like a real artist. I sit on a chair with my feet on a loveseat* and sometimes put my laptop on my purple suitcase as a table. It's weirdly comfortable.

Behind me Chino the cat naps away. (I used to have the two foamees piled on top of each other, but when the cats started sleeping with me I separated them so that there's more room for everyone.) Sometimes Mystery comes up. I feel like a Real Writer, working away in my garret with a bed on the floor, living out of suitcases. I am so bohemian. No wonder my word count's going well!  ;-)

"They call me Mista Nails!"

And JJJ's WillWriteforChocolate challenge continues, super fun. It's starting to take on the feel of a writing community. And more people keep joining including a reader of my blog! I am so humbled. 

PROCRASTINATING!

I start by looking up legitimate research on the nets, like Paris in the 1920s, and then end up everywhere else. Here's my browsing history from yesterday.

* Here's me looking at photos of Michael Jackson's kids! Procrastination is weird shit.

* The actual research...

So. Things are going along peacefully enough. Do you guys garden? Procrastinate on the net? Live in an attic?

____

* I can't sit with my knees above my hips, or most of the time it will trigger a headache. The loveseat is too plushy, I sit too low.

Writing: What I Learned from Jilly Cooper

I've started slowwwly working on things that need doing before my mother's house can be listed for sale. I'm still having trouble getting my get up to get up and go. But the writing side of my life is going well, thanks mostly to JJJ's fabulous Chocolate Bootcamp for Writers*. Every day I walk the dogs for about 45 minutes while I listen to old Storywonk podcasts--that really keeps me in the writing mood. Then around 3 in the morning, after my mother's gone to bed and all is still I attack the keyboard. Usually go to bed around 6 AM, and I don't let myself go until I've done 2000 words.

I'm climbing the ranks! This week I was #1, and overall #2. But in all fairness I must remind the good reader that, other than helping my post-operation mother out, I'm not employed right now. But I'm hoping it will instill future good habits in me. My butt-in-chair problem is that I usually get going and can't stop, and then I go to bed too late for work. Which makes me reluctant to write on work nights. I need to learn how to start at the right time and then END after 2-3 hours.

AUTHOR I LEARNED FROM: Let's try to make this a mini-series, shall we?


Jilly Cooper
Learned: Advanced Show-Don't-Tell

She writes funny novels about rich English people falling in love, back stabbing and bonking. There's usually one damned good love story tucked into those 600 pages and they're fabulous. (If you like romance between two sweet, beta, beaten down people, then The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous is lovely. If you like to see the charming rake fall head over heels for nice girl, then try Rivals.)

Often in movies etc. when the viewer is shown a mean character it's done through big gestures. She/he walks in and finds her boyfriend/his girlfriend in bed with ___ (Love Actually, Sliding Doors, etc). Or heroine sleeps with a guy but then runs off in the morning cause she can't handle nice men (Bridesmaids.) There's almost one event that shows their jerkiness.

Cooper likes to deliver cruelty in a thousand cuts. She'll take a whole chapter to show you all the wee assholeries a guy delivers to his wife every day (The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous.) Or during the car ride the bitchy chicks will deliver a series of tiny rudenesses to the heroine. So that when someone comes into her life and runs wee rivulets of kindness through it, you understand how much it means. It's subtle, convincing, and moving. Yes, even amidst the bonking and bitching, it's moving.

________
* You compete against other writers the have the highest word count by the end of the month, and Judy, Judy, Judy will buy chocolate for the winner. :-)

Writing the FUBAR Way

The movie FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition) was one of the earlier mockumentaries--comedies posing as documentaries. It came out in 2002, a year after the UK The Office. It's about two white trash best friends, and their last big weekend before one of them goes in for a cancer operation.

The last big weekend is described as givin'er--a Canadian expression, though I don't know how wide spread because you don't hear it in Quebec. The Urban Dictionary defines it as short for "fucking give it to her" and it means "To party as hard as possible and let nothing get in your way."

During my Masters in Political Science I took a graduate level political philosophy course, and my prof (who was from out west) commonly used "give'r" when talking about the books we read. He greatly admired writers who would leave it all on the page; who would come up with a theory, and then unapologetically beat it to death. Balls to the walls. Damn the torpedoes.

For example, we read Karl Marx's Capital, and it's a perfect example of givin'er. I don't even remember his arguments, I just remember being delighted by his conviction, by the slow, methodical drubbing meted out upon capitalist production:

When a certain stage of development has been reached, a conventional degree of prodigality, which is also an exhibition of wealth, and consequently a source of credit, becomes a business necessity to the "unfortunate" capitalist. Luxury enters into capital's expenses of representation. Moreover, the capitalist gets rich, not like the miser, in proportion to his personal labour and restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes out the labour-power of others, and enforces on the labourer abstinence from all life's enjoyment.  [AKA Your Rolex was bought at the expense of your employees' spare time, but we understand. Keeping Up Appearances is the sacrifice you must make in order to conduct business. Poor you. (Motherf*cking capitalists!)]

I suspect that most books rejected by a zillion publishers, then picked up by one, to become a runaway hit, are give'rs. Books that authors gave their all to, or written in a hasty passion, or experiments they thought would only please themselves.

This is why I love the Kanyes and Princes and Mariahs of the world--they're completely mad, and completely passionate. They fail and succeed spectacularly. There was nothing on the radio that sounded like "When Doves Cry" or OutKast's "Hey Ya."



So. Whether it's in our writing, or music, or business ventures, or some other aspect of or lives... as long as we're willing to risk Failing Big, then we should give'r. Anyone can shot gun beers and trash bus stops, but can you write the literary equivalent? ;-)



(And also, see FUBAR. It's damn funny. "I recommend you try another sport! Like knitting!")

   

The Plotting is away! (Hooray!)

I may have to give up only talking about my personal life on weekends... because otherwise these days I have little to talk about. It's been like this most of the year, and I think it's because I've been working on my novel so much all year. That tends to put me in Fiction Mode. When I'm in Fiction Mode, nonfiction thoughts fall out of my head.

So the epic plotting of my novel is finally over. It only took 8 months! Well okay, part of that was spent doing research. I felt pretty triumphant when I finally hammered the durned thing out last night. And it's a pretty good combination of elements from the original version, from Austen's Persuasion, and from Dickens' Chuzzlewit--which every pass, these elements came more and more together.

I've only plotted it as far as the climax, because I don't want to be too hemmed in when I write the first draft. In the past I wrote a draft, and then went over it several times. But some writers and writing teachers advise rewriting your book completely when doing the second draft, that it makes a big difference

I intend to write the first draft in a Nanowrimo kind of way--not in 30 days, but in the "write and don't think too much" way. New ideas always come when you write in a hell-bent-for-leather manner. And then try this whole Rewriting It All thing.

Plotting to the nth degree is also something new. I've been writing stories (outside of school) since grade 2 or 3, so I always just came up with a premise and then ran with it. But a premise isn't a plot, so it can only take you about 1/4 of the way and then you have to come up with all new ideas. Needless to say my books weren't very even. ;-) And tended to include kidnappings.


Mind, most of the time they didn't need to be (even, that is--the kidnappings were very necessary!) cause I wrote them about my friends. I've been re-reading one I wrote in the late '90s about my friends at the bookstore. It was the last of my full length books written about friends--after that I started thinking more about publication, at which point one has to make up characters. But sigh, they were SO fun to write. And were often metafictional with intrusive footnote humor.

This one I'm reading is a Regency mystery, starring a pair of amateur sleuths who are in a marriage of convenience. I envisioned a 5 part series, with them falling in love by book 5, but I had to stop when one of the protagonists turned out to be dating someone else in the store--other than the woman he was married to in my book, who was just one of my buddies. It would have been a bit awkward to continue. Maybe I'll rewrite them one day with made up peeps.

Here's a scene I enjoyed. The Regency language is spotty, and I had to resist correcting mistakes as I retyped, but I think I do a good job of describing the state of the castle without long, boring description. ;-)


Marcus looked doubtfully at the crumbling tower sitting barren on a crook of the river Spey. The morning sky cast a gray pall over Rothiemurchus Castle and the craggy Highlands pushing up around them. Rachele's own medieval castle sat on the North Sea, at the English border, and it was a sprawling and dismal place, but Romantically so. This place looked like it harbored bandits and the sheep carried knives under their wool.


"You live here?" Gilbert raised doubtful eyebrows.


"Is it safe?" Marcus asked.


"Is it habitable?"


"Was it built by humans?"


"I don't like the look in that sheep's eye."


Miss Melinda ignored them both and made her way expertly up the decrepit steps and tugged at the heavy wooden door. Both men cringed, afraid the movement would bring the whole place crashing down about her head. She disappeared into the dark interior and, afraid to stay out there alone, Marcus and Gilbert followed.


[Later they try breaking into a trunk.]


Several implements later, Lord Marcus stood frustrated before the elusive trunk. The tools were so rusted Heather may as well have been storing them in water; the head came off the axe, the pick axe snapped in two, and the hammer head crumbled to dust.


"Luncheon is ready, have you found anything?" Miss Melinda stood in the doorway and eyed with distaste the scene before her. 


They explained the situation to her.


She went to the trunk, pulled a pin from her hair, and picked the lock.

     

A day at the theatah

My blogging might return to some normalcy this week. ... I didn't think the Prince concert brain breakdown would be this productive, but I've already written up several posts that I'm all mustsharemustsharemustshare. As well as linking all kinds of things on facebook that could have become posts. And storing up things to my comments blogs. Seems like one little part of my brain has cleared, but who knows, it might not last. I'm not counting any chickadees.

I don't have any kitty pics this week I'm afraid. Just this...

Fernando felt like seeing a movie Thursday night, since it's a long weekend for him. We rushed off to try and catch Transformers 3--his fave childhood series.

We got the right bus, so were in plenty of time. As we sauntered through the door we saw a poster for this:

Cineplex sometimes shows operas and theatre pieces from Stratford and the National Theatre.



Last year Fernando agreed to come see Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra with me, with Christopher Plummer, which was wonderful. But it's not something I'd expect him to agree to on a whim. He enjoys literature, but not necessarily when he's in the mood for transforming robot adventure.

Me: Oh it's one of those plays--playing today I guess.
F: Let's go see it."
[pausing at the doors]
M: You want to see The Cherry Orchard instead of Transformers.
F: It's Chekhov.
M: And you want to see him now, tonight.
F: What's wrong with you? It's Chekhov!
M: You want to see Chekhov instead of Transformers?
F: I've read and seen The Cherry Orchard two or three times. It's Chekhov!
M: And you want to see it again. Tonight.
F: Yes.
M: Instead of Transformers.
F: It's Chekhov!!

So we saw Chekhov, and my husband can still surprise me after 18 years.

I love plays so I've always wanted to read or see him, but I've always been putting him off because of the depression factor. Oh. My. Days. I was, like, blown back against my chair. What a play. So sad that they only do the National Theatre showings on one date (Stratford ones are sometimes on more than one day) cause I can't recommend it to you guys!

So many different emotions, so much going on, so much tension, so much intensity. Gasp!!

Zoë Wannamaker was so powerful! Oh my days my days. I couldn't remember where I'd seen her (Harry Potter, and Agatha Christie adaptations) because I was so completely immersed in her story of this woman whose childhood home and estate is threatened with foreclosure. Lady Andreyevna reminded me of Dickens' Lady Dedlock, and Gaskell's Lady Ludlow...

...aristocratic women so firmly trapped in their situations that even when an escape hatch is opened to them, you're afraid they're just going to go down with the ship. And that's where all the tension is. Like watching Holly Hunter at the end of The Piano, waiting to see if she'll free herself from her shackle in time, or just let herself drown.

A couple weeks ago I watched Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! for the first time ever, and man does it ever stand up over time. The climax of the story is that he his character has to climb the side of a 12 story building in order to win enough money to marry his sweetheart, to whom he's passionately devoted. I'd just been reading Maas' advice about how to build suspense in a novel, and watching this scene is like the dictionary definition of building suspense for genre stories. Lloyd makes his character suffer. Everything that can go wrong goes wrong. And in original, creative ways. A dog chase on the side of a building? Gun shots? Getting electrocuted? Fear of heights is only the start.

But Maas also talks about building suspense in literary novels, and The Cherry Orchard provides a perfect companion to Lloyd's movie. It isn't full of surprise plot twists and skeletons in the closet and the sudden revelation that the butler is actually the duke's bastard child. It's just a house full of characters--their dreams and ideals and histories and pains and sorrows and their love. And that's what creates the suspense and drives the plot.

The climax of the play was so harrowing, I was almost clutching my gut in pain. And during the climax of Lloyd's movie I was clapping with delight like a hyper child.

Ahhh. Art. If only my Prime Minister didn't hate you.



              

A garden full of lines

* For those with an RSS reader or getting this by email, sorry for posting this 50 million times. Blogger seems to have caught my current bout of insanity.

Today's flower. From a Wodehouse fan page on facebook someone asked for favorite Wodehouse lines. My contribution was: "If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled." One of the things I enjoy about being part of this page is the way my love of Wodehouse particularly unites me with people of Southeast Asian descent. Often when an Indian writer is asked "Who were your influences?" old Plum's name comes up. Maybe it's one of the few things us colonials don't begrudge the colonizer

• • Dhruv M. Trivedi As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight
    

    June 16 at 5:02am · · 4 people4 people like this.
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    Sastry Kunapuli i agree with the suggestion of mrs.ssg.....
    

    June 16 at 5:29am ·
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    Swati Sengupta Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.
    

    June 16 at 8:41pm · · 4 peopleLoading...
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    Swati Sengupta ‎...now tailors measured him just for the sake of exercise.
    

    June 16 at 8:47pm · · 2 peopleLoading...
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi ‎"He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more."
    

    June 16 at 10:51pm · · 4 people4 people like this.
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
    

    June 16 at 10:55pm · · 4 people4 people like this.
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    Nitin Vaswani now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party
    

    June 17 at 12:47am ·
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi

    ‎"What ho!" I said.
    
    "What ho!" said Motty.
    
    "What ho! What ho!"
    ...
    "What ho! What ho! What ho!"
    
    After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation."

    
    

    June 17 at 1:20am · · 8 people8 people like this.
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    Deepak Ramamurthy Don't remember who said this or about whom: "The beastly woman spent 45 minutes explaining why she wrote her book, when a simple apology was all that was needed."
    

    June 17 at 8:02am · · 9 people9 people like this.
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    Peter Begley ‎"I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare--or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad--who says that it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping."
    

    June 18 at 2:54am · · 4 people4 people like this.
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi ‎"At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies. "
    

    June 18 at 2:58am · · 2 people2 people like this.
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    Paul R. Carroll

    ‘I particularly wish you to make a good impression on Mr Filmer.’
    
    ‘Right-ho.’
    
    ‘Don’t speak in that casual way, as if you supposed that it was
    ...perfectly natural that you would make a good impression upon
    him. Mr Filmer is a serious-minded man of high character and
    purpose, and you are just the type of vapid and frivolous wastrel
    against which he is most likely to be prejudiced.’
    
    Hard words, of course, from one’s own flesh and blood, but
    well in keeping with past form.

    
    

    June 18 at 3:18am · · 4 people4 people like this.
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    Jen Powell Too many to declare an absolute favourite, so I'll just share from the book I'm reading today: "...the Code of the Woosters is stricter than the Code of the Catsmeats."
    

    June 18 at 8:34am · · 1 personLoading...
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    Paul R. Carroll It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.
    

    June 18 at 8:39am · · 4 people4 people like this.
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    Jen Powell his air was that of a man who, if he had said 'Hullo girls', would have said it like someone in a Russian drama announcing that Grandpapa had hanged himself in the barn.
    

    June 18 at 8:45am · · 8 people8 people like this.
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    Paul R. Carroll What's that from?
    

    June 18 at 8:45am ·
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    Jen Powell The Mating Season, although I think he might have used the line in another earlier story as well.
    

    June 18 at 8:47am ·
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    Paul R. Carroll

    The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you im...agine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
    -B. Wooster
    
    

    

    
    

    June 18 at 8:47am · · 4 peopleLoading...
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    Paul R. Carroll You sent me to my collection to look up Code of the Woosters...
    

    June 18 at 8:50am · · 1 personLoading...
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    Jen Powell A tall, drooping man, looking as if he had been stuffed in a hurry by an incompetent taxidermist....
    (The Mating Season)
    

    June 18 at 8:52am · · 4 people4 people like this.
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    Jen Powell Paul, I did the same thing myself at first. It's that line about 'the Code of the Woosters' being stricter than the code of the Catsmeats that always causes me confusion.
    

    June 18 at 8:53am ·
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    Paul R. Carroll Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that in his journey through life he is impeded and generally snootered by about as scaly a platoon of aunts as was ever assembled.
    

    June 18 at 8:55am · · 5 people5 people like this.
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
    

    June 19 at 12:33am · · 4 people4 people like this.
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    Tim Richards ‎"You can't be a successful Dictator and design women's underclothing. One or the other. Not both."
    

    June 19 at 4:42pm · · 7 people7 people like this.
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    Paul R. Carroll lndeed, sir.
    

    June 19 at 5:33pm ·
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    Tim Richards Truer words have never been written.
    

    June 19 at 5:35pm ·
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    Ramdas Viswanathan ‎@swati - trust the female to place the world in a concatenation of permanent contemplation! :)
    

    June 19 at 7:12pm · · 1 personSwati Sengupta likes this.
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    Bama Balakrishnan ‎...it was often said of Archibald that, had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers...
    

    June 19 at 7:48pm · · 4 people4 people like this.
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous
    

    June 21 at 4:28am · · 2 people2 people like this.
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his head first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him
    

    June 21 at 4:31am · · 4 peopleLoading...
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    Katharina O'Grady How can you choose just one favourite line. In the J & W episodes alone, there are dozens if not hundreds of absolute LOL moments!!
    

    June 21 at 11:09am · · 2 peopleLoading...
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    Swati Sengupta And it sometimes happens with me that I laugh at different lines when I read the books a second time!
    

    June 21 at 11:11am · · 1 personJen Powell likes this.
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    Katharina O'Grady Same here, Swat,....!!
    

    June 21 at 11:13am · · 1 personSwati Sengupta likes this.
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    Jyothiprakash Trishuleshwar Providence, mysterious in its workings, had given him instead of the more customary human brain, a skull full of concrete!
    

    June 21 at 1:05pm · · 2 peopleLoading...
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    Mario Schiani ‎"Precisely, sir. Carpe diem, the Roman poet Horace advised. The English poet Herrick expressed the same sentiment when he suggested that we should gather rosebuds while we may. Your elbow is in the butter, sir."
    

    June 21 at 1:20pm · · 3 peopleLoading...
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    Shabbir Shamsi Lord Ickenham thought he could guess.He was aware that given a pack of cards, Claude Pott could offend the mildest lamb.Indeed, it was a tenable theory that this might have been the cause of his once having bitten by one.
    

    June 23 at 12:48am · · 2 people2 people like this.
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    Sourav Sengupta ‎"Then how do you know he's a big bug?"
    "Precisely," said Psmith. "On what system have you estimated the size of the gentleman's bughood?" --(Psmith Journalist)
    

    June 24 at 4:54pm · · 3 people3 people like this.
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    Vijen Julian Wood Angus McAllister ... was a sturdy man of medium height, with eyebrows that would have fitted a bigger forehead.
    

    June 25 at 9:28am · · 2 people2 people like this.
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    Carolyn Roosevelt ‎...aunt calling to aunt, like mastodons across the primeval swamp...
    

    June 25 at 2:22pm · · 3 people3 people like this.
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    Frank Cowell The self-assessment of cult literary star Vladimir Brusilov: "No novelists any good except me. Sovietski -- yah! Nastikoff -- bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me."
    

    June 25 at 6:12pm · · 2 peopleLoading...
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
    

    June 26 at 6:51am · · 1 personSwati Sengupta likes this.
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi Have you ever tasted such filthy coffee?" "Never" said Joe, though he had lived in French hotels
    

    June 26 at 6:57am · · 2 people2 people like this.
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    Dhruv M. Trivedi I had just got across the lawn when a head poked itself out of the smoking-room window and beamed at me in an amiable sort of way.
    “Ah, Mr. Wooster,” it said. “Ha, ha!”
    “Ho, ho!” I replied, not to be outdone in the courtesies.
    

    June 26 at 7:03am · · 3 people3 people like this.
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    Frank Cowell

    ‎"... If I had a quid for every time I've seen you gaze at him with the lovelight in your eyes----"
    She gazed at me, but without the lovelight.
    "Oh, for goodness sake, go away and boil your head, Bertie!"
    I drew myself up.
    "That," I replied, wi...th dignity, "is just what I am going to go away and boil. At least, I mean, I shall now leave you. I have said my say."
    "Good."
    "But permit me to add----"
    "I won't."
    "Very good," I said coldly. "In that case, tinkerty tonk."
    And I meant it to sting.

    
    

    June 26 at 7:28am · · 2 people2 people like this.
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    Steve Moppett ‎"You know your Shelley, Bertie" "Am I?"
    

    June 26 at 2:37pm · · 7 peopleLoading...
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    Bill Cawley Heil Spode and you imagine its the Voice of the People. That's where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is " Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in all your puff see such a perfect perisher"
    

    June 26 at 7:18pm · · 3 people3 people like this.
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    Shabbir Shamsi At the open window of the great library of Blandings Castle, drooping like a wet sock, as was his habit when he had nothing to prop his spine against, the Earl of Emsworth,that amiable and boneheaded peer, stood gazing out over his domain.
    

    Monday at 1:43am · · 3 people3 people like this.
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    Jen Powell ‎@Frank. Great quote from the Clicking of Cuthbert. Possibly my favourite Wodehouse short story. Brimming to the back teeth with fabulous lines.
    

    Monday at 4:14am ·
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    Frank Cowell ‎Jen : well, living / working in the academic world one comes across quite a few with the Vladimir Brusilov attitude. Quite a few with his amazing beard too...
    

    Monday at 4:39am · · 1 personSwati Sengupta likes this.
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    Jen Powell Your literary afternoon teas must be a sight to behold, all those cake slices being steered through the shrubberies.
    

    Monday at 6:36am · · 1 personPaul R. Carroll likes this.
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    Frank Cowell ‎Swati Sengupta: In fact I used your "codfish" quotation in an academic bbok -- in a chapter on inheritance and wealth!
    

    Monday at 8:52am ·