Anyone who happened to pass by my bedroom window very early this morning and hearing the giggles and then peals of laughter and cries of delight might well have wondered what was going on, but on this particular occasion all was innocence and pure thoughts as I was reading P G Wodehouse.
PG has been one of those authors who has been lurking on my periphery for years and years, one day I must read them has been a perennial thought and this year, along with numerous others on that list, I have finally got round to starting them. Have only read a few so far and those have not been of the Jeeves and Wooster variety, but the stand alone, one off stories. I have found them simply delightful and this morning when I woke up as usual at the crack of dawn with the birds twittering, decided that I needed something to read that would fit the sunny mood of the day and picked up off a heap of PGs that are awaiting my attention, Aunts aren't Gentlemen.
This is a Jeeves and Wooster story and I hesitate to tell you the plot, but am going to try. So here goes:
Bertie Wooster has been recommended a stay in the country as he has spots on his chest and needs bracing air so he stays in a cottage recommended to him by his Aunt Delia and finds intense rivalry between two local gentleman over a horse race and one of the horses has made friends with a cat and pines when he is not there and so the cat is kidnapped by the local gamekeeper on the orders of Aunt Delia who has placed a huge bet on the rival horse and Bertie's honour as a Wooster makes him tell her the cat must be returned so he goes at dead of night to do so, is caught after falling in a cess pit and locked up in a stable and he escapes and promptly falls into the swimming pool where he meets up with Orlo Porter (why is he in the swimming pool too? Don't ask..) a communist who wishes to marry the daughter of the gentleman who owns the cat and the horse and he is a Communist who has a large trust fund and his fiance's father who is the gentleman who owns the cat will not give him his money and they plan to elope and ......
I could go on, but you get the drift I am sure.
It is all totally potty, and hugely funny and at one stage I leaned back on my pillows and simply howled with laughter. It is very difficult to explain just WHY this writing is funny, it just is and you have to read the books to understand what I mean. My bench mark for trying to explain this kind of humour is to refer everyone who is interested to Diary of a Provincial Lady by EM Delafield where, on the surface, the narrative is easy on the ear and it is not until the reader really gets going that you realise just how humorous it is and it is cumulative, the more you read, the funnier it gets. PG Wodehouse is just the same, I started off with a little smile, then a grin, then a chuckle and, ultimately, howls of laughter. Here is an example of what I mean:
"The trouble is Jeeves she is greatly under the influence of a pal of hers called Tolstoy. I've never met him but he seems to have the most extraordinary ideas.............Do you know anything about this fellow? you ever heard of him?
'Oh yes, sir. He was a very famous Russian novelist'
'Russian eh? Well, there you are...."
This may not have you rolling in the aisles, but believe me, in the context of the story and the gradual building up of the narrative and the totally barmy goings on, this reduced me to tears of laughter.
I simply loved this book and thank goodness have about another seven or eight to hand, plus I also have the DVDs with Fry and Laurie, half of which are still awaiting my viewing. I have to say that having seen Hugh Laurie in House, I find it rather difficult now to imagine him as Wooster and yet, every now and then, in the middle of a fraught scene in that series, he would go 'Derrr' and pull a funny face and instead of Dr House there was Bertie looking at you which was slightly disconcerting.
I understand that PG Wodehouse wrote dozens and dozens of books. O joy O rapture....
