editor
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 Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 8:43 am Post subject: |
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Lord Emsworth and Others
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | 'What?' Lord Emsworth could not let this pass. 'What do you mean, you were a wonderful shot as a child? You've never shot in your life.'
'I have. Clarence, you were talking about Julia shooting Miss Mapleton. It wasn't Julia - it was I. She had made me stay in and do my rivers of Europe over again, so I shot her. I was a splendid shot in those days.'
'I bet you weren't as good as me,' said Lord Emsworth, piqued. 'I used to shoot rats.'
'So used I to shoot rats.'
'How many rats did you ever shoot?'
'Oh, Clarence, Clarence! Never mind about the rats.'
'No,' said Lord Emsworth, called to order. 'No, dash it. Never mind about the rats. Tell me about this Beach business.'
'Well, when I got to the pantry, it was empty, and I saw Beach outside by the laurel bush, reading in a deck chair -'
'How far away?'
'I don't know. What does it matter? About six feet, I suppose.'
'Six feet? Ha!'
'And I shot him. I couldn't resist it. It was like some horrible obsession. There was a sort of hideous picture in my mind of how he would jump. So I shot him.' ... (From The Crime Wave at Blandings, p. 60) |
A little later on ...
| Quote: | 'I've often asked myself the same question,' said a Gin and Italian Vermouth. 'Where, I've often asked myself, are the great sweeping moustaches of our boyhood? I've got a photograph of my grandfather as a young man in the album at home, and he's just a pair of eyes staring over a sort of quickset hedge.'
'Special cups they used to have,' said the Small Bass, 'to keep the vegetation out of their coffee. Ah, well, those days are gone for ever.'
Mr Mulliner shook his head.
'Not entirely,' he said, stirring his hot Scotch and lemon. 'I admit that they are rarer than they used to be, but in the remoter rural idstricts you will still find these curious growths flourishing. What causes them to survive is partly boredom and partly the good, clean spirit of amateur sport which has made us Englishmen what we are.'
The Small Bass said he did not quite get that.
'What I mean,' said Mr. Mulliner, 'is that life has not much to offer in the way of excitement to men who are buried in the country all the year round, so for want of anything better to do they grow moustaches at one another.'
'Sort of competitively, as it were?'
'Exactly. One landowner will start to try to surpass his neighbour in luxuriance of moustache, and the neighbour, inflamed, fights right back at him. There is often a great deal of very intense feeling about these contests, with not a little wagering on the side. So, at least, my nephew Brancepeth, the artist, tells me. And he should know, for his present affluence and happiness are directly due to one of them.' (From Buried Treasure, pgs. 71-72) |
Listen:
Lord Emsworth and Others
Audio CD
Nicely narrated by British actor Nigel Lambert though Jonathan Cecil remains the champ, in our view
| Quote: | | Editor's Note: When, when, WHEN will a right-minded television producer get this stuff up on the big and small screen, one wonders? Is the Wodehouse estate unlike Bingo and Freddie Widgeon and the gang averse to the odd fiver? |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4559#4559 |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 10:16 am Post subject: |
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Silken Eyes
By Francoise Sagan
Translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin
| Quote: | In appearance, M. Ximenestre closely resembled a drawing by Chaval: corpulent, with an air of amiable bewilderment. But now that the month of December had begun, he wore ane xpression so woebegone as to make every passerby with any heart at all want to stop and ask him what the matter. The trouble lay in the approach of Christmas, which M. Ximenestre, good Christian though he was, was this year contemplating with dismay, not having a sou with which to pamper the gift-hungry Mme.Simenestre, his good=for-nothing son, Charles, and his daughter, Augusta, an excellent calypso dancer. Not a sou: that was the exact state of his affairs. And there was no question of advances or loans. Both had already been obtained, without the knowledge of Mme. Ximenestre and his children, in order to gratify the latest vice of this supposed breadwinner; in short, to gratify M. Ximenestre's fatal passion: gambling.
Not just the ordinary kind of gambling where the gold trickles over the green baize, nor yet the kind where horses strain to the last gasp over another sort of green baize, but a game, yet unknown in France, which had, alas, become the craze in a cafe in the XVIIe arondissement where M. Ximinestre was in the habit of taking a glass of vermouth every evening before going home: a game of darts, but played with a peashooter and ten-franc notes. All the regulars were mad about it, apart from one man, who had had to give it up owing to chronic shortage of breath. Imported by an Australian newly arrived in the district, this thrilling game had quickly become the object of an exclusive club, which met in the back room, where the proprietor, a fan himself, had sacrificed the billiard table. (From A Dog's Night, pgs. 121-122) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4706#4706 |
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