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Wodehousian expressions we should all adopt:

Bally

Blasted

No good trying to hush it up at this time of day - for true things that you don't like for example having an exam

Something in that - for obvious things.

Infernal

Foul

Wart-hog

Pipsqueak

Till you burst your corsets

Bloodstained - usage similar to Bally, blasted etc

Barmy

Ruddy

Not by a ruddy jugful

Dashed

Dashed sight

Mug

...as dammit

#British #wodehousian #p.g. wodehouse #slang #ye olde

"Well, at Valsage's gaff I made the acquaintance of several disagreeable dullards. One Mr. Marlay, Irish by his flaming mop, big hands like hardback bibles, who shook my hand with force enough to flatten an ashtray for longer than courtesy dictates. Another, a heavily tattooed man, keen for me to witness his vigour, patted me so hard I forgot my mother's name. The Irish told a joke. He said "how do you save a drowning Englishman?" Naturally, I suggested employing a buoyancy garment in a controlled quadrant, to which he offered a puzzled scrunch. "No, you take your foot off his head." Beastly! I almost duelled him there and then. If this was a different time I'd have done them both in. If I got back from the war and my sweetheart had offed with his sort, I'd plug them both with my personal service revolver. England has never known such brutes. They were like fairytale bandits."

I fixated on his arm while he cursed the sunhaired Irish maidens they slithered from, loathe that St. Patrick had missed them. The inner elbow was a crimson crook of flaking skin where in his anxiety Lobilus had raked away the upper epidermal layer.

"I insisted we all drank, but looking back it seems I was the only one partaking. So, I insist I fetch the bottles myself, least I can do. He's equally insistent I sit and allow his wife to serve, that it's a great honour to serve a Serve, something she can tell her bitching circle - his words, not mine. In floats his missus like a nervous ghost. There is some sickness in the marriage, evident in their coolness, the minutiae of their interactions, how clinically she moves at his bidding, in conversation she stares fixedly at the wall behind him. After a scolding she brought the beer and with a mouselike twitch transferred it to the arm of my seat before scurrying back to the wings. I cheered her health and his, wished riches upon the freckled children of Ireland who walk to hedge schools unshod making every jaunt painful as a pilgrimage, I wished their dreary stone strife and lousy sorrow ended, all this I said staring him, the ginger chap, right in his changeling eyes, human but different, a thing from beneath the clod risen at a scyer's call. A thing of us, but not us. As above, as below proved true. I looked last to bald man, the drink halfway to my lips already, and with daring and feigned delight wished for every bald man a mane every full moon. Evidently they were philistines. Not a titter out of them. Some people have no taste."

While declaiming the men as philistines, his lips curled in a way which suggested his true unease lay in his material; the accompanying sidelong glance suggested a kind word might go a-ways to mending his ego.

#creative writing #wattpad #writing #Writeblr #Spilled ink #My words #Tennis Racket #Tennis #Humorous fiction #Witty #Wodehousian #Whimsical #Wattpad #Writers #Dialogue #Characters #Prose

Inktober Day 10: Jeeves and Wooster, crow edition, nib pen and ink on paper For today's post, I choose all of the P. G. Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster books. I've read them all, and they're all very similar, and I can't tell them apart from memory, so I can't pick a favourite one. They're all my favourite one.

The Tennis Racket

I caught his subtext, or so I thought, "Anything can be cleaned. Wives, daughters, cousins. Everyone has a price. Every stain an antidote."

"Not that" he hissed, "No, I'm still squirrelling away my fluids. Like I said, worse than usual. I'm a saucy bugger, but I swear on all the schizophrenics who ever saw a lizard and in their sun-drunkenness claimed celestial descent that last night the combat sausage never left my slacks, not even to use the privy. Actually, I did toilet a bit. That's it though. Zipped."

"What is it then?" I dared. He spoke, my gravely than e'er I remembered, and I remembered strops by the thousand - we japed, around the family hearth exclusively, he took maudlin turns to match Caligula. I knew to listen intently.

"Mr. Valsage, to whom you so sorely refer, did indeed continue our conversation, suggesting we retired somewhere more comfortable to discuss a business proposition. One, I was assured, to suit both parties, keeping in mind my delicate sensibilities. Shitfaced, we stumbled onto the streets like spumes from a splintered dam, ready to raise hell. Again you are correct on this count; Mr. Valsage is wholly responsible for my shocking and ungainly dionysian revels. You will forgive me reserving apologies until later, at least until the thing is recounted in full."

What time is it? Tennish

Not Ms. Elena. Matronly and dire, she wore drab colours of mourning no matter the season. She spurned fashion for practicality and was radiant nonetheless, raising the ire of many a bejewelled gileted country wife. Her father, a daring venture capitalist, left no ambiguity in stating only the finest man would have his daughter's hand, which meant, in so many words, no tennis ponces.

In the long evenings she did not take drink, instead she would recline in the conservatory and compose poetry. She quipped greek epithets in her letters, which always arrived timely, was witty in conversation with a tongue like a scorpion's lance, and beautiful most of all; blue-eyed and milk pale, a hyperborean princess. I imagined her easily astride a chariot clad in bronze cuirass, a raiment of fantastic spirals dancing, a crown of ash upon her head.

We got on keenly. Lobilus was the one she spurned. Burnt out from repeated rejections, Lobilus would concede defeat every six months, offering his undying platonic friendship in place of burning sexual lust, though he always reverted within a week and was soon back stuffing tubes of puppies through her letterbox. He denied retaining a cooled ember of affection, but turned red at her mere mention.