Wodehouse and the stuffed eel-skin of Fate

Bertie Wooster once said:

I’m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare who says that it’s always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.

Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest

So it was in February; I was sitting happily at my keyboard, brow furrowed with concentration as I worked on a delightful series of blog pieces on the theme of Wodehouse and love, in anticipation of Valentine’s day – the anniversary of Wodehouse’s death. The first three chapters of my first novel had received a nod of approval from a well-established author, and Winter was drawing to a close. Life was filled with the promise of Spring larks and snails; God was in His heaven and all was right in the world of Honoria Plum. But, as Wodehouse so often tells us:

..what is life but a series of sharp corners, round each of which Fate lies in wait for us with a stuffed eel-skin?

Uneasy Money

Into my quiet, uneventful life, there entered a concatenation of circumstances – wheels within wheels – that dragged me regretfully from the keyboard and into the unpleasant realities of life.  I shudder to recall those early days of ‘the crisis’ , without a Jeeves, a Psmith, or even an efficient Baxter to aid me in my darkest hour. I’ve pulled through the worst of it now, and the future looks, if not rosy, decidedly more passable than it did just two months ago.

As ever, I owe a debt of gratitude to P.G. Wodehouse. Not for the first time, I turned to the sweetness and light of his writing to lift my spirit in troubled times. Plumtopia is alive and well!

 HP