Monday, February 16, 2009

Tribute to the Worlds Greatest Wordsmith

Last month I discovered a cure for the January Blues, or rather I remembered a cure.

One morning last month I woke up and that is as far I wanted to take it… I really, really did not want to go to work… Now this is hardly unusual, but this time the feeling was stronger and more real… I toyed with the idea of phoning in sick, but finally after much toing-and-froing, I decided I needed to get up…

The dark clouds above were not alleviated by showering and not even coffee could snap me out of this unpleasantness…

I decided to forgo my current reading material for that day and instead picked up, ‘Heart of a Goof’, a collection of Golfing stories by the master, P.G. Wodehouse… After a couple of these stories, read whilst on the Dart, I felt a lot better, continuing them on the Bus, I felt ready to take the day on and fully believed, if I could steal one of Wodehouse Quotes, that God was in his Heaven and all was right with the world. I got to work and discovered a nasty E-mail sent by my team leader… I sent a relatively cheery one back, I will not have them undoing all of Wodehouse’s good work. Eventually the correspondence did dampen my mood slightly, but I shudder to think what it would have been like if I had gone to work whilst feeling the way I did when I first got up.

I was reminded of this today when I entered a book shop in Dublin, and saw a selection of newly published Wodehouse books (The publishing and style was new, obviously the books have been available for years.) These books came with complementary quotes on the front of the covers by various fans, some expected (Douglas Adams, Hugh Laurie, Lynne Truss) Some surprising me (Danny Baker, Christopher Biggins.) I then went on to think how cool that would be to have your quote on the front of a Wodehouse book, If my collection of poetry sells well and I become a bit more well known, that would be an ambition of mine, to have my complementary quote on the front of a Wodehouse novel. In fact any publisher can pick from the list below…

Wodehouse: The greatest user of the English Language ever.

The best cure for any malady is a quick dip into a Wodehouse Novel.

I think it is a crime, that Wodehouse isn’t studied at GCSE level when lesser wordsmith’s are.

The only depressing thing about Wodehouse is the knowledge that I will never be as funny as he was, but then no one will be.

Wodehouse Cheers up many a grey day.

That will do for the time being…

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well said, Paul. By a co-incidence, I have a similar post about The Master in my blog.