Prose
A random selection of light pieces from literary pastiche to wedding speeches, letters to the Times, reports on sport and games, and the final series of the satirical e-magazine The Magpie.
JEEVES SAVES THE DAY
‘Jeeves,’ I said, scarf half off the Wooster shoulders, eyes rooted to the hall table, ‘What the deuce is that?’
Jeeves removed my coat with his usual skill. The fellow was a positive devil with his hands. I mean to say, it was almost as if he thought with them. He once told me that pickpocketing was an art in which he had ‘dabbled’ – as a magician, naturally – and I could quite believe it. Dark horse, old Jeeves.
“Sir?”
“There, on the table.”
“A silver salver, sir. Early Georgian, by Thomas Bywater, founder of the Bywater school. Left to you, if I am not mistaken, sir, by your aunt Dahlia.”
“Not the salver, you oaf! The yellow thing on the top of it.”
Jeeves, I fancied, seemed to go a bit frosty at mention of the word ‘oaf’. But clearly there was another problem. From the tone of his reply I sensed that all was not well in the domestic bliss department. He looked like a man with a dead fish in his suitcase.
“That is a pair of yellow gloves, sir. Gentleman’s gloves.”
“Gentleman’s? Dash it, Jeeves, not that colour. I’ve seen better taste on a bookie.”
Jeeves coughed and made strange faces. I was going to slap him on the back but he raised a cautionary hand. “Where there is a pair of gentleman’s gloves, sir, there is often a gentleman.”
Light began to dawn. “What, here, you mean?”
“Behind you, sir, in the study. Reading ‘Plays and Players’.
“What’s his name?”
“Mr Oliver Barton, sir. I believe he may be an actor.”
From the dolesome way Jeeves lobbed out the word ‘actor’, I deduced he had doubts about the theatrical profession. B. Wooster, however, is a Patron of the Arts, having slept through many a final act, so I toddled in.
“What ho!”
Not a thing. No-one in sight. The room was as empty as the grave. Then a voice spoke above my head, mournfully, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
“Wooster!”
“Yes? I say, are you all right up there?”
“I am in the Orchid Stamen position. It is necessary for my meditation for me to be balanced on an object like this bookcase. I am in a state of deep contentment. It is part of my Technique.”
Now you won’t mind me saying I thought this was a bit much. Technique or not, one doesn’t want some perfect stranger being an orchid stamen on one’s best bookcase. Hang it, Jeeves might have to water him. Number 6A, Crichton Mansions was a gentleman’s residence, not a Kew Gardens hothouse. Dash it all. The right riposte was taking time to leap to my lips, however, so I dabbed the noble brow and let a hint of thunder roll across it. No-one pulls the human foliage trick on a Wooster.
Time passed. The Barton started up a sinister hum. Where on earth was Jeeves? I stooged about for a while and clutched for inspiration. What I wanted to say had to do with unwarranted intrusions, and some choice suggestions that O. Barton Esquire should cut along and be deeply contented somewhere else. What I finally came up with was : “Ah-ha!”
“Wooster?”
“Yes, old chap?”
“Could you remove this fly from my nose?”
I fetched the offending creature a sharp blow with ‘Plays and Players’. As blows go, it was distinctly pleasurable.
“Wooster!”
“Ho-hum?”
“Listen to me carefully. I am the great actor-manager Oliver Barton. You have of course heard of me?”
“Ho-hum.”
“I am forming a troupe. It will be the greatest group since Bernhardt, since Lugné-Poë, since Stanislavski!”
“Hum-ho!”
“We are all students of the Technique. We have a new play, by a penniless author. It is comical. It is tragical. It is comicotragical. It is called ‘Little Orphan Olive and the Technique’. We must stage it.”
“Hum hum!” I said, sensibly eschewing “Ho ho!”. This was turning into a bit of a pickle. Things seemed to be getting ahead of themselves. I had been excused serious culture since Florence Craye – she of the perfect profile – had to fill me with Nietzsche, and the abstinence was proving, as our Australian cousins would say, fair dinkum. Now culture had reared its ugly head again, and here it was, for money in the form of a human hairpin. The Barton’s upside-down fact piped up anew.
“We need a theatre, Mr Wooster. We need backing.”
“What, for carpets?”
“For the play, Bertram. We need money. We need you. Your friend Mr Little suggested that we call.”
So that was it! Slipped a fizzer by young Bingo Little. When I thought how many times I had saved him from the jaws of matrimony, I shivered. Inwardly I vowed revenge, and cursed him with one of Aunt Agatha’s most terrible curses. Outwardly I loosed off a “Hum.”
Next there was one of those silences that go on and on, while the geese fly south and autumn turns to winter. It was broken by Jeeves, bless the fellow, discreetly manifesting himself.
“May I make a suggestion, sir?”
“Please do, Jeeves. Suggest away. And with all convenient speed.”
“I recall your saying recently, sir, that you would be interested in becoming an angel – ”
“I’m not popping off yet, Jeeves.”
“A sponsor of theatrical ventures, sir. That you would be interested in becoming an ‘angel’ provided there was a singing role in the play for you. A solo singing role, sir. As I recall, this was your absolute condition.”
He paused meaningfully at this point. I couldn’t for the life of me see what the fellow was driving at. Me, sing again in public after the riot at the Oddfellows Hall? Surely not. Meanwhile the Barton kept up a repulsive air of inverted expectancy. I must have looked a bit glassy, because Jeeves went on, in nudging tones: “To show off your remarkable voice.”
Now this was a bit more like it. If anyone knew his onions on singing – or on anything, come to that – it was Jeeves. The idea occurred to me that quite a lot of fellows might have secretly admired the old Wooster baritone when it was treating the Drones Club to ‘Riding Down to Bangor’, or toying with a light opera at bathtime. I started to get Jeeves’ drift.
“Well, yes, I do sing a bit. How good of you to be interested. Do you know ‘Die Rosenkavalier?”
And I loosed off with an aria or two, followed by a medley of cracking tunes I’d picked up from Jeeves after his attendances at the music-hall. He was dusting some books, but cheesed it courteously when I gave them ‘The Lass of Richmond Hill’. His tooth looked to be playing up. The only other fly in the ointment was that the orchid stamen seemed to be wilting somewhat. In fact he slunk down from the bookcase, made a grab for ‘Plays and Players’, and legged it, muttering something about having to walk a dog for his grandmother. The fellow barely paused in the hall to pick up his gloves. Jeeves was on hand, of course, to ease him into his coat. The door banged. The whole thing was too much for Bertram Wooster, who felt a strong desire to beetle off and inhale a couple of stiff whisky-and-sodas at the Goat and Grape. I toddled out into the hall
“I say, Jeeves, that’s a shame. I was just getting into it. Jeeves?”
Jeeves turned round with a start, and fiddled with his ears.“I’m sorry, sir, I seem to have got a little fluff in my ear.”
“Both ears, Jeeves?”
“A remarkable coincidence, sir.”
“Dashed odd. But not as odd as this Barton cove. What came over him, do you think?”
“I regret I have no idea, sir. The gentleman was clearly in a hurry, for he inadvertently appropriated the salver when he picked up his gloves.”
“I say, what a nerve! Shall we hoof it after him?”
“That will not be necessary, sir. I have the salver here. I was able to retrieve it discreetly when I helped the gentleman on with his coat.”
Amazing fellow, Jeeves.
WEDDING TELEGRAM
Sent to the bride of an ex-university friend during Covid, 2021
TELEGRAM FOR ARABA / STOP / ARABA / EXCLAMATION MARK / IT IS NOT TOO LATE /
EXCLAMATION MARK / ANYONE CAN MAKE A MISTAKE / EXCLAMATION MARK / THINK WHAT YOU
ARE LEAVING FOR THIS MAN / EXCLAMATION MARK / THINK OF YOUR REPUTATION / EXCLAMATION
MARK /THINK OF YOUR GENES / EXCLAMATION MARK / WE HAVE LIVED WITH HIM / DOT DOT DOT /
WE KNOW THE VILE TRUTH / DOT DOT DOT / THERE IS NOTHING HE WILL NOT DO / COMMA / NO
BEHAVIOUR TOO DEPRAVED / EXCLAMATION MARK / HOOVERING AT MIDNIGHT / DOT DOT DOT /
WIPING DOWN WORK SURFACES BEFORE BREAKFAST / DOT DOT DOT / DRINKING ORANGE JUICE IN
THE PUB / EXCLAMATION MARK/ EXCLAMATION MARK / IMOJI OF PERSON VOMITING / ARABA /
EXCLAMATION MARK / THINK OF LIFE YOKED TO THIS MAN / EXCLAMATION MARK / THINK OF HIS
YOKES / EXCLAMATION MARK / THINK OF HIS MUSICAL PROWESS / IMOJI OF PERSON VOMITING /
THINK OF HIS COOKING / IMOJI OF PERSON HAVING STOMACH PUMPED / ARABA / EXCLAMATION
MARK / YOU HAVE YOUR WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF YOU / EXCLAMATION MARK / IS THIS REALLY THE
BEST YOU CAN DO / QUESTION MARK / THERE ARE SOME VERY GOOD SERIES ON NETFLIX / DOT DOT
DOT / BUT DAVID / COMMA SHOULD SHE HAVE YOU / COMMA / WHEN THE DIE IS CAST / WE WISH
YOU EVERY HAPPINESS / AND MAY YOU HAVE A BLAST
LETTER TO THE TIMES
Published after Ben Stokes scored 135 not out in the third test against Australia at Headingley in 2019, taking England to victory with a succession of fearless last-wicket sixes in what BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew described as “the greatest match I have ever seen”.
Sir, A grateful nation has always honoured its heroes with place names. Stokes on Trent? Basingstokes?
Yours etc
CROQUET REPORT: URUGUAY 2, WATFORD 1, JULY 2017
The British invasion of Uruguay in 1807 was finally avenged 210 years later, when intrepid conquistadores Stantoni and Lambez scaled the white cliffs of Dover, laid waste to the hamlets of Kent and caught the 9.24 to Watford Junction. Here they engaged in mortal combat with local overlords Sir Simon de Hathrell and John Bee the Good. For a while it seemed that all was perdido for the counterinvaders, as the East Anglians, grunting ferociously to each other in East Anglian, strove to put the gauchos to the steak; but back to back in the doubles the dusky foreigners beat off the locals, and although John Bee the Good proved John Bee the Better against Stantoni, lucky Lambez vanquished Sir Simon de Hathrell with a thrice flaying and then bit several passers-by to celebrate. Rivers of blood coursed through Cassiobury Park, which proves that a) Enoch Powell was right about immigration, at least by croquet players from Uruguay; and b) Britain should never have invaded in 1807. The national team has now drawn with Wales and Germany, beaten Belgium and Watford, and been thrashed by Hurlingham and Hampstead. (They also played Switzerland, but Swiss hospitality was such that no-one can remember the result.)
Stanton & Lamb bt Hathrell & Bee 25:17 (on time); Bee bt Stanton 26:1; Lamb bt Hathrell 26:1tp
DARTS TOURNAMENT REPORT, PUNTA DEL ESTE, NOVEMBER 2017
21 of the world’s finest darts players took part in a tournament on 17 November, but wherever they were playing it was not Punta del Este. Here the usual collection of purblind potatoes gathered in El Mercado to eat, drink and occasionally hit the wall around the dartboard. Not hitting the floor or ceiling meant that the players were on form tonight, and after four rounds Grace came in third with 179, leaving two of the oldest and youngest players, young Juan and old Guido, drawn for top place on 193. In a three-dart tiebreak, young Juan won the crown. Fernando got the record de la noche with 81 after hitting the bull and posing for an indecent number of photographs. Alberto did everything possible so as not to come first yet again, throwing with his wrong hand, eyes shut, from across the street etc, but still nearly won. The manager’s pasties were very good, much better than his darts, and less spiky to eat. The IPA in El Mercado was a nice drop. See you next Friday! Bring friends if you have any.
ONLINE BACKGAMMON TOURNAMENT REPORT, FEBRUARY 2024
FINNIMORE MARSHALS AIR VICE
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so many phews. Carruthers scrambled her Spit (yuck) to stand in for Guy, and an unsteady formation did battle over the sodden fields of East Kent. Carter v Lamb was an epic dogfight until Carter lucked out big time. Hayter had to pause one match to watch her son cook in a pan of water (times are hard in Ramsgate) and Cooper flew in from Devon on a wing and a prayer. In the end Peter led the squadron, with fifteen green pound notes; Jenny got a big white tenner and Kevin got whatever a fiver looked like in 1940.
ONLINE BACKGAMMON TOURNAMENT REPORT, FEBRUARY 2024
As anyone knows if they’re interested in weird tabletop games, the noble sport of tiddlywinks is played with a squidger and a wink. You squidge the wink to make it hop. Contests can be singles or doubles, and begin with a squidge-off. Winks on their own are free winks. A wink in the pot is a potted wink. To land on another wink is to squop it, and to win is to pot out. Eight of the nation’s finest, though probably not at tiddlywinks, got squopping and potting tonight in a 5-pt backgammon round robin that lasted a little under three hours. Woe betide you if you left a free wink within squopping distance of Carter, or imagined that Finnimore couldn’t pot out with four double sixes in a row. Some of these people were born to squop. Anna came out with £20, Kevin with £10 and Peter with £5. See you in a fortnight with normal clocks, for the usual 6.30pm squidge-off.
ANCIENT AND MODERN: THE TRAIN IN SPAIN
One day you rightly decide to visit Valencia. For two years in the 1930s, during the Civil War, Valencia was the capital of Spain, and its old town must surely be the loveliest place in the country, perhaps even in Europe, for a late evening stroll. Huge doors, narrow streets, marble pavements, soft yellow lamplight, restaurant terraces, families, gobsmacked tourists. The night (in October) is gentle – relaxing – and quiet, for the old town admits no cars. It’s a bit like Rome without the swarms of bloody Vespas. You could live here, you think, you could relax, you could breathe again, you could be young….
Valencia
Until you try to leave the place. Valencia’s public transport is great, but as with the architecture there’s a strange disconnect between ancient and modern. It’s like a clock in a church. Modern these days means QR codes, weird hieroglyphs like crosswords on acid, helping consumers consume. You muse on this as your shiny new bus approaches Valencia’s Estació del Nord, where you plan to buy a RENFE train ticket to Tarragona. The station is a quaint old place next to a bullring. You go inside and look for a ticket machine. Good, you think, there are five machines. You go to one of them and touch the screen. A wobbly arrow flickers into life, not where your finger is, but a centimetre or so above. This means that to input ‘Tarragona’ you have to click on Gzffzlspacebarz, the keys immediately underneath. When Gzffzlspacebarz doesn’t appear as a destination you try another machine, realising after a while that four of the five
machines are for local trains, and only the fifth is for long distance. On this machine there is one train to Gzffzlspacebarz next day, at 5pm. You feel there must be more, so you join a long queue for the ticket windows. After 20 minutes in this queue you notice a small sign above the windows saying that they too are for local trains only. Further along there’s another queue for long distance, not so much a line this time as a group of people gathered around like extras in Les Misérables. To get a train ticket you need a queue ticket. A helpful lady who has thrown in the towel says, ‘Here, have mine’.
Crosswords on acid
After 20 minutes holding this ticket you realise that there are in fact two types of queue ticket, one for today and another for tomorrow. Hers is for today: you need tomorrow. By this time you are starting to suspect that RENFE’s customer service may not be the sharpest arrow in the Euroquiver, but you have made friends with so many fellow sufferers around you (Valencians may seem gruff at first, but they’re innately friendly) that you’re quite enjoying life on the barricades. You get a queue for not-today trains and start again. In the ticket window that will perhaps serve this queue, although possibly not today, there is a helpful screen listing the turnos anteriores, the heroes who have already made it to the window and gone home.
Modern and ancient
This is tremendously useful information, your new friends agree. It’s just what you need! Unfortunately no other information is available. You would sit at a nearby bench to admire this information but RENFE have forestalled you, and erected a large perspex barrier that prevents anyone from sitting down. There are no other seats. You and your new comrades discuss how to dismantle the barrier. An elderly lady suggests lifting it off the hinges.
By now you are at the centre of a small groundswell of popular emotion, and are about to hand out sashes to the other Misérables when word goes round that somebody who has been waiting for two hours has given up. So do you – so does the elderly lady – and so do several other unheroic comrades. You go home and buy online. Not cheap. Next day you finally get to Gzffzlspacebarz on a train that shoots along at 200 kph but does not have wi-fi. Modern must be a relative term. Gzffzlspacebarz is nice, but not nearly as nice as Valencia.
FROM 'THE MAGPIE', 1 APRIL 2016
THE MAGPIE, COMPLETE FINAL SERIES, 2025
BREXIT
And what about the loyalty dividend? Here it is important to remember that the UK is basically divided into people who were not clever enough to have been born near London (stupes), and those who were (clevs). The stupes live in places where the trains don’t work, eg anywhere north of Birmingham, and the clevs live in picture-postcard golfing villages in the south east, with names like Nicely-On-The-Green. As they catch their excellent trains into London from stations called Ashford International, Ebbsfleet International or Stratford
International, clevs reflect on their schooldays at Eton and their holiday cottage in the Dordogne. (All clevs have holiday
cottages in the Dordogne, which is why they don’t want Brexit.) The problem is that the ranks of the Civil Service are filled almost entirely with clevs, and when a shiny-faced arch-clev thinks it would be a good idea to have a referendum and the stupes give him a good kicking, the clevs in the Civil Service then have to administer a policy that they know is pure stupe. All their clev friends in other countries know this too, and are looking on in appalled disbelief. A diplo-clev in New York, tasked with peddling Brexit, resigned because she simply couldn’t bring herself to say the stuff. Other clevs with valuable access may not be so principled. Oh well, that’s democracy for you, or at least the two-party sort. Let’s change and do it like in Uruguay.
BREXIT IN 2025: WHOOPS
Money: the UK economy is £140 billion smaller due to Brexit. Thanks to this, the average Brit was nearly £2000 worse off in 2023. See this panel from Private Eye in September 2024. Service exports have done better than physical goods, but exports of these have fallen by 13.2%, and food and drink exports to the EU by a massive 34.6%.
Bureaucracy: Brexit was sold to the UK as a move which would ‘take back control’ of the nation’s borders and its rule-making ability. In reality, the opposite has happened. British citizens now face rest of world travel queues and will soon have to pay for an online visa waiver. Those who weren’t old enough to vote on Brexit (young musicians, for example, or Erasmus students) are now finding it harder and harder to travel, work or study freely in the EU. Meanwhile many EU laws have been quietly retained. Businesses face a mountain of red tape, and are missing out on EU trade dealssuch as that recently agreed in principle with Mercosur.
Jobs: there is hardly a business sector in the UK that has not been hit by the forced withdrawal of EU labour. Hospitality has suffered particularly hard, and the older generation who may have voted nostalgically are now regretting the loss of nurses and carehome staff. Meanwhile, immigration has actually increased since Brexit, but the European craftsmen have gone home.
Status: the referendum vote delighted our country’s enemies and saddened our friends. The world now sees Prime Minister Starmer trying to rebuild relations with Europe as best he can, but Brexit is still the elephant in the room. Although ‘Growth’ is the new government’s slogan, and some product standards are to be aligned with Europe to reduce borde delays, the full alignment that would give growth such a boost is taboo for both main parties, who are scared that freedom of movement would do even more than Elon Musk to fuel support for Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK.
Polls: Brits are not stupid. Five years on, they have seen the result of Brexit and are saying “whoops”. In January 2025 Statista found that 55% of respondents think it was wrong to leave. Redfield & Wilton found “that 57% would now vote to rejoin the EU, with just 43% backing staying out.”
The New World: Donald Trump recently threw out a European leader for having the temerity to be invaded by his nice friend, Vladimir Putin, without capitulating immediately. Faced with the American desertion of Omaha Beach, Britain now needs Europe more than ever.
What to do: join the European movement, a cross-party organization founded by Winston Churchill in 1949 to promote European unity. What would the great statesman be thinking now?
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