humour

Thought behind the thought
Humour is the elixir of life. A man, or a woman for that matter, is worse than dead if humour is not an important part of his existence. A life without humour is a boring life indeed! Because the ability to laugh at whatever situation life puts you in, is what can keep you going. A hectic day at work can be made bearable by a witty colleague, the grim news on the front page can be offset with a single cartoon, and simple word play can bring an accidental smile to your lips.


Word craft
People who bring humour to other people's lives are worthy of the highest awards that could be given for the service of Humanity. Like P.G.Wodehouse, the master of the craft, who has brought 'Something Fresh' to so many of my days.

The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P. G. Wodehouse was born in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. After two years with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank he became a full-time writer, contributing to a variety of periodicals including Punch and the Globe. He married in 1914.

As well as his novels and short stories, he wrote lyrics for musical comedies with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, and at one time had five musicals running simultaneously on Broadway. His time in Hollywood also provided much source material for fiction.

At the age of ninty-three, in the New Year’s Honours List of 1975, he received a long-overdue knighthood, only to die on St Valentine’s Day some forty-five days later.



Selected lines from his books, that will put a smile on your face!

Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons. (Blandings Castle)

I saw my Aunt Agatha for what she was - not, as I had long imagined, a sort of man-eating fish at the very mention of whose name strong men quivered like aspens, but a poor goop who had just dropped a very serious brick (Very good, Jeeves)

.... there came into his eyes the sort of look which would come into those of an Indian chief - Chicagook, let us say, or Sitting Bull - just before he started reaching for his scalping knife. (Very good, Jeeves)

The jaws fell, the ears dropped limply. He had been looking like a dead fish. He now looked like a deader fish, one of last year's, cast upon some lonely beach and left there at the mercy of the wind and the tides. (Right ho, Jeeves)

"Maybe his bark was worse than his bite."
" Ver possibly, though, I cannot make any authoritative pronouncement, the old relative never having actually bitten me." (Barmy in Wonderland)

The waiter brought the menu, and Barmy's stomach caught Barmy's eye in a congratulatory sort of way, like a stomach seeing the approach of the happy ending. (Barmy in Wonderland)

"It's incredible. Don't you ever stop eating, Phipps? Digging your grave with your teeth, that's what you are doing. Oh well, tapeworms will be tapeworms," said Mervyn Potter philosophically.

'So!' he said at length, and it came as a complete surprise to me that feelows ever really do say 'So!" I had always  thought it was just a thing you read in books. Like 'Quotha!'  I mean to say, or 'Odds Bodikins' or even 'Eh, ba goom!'


Credit and Source of information
http://www.wodehouse.co.uk/
www.pgwodehousesociety.org.uk.