Ex-Mobile Message

This post was supposed to be a photo I posted from my mobile phone, but it did not show up! So it was blank, and silly Steli replied with a +).

FYI, +) is the happy cyclops. Steli, how come we've never tried the sad one? +(

Anyway, I digress.

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I am sneezing more today and really stuffed up and I do feel tired.........but today is so gloriously sunny that I thought the world was in LCD when I opened my curtains. Do you know what I mean?
So in this weather (it will be 24C, or 75F), which is really spiffing when it happens in London, I want to go out! I've even dressed for it, so maybe later, though tomorrow will also be lovely.

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This week, I started reading the short stories of Saki (H.H. Munro), something I haven't done since High School! I didn't remember he was so funny!
If you like P.G. Wodehouse, you will definitely appreciate Saki. There's even an Aunt Agatha in it. Today is catch-up day, so it will be a bit long.

REGINALD

Reginald at the Garden Party

I found everyone talking nervously and feverishly of the weather and the war in South Africa, except Reginald, who was reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away look that a volcano might wear just after it had desolated entire villages ... At that particular moment the croquet players finished their game, which had been going on without a symptom of finality during the whole afternoon ... Conversation flagged, and there settled upon the company that expectant hush that precedes the dawn -- when your neighbours don't happen to keep poultry.

"What did the Caspian Sea?" asked Reginald, with appalling suddenness.

There were symptoms of a stampede. The Archdeacon's wife looked at me. Kipling or some one has described somewhere the look a foundered camel gives when the caravan moves on and leaves it to its fate. The peptonised reproach in the lady's eyes brought the passage vividly to mind.

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Reginald on Christmas presents

There is, for instance, the female relative in the country who "knows a tie is always useful" and sends you some spotted horror that you could only wear in secret or in Tottenham Court Road. It might have been useful had she kept it to tie up currant bushes with, when it would have served the double purpose of supporting the branches and frightening away the birds ...

Then there are aunts. They are always adifficult class to deal with in the matter of presents. The trouble is that one never catches them really young enough. By the time one has educated them to an appreciation of the fact that one does not wear red woollen mittens in the West End, they die, or quarrel with the family, or do something equally inconsiderate. That is why the supply of trained aunts is always so precarious.

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...she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people rise early to see if a new strawberry has happened during the night.

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Reginald on Worries

Of course, one just loves them for it [sweet, uncomplaining women who have seen trouble], but I must confess they make me uncomfy; they remind one so of duck that goes flapping about with forced cheerfulness long after its head's been cut off. Ducks have no repose.

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Reginald on House-Parties

You see, they had asked me down to shoot, and I'm not particulary immense at that sort of thing. There's such a deadly sameness about partridges; when you've missed one, you've missed the lot...

And they tried to rag me in the smoking room about not being able to hit a bird at five yards, a sort of bovine ragging that suggested cows buzzing round a gadfly and thinking they were teasing it. So I got up next morning at early dawn - I know it was dawn because there were lark-noises in the sky and the grass looked as if it had been left out all night - and hnted up the most conspicuous thing in the bird line that I could find, and measured the distance, as nearly as it would let me, and shot away all I knew. They said afterwards it was a tame bird; that's simply silly because it was awfully wild at the first few shots. Afterwards it quieted down a bit, and when its legs had stopped waving farewells to the landscape, I got a gardener-boy to drag it into the hall...