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editor
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 Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:42 pm Post subject: Season's Greetings! PokerPulse Gambler's Guide to Christmas |
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| Quote: | WELCOME!
PokerPulse Gambler's Guide to Christmas
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From Punters:
Good Housekeeping" Christmas Book
The Best of "Good Housekeeping" at Christmas, 1922-62
Hardcover
Edited by Brian Braithwaite and Noelle Walsh
Featuring Louise, The Most Selfish Woman I Ever Knew, a short story by W. Somerset Maugham
| Quote: | | Editor's Note: What a bit of luck when this happy Christmas tome, simply gushing with steamed pudding and brandy sauce recipes and seasonal memorabilia, fell into our appreciative grasp. Imagine our delight at finding this undiscovered (by us until now) Maugham short story from 1925 about a doe-eyed flapper with an apparently weak heart who buried two less stalwart husbands - ah, the tyranny of the weak. We find her here after her second marriage: |
| Quote: | For the next two or three years Louise managed, notwithstanding her weak heart, to go to all the most lively parties, beautifully dressed, to gamble very heavily, to dance and even to flirt with tall, slim young men. But George Hobhouse had not the stamina of Louise's first husband and I fancied that he had to brace himself now and then with a stiff drink or two for his day's work as Louise's second husband. Then came the war. He rejoined his regiment and three months later was killed.
Though it was a great shock to Louise, at that moment she felt that she must submerge her private feelings; and if she had a heart attack nobody heard of it; but she said that she must distract her mind, so she turned her villa at Monte Carlo into a hospital for convalescent officers. Her friends told her that she would never survive the strain.
"Of course it will kill me," she said. "I know that. But what does it matter? I must do my bit."
It didn't kill her. I thought she was having the time of her life. I know that there was no convalescent home in France which was more popular. I met her in Paris once; she had gone there on business connected with the hospital; she was lunching with a tall and very handsome young Frenchman, and she told me that the officers were too charming to her. They knew how delicate she was and they wouldn't let her do a thing. They took care of her, well -- as though they were all her husbands.
"Poor George, who would ever have thought that I with my heart should outlive him?" She sighed.
"And poor Tom," I said. (-- at p. 30) |
| Quote: | | Addendum: We highly recommend this richly illustrated book as a gift, especially to western children growing up in the absence of Christian metaphors, which once gave much of western culture some hope of enduring a harsh northern winter. Anyone driven mad wondering if Louise ends in tears may e-mail us at legal@pokerpulse.com. |
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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From Mortal Gambles:
The Time-Life Book of Christmas
Hardcover
Produced by the Compage Company
Published in 1987
| Quote: | Whenever palm trees come alight with multicolored globes, and Salvation Army Santa Clauses tinkle bells on Hollywood Boulevard, I remember Christmas Day of 1940 when my father I called upon our 61-year-old Uncle Claude, known to the world as W. C. Fields. Having declined all invitation to celebrate the season, Uncle Claude was at home, alone, when we arrived, sunning himself in the yard of his residence on De Mille Drive.
... "At least," Fields muttered, "they don't serve the tainted day here with snow. Sleigh bells give me double nausea!"
He arose and retreated to the shade, carrying his wrought-iron garden chair. "All right," he said, "I supposed you'll go blatting to all the world about it, but I'm going to tell you why I eschew Christmas and other silly holidays. It's because those days point up a thing called loneliness. An actor on the road as I was for so long - finds himself all alone on days when everyone else has friends and companionship. It's not so good to be in Australia, or in Scotland, or in South Africa, as I was on tour, all alone on a Christmas Day, and to see and hear a lot of happy strangers welcoming that two-faced merriment-monger Santa Claus, who passes you by.
"We're all lonely enough as it is. By God, I was born lonely!"
Now Fields slowly started rocking on his stationary chiar, one ye on the gin bottle atop his portable bar constructed from a red, four-wheeled child's wagon. Some weeks earlier he had been at Soboba Hot Springs, a California health resort, where he was compelled to partake only of the native waters. He had imbibed nothing more powerful than ginger ale ever since the repair job.
"But Christmas and New Year's and Thanksgiving and all the rest," he eventually said, "make me even more lonely. So I observe only one day - April First. That's my day. It's Adam's birthday, too. If I remember correctly, the Holy Writ relates that Adam was created on April First. It explains a lot of things, expecially politics and psychoanalysis."
Unle Claude's gaze returned to the bottle of gin. "I've just reached a momentous decision," he announced. "I've either got to take a drink or shoot all the Santa Clauses infesting the boulevards." He made himself a triple martini. "It may interest you to know," he added, after a few sips, "that tomorrow I am removing both your names from my will. It was a hefty bequest, too. Oh well, if you prefer mistletoe..." (From Sleigh Bells Give Double Nausea, A holiday visit with W. C. Fields, by Will Fowler, pg. 246) |
| Quote: | | Editor's Note: A wondrous collection of classic Christmas stories, Victorian Christmas cards, White House family Christmases, Norman Rockwell Christmas covers, Life's unrivalled photos of American department store windows done up for the season, the famous tree and nativity at New York's Metropolitan Museum, traditional crafts plus recipes for the usual festive fare. A revealing glimpse at the American take on this Christian holiday. One of our favorites! |
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
Victorian Christmas
Over 50 Ideaas for Enjoying a Traditional Christmas
Hardcover
By Valerie Janitch
| Quote: | Decorating the house with greenery and lighted candles at the end of the year was traditional long before Christianity began. For many pagan peoples the winter solstice marked the turn of the year, reminding them that spring would soon be on the way. It was celebrated with festivals of fire and light, making a welcome break in the dark winter months. Evergreens were used for decoration, symbolizing fertility as the days lengthened and the sun grew stronger, bringing a renewal of life and growth and the promise of fresh crops.
As the Roman Empire spread, so did its great festival of Saturnalia, which began on the 17th of December and led up to the 25th, the day that the Romans observed as the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. Wild behaviour was encouraged: men dressed in animal skins, and master and servant exchanged clothes and identities, as an excuse to indulge in all kinds of outrageous misconduct. Laurel wreaths and branches decorated the houses, and lamps burned continuously.
Immediately after Saturnalia came Kalends - a three-day festival to celebrate the New Year. This less exuberant celebration was presided over by Strenia, the goddess of health, and greenery from her groves was wound into wreaths and exchanged as gifts. These were fixed to the door of the house to ensure the health of everyone who lived there in the forthcoming year.
In Northern Europe, the winter solstice was makred by the festival of Yule. The short, dark days, icy winds and intense cold were made more bearable by blazing fires and glowing lamps. Evergreens decorated the houses, and gifts were made as sacrificies to the great Norse gods, Odin and Thor, and the goddess Frey. Likewise, the druids, priests of the religion of early Celtic Britain, built shrines of greenery to shelter spirits of the woods during the dark winter months, and ensure a survival into spring.
The early Christians were undecided when to celebrate the birthday (or Mass) of Christ, and chose various dates - as far apart as the 1st and 6th of January, the 29th of March and the 29th of September. Towards the end of the fourth century, the Church Fathers felt it necessary to fix a definite date, and the Pope wisely decided on the 25th of December. Realizing that it was almost impossible to eradicate the traditional Roman, Nordic and Celtic festivals, which were psychologically important to the people's lives and so greatly enjoyed at this season of the year, it seemed more sensible to include them into the Christmas celebrations. Which explains why so many of the pagan rituals of Saturnalia, Kalends and Yule - the evergreen life-symbols, the yule logs and candlelight - are still with us today.
Holly, ivy and mistletoe are the evergreens that are immediately associated with Christmas. The scarlet-berried holly provides a bright note when there is so little colour available in the hedgerows, which is probably why the early Christian church adopted it - suggesting that the prickly leaves represented Christ's crown of thorns, and the berries dropes of His blood. As a symbol of eternal life, it meant good fortune - especially if it had been used to decorate the church. The people of the state of Louisiana in southern USA always kept the berries for luck, and holly hung in the cowshed on Christmas Eve is said to ensure the health of the occupants. For humans, holly was used to treat fevers, dropsy and rheumatism, gout and asthma, while the North American Indians treated measles with holly tea.
The blazing Yule log and energetic revelry of the pagan winter festivities called, of course, for something special in the way of thirst-quenching drinks. In English country villages especially, the traditional Christmas drinks were still an important part of the festivities in Victorian times. These ranged from 'egg hot' - heated cider mixed with eggs and spices - to 'ale posset', a concoction of ale and hot milk, sweetened and flavoured with sugar and spices, which was always the final drink on Christmas Eve. (From Traditional Decorations, pgs. 12-13) |
A well-researched, richly illustrated Christmas classic!
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:48 pm Post subject: |
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From The American South:
Breakfast at Tiffany's
A Short Novel and Three Short Stories
Hardcover
By southerner Truman Capote
| Quote: | | But before these purchases can be made, there is the question of money. Neither of us has any. Except for skinflint sums persons in the house occasionally provide (a dime is considered very big money); or what we earn ourselves from various activities: holding rummage sales, selling buckets of hand-picked blacberries, jars of homemade jam and apple jelly and peach preserves, rounding up flowers fro funerals and weddings. Once we won seventy-ninth prize, five dollars, in a national football contest. Not that we know a fool thing about football. It's just that we enter any contest we hear about: at the moment our hopes are centred on the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize being offered to name a new brand of coffee (we suggested "A.M."; and, after some hesitation, for my friend thought it perhaps sacrilegious, the slogan "A.M.! Amen!")...(From A Christmas Memory at p. 162) |
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:50 pm Post subject: |
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From A Gambler's Prayer:
Staying Alive
Real Poems for Unreal Times
Paperback
Edited by Bloodaxe founder Neil Astley
| Quote: | Journey of the Magi
"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The snow was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
T.S. Eliot
(-- pgs. 427-428) |
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:51 pm Post subject: |
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From Hosers, eh?
The Merry Heart
Hardcover
By Robertson Davies
| Quote: | There are many people - happy people, it usually appears - whose thoughts at Christmas always turn to books. The notion of a Christmas tree with no books under it is repugnant and unnatural to them. I had the good luck to be born in such a family and, although my brothers and I were happy with such insubstantial gifts as skates, toboggans, and the like, we would have been greatly disappointed if there had been no books. My father expected the latest Wodehouse, and some vast wad of political recollections - the Life and Letters of Walter Hines Page when I was very young and the awesome six volumes of Lloyd George's war memoirs, much later, were the sort of thing that he, and he alone in our family, could read - and my mother wanted and received novels of idyllic rural life by Mary Webb or Sheila Kaye-Smith.
For me, a standby for years was the annual collected volume of the English boys' magazine Chums, through which I chewed greedily, consuming the historical serial (the boy who did wonders in the army of Wellington or the navy of Nelson); the contemporary serial (the boy whose mother sacrificed to send him to a good school - these were all boarding schools - and who emerged victorious from some scandal in which he had been accused of theft or secret drinking, and carried the school to victory in the great cricket match); the comic serial, about disruptive groups of boy conjurors, boy ventriloquists, and boy contortionists who reduced their schools to chaos and their masters to nervous prostration by their side-splitting japes and wheezes. None of these wondrous boys were int he least like the boys I knew in Canada, but that merely gave them the appeal of the exotic. In between the pages of these I read the articles about careers (civil servant, church organist, veterinary) and about how to make a serviceable violin out of a cigar box and some picture wire.
I particularly relished a column of comic backchat between two wags named Roland Butter and Hammond Deggs. Here is a sample of their wares: RB "Why did the djinn sham pain and whine?" HD "I dunno." RB "Because the stout porter bit 'er." HD "Oh, crumbs!" It was not until much later in life when I came under the spell of Demon Rum that I savouredf the full richness of that one.
Before Christmas there was always a period of expectancy during which my parents urged me to read Dickens's Christmas Carol. Every year I tried and every year Christmas Day and new books arrived to find that I had got no further than the appearance of Marley's ghost. I was a slow reader, moving my lips and hearing every word, but I knew the story. It was inescapable. At school no Christmas passed without several children being dragooned into a re-enactment of the Crachits' Christmas Dinner, for the entertainment of parents. Early in life I developed a distaste for the Cratchits which time has not sweetened. I do not think I was an embittered child, but the Cratchits' aggressive worthiness, their bravely borne poverty, their exhultation over that wretched goose, disgusted me. I particularly disliked Tiny Tim (a part always played by a girl because girls had superior powers of looking moribund and worthy at the same time) and when he chirped, "God bless us, every one," my mental response was akin to Sam Goldwyn's famous phrase, "Include me out." (From Christmas Books, pgs. 258-259) |
| Quote: | Chums Annual - 1934-35
Hardcover
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The Christmas Carol gold standard:
| Quote: | Scrooge
DVD
Featuring another comic genius Scot, Alastair Sim
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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From PokerPulse Player's Guide to Gambling Green:
The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
A Reporter at Large
Big Foot
In measuring carbon emissions, it's easy to confuse morality and science.
By Michael Specter
Feb. 25/08
| Quote: | | A person's carbon footprint is simply a measure of his contribution to global warming. (CO2 is the best known of the gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, but others - including water vapor, methane, and nitrous oxide - also play a role.) Virtually every human activity - from watching television ot buying a quart of milk - has some carbon cost associated with it. We all consume electricity generated by burning fossil fuels; most people rely on petroleum for transportation and heat. Emissions from those activities are not hard to quantify. Watching a plasma television for three hours every day contributes two hundred and fifty kilograms of carbon to the atmosphere each year; an LCD is responsible for less than half that number. Yet the calculations required to assess the full environmental impact of how we live can be dazzlingly complex. ... A few months ago, scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute reported that the carbon footprint of Christmas - including food, travel, lighting, and gifts - was 650 kg per person. That is as much, they estimated, as the weight of "one thousand Christmas puddings" for every resident of England. ... (-- pgs. 44-52) |
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:57 pm Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
Nativity Poems
Hardcover
By Joseph Brodsky
Translated by Various Artists
| Quote: | CHRISTMAS BALLAD
For Evgeny Rein, with love
There floats in an abiding gloom,
among immensities of brick,
a little boat of night: it seems
to sail through Alexander Park.
It's just a lonely streetlamp, though,
a yellow rose against the night,
for lovers strolling down below
the busy street.
There floats in an abiding gloom
a drone of bees: men drunk, asleep.
In the dark capital a lone
tourist takes another snap.
Now out onto Ordynka turns
a taxicab, with sickly faces;
dead men lean into the arms
of the low houses.
The floats in the abiding gloom
a poet in sorrow; over here
a round-faced man sells kerosene,
the sad custodian of his store.
Along a dull deserted street
an old Lothario hurries. Soon
the midnight-riding newlyweds
sail through the gloom.
There floats in outer Moscow one
who swims at random to his loss,
and Jewish accents wander down
a dismal yellow flight of stairs.
From love toward unhappiness,
to New Year's Eve, to Sunday, floats
a good-time girl: she can't express
what's lost inside.
Cold evening floats within your eyes
and snow is fluttering on the panes
of carriages; the wind is ice
and pale, it seals your reddened palms.
Evening lights like honey seep;
the scent of halvah's everywhere,
as Christmas Eve lifts up its sweet-
meats in the air.
Now drifting on a dark-blue wave
across the city's gloomy sea,
there floating by, your New Year's Eve --
as if life could restart, could be
a thing of light with each day lived
successfully, and food to eat,
-- as if, life having rolled to left,
it could roll right.
1962
Translated by Glyn Maxwell
(-- pgs. 5-6) |
| Quote: | ... ''Nativity Poems'' collects the poems Joseph Brodsky produced most winter seasons starting in 1962, when he was a ratty 22-year-old dissident haunting the St. Petersburg cafes until the K.G.B. hauled him off to a labor camp. The last was written in 1995, a few months before his death, after a quarter-century of flaming and desolate exile in the United States. Here he became poet laureate. Universities competed to hire him. The Nobel Prize duly arrived. His fellow Nobel poets loved him, translated him, drank with him, stayed up late with him and eulogized him when his heart failed; not broken, perhaps, but certainly overcompressed.
The first Christmases in this collection find Brodsky in his early mode of dark rebellion. It was a difficult condition in many ways, among them of course the labor camp years. Yet to a writer it offered a kind of bulwark. The Soviet Union was granite oppression and provided an unbudging gritty mass to strike a poetic match against.
''You get a sense of superiority rather easily,'' Brodsky recalled years ater in the United States. ''You are working against such obvious notions of vulgarity; and the state is there in a kind of obvious grandeur. You identify yourself as the good, and you may be the worst possible.''
Several of the early poems here tend to reflect this odd mixture of pain and an arrogance that could almost be called satiric complacency. The poetry sometimes breaches it, as in ''Christmas Ballad'' (1962), whose mordant portrait of a joyless St. Petersburg winter lifts with images that fly above it. Of a streetlight: ''There floats in an abiding gloom/ among immensities of brick,/ a little boat of night.'' (From BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Christmas Verses Begin In Early, Dark Rebellion by Richard Eder in The New York Times Dec. 19/01) |
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
Deadeye Dick
Paperback
By Kurt Vonnegut
| Quote: | According to Fred T. Barry, a Jew named Joseph of Arimathea took Christ's goblet when the Last Supper was over. He believed Christ to be divine.
Joseph brought the goblet to the Crucifixion, and some of Christ's blood fell into it. Joseph was arrested for his Christian sympathies. He was thrown into prison without food or water, but he survived for several years. He had the goblet with him, and every day it filled up with food and drink.
So the Romans let him go. They couldn't have known about the goblet, or they surely would have taken it from him. And Joseph went to England to spread the word about Christ. The goblet fed him on the way. And this wandering Jew founded the first Christian church in England - at Glastonbury. He stuck his staff into the ground and there, it became a tree which bloomed every Christmas Eve.
Imagine that.
Joseph had children, who inherited the goblet, which came to be known as the "Holy Grail."
But sometime during the next five hundred years, the Holy Grail was lost. King Arthur and his knights would become obsessed with finding it again - the most sacred relic in England. Knight after knight failed. Supernatural messages indicated that their hearts weren't pure enough for them to find the Grail.
But then Sir Galahad presented himself at Camelot, and it was evident to everyone that his heart was perfectly pure. And he did find the Grail. He was not only spiritually entitled to it. He was legally entitled to it as well, since he was the last living descendant of that wandering Jew, Joseph of Arimathea. (From Chapter 20, pgs. 173-174) |
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| Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2008 4:54 pm Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
Winter Hours
Hardcover
By Mary Oliver
| Quote: | | The material issue of a house, however, is a matter not so much of imagination an spirit as it is of particular, joinable, weighty substance - it is brick and wood, it is foundation and beam, sash and sill; it is threshold and door and the latch upon the door. In the seventies and eighties, in this part of the world if not everywhere, there was an ongoing, monstrous binge of building, or tearing back and rebuilding - and carting away of old materials to the (then-titled) dump. Which, in those days, was a lively and even social place. Work crews made a continual effort toward bulldozing the droppings from the trucks into some sort of order, shoving at least a dozen categories of broken and forsaken materials, along with reusable materials, into separate areas. Gulls, in flocks like low, white clouds, screamed and rippled over the heaps of lumber, looking for garbage that was also dumped, and often in no particular area. Motels, redecorating, would bring three hundred mattresses in the morning, three hundred desks in the afternoon. Treasures, of course, were abundantly sought and found. And good wood - useful wood - wood it was a sin to bury, not to use again. The price of lumber had not yet skyrocketed, so even new lumber lay seamed in with the old, the price passed on to the customer. Cut-offs, and lengths. Pine, fir, oak, flooring, shingles of red and white cedar, ply, cherry trim, also tarpaper and insulation, screen doors new and old, and stovepipe old and new, and bricks, and, more than once, some power tools left carelessly, I suppose, in a truck bed, under the heaps of trash. This is where I went for my materials, along with others, men and women both, who simply roved, attentively, through all the mess until they found what they needed, or felt they would, someday, use. Clothes, furniture, old dolls, old highchairs, bikes; once a child's metal bank in the shape of a dog, very old; once a set of copper-bottomed cookware still in its original cartons; once a bag of old Christmas cards swept from the house of a man who died only a month or so earlier, in almost every one of them a dollar bill. (From PART ONE, Building the House, pgs. 8-9) |
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| Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
The First Christmas
The National Gallery of London
Hardcover
Text and Illustrations attributed to Frances Lincoln
Extracts from the Authorized Version of the Bible
(the King James Bible), the rights in which are vested
in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the
Crown's patentee, Cambridge University Press
| Quote: | And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." (Text is beside a wondrous color plate of The Adoration of Kings by Jan Gossaert, p. 16) |
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| Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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Britain
Magazine Subscription
Sing We Now of Christmas
The Story of English Carols
By Sian Ellis
January, 2009
| Quote: | Carol singing in churches was curbed during and after the Reformation (Calvinist factions regarded the Christmas feast as a popish abuse), and under Puritan rule it was banned. Although the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 lifted official prohibition, the established church dragged its feet: The Book of Common Prayer offered no specific provision for seasonal hymns, and it was only when poet laureate Nahum Tate's While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night was included in the 1700 Supplement to the New Version of the Psalms that a Christmas hymn was permitted to be sung in Anglican services.
During this time the survival of carols was left to those outside church, handing on songs from plays like the Coventry carols, or through waits and wassailing. The waits (watchmen) who patrolled city streets at night turned to music at Christmas, playing outside citizens' houses for reward. The idea that visiting singers brought good luck had also given rise to wassailing (Anglo Saxon waes hael meaning "be healthy" or "good cheer"). Wassailers carried a bowl of hot, spiced ale or wine with them and shared a drink with their host, who generously replenished the liquor and sent them on their way with gifts. We Wish You a Merry Christmas, with its demands for figgy pudding and God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen both hail from "luck visit" traditions. (-- p. 42) |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:41 am Post subject: |
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Very Good, Jeeves!
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | Every year, starting about the middle of November, there is a good deal of anxiety and apprehension among owners of the better-class of country-house throughout England as to who will get Bertram Wooster's patronage for Christmas holidays. It may be one or it may be another. As my Aunt Dahlia says, you never know where the blow will fall.
This year, however, I had decided early. It couldn't have been later than Nov. 10 when a sigh of relief went up from a dozen stately homes as it became known that the short straw had been drawn by Sir Reginald Witherspoon, Bart., of Bleaching Court, Upper Bleaching, Hants.
In coming to the decision to give this Witherspoon my custom, I had been actuated by several reasons, not counting the fact that, having married Aunt Dahlia's husband's younger sister Katherine, he is by way of being a sort of uncle of mine. In the first place, the Bart. does one extraordinarily well, both browsing and sluicing being above criticism. Then, again, his stables always contain something worth riding, which is a consideration. And, thirdly, there is no danger of getting lugged into a party of amateur Waits and having to tramp the countryside in the rain, singing, 'When Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night." Or for the matter of that, 'Noel, Noel!'
All these things counted with me, but what really drew me to Bleaching Court like a magnet was the knowledge that young Tuppy Glossop would be among those present.
I feel sure I have told you before about this black-hearted bird, but I will give you the strength of it once again, just to keep the records straight. He was the fellow, if you remember, who, ignoring a lifelong friendship in the course of which he had frequently eaten my bread and salt, betted me one night at the Drones that I wouldn't swing myself across the swimming-bath by the ropes and rings and then, with almost inconceivable treachery, went and looped back the last ring, causing me to drop into the fluid and ruin one of the nattiest suits of dress-clothes in London.
To execute a fitting vengeance on this bloke had been the ruling passion of my life ever since. (From The Ordeal of Young Tuppy, pgs. 203-204) |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 9:28 am Post subject: |
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From Unusual Bets:
Silken Eyes
By Francoise Sagan
Translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin
| Quote: | In appearance, M. Ximenestre closely resembled a drawing by Chaval: corpulent, with an air of amiable bewilderment. But now that the month of December had begun, he wore ane xpression so woebegone as to make every passerby with any heart at all want to stop and ask him what the matter. The trouble lay in the approach of Christmas, which M. Ximenestre, good Christian though he was, was this year contemplating with dismay, not having a sou with which to pamper the gift-hungry Mme.Simenestre, his good=for-nothing son, Charles, and his daughter, Augusta, an excellent calypso dancer. Not a sou: that was the exact state of his affairs. And there was no question of advances or loans. Both had already been obtained, without the knowledge of Mme. Ximenestre and his children, in order to gratify the latest vice of this supposed breadwinner; in short, to gratify M. Ximenestre's fatal passion: gambling.
Not just the ordinary kind of gambling where the gold trickles over the green baize, nor yet the kind where horses strain to the last gasp over another sort of green baize, but a game, yet unknown in France, which had, alas, become the craze in a cafe in the XVIIe arondissement where M. Ximinestre was in the habit of taking a glass of vermouth every evening before going home: a game of darts, but played with a peashooter and ten-franc notes. All the regulars were mad about it, apart from one man, who had had to give it up owing to chronic shortage of breath. Imported by an Australian newly arrived in the district, this thrilling game had quickly become the object of an exclusive club, which met in the back room, where the proprietor, a fan himself, had sacrificed the billiard table. (From A Dog's Night, pgs. 121-122) |
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Last edited by editor on Fri Dec 04, 2009 2:03 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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