the other day while on vacation we were puttering around in a sweet antique shop in the tiny historic village of Fitzwilliam in southern New Hampshire. we had just visited the local farmers market and we had some time to kill before we were due at a wedding reception in northern Massachusetts.

while puttering inside the shop on my own (my wife putters separately from me since she is interested in different things) I found a cool “Ruppert knickerbockers” beer tray from the early 20th century, apparently the best selling American beer of its time according to Google, and a liberty bell miniature from 1975. after paying for them, we were just about to leave but then I noticed a “cross stitch sampler” hanging on the wall for sale. it had been made in 1917 so that, in itself, was very cool. and then I suddenly remembered how, as a school kid in India, we used to have a craft class where we were taught how to make cross stitched handkerchiefs. my parents back in India likely still have my creation from that class that they hopefully show everyone who visits them. I was very proud of this handkerchief because of all the blood, sweat and tears that had gone into creating this masterpiece, mostly blood and tears because i was a kid with a needle.

the second thing I remembered while admiring the sampler was that I knew these particular lines. I had read them before in the novel, “the code of the Woosters” by P.G.Wodehouse, the master of British farce and prolific referencer of literary works in his novels. if there’s one person I attribute to developing a working sense of humor, it is Mr. Wodehouse. it’s because of P.G.Wodehouse that when I was growing up and my peers were getting attracted to the comical aspects of wordplay, puns, dad jokes and physical comedy intrinsic to most Bollywood movies, I was gravitating towards farce and absurdism, eventually and inevitably graduating to dark gallows humor.

So obviously I had to purchase the sampler. and after we got back home from vacation I obviously had to spend a warm Sunday afternoon reading a Wodehouse (Piccadilly Jim) out on the deck with my dog and a splendid Vermont ipa. I also bought a new Kindle Paperwhite because 1: it feels very much like a long term Wodehouse binge session is in the offing, 2: I can’t seem to find my second generation Kindle from fifteen years ago and 3: turns out that my Chromebook tablet is way too heavy for binge reading.