"No novelists anywhere any good except me. P.G. Wodehouse and Tolstoy not bad. Not good, but not bad"

Some days are just bad days. There's not enough hot water for your shower, the milk that you have to use is on the wrong side of the use by date, its raining and your shoes get wet, there are no seats on the Tube, you're late, you have to have a ham sandwich for lunch AGAIN, you don't have change for chocolate, you stare at and re-write the same five sentences for eight hours, one of your limbs gets caught in the closing Tube door, that amazing thing you were going to have for dinner has mysteriously disappeared, and then you can't sleep. We all have days like this. What matters is that you know what to do when one springs upon you.

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT do any of the following: listen to Neil Young's Oh Lonesome Me or Cat Power's Hate; watch romantic comedies (you think its going to make you better but then you're watching a ridiculous story about an beautiful girl who still can't get a boyfriend and then she gets one and amazingly all her life problems are solved! - Katherine Heigl, I'm looking at you) or any movie where an lovable animal dies; drink gin; or eat too much chocolate (you WILL get the chocolate guilts).

My infallible list of bad day busters includes: Supernatural bloopers (I love those boys! So hot, so funny!); Fly My Pretties (at the moment, its the Live at Bats album but anything by these guys is pure gold); car dancing; or, listening to awesome songs like this or this (I love the live versions of these - yes, that is Bjork and Bowie.). But my top-notch, never fail bad day cure is P. G. Wodehouse. Whenever I travel, I always take a copy of one of his books with me to combat any airport stress. I even have his books on tape to listen to when I can't sleep, and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

If you have never heard of P. G. Wodehouse, never fear! I have especially gone on the P. G. Wodehouse walk in order to gather information to educate you!

OMG his actual house!!!

Probably the first thing you need to know about P. G. (as we shall now call him), is that his last name is pronounced 'Wood-house', even though its spelt 'Wode-house'. He was born out in Hong Kong, where his father worked as a judge, but was educated in England. He wanted to go to university, but his older brother had already gone and there wasn't enough money for P. G. to go as well. So, he got a job at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Savings Bank, with the hope of getting a post overseas. However, while he was working there, he had a couple of stories published in a newspaper and he decided to become a writer. He did some more short stories, then a novel and he was away!

This is the block of flats where Bertie Wooster lived!!!

P. G. was a pretty prolific writer with almost 100 novels and short stories. His stories generally fall into a couple of groups:

 - Jeeves and Wooster

 - Blandings Castle

 - Psmith (the P is silent "as in pshrimp")

 - Mr Mulliner

 - Urkridge

All the stories follow a similar pattern - the hero is in some kind of trouble, usually either romantic or financial, and he gets deeper and deeper into that trouble until a he is rescued by a wise elder. All the worthy heroes are not too bright, reasonably good looking, upper class and bad with money. The heroines are usually the jolly good sort, with names like Jane, Angela or Nobby (short for Zenobia). The other female characters are usually aggravating girls to steer clear of (Florence, Madeline and Honoria), or the aunts (Julia, Constance, Hermione or Agatha). And then there are the wise elders: Jeeves, Lord Ickenham and Galahad Threepwood.

Aunt Dahlia's town house!!!

What develops is a beautifully constructed farce, punctuated by some of the funniest phrases that you will ever read. Some of my favourites include:

 "My Aunt Agatha, for instance, is tall and thin and looks rather like a vulture in the Gobi desert, while Aunt Dahila is short and solid, like a scrum half in the game of Rugby football".

"'He is ambitious. It won't be long,' said  the girl, 'before Wilberforce suddenly rises in the world'.
She never spoke a trurer word. At this moment, up he came from behind the settee like a leaping salmon".

 "I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped a lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he'd seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him around, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business".

Grosvenor Square - the site of the above quoted event!

There was just one black spot in P.G.’s life. Before the Second World War, P.G. had been living in Northern France, and when the Nazis invaded, he was placed in an internment camp, along with other resident aliens under the age of 65. During his time at the internment camp, he was asked to broadcast some humorous show on Radio Berlin, which he did. His intention was to provide some comedic relief for those living in internment camps at the time. Also, he had no knowledge about Nazi atrocities or the bombing of London at the time. But obviously, his good intentions backfired. He was investigated by British Intelligence and he was openly accused in the British press of having right-wing sympathies. It is highly doubtful that this was the case; his character Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts (modelled on Oswald Mosley, leader of the Fascist group the Black Shirts) would convince most people of this. After the war, P.G. lived in America and never returned to England. But much later his contribution to British literature was recognised, and he was knighted at the age of 92.

The only pub in the Park Lane area, and the inspiration for the Junior Ganymede, the club that Jeeves belongs to!!

All in all, I pretty much love P.G. He's funny and entertaining, with a great way with words. If you haven't read him, you should go out and do so. Or, at the very least, watch some of the Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie version of Jeeves and Wooster - guaranteed to make your day better!

Born 2 Rule

We have arrived at the third and final post on Hampton Court - the Georgian part. Everywhere you go, the Georgians are there, with Christopher Wren and neo-Classical Architecture. In fact, Christopher Wren actually designed the Georgian Wing of the palace, which pretty much shows that you can't throw a brick in London without hitting a Christopher Wren building. The best thing about the Georgian wing is that it looks out over the gardens and grounds that surround the palace. The gardens are beautiful, but in that really formal, structured kind of way that I don't really understand - what's the point of nature if its not natural?

Look at those perfectly conical trees.

 

Interestingly enough, when the South Wing was added, some of the Tudor parts were left and incorporated into the new addition.  The best bit is this amazing room known as the Wolsey Closet, it has these beautiful patterned ceilings, which have Wolsey's iconography like the ornate 'W', and scenes from the Passion of  Christ are painted around the walls. A lot of people have laboured under the misapprehension that this room was Wolsey's private chapel, because of the religious nature of the scenes on the wall, but it is more likely that it was just a fancy meeting room, designed to impress the foreign visitors that Wolsey entertained.

The room in the photo above is another interesting one - its the bedroom of the king and queen, and, through a system of ropes and pulleys, the door can be locked by someone sitting in the bed. How cool is that - don't want to get your feet cold walking across the room to unlock the door, no problem! Interesting side-note: royal bedrooms are easily identifiable because they all lock from the inside. This is for obvious reasons - the king and queen needed a place to sleep that was both private and safe.

The dome of the chapel in the Georgian wing.

But lets not beat about the bush anymore, we all know what this post is really about - the Georgian kings and how awful they were. From George I and his embarrassingly bad grasp on the English language, to George IV and the terrible relationship he had with his wife Caroline, the first four Georges were not the most pleasant of people. In particular, there were continuous tensions between father and son, with the next generation never learning from the mistakes of the previous. And of course, poor old George the third, who was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, as well as being the king who lost the American colonies. This situation has been no better summarised that in this video, which is probably the best thing I have ever seen! If you don't love it, I'm not sure we can be friends any more...

I think that is a high point on which to end, sorry about the shortness of this post - the Georgian part was last on my list to see and I had to almost run through to see it all before they locked the gates for the night!

"William and Mary, by the Grace of God, King and Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, etc."

Ok, so here I am, being assaulted by ladybugs, but still powering through to bring you another post! I'm serious about the ladybugs - they are way bigger than the ones at home, and are trying to hibernate in my room, but every so often, they just leapt out at you from nowhere, scaring the proverbial out of me. And they get everywhere - I found one in my bag on the Tube yesterday.

But enough about my ladybug issue, and on with more exciting stories of Hampton Court (and show you more photos)! This part is about William III and Mary II. I first heard about them when I was a Kensington Palace and thought they were pretty interesting - they were the only diarchy in British history. Usually there is a monarchy (one ruler, either a King with a queen, or a Queen with a Prince Regent), but William was a Prince of Orange in his own right, while Mary was Queen of England, so they ruled jointly.

It worked out pretty well for them, 'cause Mary, despite being smart, beautiful and friendly, wasn't really the powerful, dynamic type of ruler. However, she did have to take the reins when William was away at war, which was A LOT. If there was one thing William loved above anything else, it was doing to war, and he did it for up to 6 to 9 months of the year, usually against the French. Even when he got home, he slept on a camp bed in one of the private rooms. He wasn't actually that good at it, and he made very little progress against the French. He also wasted a fair amount of money at the same time.

Here is William, bravely riding out to war - sorry about the bad photo quality!

Apart from this inclination towards warfare, William had one or two other faults. Mainly he disliked appearing in public - at the time, it was expected that the king and queen would go about their daily business in the public eye: the public could come and watch the king receive guest, eat and even get ready for bed. A little strange, but its actually a cunning public relations scheme. However, William didn't do this very often, and this made him unpopular with the public. In fact, William and Mary's reign was the beginning of the end for public court rituals.

ONE of the public throne rooms.

There were also rumours floating around that William liked the camaraderie of war a little more than anyone with a wife should, if you get my drift. William had a very close friend, Hans, who had nursed William through scarlet fever when he was young. William had never forgotten this, and Hans was given appropriate honours at court. But later on, William found another favourite, an exceptionally beautiful and slightly effeminate young man called Arnold. William consequently forgot his best friend Hans, and focus on Arnold, which is when things took a turn for the scandalous! Hans took offence at this, as you would after you saved someones life and then they ditched you for someone prettier, and so he left court and never spoke to William again.

William's private rooms, where the men would hang out.

These rumours only served to further decrease William's popularity, and after Mary died of smallpox, it only dropped more and more. William had truly loved his wife, and when she died, he took to eating and drinking a little more than was good for him. He died of pneumonia, caused by a broken collarbone after his horse threw him after it tripped on a molehill.

However, in my opinion, William's greatest mistake was wanting to completely demolish Hampton Court, and replace it with a whole new palace. I mean, SERIOUSLY?! Hampton Court is so beautiful, I don't know how anyone could want to get rid of it. Thankfully, there wasn't enough money to raze the palace and build a new one, so they just added Baroque addition. Just on the side, casual-like:

Baroque columns in front of the famous Hampton Court red brick chimneys. Just slapped on to the front there.

Anyway, I think that's enough royal scandal for now. Tune in same time next week for the final instalment in our Hampton Court series! Now just let me find that stupid ladybug...