Greetings!
If you’re new here then you can find out all about this project of mine here:
But in a nutshell it’s this: I’ve been taking a short and very bland story and rewriting it in different styles. This time I’ve chosen to do it as a parody in the style of Bertie Wooster.
Some background
In case you’re unfamiliar with Bertie Wooster, he was a character invented by P.G.Wodehouse. He’s an upper class Englishman, a bit lacking in the brains department, and so always getting into scrapes. Fortunately, his butler, Jeeves, always manages to rescue him. Wooster is also cowed into submission by the women in his life, especially Aunt Agatha. I always imagine her as a Lady Bracknell-type person, although apparently Wodehouse’s model for the character was one of his own aunts.
There’s a brilliantly-priced collection of Wodehouse’s fiction on Amazon. This Kindle book costs £0.99 or $0.99.
Click the pic to see this on Amazon (affiliate link)
Here is the original story in case you haven’t seen it yet.
A bang on the head (template)
In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.
The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.
The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.
An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.
A bang on the head in the style of Bertie Wooser
Life's a rum old thing. One minute everything's tickety-boo2, and the next Fate decides to tap you on the shoulder and say, “Sorry, old boy” and then let you have it with whatever’s nearest to hand. In my case, that was a wall. That’s why I didn't do any writing that day.
Look, this is all going to get terribly confusing so bear with me while I start from the beginning.
Last week I was very happily asleep -- or at least, I assume I was happy because I wasn't having any nightmares (ghastly things!) -- when the old bladder began squawking for attention. Dashed inconvenient if you ask me. A chap doesn't want to have to get up in the pitch black to answer the call of nature, or answer anything else come to that. I mean, imagine if there was a knock on the door or a telephone call in the early hours: a fellow would be not a little perturbed, what?
Where was I? Oh yes. So I clambered out of the four poster, but at altogether the wrong angle, so blowed if I didn't go careering straight into the wall. I tell you. I tried to ignore it and dragoon the well-known Freedman stiff upper lip into service, but the old noggin was having none of it. So after a few days of the deuced thing throbbing and thumping, thereby preventing the legendary Freedman grey matter from doing its stuff, and what with my feeling as if I was on a boat on a particularly rough sea, I gave in and hauled myself to the local infirmary.
I was tempted to sign in at the mortuary straight away to save some time. As it was, I was certain I was going to be shuffling off this mortal coil pretty sharpish because of all these chaps and chapesses, if that’s a word (and if it isn’t it jolly-well ought to be) not keeping away from each other and not wearing their masks properly.
By and by a fearsome-looking nurse called my name, and I suspected that she could probably frighten illnesses away just by glaring at them. Still, she knew her stuff, and after thumping my knees and waving a finger from side to side about an inch from my nose and asking me how many I could see, and pulling my elbows all over the place, she threw me out with the instruction to take it easy for a few days. I didn’t think it prudent to argue with her.
So that's how nothing came to be written, which goes against the natural order of things if you're a writer. Still, at least I read some of a book, so all's well that ends well and all that rot.
This article first appeared on Substack. I hope you enjoyed it. At the time of writing I've published 67 versions of the story. To see more, including the back catalogue, so to speak, and new ones as they come out (every two weeks), I suggest to subscribe to my Eclecticism newsletter. Click on the graphic below to have a look.
If you're reading this before 8th June 2024, you may be interested to know that I'm running a course called Creative Writing with Constraints at the City Lit Adult Education Institute in London on 8th June. One of the techniques we'll be trying out is rewriting a short story in a completely different style. This proved hugely popular when I did this the last time I taught the course. Find out more by clicking on that link. Hope to see you there!