Winter Charms

 

Brrr.
I love this feeling of January. These Winter days that feel like Winter. My heat runs. The cosiness abounds. It is a little bit challenging living in an old home with single-pane windows and no central heating, but it's all part of the adventure. 

I made a little pot of jasmine silver tip tea. Superb. It warms my core as the afternoon stays quite chilly.

I read a lovely little icy blue toned book - The Tempest by Shakespeare, and enjoyed the magical, mystical elements. It is such a short play, I wonder if Shakespeare wrote it overnight one evening.

Then, I move onto another new book just arrived, Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse. It is silly and fun as you would expect with Wodehouse, and I am constantly chuckling. It is just what I needed as the world seems to ache outside my door more and more each day. I need a little silliness and Bertie Wooster will deliver in that. I am having a blast in these short stories. The simplest notions make me smile, such as breakfast:

The letter arrived on the morning of the sixteenth. I was pushing a bit of breakfast into the Wooster face at the moment and, feeling fairly well-fortified with coffee and kippers, I decided to break the news to Jeeves without delay.

It isn't 'having' or 'taking' breakfast like a normal, civilized human being. It is a 'pushing' a bit of breakfast into his face. Not sure why that is so funny, but the imagination takes us places. The class of Bertie and his silly notions to his valet Jeeves and views of life somehow makes the basic tasks and the trouble they get themselves into positively risible. Reading these stories is perfectly timed right now when a little cheer is essential. No time in history is perfect, even in Wodehouse's time there were many dark times indeed, but it reminds me that we can still have absolutely charming episodes at home. Pure wit and delight with a little imagination.

I find that when I look at the world with Wodehouse eyes, I see much to laugh at and find words to provoke such laughter. Right now, and always, that is a very good thing.