Oh, I say, how many shekels would a Starship set back Bertram W.?  They are dashed sleek, I mean to say, what!  A take-off from one’s chic flat with a touchdown at the Drones would be just the thing to avoid the hoi polloi.

“Bertie old boy,” sayeth the Elon, “I bet you and a couple of boys at the Drones can’t take over the DoD’s computer systems for me?”

“It’s a wager, my dear old African,” quoth I.  “There is no technology, no matter how quaintly old-fashioned, that can pull a fast one on me.”

So here I am esconced, as it were, in the bowels of the quaintly old-fashioned, wondering for the everloving life of yours truly what the dashed procedure is for operating an abacus.  If any of the readers to which these presents shall come know the d.p. for operating an abacus, please contact Bertram eftsoons and right quickly.

Who are these dashed people one sees everywhere on the TV these days?  The woman of indeterminate pronunciation and the elderly bridge player fellow?  I dare say that the marked American cussedness is more than a little marked.  In fine fettle, as it were.

With the recent contretemps of the Aunt-majority parliament in Blighty (criminals out of the Big House, social media posters in), ditto similar hijinks in la Aunt France (the Telegram chappie arrested on the tarmac), one wonders if a sprightly young toff of impeccable pedigree and impeccable taste should not prolong his sojourn abroad?  It’s dashed unpleasant, being in the chokey.

Jeeves asseveres that the company of the other Drones would enliven the otherwise dreary confines and what not, and no doubt the good fellow is right.  Still and all, one prefers to do one’s own enlivening.

Let none say that Bertie Wooster is not a dashed climate activist.  Of course I am.  Noblesse oblige and all that, what what!  Why just this eve I instructed Jeeves to grill the young master a ribeye.

I borrowed $33 trillion in Yank money from a feller and now I can’t find the stuff to pay him back.  Its a dashed whatsit . . . contretemps.

Oh, I say, dash it, ye olde witches were rather sporting.  Dashed adventurous of the old biddies.  But one rather draws the line at hog pens.

Oh, I say, dash it, have you seen the latest thing? Mugshots! What ho, what ho, what ho!

Many is the crime I have assayed to commit when conscience, the clarion voice of the angel within, whispered in my ear, “Bertram, what would your mother say if you were to be nabbed with your tie in its current less than perfect state? What price the mugshot, Bertram?”

To which I replied, “conscience, old bean, thumbs up and +1. You’ve struck the nail on the flat surface for which striking is ideal, viz, the head.”

As all the world knows, when a suave man of the world such as yours truly stumbles into possession of the Hunter B. laptop, one may be excused a certain bumbling in trying to dispose of the Loathsome O. I rather fear, dash it, that in accidentally becoming engaged to Director Wray’s daughter I may have taken the thing too far. Rather frosted the jolly old cake, what? Not least among the scaly features of aforesaid contretemps is that the gray matter refuses to remember how to spell Buriesma. Byurisma. Thingummy.

The doings at the Drones Club are as sprightly as ever.  Rolls whizzing to and from, young blood distinctly young and bloodish, bon mots of the bonest.  Rep. “Reppie” Thomas H. Massie had a good one that he shared with all and sundry to general acclaim.

.@repthomasmassie on his #RawMilk Bill and the lactose lobby in #DC pic.twitter.com/RI97JEY766

— Free the People (@freethepeople) March 12, 2023

Although still a frolicsome life of the party and whatnot, your Bertie has had to return a dashed nolle prosequi when viands and potations are pressed upon him.  I’m in training.  The boys have signed me up for a bank run.

A pal of mine who is some kind of nob invited me to a shindig last night at a gentleman’s club called the Old Cap.  Quite the impressive pile, one approves.  There were women among those present, one expects that these days, but without particular reference to the gentler sex one feels that the club’s committee needs to be a dashed sight more selective in accepting members.  Wield the old black ball with a sprightly hand, my dear selection committee members, forsooth.  I observed to my pal that the American style of architecture preferred its gargoyles inside instead of out, what ho, what ho.   He was a bit shirty about it.

The bash, or doings, were of the most peculiar kind.  Rather a ritual sort of thing, don’t you know.  After a good deal of this and that, a doddering old fellow, some kind of mascot one presumes, stood up and began a rather extensive recitation regarding the “state of the union” while acting in the character of the U.S. President.  One gathers the whole thing partook of the jocose.

One wishes to be an au courant hep cat and all that, fully up on the vibe and so forth, and so the dashed cry goes up from all and sundry, whither classified documents for elegant display in one’s tastefully appointed crib?

The Bingos, I am told, were reduced to the expedient of using cheap Chinese knock-offs.  Many such cases, as the fellow said.

Nonetheless, with a certain amount of relief and whatsit, frightfully hairy adventures having been undertaken, I can announce that the Wooster garage now doubles as a bijou SCIF.

One is not surprised. My mind boggles like billy-o that anyone would think a chappie like Wodehouse would be swanning around in footerbags like a bally fascist, shouting ‘Heil’ to this fellow or that fellow. Or that he would muck about with the Serene Soviet in the labour interest. No, the shot is simply not on the board. The Conservatives had all the best clubs

Dashed Fink-Nottle has had the immortal crust to open a dashed school for dashed rhetoric for politicians. If the babblings of the blighter in his cups can be trusted, some of the most prominents sorts of chappies attend, like that fellow Brandon or the old boy from Harvard, Ketterfish or Fettleman or some such name. It astounds the mind. There is blasted Fink-Nottle, touting to all and sundry his supposed success at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School, and teaching these respectable political johnnies to appear on the hustings blitzed, or soused if you prefer, out of their ever living minds.

In the full swing yesterday of preparation for a convivial foregathering, I came to the donning of the raiment, laid out as it had been by one’s faithful manservant.  But where I had looked for vim and zip I saw clothing in the soberest of cuts and color.  “Jeeves,” quoth I, “why this solemnity of garb?  Why these dim-hued items of apparel?”

With his usual tact, Jeeves broke to me the news.  Stout fellow.  One’s feelings were dashed stirred up.