That man, again, and this time with a wonky moustache

Only having turned a few pages of 'The Golf Omnibus' by PG Wodehouse, it is surely premature to call it classic writing, but it undoubtedly is. Wodehouse combined with golf is a far more potent combination than many many others, even for those uninitiated into that grand pasttime. As a non-golfer, but someone who would love to tread the greens, the romanticism of the great old game is hard to resist. Maybe this longheld suspicion that the 'Jeeves' stories may not be the best Wodehouse isn't as far beyond the pale as one might think.

Long, long ago, when professional sports were still mildly entertaining and not played exclusively by soulless automatons and occasionally disguised donkeys - I'm looking at you, Rex McWhirter - it was rather fun to watch golf, snooker, bowls, cricket and all those marvelous sports that were freely available on television. Yes, you used to be able to watch sports other then football and rugby for free, people! It was a golden age of sorts, enhanced by occasional snowstorms and thunderstorms that stopped play just as Steve Davis was being snookered behind the yellow ball. Oh, days of rose-tinted misery!

Golf was the funny sport in the television pack, and one I still miss for its sheer quirky eccentricity, just like the arcane sport of cricket. They seem to get watered down to mediocrity as more and more money gets poured into them, until finally they take on the qualities of consistent sludge with few of the peaks and troughs that have been characteristics in the past. Or is this all just fuddy duddy worshipping of the past? Could it be? No... surely not... isn't it obvious that sport has become more and boring in recent decades? Oh, who on Earth cares?! Sport! Bah humbug!

Short stories are tough to read, but Wodehouse makes it easy. After less than one story and a brief flick through the rest of the pages, he's up there with Conan Doyle as someone with supreme gifts for prose and inventiveness. Dashiell Hammett is up there too, but with the one shortcoming of being rooted firmly in detective stories while the two first examples could run around in more numerous genres, So, expect a piece now on the 'Golf Omnibus' and Doyle's 'Uncollected Short Stories'. Oh, and Hammett's short fiction is sure to appear sooner or later too. Boy, those are three guys who could write, and I'm reasonably sure they weren't automatons or donkeys!

O.