#wodehousian

Bally

Blasted

No good trying to hush it up at this time of day - for true things that you don't like for example having an exam

Something in that - for obvious things.

Infernal

Foul

Wart-hog

Pipsqueak

Till you burst your corsets

Bloodstained - usage similar to Bally, blasted etc

Barmy

Ruddy

Not by a ruddy jugful

Dashed

Dashed sight

Mug

I fixated on his arm while he cursed the sunhaired Irish maidens they slithered from, loathe that St. Patrick had missed them. The inner elbow was a crimson crook of flaking skin where in his anxiety Lobilus had raked away the upper epidermal layer.

"I insisted we all drank, but looking back it seems I was the only one partaking. So, I insist I fetch the bottles myself, least I can do. He's equally insistent I sit and allow his wife to serve, that it's a great honour to serve a Serve, something she can tell her bitching circle - his words, not mine. In floats his missus like a nervous ghost. There is some sickness in the marriage, evident in their coolness, the minutiae of their interactions, how clinically she moves at his bidding, in conversation she stares fixedly at the wall behind him. After a scolding she brought the beer and with a mouselike twitch transferred it to the arm of my seat before scurrying back to the wings. I cheered her health and his, wished riches upon the freckled children of Ireland who walk to hedge schools unshod making every jaunt painful as a pilgrimage, I wished their dreary stone strife and lousy sorrow ended, all this I said staring him, the ginger chap, right in his changeling eyes, human but different, a thing from beneath the clod risen at a scyer's call. A thing of us, but not us. As above, as below proved true. I looked last to bald man, the drink halfway to my lips already, and with daring and feigned delight wished for every bald man a mane every full moon. Evidently they were philistines. Not a titter out of them. Some people have no taste."

I caught his subtext, or so I thought, "Anything can be cleaned. Wives, daughters, cousins. Everyone has a price. Every stain an antidote."

"Not that" he hissed, "No, I'm still squirrelling away my fluids. Like I said, worse than usual. I'm a saucy bugger, but I swear on all the schizophrenics who ever saw a lizard and in their sun-drunkenness claimed celestial descent that last night the combat sausage never left my slacks, not even to use the privy. Actually, I did toilet a bit. That's it though. Zipped."

"What is it then?" I dared. He spoke, my gravely than e'er I remembered, and I remembered strops by the thousand - we japed, around the family hearth exclusively, he took maudlin turns to match Caligula. I knew to listen intently.

Not Ms. Elena. Matronly and dire, she wore drab colours of mourning no matter the season. She spurned fashion for practicality and was radiant nonetheless, raising the ire of many a bejewelled gileted country wife. Her father, a daring venture capitalist, left no ambiguity in stating only the finest man would have his daughter's hand, which meant, in so many words, no tennis ponces.

In the long evenings she did not take drink, instead she would recline in the conservatory and compose poetry. She quipped greek epithets in her letters, which always arrived timely, was witty in conversation with a tongue like a scorpion's lance, and beautiful most of all; blue-eyed and milk pale, a hyperborean princess. I imagined her easily astride a chariot clad in bronze cuirass, a raiment of fantastic spirals dancing, a crown of ash upon her head.

And misery loves company so here are some Wodehousian hangover descriptions that reminded my brain this morning that there is dopamine in my body.

It's taken from the luck of the Bodkins.