1. Claude and Eustace have been sent down from Oxford but refuse to leave your flat until they have made their professional debut on the West End, an aim to which your aunt strenuously objects. What do you feed the Empress?
If you feed the Empress acorns, select A. If you feed the Empress mash with a nip of bourbon, select B.
2. You accidentally steal the umbrella of a social superior. Do you start a chicken farm or marry Muriel?
If you start a chicken farm, select A. If you marry Muriel, select B.
3. Your Uncle Fred is masquerading as a beloved Russian novelist in a dining car containing half of the most important members of your gentleman’s club as well as your publisher, who currently has on his person a compromising letter that could end your literary career. What tie will you wear?
If you will wear the striped tie, select A. If you will wear the quiet grey, select B.
4. The girl you love is engaged to the local squire. How many kippers would you like with your breakfast?
If you will have four kippers, select A. If you ask for kidneys, select B.
5. A small dog belonging to your second-least favorite aunt has stolen a constable’s helmet. Where will you hide?
If you will hide on Swan Island, select A. If you will hide in Roberta Wickham’s room, select B.
1A. You feed the Empress acorns. This fails to revive her, and Laura Pyke, the food crank, is called in for consultation. You are moved out of the Green Room — which has the nicest view in the whole house — to make room for her. The week-end has been ruined.
1B. You feed the Empress mash with a bit of bourbon. Although the Empress responds promisingly, while you are distracted by her, Roderick Spode takes the opportunity to ransack your room and plant the stolen cow-creamer under your bed. Gwladys refuses to believe that you are not a kleptomaniac and breaks off your engagement.
2A. Muriel objects to your starting a chicken farm, as she has always planned for you a career in Law, and brings breach-of-promise actions against you.
2B. Muriel has been secretly engaged to Tuppy Glossop for three years. He threatens to horsewhip you on the steps of your Club after learning of your attachment; you sail to America and spend six months in New York City trying to forget her. You forget her so successfully that when you meet her again — this time with dyed red hair as a gold-digging chorus girl — it takes you weeks to remember who she is. By this time she has married your wealthy uncle, giving him a son almost nine months to the date after their wedding, disinheriting you.
3A. You wear the striped tie. By curious coincidence, you bear a remarkable resemblance to the Canadian poet Rockmeteller Todd, who is also in the dining car, wearing a striped tie. You are invited to speak at a local primary school on the meaning of your best-known work, “Across the Pale Parabola of Joy.” Rockmeteller confesses to you in the drawing-room car that he has no intention of keeping that appointment and begs for you to go in his stead. All of the little girls have braids down their backs and goggle at you. Your Uncle Fred, meanwhile, slips off at the next stop and is arrested in London for nude bathing in the fountains at Trafalgar Square.
3B. You wear the quiet grey tie. Somehow, you find its subtle colors morally strengthening and finally draw enough courage to propose to Isobel Allsop, whom you have loved since she was so high. She accepts.
4A. You take four kippers. The kippers leave you full until lunch. It was just the right amount of kippers to have; what a flair you have in these matters.
4B. You ask for kidneys, inadvertently offending the sensitive French cook Anatole, who gives notice immediately. Your Aunt Dahlia disinvites you from her around-the-world yacht trip. The week-end has been ruined.
5A. You hide on Swan Island. It is filled with swans. The boat is gone, and you have no umbrella with which to defend yourself. It will take weeks for them to find your body.
5B. You hide in Roberta Wickham’s room. It is filled with swans. As they descend upon you, hissing curiously like the death-rattle of a soda-water syphon, you have only enough time to avoid Roberta’s Pomeranian, which begins snapping at your heels.
Tags: blandings castle, choose your own adventure, eggs beans and crumpets, jeeves and wooster, p.g. wodehouse, psmith
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I love you.
Any option in which “Ask Jeeves” is not available is, at best, a losing proposition.
1 this is amazing. 2 shouldn’t there always be an option “c”: get drunk and trust that jeeves will sort it all out?
What I take away from this is that swans are evil, and will bring your death. This is both right and true.
*quiet screams of delight*
Whoops, scratch that. For “delight” read “swans”; for “quiet” read “terrible”
Can we do a PG Wodehouse on Woodhouse http://archer.wikia.com/wiki/Woodhouse
Absolutely delightful!
And I must confess, am secretly chuffed at picking the kippers.
I rarely like to share links from the Toast, because I’m afraid of letting too many people I know in real life into my precious internet world, but I had to send this to my cousin, who will appreciate it immensely. It is my fondest hope that she is enjoying it right now, possibly with a crumpet.
omigod ophelia don’t hide our light under a bushel
Ack, sorry! It’s just…I LOVE YOU AND YOU ARE SO WEIRD AND I DON’T WANT TO SHARE YOU. But yeah, you’re right.
Ooh, do a Psmith one next!
Can you be in actual romantic love with a blog post? Because I am in love with this one.
The tie!
Mallory, what a flair you have for these things.
Jeeves declines to pack your favorite mess jacket. The week-end is ruined.
Confession: When I was 23, I had never heard of P. G. Wodehouse. I moved to Bombay / Mumbai (larger discussion available on nomenclature, but not here / not now) for 6 months w/ my best friend, and in the way southern part of that city, there is a street called “Wodehouse Road” (because obviously). As this subcontinental context provided the first time I ever heard the man’s name spoken aloud, my pronunciation of it is forever broken. No matter how much of a white girl / gori I will always be, I can’t seem to get the middle half-syllable out of “Wo-de-house.” My husband thinks this is hilarious. I feel a little stupid, but the fact remains.
That seems perfectly Wodehousian to me.
I’m quite sure I’ve mentioned this podcast before on this site, and I’m quite sure I don’t care: Paul F. Tompkins’ Dead Authors Podcast would, I think, be right up the alley of many of my dear fellow Toasters.
It makes me grin so hard my face hurts by the time each podcast is over.
I recently got Mr. Fringehead to listen to the Walt Whitman one, and now there’s a commercial (for Google, I think?) playing that uses part of a Whitman poem, and we both yell out lines from the podcast (“three meters!”) and fall over laughing every time we see it.
SHOULD I DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN THE TASTE OF A SALT-MAN
OF A LICK-BOY
OF A SKIN-ROGUE
(it’s one of my favourite episodes too, i’ve described it to people as “james adomian does whitman_ebooks”, it’s incredible)
Oh god, the Walt Whitman episode is just beyond amazing. Love the whole series, but Walt Whitman forever.
The Walt Whitman episode was indeed amazing and hilarious, but I would also like to put in a word for the Aesop episode. And Kristen Schaal as Tennessee Williams. And John Hodgman as Ayn Rand. Really, everyone should listen to all of them, they are great.
This comment has sold me on it.
Swans=velociraptors
One bit me when I was six and visiting Colonial Williamsburg; I barely escaped with my life.
My next-door neighbor has swans on his pond in the summer months and I have to restrain myself from throwing rocks at them when we saunter around his property.
Oh Toast, you know me so well.
This has unseated Alan Moore’s H.P. Lovecraft story written in the voice of a P.G. Wodehouse story as my favorite piece of P.G. Wodehouse fan-fiction.
TELL ME MORE
It’s the one really good part of League of Extraordinary Gentleman: Black Dossier. A distant relation is performing some sort of strange ritual in the back yard but Wooster is far more concerned with showing the exact proper amount of gratitude for a tea set he’s received than the fact that the nature of reality is breaking down around him. It does a really good job of simulating Wodehouse’s voice and unlike most late period Alan Moore nobody has sex with a weird old sex warlock that’s probably a stand-in for Alan Moore.
This sounds amazing.
Conversely, I also want to read Wodehouse stories in Lovecraft’s style now.
Now to top of this delicious crumpet: a light marathon of Fry & Laurie as Wodehouse’s dynamic duo.
I love every bit of this and am now going off to read some Wodehouse.
So much love.
So much depends upon a grey silk tie.
Mallory, you are full of the milk of human kindness.
If I might be so bold, you all might very much enjoy WHIMSY & SODA, a collection of 12 parodic Jeeves and Wooster stories, including “Jeeves Your Own Adventure.” Available for Kindle at Amazon.
One bit me when I was six and visiting Colonial Williamsburg; I barely escaped with my life.
My next-door neighbor has swans on his pond in the summer months and I have to restrain myself from throwing rocks at them when we saunter around his property.
also, the next best thing to actually playing this: aunts and butlers!
This piece is great! Well done.
I’ve actually read Whimsy & Soda, noted above. It’s ALSO a great piece, and I highly recommend it!
Psst Mallory, if you ever want to make this interactive, it’s very easy to do.
Psst Mallory, if you ever want to make this interactive, it's very easy to do.
Muriel objects to your starting a chicken farm, as she has always planned for you a career in Law, and kills all men.
Your spine is about to be broken in 4 places by Stilton Cheesewright. Either risk your life by staying at Brinkley Hall in order to taste another one of Anatole's culinary masterpieces or return quickly to the metropolis and have kippers at the Mottled Oyster.