Round the Herne

 It being April 23rd, my mind turns to dragons and the numerous folktales about them. This story from Albania features a singularly charmless family as its central characters and a reminder about why we should be careful who we let have influence over our children's minds (cranky, manipulative teachers included).  There are forty dragons featured in this tale, though it has to be said that they really don't do anything very draconian and, as is so often the case with a lot of folktales, there are many loose ends left untied - like what happens to the governess, why are forty dragons squeezed into a castle, and ought the romantic "hero" be on a police watch list? Possibly when this story was first doing the rounds, audiences would have been familiar with other stories that would have put the dragons, the governess etc. into context. I did consider doing a story about the bolla, a type of dragon that only opens its eyes on April 23rd, but aside from a few scraps of myth...

 My reading of the last three chapters of P G Wodehouse's comic novel "Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit" (1954) in which Jeeves, that machina ex deus, resolves all the problems that beset the household. You will have noticed from the constant references to Agatha Christie across the book that the two authors admired each other's work. Whilst Christie had rather Wodehouse-like characters in some of her books (especially the Tommy & Tuppence ones), she sadly never had a Jeeves-style character solve a murder and exonerate his employer from suspicion.

  My reading of the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of P G Wodehouse's "Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit" (1954).The purloining of pearls gets ever more confused as Wooster contemplates a life behind bars and Mrs Trotter throws her hat into the ring.

  My reading of chapters sixteen and seventeen of P G Wodehouse's "Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit" (1954). Grievous bodily harm is attempted, Cupid steps in, and aunts become pottier by the minute.

  My reading of the fifteenth chapter of P G Wodehouse's "Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit" (1954). Wooster contemplates his grim marital fate with sangfroid then looses it all as a far worse fate looms into view.

  My reading of the fourteenth chapter of P G Wodehouse's "Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit" (1954). In this installment, Wooster manages to untangle himself from a near-death experience but faces the far worse prospect of getting hitched to the pushy Florence Craye.

 My reading of the thirteenth chapter of P G Wodehouse's "Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit". Wooster finds himself making a grievous mistake as to whose bedroom window he is climbing through whilst attempting to protect his mad aunt's reputation.