The Coral Gables Times

'Time BY P.G. WODEHOUSE Wooster will be 80 "any moment now"—but it's just as good

I DON'T KNOW HOW it is with others, but as regards myself I find that in the matter of recreation one tends to slow up a little when one reaches the age of eighty, as I shall be doing any moment now. We octogenarians, when we get a bit of leisure, don't go in much for climbing trees or tor racing; we tend to light our pipes and relax over a book. Our pleasures, in other words, are mainly mental. To take an instance at random—me—my idea of a good time is to settle down with a couple of Perry Mason paperbacks or to watch "Love of Life" (a daytime serial which nobody ought to miss) on the television set. Having been born an Englishman, though now an American and a red-blooded one at that, I [TEXT LOST]ed, when I was younger, to play cricket and, until a stiff index finger made me give it up, golf, and in my very early days, when I was a clerk in the London office of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, I did a lot of running. It was impressed on me by the authorities that if I got to the office late three mornings in a month I would forfeit my Christmas bonus, and one of the great sights in the City of London in the years 01-1902 was me rounding into the straight with my coattails flying and my feet going pitter-pitter pat and just making it across the threshold "Our pleasures, in other words, are mainly mental." plasticine and wanted me to finger out a model of the Pentagon, you would be met with a firm nolle prosequi. "Not in the mood," I would say. Probably because they are always writing or thinking of what they are going to write next, few authors have hobbies. Henry James hadn't. Kipling hadn't. And, as far as I know, the literary artists who write "George Loves Mabel" or "Castro Ought To Have His Head Examined" in pencil on the posters in the subway haven't. Somerset Maugham plays bridge, and so do I when I can get a four, but as a rule what an author does in his spare time is sit and think . . . or, at any rate, sit. This is what I do myself, except when I lie at full length. But even an octogenarian must have exercise, and here I am fortunately situated. In Remsenburg, Long Island, where I have been living since I became officially senile, we enjoy a number of amenities such as fresh air, fresh eggs, and an attractive waterfront on Moriches Bay, but we have not kept up with the march of progress so far as to have letter carriers. Mail has to be fetched from the post office, and I walk there every day to get it, accompanied by Poona, my cat, and Bill, my foxhound, who generally packs up after the first furlong or so. Someone tells me that this is always the way with foxhounds. They have to do so much bustling about in their younger days that when they come to riper years their inclination is just to lie around in the sun. Bill's age, when he came to us as a stray, must have been at least seven, so his days of activity are long behind him, and it is rare for him to stay the course. But Poona and I are made of sterner stuff, and we trudge the two miles there and the two miles back singing a gypsy song. Also I still do my setting-up exercises before breakfast, as I have done since 1919 without missing a day, though it is an open secret that I now find a difficulty in touching my toes, and I catch—or try to catch—Poona each night. We let her out at about ten p.m. for a breath of air, and once out she hears the call of the wild and decides that being at large is a good thing and ought to be pushed along. And I have the job of catching her. When you are eighty you have passed your peak as a cat catcher. There was a time—say between 1904 and 1910—when it would have been child's play for me to outstrip the fleetest cat, but now the joints have stiffened a trifle, and I am less of a force. The spirit is willing, but the flesh doesn't seem to move as it did. The thing usually ends in a bitter "All right, stay out, you cad" from me and a quiet smile from Poona. And then the reproachful mew outside my bedroom window as the clocks are striking five. And if I leave the fly-screen open so that she can come through the window, she jumps on the bed and bites my toes. There seems no way of beating the game. Still, things have brightened a good deal lately owing to Poona having been bitten in the foot by another cat, no doubt in some night-club brawl, and being able to operate only on three legs. One more such episode, and the thing, as I see it, will be in the bag. I may not be the sprinter I once was, but I feel confident of being able to overtake a cat walking on two hind legs. Meanwhile, the exercise is doing me all the good in the world, for apart from the running there is the falling. Owing to the activities of the hurricanes which enliven life on Long Island many of the trees chez Wodehouse are shored up with wire ropes, and any doctor will tell you there is nothing better for the liver than to trip over a wire rope when going all out after a receding cat and come down like a sack of coals. It amuses the cat, too. "Bill generally packs up after the first furlong." "...ile thousands cheered. It kept me in fine condition and gave me a rare appetite for the roll and butter and cup of coffee, which were all I could afford for lunch in those days. I have never had anything in the nature of a hobby. When my day's work is done, I do not breathe a sigh of relief and say "And now for an invigorating bit of fret-sawing," nor do I model things in plasticine. No particular reason. It is j t that these hobbies do not appeal to me. If you were to come to me and say, "Hello, there, Wodehouse, sawn any good fret lately?" I would shake my head. And if you brought me a blob of "The exercise is doing all the good in the world." ILLUSTRATIONS BY WHITNEY DARROW JR. Suburbia Today, June 1961 13