The Belgravia Commission — Blog

Uncle Rod with one of his pigeons in 1986

RIP Uncle Rod. May you soar with your pigeons.

A story in two parts, in which Alison Aye continues to write in the style of Wodehouse and talk about herself in the third person; and will be proceeding, through no fault of her own, with this wankerish behaviour for a predicted couple of months (or until the Belgravia Commission is completed).

Part 1: Mayfair, four days ago…

Bertie was lounging on the sofa, feeling a bit like a squashed tomato after a rather lively night at the Drones, when the whole business blew up.

"Sir?" Jeeves appeared from thin air, carrying the tea, with as little uproar as a jellyfish (that’s a direct quote from Wodehouse. And I’m not sorry. I’m imagining his joy, as he coined it).

"Dash it, Jeeves," Wooster said, propping himself up on an elbow. His head was buzzing, and the light coming through the window wasn't doing him any favours. "I thought I distinctly instructed you to untangle me from that woman’s electronic mailing list!"

"I did attempt to sever the connection, sir”, Jeeves replied, his face a mask of solemn regret. “But I am from earlier times and I don’t pissing-well know how to do it."

"Well, the damage is done. She writes to inform us that, just yesterday, her Uncle Rod has ascended to the heavens, kicked the bucket, conked out (Bertie’s words, not mine). Her father's youngest brother, apparently. There are now only two of the brotherhood left standing. Was the deceased an Eton man, Jeeves?"

"No, sir. He hailed from... the other place. Furthermore, I understand he was a pigeon man, sir."

"A fellow who resembles a pigeon?"

"A pigeon fancier, sir. He engaged in the competitive racing of the birds and was, by all accounts, a preeminent figure in his chosen field. The zenith of his career occurred in the year nineteen-hundred and eighty-one, an occasion marked by Aye purchasing him a cigar from the local purveyor."

"In eighty-one? She must have been a mere slip of a thing, Jeeves."

"Precisely fourteen summers. She procured a single cigar, and it appears the shopkeeper raised no objection whatsoever to a young schoolgirl in uniform engaging in the tobacco trade. Mind you, sir, from what I gather, Uncle Rod had been puffing away since infancy."

"Capital! The good old days, what? Do read the rest to me, Jeeves, my eyes are bleary."

"During her first year at Goldsmiths’, sir, when it still had the apostrophe, she captured numerous photographs, depicting her father and uncles alongside their pigeon crees. Regrettably, upon her return to the hoity-toity college, she lacked the necessary fortitude to show them to the dons. Not, you understand, that she harboured any sensation of shame regarding her ancestral background, but she found herself so thoroughly intimidated by the arty London set that she failed to trumpet her heritage."

"Pigeon cree, Jeeves? What in the name of everything holy is a cree?”

"It is the regional colloquialism for a pigeon loft, sir. A term from which Aye refuses to retreat, lest it be entirely erased from the historical lexicon. It is the selfsame principle that dictates her refusal to address 'The Big Meeting' by its officially sanctioned title of the ‘Durham Miners' Gala’, sir."

"The Big Meeting? Has a solid, no-nonsense ring to it, Jeeves."

"Indeed, sir. To the industrious gentlemen who actually extracted the coal, it was invariably known as ‘The Big Meeting’, but the ‘authorities’ gave it another title, perhaps to eliminate any ambiguity regarding the exact nature of the gathering to an outsider’s ear."

"Which is, Jeeves?"

"An annual assembly, sir, wherein all the pitmen from every mine in the county would march majestically in a celebratory procession to the Cathedral, with some overthrow-the-capitalists speeches thrown in along the way. They were accompanied by their heraldic banners, brass ensembles, and families. Although, nowadays they hire an omnibus, rather than walk the route. The lady considers it a matter of paramount importance to employ the vocabulary of the miners. She credits even the uninitiated observer with sufficient intelligence to grasp the meaning, without administrative interference."

"Very proper, Jeeves. Good for her. Stand by your guns and all that rot”.

He shimmered out of the room, leaving Bertie to contemplate the extraordinary habits of the northern working man over his morning beverage.

Part 2: Mayfair, present day…

“A forlorn telegram from that woman, sir.”

“Right-ho, Jeeves. Deep breath and get on with it.”

“She has discovered the AI scanner button, sir, and is entirely grief-stricken to learn that twenty-one percent of our above exchange is deemed to have been generated by a machine. EVEN THOUGH SHE KNOWS THAT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF IT WAS WRITTEN BY HER OWN FAIR HAND. She has written that part in capital letters, sir, which I believe means she is shouting. It appears the artificial-human-detector searches specifically for words like ‘selfsame’ and ‘lest’ and ‘wherein’ and ‘zenith’ and ‘fellow’ and ‘furthermore’ and ‘whilst’ and ‘indeed’ and ‘nineteen-hundred and eighty-one’ and ‘ascended to the heavens’ and ‘local purveyor’ and ‘historical lexicon’; general phrasing and outrageous similes, she notes, that ‘real people’ do not use. She has been trying to rewrite it for days, completely obliterating our language, rendering the story crap, sir”.

“WTAF, Jeeves! Are you telling me we are not real people? And what’s more, she has used those words twice now, so she is making matters worse for herself with that AI-detector contraption.”

“Precisely, sir. And furthermore, it would appear that Mr. Wodehouse is not the comical genius we have always believed him to be. Aye ran several pages of his text through the scanner, as an experiment, whilst she still had hair, and it turns out the gentleman didn’t write a single word of us himself. We are one hundred percent machine-written, sir.”

“Wodehouse! The sly old bastard! My illusions are shattered, Jeeves. Fetch me a snifter, I’m going to lie down.”

It was one of those crisp August mornings when the soul, stirred by the presence of a rather decent summer dawn, begins to contemplate the finer things. Bertie Wooster was lounging in the armchair, idly turning over a thought or two, when Jeeves shimmered into the room bearing the first post on a silver salver.

"Your correspondence from Alison Aye, sir," he murmured, his voice resembling the faint purr of a well-oiled sports model. “It transpires, she has been embroidering a commission for a client in Belgravia for quite some time.”

"Ah, Jeeves," Bertie replied, taking the missive. "Splendid. I haven’t heard from the old girl in ages.”

"Extremely satisfactory, sir."

"She says she wants to chat about a rather pressing matter concerning those RA Bastard Shites. She’d been meaning to scribble a few words about it for months, literally months, but things happened, you know. An aunt here, a spot of bother at the Drones there..."

"The artistic temperament is frequently prone to such delays, sir."

"Exactly," Bertie continued, adjusting the old dressing gown. “Furthermore, instead of indulging in that modern form of self-torture, scrolling over her telephone while jolting along on the omnibus to and from the daily grind, she has surrendered herself to reading ‘The Code of the Woosters’ for what must be the fifth time. The solitary snag in an otherwise capital arrangement, you see, is that her inner monologue has taken on a distinctly Wodehousean ring. It is an affliction not unlike that dark period when, having thoroughly saturated her brain cells with a television melodrama by the name of Breaking Bad, found herself repeatedly addressing us as 'bitches’".

"As regards to the Royal Academy, Jeeves, she is tossing a hearty bouquet in the direction of Christopher Madden. The fellow has pulled off a most spectacular coup and landed his ‘Interlinked Mints’ smack-dab in the Summer Show!

You may recall that back in the year 2024, after some thirty years of absolute, unremitting toil with a needle, Aye finally managed to smuggle a piece into those hallowed halls. A dashing collage it was, entitled ‘Shifting to the Moon,’ upon which she had stitched a most spirited ‘Smash Thatcher’ placard.

Well, as fortune would have it, Christopher spotted an account of her triumph in the Observer and dashed off a line to explain the dizzying genealogy of the thing. ‘A most peculiar route to Piccadilly,’ he remarked, or words to that effect. He’d drawn a caricature of the late Lady Thatcher back in '79 in full 'Iron Lady' or 'Mad Axewoman' mode. The Socialist Workers Party snapped it up for their own banners; other chaps copied those banners; a snapshot of that effort landed in a rag somewhere, and forty-five years later, Alison Aye stitched the print onto a tea towel! A splendid choice of material, he called it, offering a tip of the hat to her, though he lamented that his own direct assaults on the Academy had always hit the woodwork, shortlisted a time or two, but always pipped at the post.

But mark how the wheel of enterprise turns, Jeeves! This very season, the fortress has fallen. Young Madders has been weighed in the balance and found thoroughly acceptable, and you may gaze upon his masterpiece decorating Burlington House from now until the twenty-third of August”.

“And for how long does she propose to continue expressing herself in this decidedly wanker-ish manner, sir?”

“I gather, Jeeves, that she intends to keep this up until the Belgravia Commission has concluded. And, if I have the measure of things, the bounder isn’t at liberty to show it to us just yet.”

“That would appear to be the position, sir.”