Brooklyn Bliss

Yesterday, I ran 0.75 miles easily (with two fleeces and a windstopper jacket, plus hat and gloves), then enjoyed a glass of Chardonnay with Waking Ned Devine - one of my all-time favorite movies - which I haven't watched since the summer of 2001, It is an absolute gem.

And since I'm about to lend out P.G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress, here's a passage I'd marked to share, in which Lord Marshmoreton, an English aristocrat, attempts to explain why he cannot permit his daughter to marry the American composer George Bevan:

Lord Marshmoreton: Ours is an old family, I would like to remind you that there were Marshmoretons in Belpher before the War of the Roses.

Mr. Bevan: There were Bevans in Brooklyn before the B.R.T.

Lord Marshmoreton: I beg your pardon?

Mr. Bevan: I was only pointing out that I can trace my ancestry a long way. You have to trace things a long way in Brooklyn, if you want to find them.

Lord Marshmoreton: I have never heard of Brooklyn.

Mr. Bevan: You've heard of New York?

Lord Marshmoreton: Certainly.

Mr. Bevan: New York's one of the outlying suburbs.

--P.G. Wodehouse, A Damsel in Distress, ch. 16

(Editorial comment: The "B.R.T." to which Mr. Bevan refers is "Brooklyn Rapid Transit," a precursor to the current New York City transit system. Apparently, the book was later made into a movie starring Fred Astaire and Gracie Allen.)