Henry is persuaded to take a European trip with his eccentric Aunt Augusta. Henry is a rather mundane type of person and so the book is quite funny as he tries to deal with his Aunt and the problems she throws up.

A lot of the book reminded me a bit of Basil Fawlty talking to the Major. He asks a question and the response includes some non sequiturs and rambling story and Basil finds himself drawn into it before catching himself to realise that the he’s lost control of the topic he was trying to pursue. E.g.

At one point a story comes seemingly from nowhere about production of Hamlet in africa(?) where someone attempted murder by pouring molten lead into the actors ear (didn’t work) and police were too unimaginative to realise who had done it because they assumed it must have been the actor playing Claudius (?) who was actually a murderer in the play.

In the middle of one rambling anecdote Aunt Augusta says something like “thank goodness for the gold ingot”. “What gold ingot?” “Never mind that, I was telling you about ...”

When Henry confronts one of Augusta's neighbours demands to know why he put cannabis in his mothers ashes. Wordsworth answers, perplexed, “there aren’t cannibals in Sierra Leone”

Augusta related the story of Mr Potiphar who made it is mission to frustrate the inland revenue. Drag things out as much as possible on the assumption that staff turnover there means there will always have to be someone new getting familiar with all your files all over again. Send them a letter saying “you don’t appear to have responded to my letter of 23-March” when you didn’t actually send one. Then when they acknowledge they haven’t received it, send a copy of that letter which makes reference to more correspondence that you never actually sent. Eventually they’ll stop bothering you"

Enjoyed this and it was funnier than I'd expected.

Completed : 17-May-2019 (audiobook)