Here is my latest piece at PunditWire, describing how I dealt with pesky young professionals not paying full attention during my Drafting Skills class last week in Warsaw.

The main feature of this one is, of course, the superlative extract from the famous account of how Bertie Wooster is stuck on the roof of a passing shed by a furious swan in the pouring rain: Jeeves deftly solves the problem. It’s P G Wodehouse on the very top of his form, with every word feeling just right and all sorts of little language tricks to get the story both witty and astute:

Well, I could have told the swan it was no use. As swans go, he may have been well up in the ranks of the intelligentsia, but when it came to pitting his brains against Jeeves, he was simply wasting his time. He might just as well have gone home at once.

Every young man starting life should know how to cope with an angry swan, so I will briefly relate the proper procedure.

You begin by picking up the raincoat which somebody has dropped; and then, judging the distance to a nicety, you simply shove the raincoat over the bird’s head; and, taking the boat-hook which you have prudently brought with you, you insert it under the swan and heave. That was Jeeves’s method, and I cannot see how it could be improved upon.

With that in mind, I mulled over in Warsaw about how to deal with the Mobile Phone Menace. And the answer came to me.

Bring in support. Bring in Dirty Harry.

More on Wodehouse and animals here.