Jeeves shimmers into Bertie’s bedroom carrying a breakfast tray.
Jeeves: Good morning, sir.
Bertie: (sitting up in bed) Good morning, Jeeves…. (Breaking off with a gasp) Good Lord, Jeeves, what is it that you’re wearing? Or rather, not wearing? Where’re your tailcoat, and black tie and pinstriped trousers?
Jeeves: They’ve all been given to the rag-and-bone man, now known as the raddiwala. The nether garment you see me attired in is a lungi, and the upper garment a banyaan. They are what the well-dressed bhaisahebs in Karol Bagh, Delhi, wear when the temperature reaches 40°C as it has here in London. I have laid out similar raiment for you, sir.
Bertie: Golly, Jeeves. You mean, I can’t wear my lavender spats?
Jeeves: I fear not, sir. From now on the preferred footwear is what are called Bata flip-flops.
Bertie: You don’t say. And what’s that you’ve brought in for my breakfast? Where’re the bacon and eggs?
Jeeves: The ingestibles you refer to have been rendered indigestible by climate change. What I have procured for your consumption is called curd rice.
Bertie: All this is decidedly rum, Jeeves, what with bunions and cured lice.
Jeeves: Not bunions, sir, which are painful protuberances on the big toe, but banyaans which are an item of attire. And the culinary preparation in question is not cured lice but curd rice.
Bertie: All this is too much for me, Jeeves. I think I’m in need of a stiff scotch and soda to buck me up.
Jeeves: Chhaachh, sir.
Bertie: Bless you, Jeeves. You sneezed. I hope it’s not Covid.
Jeeves: It’s not Covid, sir. And I did not sneeze. I said ‘chhaachh’, a cooling beverage that refreshes but does not inebriate and which has replaced scotch whisky as the libation of choice in our tropical transformation. And with that, sir, I regret that I must give in my notice.
Bertie: Notice, Jeeves. You mean you’ll no longer be a gentleman’s personal gentleman?
Jeeves: Your surmise is indeed correct, sir. I am effecting a lateral career transition and relocating to Goa to chill out and become a littoral posterior, otherwise known as a beach bum …
