Many people know of Jerome K Jerome's timelessly funny and period-charming account of a trip on the River Thames - Three Men in a Boat.
And, those who seek more of the same are usually disappointed by its official "sequel" Three Men on the Bummel.
But there is another book by Jerome that - while somewhat narrower in appeal, and different in tone, comes near to matching the comic excellence of Three Men in a Boat; and that is the (rather unappealingly-titled) Diary of a Pilgrimage.
DoaP is the story of Jerome's visit with a friend, to watch the (once a decade) Passion Play at Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps of Germany.
The comic writing of DoaP has a quite different quality to that in Three Men. AT times, it is as if we are getting the subjective stream of conscious, and the humour comes from this being stated as "fact".
A point-of-view on events asif from inside Jerome's frequent travel-induced perplexity, seasickness, half-asleep drowsiness, struggles with foreign languages etc.
Once the reader has tuned-into this; Diary of a Pilgrimage is very funny, and exudes an improvisational freshness.
And the satire and a bizarreness is pleasingly underpinned with Jerome's special personal character: his likeability, human fallibility, and ultimate decency.