Skip to content
Ongoing story · Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

A small favor becomes everyone else's problem

Make a running joke develop: each attempt to get rid of a nuisance should inconvenience a different person in a different way.

Use in my story
Read the scene & sources · Plot spoilers

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) · Jerome K. Jerome

Chapter IV: the complete cheese-transport digression, including its seaside punchline; not the book's ending.

The situation

While planning food for the boat trip, the friends rule out cheese. J. explains with an anecdote about carrying two exceptionally pungent cheeses from Liverpool to London for a friend who will return later. A small favor therefore puts him in charge of something other people cannot comfortably share space with.

What the source describes

The cheeses empty a crowded railway compartment. At the friend's home, the wife asks J. to take them back; he refuses with an elaborate claim of consideration for his landlady. The wife and children move to a hotel, making the cheese expensive to keep. The returning owner tries the canal and then a mortuary, but both disposals meet objections. J.'s anecdote ends with burial at a seaside town, where visitors mistake the powerful smell for invigorating air. This is comic narration and exaggeration, not a claim about cheese or health.

How the choices connect

  1. Accepting a modest favor makes J. responsible for an awkward object during travel.
  2. Passengers escape, temporarily giving its carrier an absurd benefit: an otherwise crowded train's empty compartment.
  3. At home, escape costs money; J.'s refusal to take the cheeses back leaves the household to relocate.
  4. Attempts to discard the problem recruit new objectors until a different audience interprets the same property as an attraction.

Watch for…

Three scenes of people simply saying that something smells bad provide repetition without development. Do not turn the seaside punchline into medical fact, or treat forced exposure of powerless bystanders as automatically lighthearted. The humor also comes from the narrator's inflated courtesy and avoidance of responsibility.

Read the source passages

Chapter IV, from 'I remember a friend of mine, buying a couple of cheeses at Liverpool' to 'George was right in declining to take any'. ↗
Primary English text, Project Gutenberg 308. Read as the narrator's exaggerated anecdote; the supposed benefit of seaside air is the joke's mistaken attribution.

CUESHELF INTERPRETATION

How this moves the story

The cheeses keep the same smell, but the people around them have different options. A passenger can leave; a household has to arrange somewhere else to sleep; the owner must find a place willing to take them. The joke grows because each attempted solution creates a new expense, disagreement or excuse.

Try it in your story

Choose one troublesome thing a character has agreed to look after. Write three attempts to place it elsewhere. For each attempt, name the new caretaker, what they stand to lose, and what they do about it. Change the kind of trouble, such as lost time, an argument and a bill, instead of making the same complaint louder.

Use in my story

Keep exploring