I had an unusual splitting headache last week at the club (the home of homes) after listening to several members go on about this and that, but nothing really meaty to get one’s teeth into. Of course when one gets a headache at this time of life, one cannot help but think it might be the onset of a stroke.
I rarely discuss the few problems one comes across at the club as I have managed to avoid them by resigning from most of the standing committees I used to sit upon.
A rather odd occurrence took place at the club the other day. After our lunch, the CBC arrived to interview a few mems.
Why us? I am reliably informed that we who enjoy our lives amongst like-minded friends in a setting such as ours are a dwindling few. Also I suspect it was a “slow news day.”
We remember the country’s broadcaster as a stolid, respected, highly trained and deeply neutral provider of news. So we were quite taken back when our club president, General Baron de Boeuf, led a reporter who appeared to be a 15-year-old girl with an unnatural tan into the Memorial Reading Room.
They were followed by two gentlemen who looked like they had been turned down at a parole hearing, slovenly and heavily tattooed. They were, as we came to find out, the producer and cameraman for the aforementioned on-air personality, Tabatha Twinckle Ho-Dniepper so named to honour her “diverse” background, but we could refer to her as “TT.”
Unfortunately she sat down next to the Brigadier and announced that the old soldier would be the first interview. Our suddenly perspiring president beat a hasty retreat to his office, mumbling “Oh, Lord, anyone but the Brigadier.” Many of us starting waving at club flunkies for a martini.
TT pushed her pink mic into the face of the startled soldier and leaned forward, saying in an untrained baby voice: “Like are you having an awesome day in this amazing place? … Like… Like?”
We were to learn that TT had graduated summa cum laude from the Up There College of Peace and Understanding somewhere in northern B.C., majoring in feminine issues Journalism. Hence the double “like” for emphasis, I suppose.
A short time later, the Brigadier began to drool, as we know he will do when pressed to concentrate.
After a while the orange-hued reporter realized our most odd mem had not answered. In fact the only sound he emitted was a sort of core whistle, due to his recent two-bowl lunch of the club’s pea and ham soup.
Nothing in this young reporter’s short curriculum vitae had prepared her for an elderly mute interviewee clearly in need of the toilet. She looked at her producer and cameraman in desperation for a sign of some sort as the whistling sounds became more frequent and of a higher pitch.
Thankfully kind hands led the Brigadier towards the club WC just in time, forcing TT and her startled crew to “shoot” mems hiding behind the Reading Room potted ferns so as not to not leave completely empty-handed. They left shortly after interviewing her only subject, our somewhat Marxist sous chef.
On another subject, I often suffer for the fact that I have made my wife Kitty’s cats, Pericles and Bertram, somewhat famous by writing about their deviltry. To that end many club mems want to see them at our house and so invite themselves over at inconvenient moments.
For instance last Saturday our cook, Mrs. Bleak, the Picasso of all things on a plate, had just served me her illustrious Sausage Surprise, when the face of George Smallpiece appeared in the window. I pretended I had not seen him as I attacked my meal, but all for naught, as a fierce tapping of keys on glass ensued. I put my knife and fork down and with a Homeric sigh opened the kitchen door, allowing the intruder to blow in.
“I am returning your book Be Nice to Your Liver and It Will Be Nice to You,” he said. Smallpiece paused before continuing, “No thanks are necessary, where are the cats?”
I eyed a nearby kitchen hatchet lovingly. I knew for a fact that I have never owned a book by that title, nor would I. No, I was in the middle of a ruse to see the bloody cats!
The frightful animals were dead asleep on their respective pillows by the stairs after their huge meal of blue tuna, with only Bertram opening one questioning eye.
“They don’t look appalling to me,” George said and then left. He now has told many that I exaggerate in my writings. Phooey.
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The club very much goes into “irons,” to use a nautical term, during these sleepy summer months, allowing the old place to be cleaned and the exhausted staff to frolic about on their hols.
I think I can honestly say that we have reached the end of the pier as far as civilized life is concerned. I happened to hear a woman in America who is raising money for the obviously distraught family who left their daughter in the back seat of their locked car on a very hot day. The child subsequently died. The point the woman on the radio wanted to make in the face of some difficult questions, was that it could happen to anybody. We were not to judge others
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