#MajorsCorner #CottageCheese #SupermarketLove

We were having a wonderful natter at the club the other day and did not notice Major Rudyard Hobble rolling around in his wingback, trying to get our attention. Finally the blind admiral, who has hearing just this side of a bat, said:
“For heaven’s sake, Rudyard, what is it? You are putting me off my frosty martini and I don’t like it.”
Major Hobble looked at us blankly now that he was in the spotlight. This always happened with this mem whenever someone looked at him sharply. He had been promoted to a major and given a gong during the Korean fracas for burying the regimental silver before the Mao’s Red Army overran his redoubt.
The Chinese took the regimental marmalade, the bastards, but could not locate the tea service etc., so the silent man shot up through the ranks, becoming a major like me. Just for that! Still he was a nice enough chap, I suppose, and a member, of course.
After what seemed like an hour Hobble suddenly said:
“I am lonely, I cannot find a companion. I cannot seem to meet anyone of the opposite sex.”
Most of us were surprised by that, as we had never heard him ever talk about a woman, as a wife or otherwise. He struck us as happy to be with his napkin ring collection and the fortune he had been bequeathed by a distant uncle whom he had only met once.
The story goes that the chap mixed up Rudyard’s name with that of Ruby, his daughter. When the pile landed in the startled nephew’s lap, the daughter became incandescent, but her lawyers could do nothing as the will clearly said: “To my dear Rudyard…”
She did not go quietly into the night, however, as she still sends him weekly meat pies made up of dog droppings, which, after one terrible dinner, have made Rudyard a confirmed vegetarian. But we had never heard of him yearning for a female friend.
While we have more than a few anxious widows around the place, I am afraid that familiarity may breed some contempt about the club halls. Too much exposure to fellow mems’ eating habits, mismatched socks, overgrown eyebrows and bouts of catarrh at close quarters in the senior reading room does not lead naturally to passion, but rather to heavy drinking.
Rudyard felt that outside of the club and one of the finest collections of serviette rings in western Canada, he might have missed the boat, as it were, on the other things in life, such as a small spotted hand to squeeze.
George Smallpiece piped up with his formula for meeting those on the distaff side: the supermarket. He claimed that he had tremendous luck near the cottage cheese section, which left most of us staring into space wondering why cottage cheese?
“Don’t know really, but there are flocks of elderly women around the stuff,” he said with feeling. Some mems felt that perhaps women liked the icky material because they could eat it without their dentures, in other words they could down it quickly without fuss.
The Brigadier bellowed that he liked it with grapes and other fruit but it gave him wind on a ghastly scale and took days to recover. The new wife had banned it from the house and he missed it quite a bit now that he thought about it.
We looked at our collective feet in deep embarrassment. He is our cross to bear, I am afraid.
The one-armed colonel felt that the drugstore in the supermarket might be a better place to try one’s luck. After all one could see by what the woman bought whether she was in rough shape or had a few more kilometres on her yet. We pondered this for a few moments.
Mrs ffrangington-Davis was just passing with her pink gin and heard the last comment. “Nonsense,” she said loudly, “any fool knows that one goes to a bowling night as there are lovely and possibly desperate women there who might glance twice at Hobble.”
And so it has gone for the last fortnight, with Rudyard on three different teams as one of the few men who can still bowl and not fall over. He is as happy as a clam, with several females eyeing his pins.
So never be afraid to ask a woman a question.
Copyright Major’s Corner 2014
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