Let there be no misunderstanding, I love my club (the home of homes) but once in a while I am hard pressed not to shout “Enough!”
I bring this up in a high state of anxiety due to a dear friend of mine, Mr. Cursive, a retired English teacher and a man who is normally a great conversationalist, but not of late. Every time one comes across him he appears to be in mid-warble of a grammar class from his distant past as a boarding school master. Too be fair it might be the onset of some dreadful aging process, but it is an enormous burden for the rest of us mems to bear.
For instance the other day I was waylaid by the frenzied man just as I was lifting a fully loaded glass of silver yum-yums to my ruby lips. A martini is not something to take for granted. On several occasions in my long life I have had to go without. I recall a commanding officer who was some sort of religious nut. He outlawed martinis in the officers’ mess, having found something pretty obscure in the Bible forbidding olives and wine together. I pointed out “it said wine, not gin, sir!” He riposted that just because the “bloody stuff” was not invented yet, it did not mean one had to be so literal. The man was a fool who eventually shot himself for losing a regimental library book. But still you take my meaning here: Don’t disturb a chap whilst a martini is on the way.
I sadly put the drink down and waited for Cursive to make his point. Sigh.
“I wonder if you remember, Major, from your Latin studies the term ‘ad hoc genus omne,’ as there are not many who held the Latin Medal from your school as you did, what?” The room swam before my eyes as I tried to control my temper at being disturbed from my restorative “loud-mouth soup” for this foolishness.
It was my own fault, of course, because I had slightly exaggerated my Latin abilities to the bug-eyed teacher by mentioning a medal. I neglected to add that I was in the second form when it occurred, the award was made of papier-mâché and I had simply recited “amo amas amat” as my father had taught me. A slight bit of the Brian Williams disease, I am afraid.
Anyway I would now suffer for this hubris, as the man was off and running about the change of meaning that has occurred to “ad hoc genus omen.” It would seem that early on in history Horace used the term to mean slave girls, actors, jugglers, the sort of people one saw in markets back in Roman times.
I stared at my warming martini.
Cursive, fearing boredom on my part, grabbed my arm to say, “Here is the really good part, it has now become another way of saying riffraff, etc.”
I downed my drink while it was still recognizable and waved frantically for a waiter to replenish the nectar of the gods.
My tormentor looked at me expectantly, waiting for applause of some sort, I suppose. None was forthcoming. Then he resumed: “Sometimes we use ‘et id genus omne’ instead, meaning ‘all that sort of thing,’ eh?”
Enough is very much enough. I stood up, shouted “Let me pass!” and ran to the bar so my coming drink would not become over-tired through travel. I downed it in a trice as Cursive moved onto his next victim, who looked to be the snoozing one-armed colonel.
I threw a club peanut in the colonel’s direction in the hopes of giving the poor man a fighting chance, but sadly it went wild and struck a startled Mrs. Hyde-Quarters, who gave me a strict look in response. I grinned madly and returned to my thoughts at the friendly confines of the club bar.
Life is funny, eh? One joins a club to play with one’s own until one of them loses the plot and then where does one go?
All food for thought, as the lifeboat of time springs another leak.
Copyright Major’s Corner 2015
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