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This was Jim Lodge’s favourite “Major”. RIP my friend.

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Times Colonist (Victoria)

The end of days? No, rather the day of ends

Sun Jun 22 2008

One imagines that when one reaches these slightly overripe years, one could expect to be left alone to the few thoughts still sailing about in the old noggin, but apparently not.

Let us take by way of example the seemingly innocuous Father’s Day last weekend.

One would not normally entertain the image of taking the proverbial pie in the face when it is announced by the women’s section that the home of homes will be renaming Father’s Day Prostate Day.

Now I know before any of you start to write me that this wretched disease is dropping the male side of the species like flies, but dash it all this is a club, not a walk-in clinic.

It soon became clear that we were merely corks in the Niagara River and this outrage was going to occur no matter what, with the pink section of the home of homes having the temerity to send letters to our residences so our wives were alerted to deliver us with no excuses taken.

On the day in question we filed quietly through the large doors and into the senior reading room, where we were introduced to Dr. Piddle, the same Dr. Piddle who wowed us at the speakers’ lunch months earlier.

Several elderly men of the hard-of-hearing school of thought threw themselves in front of the doctor as if he were the pharaoh Ramses II and lay there until one of the large women lining the room to prevent any escape shouted that it was prostate, not prostrate, day. Much embarrassment ensued as the members involved were helped to their feet.

The good doctor then explained that this would all be over after a short physical and a blood test, and he would see us one at a time in the large cloakroom.

Mrs. ffrangington-Davis gave the Brigadier a mighty shove and so he became the first of the male club mems to stumble through the dark entrance.

As we stood silently, lost in a collective stupor, there came a shout from the closed door, followed by the Brigadier emerging at a good speed wrapped in a mink coat, saying no one had suggested that since an hirsute prefect at school had offered him unlimited toffee for the privilege.

I remember my own nightmare of the “short-arm salute” when as one of 200 soldiers I queued in front of a barn marked Medical Corps wearing nothing but

our Stanfields.

A doctor sitting upon a chair with a cigarette in one hand asked each man to cough as he passed while using the other hand to give a good pull on the chap’s curtain weights.

As I approached, I could see the doctor was a disgusting man with a terrible case of warts, including the hand doing all the work, as it were.

The man in front of me stepped forward with a grey pallor and stuttered his name nervously, then spread his legs slightly for the main event.

The filthy medic took hold of his meat and two veg and gave a desultory yank, instructing him to cough. But instead of a cough he chuckled heartily from a nervous affliction.

“Cough, you fool,” said the dreadful doctor, this time giving the whole apparatus a goodly squeeze with a twist, bringing a hyena-like scream of laughter, the sound of which curled some 2,000 nearby toes in fear.

Finally, after much tugging, two large provost corps types took away the now hysterical soldier. I stepped in front of the fevered medic, who quickly grabbed my block and tackle with a terrible look in those wart-encrusted eyes, and on cue I coughed like a Welsh miner in the final stages of the black lung.

A digital exam is nothing, so please see your doctor, chaps, and enjoy the rest of your days.

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FPinfomart.ca

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#Majorscorner #SpeedDatingat the Club.

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THIS is an old column from April 2010.

Times Colonist (Victoria)

A lonely hearts club ban on speed dating seems in order

Sun Apr 18 2010
Page: D5
Section: Monitor
Byline: Maj. (Retired) Nigel Smythe-Brown Column: Major’s Corner

Source: Times Colonist

I am sure that I am not exaggerating a great deal when I say there are some in Victoria who see the club and its habitués as a colossal anachronism that wants doing away with.

This is unfair, with a hint of ageism or whatever they call the deep dislike of one’s elders these days. It would not be contemplated amongst the First Nations or for that matter any of the other ancient world cultures. These great peoples have a place for the acquired wisdom from the few Wrinklies still upright, who are in fact celebrated.

We are still here, you know.

However, in an effort to stay current and at our zenith, the club decided to become involved in the harried world of speed dating. If you know about this exercise, you will also be aware of the time element involved — there is not much of it.

The object, which was slowly and loudly explained to the concentrating mems by the moderator, was to have a five-minute chat with the terrified female or male with whom they were paired and then move to the next.

I hurriedly add I was in no way involved, as for some 40 years I have had the joy of marriage between myself and my dear Kitty. There is nothing more splendid in this life than to sit with my companion of the ages, although sadly it also includes her appalling cats Pericles and Bertram.

I simply wish to be the Boswell of this new situation.

No, this was about the widowed and lonely of the club, the ones who have no one to see them out of this world and into the next, the ones with neither wives nor husbands, cat-minded or not. These club types felt that perhaps there was still time to snare one last companion in this life.

On the night in question after a tense dinner, the nervous elderly crowd moved to the senior memorial reading room for the advertised event. Mrs. Lay-Low the MC gave numbers to everyone, requiring the evens meet with the other evens and the odds the odds. Then the clock began.

The problems were evident from the start. By the time the coughing stopped, the first five-minute alarm went off, and everyone moved to the next table.

Not only did the embarrassed coughing start again, the women decided to renew their bright red lipstick.

Once more the catarrh and the makeup fix allowed the clock alarms to sound, forcing another move.

Mrs. Lay-Low, now with a fixed smile on her face, suggested that all involved should take a minute off the clock to gargle or settle their war-paint issues before beginning again.

A new problem arose when the roll call went unanswered by several male mems who had exited, whimpering, leaving the women overrepresented. The other thing missing was the excitement of meeting new people, for each was all too well-known to the others.

This brought shouts of “Not you again!” or “I found you unattractive 30 years ago!”

The cruel tyranny of the majority began to tell as the women with a male sitting before them decided in spite of the bell not to release the jumpy and less numerous men. This brought alarm from the other females, as time was running out with no positive results.

Mass tugs-of-war began, with bespoke suits taking the strain, causing zippers and buttons to burst loudly.

Old men in their underthings took cover behind the large curtain, but it was the work of seconds for the stampeding women to find them.

I will not continue further as this is a family newspaper; however, the carpets are ruined.

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FPinfomart.ca

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#TheMajorsCorner #Vasectomy #Humour

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September 2009:

I have just been told a terrifying story that I am breathless to relate to my Sunday audience. It concerns the fortunes of one General Rupert Roberts a much revered character around the senior reading room at the club (the home of homes). He is a recently single man now in his late seventies, who after five wives producing a progeny of nine children, has asked Susan Slip-Stream at just forty-five ( a wonderful clubwoman) to be his next wife! With the real shocker that she said yes! However before the General could take possession of said Susan, the bride-to-be insisted that the old soldier have a vasectomy.
After staring at her hard for a moment or two to see if there was possibly a flicker of irony to her demeanor,he nervously nodded before fainting. You see Susan was conscious of the general’s ability to impregnate by virtually shaking his trousers as his last child had just turned ten and he remained a notably hearty man. She was also aware that his off-spring had gone awry so that all were bitter and disappointed failures living from the proceeds of numerous trust funds, including his eldest the fifty-nine year old Claude. He alone is a frightful advertisement for future children as far as Susan is concerned, for he smells frousty with appalling eating habits.
When Rupert arrived at the specialist he was immediately put at ease by the charming receptionist who produced a cup of tea and a biscuit to quieten his nerves. Just as he was getting to the good part in a magazine concerning geriatric fertility, he was gently called to the inner office into which he went with an open and curious mind.
Now the majority of us have accepted the new role of women in a man’s life i.e. anything, but it is not out of the realm of expectation that General Rupert Roberts would have looked forward to a MALE doctor at this difficult juncture. What gazed at him fishily was a sort of female version of a long-ago Sergeant-Major who had frightened him horribly as young cadet. He quailed and said “Er”, but she had no time for gossip and ordered him to drop his trousers as she had many patients to see. This he did whilst avoiding eye contact. She pulled up a chair and tore off his regimental underwear and eyed his boy-zone or as he put it, his “meat and two veg”, as if they must be kept after school for disappointing grades. The General naturally moved slightly away under this sort of scrutiny at which point the pink Dr. Jeckle took hold of one of the unsuspecting “veg” and stuck a needle in it.
Now we have all suffered the shock of surprise in our long lives and none more than our friend the general , but steady on, a needle down there! The very bad news that now dawned on the wounded mem was that he had two “veg” which meant there would be a second act. As a direct result of this almost criminal outrage the other veg legged it into the lettuce as it were, which brought a look of menace running along the doctor’s heavy brow followed closely in an almost dead heat by determination. This was a woman that was not to trifled with, and as the “meat” had long ago slinked from the field of battle it did not take her long to locate the trembling twin.
Now there is not much a chap can do under these dire circs other than to become bug-eyed , and watch the unimaginable, happen, and so it did, again.
As he sits across from me now at the club perched on a rubber doughnut, he does not yet know that Susan has called off the wedding due to the age difference but not steeled herself to tell him. Oh dear.
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#MajorsCorner #ReggieReturns #Humour

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Oh Lord, Reggie has returned. I am not sure loyal readers will remember my wife’s brother, Reginald Pull-Over. A greater blot on the escutcheon is almost unthinkable, but there he was, sitting in our living room, grinning inanely at me.

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#MajorsCorner #AssistedLiving #Humour

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“The club hides behind the veneer of a Victorian graveyard, only looks twice as dead.” A visiting American friend once described us that way, and I would not disagree.

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