A slight accident has just taken place to my left as I write this column in the senior reading room at the home of homes.
Mr. Throckmorton was in the midst of telling another of his altogether too familiar stories concerning his beloved dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Smith.
As he finally reached the climax of this well-trod story concerning the dog having learned, at least in Mr. Throckmorton's teeming mind, to knit, he gesticulated, hitting a passing waiter carrying the great tray of nuts.
Everyone in the vicinity took a salty shower, but with no hard feelings as the chap is mad about his hound and is almost gaga to boot. However, a mutton-chopped female happened to be passing and, getting the wrong end of the stick, she alerted club officials that the man was drunk as an MLA.
This craven act reeked of the rhetoric of the pernicious and brings up the scabby sore: Should we not have separate clubs?
To wit, the brigadier made the mistake the other day of sampling another club to exercise in, thinking that perhaps the Hadrian's Wall of blubber encircling his middle might react differently.
As he cantered up the avenue, he came to a club with the snappy name of Pear-Shaped, and without any of his usual hesitation, shot into the pink-coloured premises.
After blinking frantically to get his bearings in the bright room, he began to follow the leotarded leader of a class. The poor chap, I am told, got about two deep bends into the lesson before the screams started.
"A man!" was the shout that had the brigadier thinking he was in the midst of a robbery or some sort of emergency.
Sadly, the shouters were referring to him, so with some alacrity he cupped himself and started backing toward the door as they surrounded him like wombats.
I would like to say that both sides finally saw the humour of it all, shook hands and went their happy ways.
Unfortunately, some stories end badly and this is one, for the brigadier was found moaning in a church dumpster not far from the dreaded Pear-Shaped the next morning.
For many years, women have complained that men's clubs should not be the exclusive roost of the male species, as this smacked of massive misogyny and was an anachronism in this day and age.
So we were re-hammered on the anvil of the new civility and opened our doors if not our hearts to the female inevitability.
If one goes to one's handy phone book, one will see no men's clubs, but women's clubs sprout like the dreaded Garry oak, with the word "Exclusive" front and centre. That, however, is not all.
At our club's exercise room, there is a women's section that we are not allowed to enter, but they wander around in not only their own premises but what little room is left for us.
We must listen to outrageously exotic music and here is the hard cheese of it all: They change our televisions to women's shows where everything is up for discussion.
Apparently, there are all sorts of things we men did not know about the fairer sex, so much so that one colonel shot off the treadmill in shock and disbelief upon hearing that women shave fully.
Also a semi-senile mem dropped a weight on a passing waiter's foot upon hearing a discussion on TV about "a Brazilian," which had nothing whatsoever to do with the country. He began weeping.
I am all for fairness -- you know that -- but what is good for the gander is good for the goose. If the men can no longer have a club exclusively, does it not follow that no one can?
