Major’s Corner column for Feb. 5, 2012
The club represents all that is warm and chummy in this far too short life. It is a place where like-minded fellows (and now women) have always gathered to read, chat and generally let down the defences, as it were.
It has always been my plan to shed light on our doings, as I sometimes fear that not a few mems would prefer a more secretive home of homes, which leads to odd handshakes and loathsome winks.
We had one of those frightful movie types from Los Angeles arrive at the club a month or so ago. He was introduced to us by one of our shady new mems, who got into the home of homes in the last intake in order to enlarge our dwindling exchequer.
This Californian went by the moniker of Chip Ladd, which I am almost positive is not his real name. His intent, he said, was to use our edifice in his next “major motion picture” as the home of a misunderstood prostitute.
Skepticism is an ugly word, but it ran through the heart of our club like scurvy. The so-called “Chip” wandered within our ivy-covered walls back-slapping one and all and astoundingly offered my favourite barman and waiter the part of the long lost son “in transition.”
When I was a boy our family had a dog by the name of Gilbert. He was of uncertain provenance but had a pleasing look about him.
I adored old Gil. In many ways he was my best friend, for I did not mix well with my contemporaries as I was thought to be odd. I was beaten by bullies and generally flung about by life. Mine was not a happy childhood.
But Gilbert forgave me for all my strangeness and cared for me as I was. He was not a young dog when my father acquired him from a distant aunt who had gone mad because of a recalcitrant fiancé. He did not warm to my father, who felt the dog was a reactionary, but he became my companion from the start.
After receiving many e-mails saying that your Sundays would not be the same without the old fellow, he is back. Thank you for caring as I had no idea that he mattered to you so much. Thank you.
I shot into my club the other day, panting like a fish out of water, and straight into my comfy wing-back chair by the large bay window with its glorious view of the harbour. I waved down my preferred waiter, Rogers, who leapt towards the bar at my unspoken but clear request for a restorative martini, not unlike plasma for a battleground wound. Some days are just like that, wouldn’t you say?
I know you must be wondering why your old Major would sprint to his sanctuary by the sea with his mind teeming in fear. The answer is: I read too much history, especially just before bed.
In 48 BC when Julius Caesar realized that Alexander the Great’s library was on fire with no chance of salvaging it, he threw himself on the ground and wept. He could not come to grips with the fact that he had destroyed something so precious, especially as his hero in life was Alexander.
Julius had kidnapped the boy-king Ptolemy, husband to his sister Cleopatra, in order to put her on the throne of Egypt, when the king’s army attacked the Romans in Alexandria. Caesar lit the merchant ships in the harbour on fire to create a diversion, but in doing so the harbour buildings began to burn and the blaze spread to the world-famous library with disastrous results. Built three centuries before by one of Alexander’s generals, it was the premier site of knowledge of its time, only to be lost in the end because of Caesar’s lust for the 21-year-old Cleopatra. But it proves the adage that you often hurt the thing you least want to.
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