The weeks seem to rip along at a frightening speed these days, faster than last year, I would say. Already we are staring at spring and its big brother summer beyond it.

However my morning of Club Marital Advice on Wednesdays appears to slow time down a bit, as chaps use up a great deal trying to spit the problem out. Silences interlaced with heavy sighs accompanied by eye-rolling mark a mem down as someone bearing a heavy load.

I refrain from the obvious “Come along, now,” as this freezes the slow minds of my nervous clientele. I take the well travelled option of examining my gleaming black oxfords until a gurgle or two announces the intention of the bug-eyed club member to begin.

“Er,” one recent supplicant, Sidney, began, “I have suggested to my wife, that is I have requested softly to my turtle dove, that we try separate rooms for a while….er.” Sidney rested as would a puffer fish after a particularly harrowing day, gasping for the first martini.

I have heard this chant before: that two bedrooms will solve the problem of one. In the case of brother Sidney that approach would not resolve two of the key problems of the long marriage: Neglect and slow burning embarrassment. I was not yet ready to rub salve into the gaping wound of the sagging partnership, so cocked an inviting eyebrow for him to continue.

“I mean to say, the old girl is getting more needy as the days wane, what?” he added. I nodded, knowing this chapter all too well. I chose not to skip to the last page but rather, as part of the cure, to let the fellow stumble on his own to the proper conclusion.

After a few more like-minded outbursts, I had the whole story, which as I thought, involved a chap stuck halfway up the hill at the point of no return.

It would seem that Sidney and Myrtle (I have changed their names from Godfrey and Betty to protect the participants) had a wonderful marriage. After producing the usual three ungrateful children they had settled down to a twosome lifestyle that was both full and meaningful.

But as the years passed, a sleeping serpent in their perfect garden had awoken, producing a new and terrifying Myrtle who now wanted more. Whenever Sidney kissed her goodnight with a slight squeeze, as was his norm, she made it pretty clear that she wanted the “Full Business,” as he described it, and she was not to be fobbed off with a cheap hug.

Well, as we men know, the FB is but a distant memory except after any movie starring Lana Turner. Participation in such a frightful activity at our age could bring on “the Big One” (heart attack).

This subject once arose on my and Kitty’s horizon. It still sends a shiver down my spine when I recall it. I found myself being gripped by my frenzied wife at all hours, with her wearing that horrifying “come with me” look. I hid with an aspidistra plant in the closet as she shouted my name in threatening tones while roaming the house.

I believe these things are sent to try us, like the boils of Job in the Bible, a test of one’s character out of the blue. I fought this apparition by pretending to be in the throes of St. Vitus’s Dance and then praying fervently on our roof as a mid -level prophet might do.

Eventually my wife’s overheated whims passed into the ether and we began to share our lives again, although a sense of mistrust was never far away, as if we cleared the hurdle but not without barking our shins in the process.

It is the price of a long marriage.

The very memory sent a spasm through my tummy, but I showed no emotion.

A murmur of thanks escaped Sidney’s lips. He floated away with hope in his eyes.

Copyright 2014 Major’s Corner

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I was watching one of those terrifying documentaries that one sees these days on what now passes for television. It was something about the tonnes of space junk and asteroids, etc., and what they might do to the Earth.

It took a rather large medicinal martini for your Major to turn off the light and press up against his true love for comfort. Instinctually Kitty, my wife of some 50 years, tried to call 911 as she was in a deep sleep and not best pleased to be disturbed by what she claimed was a “second storey” man. All very confusing, but when the marital smoke cleared I was still very much rubbed the wrong way by what the TV had proffered.

Years ago as boys in a church basement we would be shown National Film Board of Canada documentaries about Wally the Moose and all his happy friends in the wild. A soothing voice would assure us that government was doing all it could for Wally’s kind and the surrounding forest.

Now Joe Somebody has produced a frightening doc in which the opening words are in the order of “Get down!” or “We are doomed!”

It is too hard on the nervous system for me. I preferred it when the NFB was renowned the world over for animals frolicking, canoeing adventures and glorious mountain ranges.

My ungrateful children now refer to those sorts of cinema as “travelogues” and think they are absolutely useless. They also say cruelly that in a chipmunk film I loved as a boy showing Jimmy and Harry Chipmunk playing amongst the branches, the producers had tied their feet to the boughs so they would stand in one spot and wave their little arms.  And when they jumped happily amongst the branches, it was because the same mean producers were tossing them about the forest wrapped in cellophane making them more aerodynamic. Well, I won’t have it. Jimmy and Harry Chipmunk were real, and that’s an end to it.

In the same frightening late-night documentary I mentioned earlier, a learned professor pointed out that everything in the universe is moving at a high rate rate of speed, but he cannot have meant my club. I am almost sure that General What-Knot over by the library in the senior reading room has not moved for more than an hour. He is, as they say, at a “full stop.”

I could not help noticing at today’s luncheon that the octogenarian general put on quite a display of conspicuous consumption vis-a-vis the roast beef. I mean to say three helpings of the stuff? Steady on, old boy.

What was he thinking? I thought he should be put on the club suicide watch, as it was unusual for the old soldier to eat in that manner. He is rail thin and happily widowed, if you know what I mean.

Cherchez la femme, eh? I am almost sure someone told me the other day that Mrs.Hynde-Quarters had set her cap for him and now perhaps the poor chap was trying to take the club way out. I have seen it before, a fundamentally sound way of life disturbed in a manner unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.

When I queried the Brigadier over this matter he confirmed the worst. Mrs. HQ had thrown the general into a round of dances and cocktail parties that had his wiry neck stretched in anguish. With nowhere to turn the general had likely decided to deliberately “blow a bowel” and expire after lunch.

I decided he would not be a victim of club women. After all, he was a warrior. I jumped from my green wingback, pulled his paper from his face and, with my arm around his back, started dragging him up and down the carpet in an effort to get his system moving again while popping a few of my gas pills into his startled mouth.

After some confusion where I am almost sure he tried to strike me, he shouted that he  was trying to put on weight on doctor’s orders and had no idea why I was babbling about Mrs. Hynde-Quarters as he barely knew the woman.

I should never have listened to the abnormal Brigadier.

Copyright 2014 Major’s Corner

How very exciting, my first “blog”. So if everyone is comfy I will begin.

I appear to be a victim of my own success at the club. As you will recall I usually have a queue by my green wingback chair in the senior reading room, but like most these days I have had to specialize. I have designated Wednesdays as “Marriage Advice From Your Major Day;” otherwise there would be no time to discuss the real travesties in life such as the cutback from three to two olives in the club martinis. Outrageous!

Last Wednesday was the first time of the scheduling experiment and I thought it zipped along fairly well with very few tears. I think the case of Winford Tweed sets the tone.  Old “Tweedy”  has always had many good friends about the place to lean on and in fact opened up to me that chaps seemed far more understanding and more friendly than the wives in the ancient marriages “we are all lumbered with” (his words not mine, Kitty).

I have heard this cri du coeur before, often edged with a deep bitterness. A chap can spend an energetic afternoon drinking martinis, eating peanuts and chatting on a number of subjects, only to totter home to a world of frightful abuse or chilly indifference from his once closest and dearest.

I could see that this would be a two-martini session, so waited for Winford to take the hint. After he had tackled a passing waiter and my glass was again brimming, we returned to the meat and potatoes of the matter. I pointed out that his “issue” (Lord how I hate that word) was common down through the ages.

It is a little-known fact that Attila returned to his massive sheepskin tent after conquering countries hither and thither as the most powerful man on earth only to be told by his heavily mustachioed wife that there would be no din-dins until he showered, then shaved his feet and be quick about it.

I pointed out to my thunderstruck friend that unlike the young Attila, we have the upper hand particularly at our age, because there are not many of us left, that is, older fit males with all our marbles. We are, if I am not too bold, an almost extinct shrub.

I then told the story of how my wife of some 50 years, Kitty, deserted me at the local Thrifty’s meat section to have a chat with a friend in green produce. I found myself staring at flanks and turkey breasts feeling sorry for myself.

However within what seemed seconds, several mature women appeared to be taking an inordinate interest in your Major. I quickly checked my fly. No, that was not it.

I took out my hankie and madly wiped my mouth in case any chocolate milk was on my upper lip; no, not that.

After those two attempts to explain any interest in me, I was at a loss, and so just said “Er?”

With that the gaggle jumped into action, wanting to know if I was a widower and feeling my arms and legs, etc. Jolly exciting it was. Then bits of paper with phone numbers and emails were stuffed deep into my grey flannel trousers, which made me hop around a bit. I was grinning like a bishop at a brothel until Kitty suddenly appeared and rudely shooed them away.

In the car home it was a chilly atmosphere and an icicle appeared on the end of my nose. However after a silent dinner when I tried to sneak up to my study, Kitty suddenly asked about the club and even if I was happy.

The room pixillated. I rubbed my temples. Then I realized that my wife was jealous. What a shock, but it was true. I was wanted by others because there are not many semi-sane senior men left. We are rare.

The lights came back on in Tweedy’s eyes and he left with a lighter step. I think Wednesdays will fill up splendidly.

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