#SundayColumn #TheEssenceOfClubLife #Humour #SilverYumsYums Sept14, 2014

The essence of club life (warning: silver yum yums are involved)
People not familiar with our club ways are incessantly enquiring as to what I do at the club (the home of homes) all day. “After all” they say, “it is not a tennis or a curling club, therefore what do you get up to?”
I smile disarmingly as one would with a recent emigre who was struggling to understand the concept of the Canadian Senate; if you have not experienced it there is no way to grasp its finer points.
In the end the club is a state of mind and a way of life, It is in short, magnificent.
How do I explain the inexplicable? Let us say I am having the first of my usual three post-prandial martinis, and I realize that no one is around for a good conversation – you know, a good subject to bat around like the shuttlecock of life, as the poet tells us. What am I to do?
This is where the very essence of club life comes into it. Surface tension. That’s right, surface tension in your martini. Where else on earth would you have the time to study the subject? If you get down to eye level and examine your glass of loud-mouth soup, you will see a miracle of life. The way it clings to the roundness of the glass – splendid. The beautiful light formations dancing across its solid surface – pristine.
You can keep your Big Bang Theories because it is just as likely that life began in a gin bottle. It could have happened, eh? Some wet vermin crawled out, gave a gentle burp and started to procreate, what?
I remember as a young man that’s what I felt like doing after a drink or two of the silver yum yums. Besides you can’t prove either theory, so there. But you take my point: A quiet club allows one to entertain such thoughts, where it is probably not possible anywhere else on our planet without drawing comment.
Another exercise during quiet time at the club is to count the number of paces it takes an average club flunky to walk from the bar to the Senior Reading Room. This is meaty stuff. My preferred barman and waiter, as you know, is dear Rogers, getting on, but he set the standard, so this subject shall always be known around the club as “Rogers’ Walk.”
He always does it in a brisk 57 paces, not one more or one less. So when another waiter is on duty, I take great joy in testing his mettle against the master’s.
In order to do this fairly, one must take him unawares, such when he is idly goggling Gwendolyn, an absolutely cracking girl who works at the club reception counter. If I were only a few years younger….
As I was saying, it is at this point I wave madly at the mesmerized waiter, who starts to lope towards me. But it is those first few steps that set the standard. If one does not push forward with single-mindedness, one stands no chance of matching Rogers’ 57 paces, which this one (Anthony) does not, coming in at a languid 61. But now the fun begins. As Anthony the waiter arrives with, I have to say, a somewhat surly look, I glance up and say, “I have forgotten what I called you for, dreadfully sorry, old boy.”
He is barely back drooling at the front desk when I wave again, and this time he hits a much better 58, although his teeth seem to be making castanet sounds, especially when I ask, “What time is it, Anthony?”
There are several more of these mind teasers to occupy the grey matter during the infrequent lulls at the Home of homes, but I don’t want to give everything away, what?
But I do hope I have put to rest some of those rumours about a dull life here at the club. It is a real beehive in the end.

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