A few weeks ago someone passing my chair, I am not sure who, whispered “Naysayer” at me in a very aggressive way. Now I can take the thrust and parry at the club as well as any other mem for it usually falls from me like water off of a duck’s back, but not this. This stung. To accuse your Major of punching holes in other’s ideas and plans seems cruel and unusual in the extreme. However after some digging I think I now know why I was so hurtfully singled out.
Most of my loyal readers will know about the new fad of craft beers. Every second house one walks by demonstrates evidence of a brewery at work. Based on smell alone, I would guess all Victoria is engaged with some homegrown recipe of hops and barley known only to the mad brewers within.
I can take it or leave it, but I am more firmly in the latter category than the former. A year or so ago I was invited to a chap’s residence to try his just-brewed suds. I won’t mention his name (Sherman Sorbet) as he might still hold a grudge because of my unstinting honesty. To wit, after I had one or two sips of the stuff, he asked what his concoction reminded me of. I said “Graham crackers.” This frankness was clearly not to his liking, especially when his wife, sitting between two six-foot brew kettles, started weeping. I found myself on the sidewalk in front of his steaming house with a flea in my ear for telling the truth. I trudged back to the club deep in thought and yearning for a restorative martini.
I did not hear from Sorbet for some months until he leapt out of a bush in Beacon Hill Park and grabbed me by the arm, not unlike the Ancient Mariner. When I regained my composure and tried to slow down the pump a bit, I asked him what the meaning of this gross interference was. He danced around me with a stupid smile on his face, all the while burbling about being some sort of genius, although he did mention his long-suffering wife was not yet certain of this claim. I insisted he come to the point, as I had things to do, like go to the club.
“Craft champagne,” he murmured excitedly, while his tongue lolled about his mouth. “Champagne?” I shouted. “You cannot tell me that after poisoning family members and me with your craft beer you are going to try your hand at champagne.”
Once again I found myself in his living room, but this time there was no evidence of beer-making. The place was festooned with large green bottles.
“You will be the first, my friend,” he said ominously. “Er,” I debated. What was I to do?
He lovingly cradled an enormous green bottle.
“This is a Nebuchadnezzar, which holds 15 litres of champagne, compared with your club magnum, which is only 1.5 litres. That is fully 10 times what is normally served,” he said. “I shall corner the market through curiosity alone.”
He said he was hoping to produce a 30-litre Melchizedek bottle next year.
“But one day at a time Major, wouldn’t you say?” He went on to strengthen his point.
“Everything in moderation, what?”
Moderation? Had he lost his mind? Craft champagne in those enormous bottles? Could they be safe?
“I shall now open this big puppy and you shall have a taste, Major.”
He began to struggle with the green monster. I could hear his wife sobbing from the next house as she was comforted by a group of nervous neighbours.
“Not now, woman!” he bellowed while trying to loosen the huge cork. He rolled across the floor, attacking the bottle as if in a wrestling match. Then he banged it against his fireplace with little to no result.
He shouted something very rude indeed. He sat down stubbornly with it between his legs and banged the bottom on the floor as his wife cried from elsewhere.
Suddenly the cork began to move, which brought a grin to his moist face. “See?” he panted and banged the behemoth on the floor twice more. That did it.
With an enormous pop the cork took flight. In fact it was so large and strong, it went through the ceiling and the next two ceilings and finally the roof. The wife wailed louder as we were covered in a syrupy froth of Sorbet’s craft champagne. When my eyes cleared from the wretched stuff, I noticed he had made an advertisement that hung on his wall. The last line said: “Beware of French imitations.”
I phoned the French consul in Vancouver, who had Sorbet immediately arrested for copyright infringements. So I think it was Sherman Sorbet who called me an naysayer at the club. QED.
Copyright Major’s Corner 2015
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