I have joined a club. Given the range of possibilities and that London is, more or less, just up the road you will be disappointed to know that it is my local PROBUS club. I confess that until I retired down here I had never heard of PROBUS, an acronym whose meaning I am still not absolutely certain of but which means, in effect, retired old farts with nothing better to do than meet once a fortnight. Each club has different ways of arranging their meetings but ours I think is the best. We meet around 10.15 in the local hotel, in time for coffee (always an essential for me mid-morning) and begin at 10.30. A few club notices are followed by one of the members acting as a warm-up man and telling a few jokes. We used to have a splendid old codger (now, alas, too ill) who broke every rule in the stand-up comics rule book and who delivered his jokes in a frightfully up-market English drawl irrespective of whether the characters in the joke were Scots, Irish, American or anything. His timing was atrocious and he frequently lost his way in the delivery. He was weepingly funny! Anyway, after that, we have a guest speaker, and if I tell you that a fortnight ago we had an ex-Brigadier of Ghurkas, and today we listened to a lady wig-maker, you will have some idea of the breadth of subject matter we get to hear about. Occasionally I have given talks myself - yes, you ungrateful wretches, there are people out there who pay for the privilege of listening to me!
Anyway, from today's speaker I learned what "not a lotta' people know that" in olden days gentlemen would never, but never, remove their wigs unless forced to do so and that such events were often the precurser to fisticuffs, hence the saying when attempting to calm some one down, "Keep your hair on!" Similarly, in the 17th c. when wigs were de rigor for gentlemen, and the bigger and more ornate the better, the expression "big wigs" arose as a description of gentry.
You know, you can read all those other intellectual blogs, like Oliver Kamm's and Norman Geras's but they'll never tell you really important things like that!
Now these are the sort of facts I enjoy. I'm pleased to hear your club is going so well. I founded a club this week and I want to shoot 90% of the membership.
Posted by: Clairwil | Friday, 09 November 2007 at 00:15
*not this week* but this year. The prospect of meeting them tomorrow is weighing heavily on my mind.
Posted by: Clairwil | Friday, 09 November 2007 at 00:16
Clairwil, dare one ask ...?
Posted by: David Duff | Friday, 09 November 2007 at 07:54
Oh don't be alarmed I'm not Cynthia Payne!
It's a guild of idlers.
Posted by: Clairwil | Sunday, 11 November 2007 at 21:43
How disappointing. Still, you'll be far to lazy to shoot them!
Thinking about it, I would qualify as your chairman.
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 11 November 2007 at 21:53