I am well aware that most of my readers assume the subjects roiling about the senior reading room at my club (the home of homes) consist of such topics as recalcitrant roses, dreary church sermons or the next week's lunch menus. Oh, I can hear you sniggering behind your newspapers, but assumption has lost more than one war, I can tell you.
Take, for example, last week, when a retired member of Parliament, Arthur (Landslide) Gerrymander, sat down beside me in a welcoming green wingback and gave a deep sigh in response to my cocked eyebrow. Arthur is a man of short stature, but when he stands on his golden parliamentary pension, he soars to a great height.
He spent an uneventful 25 years hiding in the back benches, only popping up for the most sought-after trips to the South Seas in the dead of winter on behalf of his shivering constituents. Inevitably it would be under a guise such as "World Democracy Day" in Costa Rica or someplace like it.
Afterward, there would appear in our mail a picture of Arthur amongst a colony of monkeys, waving our flag. Below the simians would be a paragraph or two on the trip, during which apparently not one of the conventioneers could mention sa国际传媒 without locals bursting into tears of gratitude for all we have done for good government around the world. We came to notice the appalled Mrs. Gerrymander in said picture proving once again why no one should wear a dress around a curious monkey.
When he retired as the longest sitting Member of Parliament, it dawned upon the populace of his riding what they had voted for in the last quarter of a century, and they have voted Marxist ever since as some sort of punishing cleanse.
Nevertheless, I always look forward to a chat with the far-from-dull ex-MP, and he did not disappoint me. As we ordered our normal prelunch martini, he opined that the greatest threat to a sitting MP has always been the two-headed serpent of alcohol and adultery. A catlike smile played about his lips as if he were in a golden reverie of his early years in the House of Commons. Then he shook his head sharply, as if to rid himself of bittersweet memories and return to the topic at hand.
He pointed out that the people of sa国际传媒 (outside of Quebec, with its more urbane style) generally elected strange-looking white men with retreating chins and startled looks. They come from places like Where-Am-I, sa国际传媒, or Sandblast, Sask., and are therefore unused to a sophisticated city where they are suddenly someone, in a sandbox containing nine women for every male, that is to say our capital, Ottawa.
Each arrives bug-eyed in their one suit with the gravy stain, bursting with ideas concerning their voters and sa国际传媒 itself, only to be told by their pretty new assistant Claudette that they are on their way to a four-month sojourn of intense French/Wine lessons privately taught by voluptuous Qu脙漏b脙漏cois women.
The rest is a blur, with only a few scribbled postcards sent to their fretting families in an unfamiliar patois and signed, instead of Peter, "Pierre."
They return to the capital with a new swagger and suit, both of which fit the new men who have emerged from the chrysalis of their former selves. They are still unattractive by any measure, but now have a small, neat beard to hide the pointy chin, a new diet, bad French and a hovering, delectable PA.
It is a Hollywood for all those bullied chaps from school who finally get a date with a starlet and, stranger still, are taken seriously.
This, of course, brings up the serpent's tail, said my friend the retired MP, the thing to be most afraid of in Ottawa, for after alcohol and adultery comes their loathsome friend alimony. Tread thoughtfully.
[email protected] @TheYYJMajor on Twitter
