He is the only member of the club who doesn’t like plum pudding.

 Over the years I have collected club memberships as if they were going out of style. Akin to people who buy things because they’re on sale, whether they truly want them or not. Well, I collect memberships in a similar fashion.

I belong not just to one gym, but three. Why three, I am sometimes asked. Well, I reply that’s because I have three very good friends who call me up occasionally and ask if I want to go to the gym together, so they can have someone to talk to whether they are on the treadmill or the stationary bicycle. Because of the type of personality I have, I usually agree to accompany them, unless of course I have better offer.

You see, all three friends belong to different gyms. I have for the sake of simplicity asked them if they would like to join just one gym, but their excuses are all the same. “That’s John’s gym,” or, “that’s Jim’s gym,” or “that’s Arthur’s gym,” and so, I’m the only common denominator. They all like me, but don’t like the others. They have different interests in life they tell me that I share with all three, but none of the others do. So, there we have it.

I also belong to a cigar club, even though I don’t smoke cigars. In fact, I don’t smoke anything! Don’t ask why, I’ll just tell you.

My girlfriend at the time Freda McFadden’s father, said the only condition he would allow his daughter to date anyone is if they smoked cigars. So, in order for him to allow me to take Freda on a date I told him I belonged to a cigar club. He was impressed. But not as impressed when I told him it was a lower end club, not like the one he belongs to which only opens its doors to millionaires and billionaires. I am neither. But, when I showed up at Freda’s house to ask her out, her father, Humphrey, at first didn’t want to agree because of the low end cigar club I belonged to. But I did remind him that that wasn’t a qualifier he named. He swore that the next person Freda dated had to belong to his club.

Well, luckily for me, Freda didn’t date anyone else and in fact we’ve been married for 45 years. So, he never got to try out his new edict. In fact, I belonged to the club but never attended a single meeting. They didn’t care, because I paid my dues on time so that was all they really cared about. Plus, at Christmas time, I would send the club a selection of very expensive cigars I had imported from Cuba via Nicaragua. So, they kept me on the rolls.

Then there’s my membership to the swim club, and it’s another club I don’t attend. A man at my business had a son who is a world class swimmer. But he can’t afford to have a membership to a swim club, so I bought him one for which he was very appreciative. However, he said he felt bad about going to the club with them knowing he hadn’t paid for the membership. So apparently one day they had a two for one membership drive, so they could afford to fill the swimming pool with real water instead of the usual waste water and so I acquiesced. And no, I don’t swim. But I do go because they have the best hamburgers this side of Hamburg, Germany. And that’s no lie. The French fries are typically French in that they are wimpy. And so, it goes on and on and on. I would be here all day listing the clubs I have memberships to, but we need to leave soon for our annual single malt scotch whiskey night at the scotch whiskey club.

Yes, and that’s the only club I willingly pay for and attend regularly. Especially when a member returns from a trip abroad generally to Scotland and returns with a case of a new single malt scotch whiskey. That’s when it’s standing room only, because that’s the only night when every single member shows up at the club. Generally, such meetings start at 7pm. But members begin to line up at 7pm the night before just to make sure they get in. The only way to avoid standing in line for about 14 hours is to purchase an executive membership which costs an arm and a leg, but after much thought I decided to purchase such a membership and oh boy I’m popular on these days.

People I never knew pop out of every hole in ground and ask to be my friend for the day. I’m allowed to bring two guests, and this is how I pay for all my other memberships. I put the tickets up for auction and the word gets out about a week before the get together. My phone never stops ringing. The guest tickets are free, part of my membership, so there’s no money attached to it. It’s whatever I want to charge. The executive committee frowns on such behaviour, but they never stop it. Other executive members do the same. So, what we do is have a conference call the night before we put up the guest tickets for auction and decide how much we are going to charge. Sometimes for what these people pay for the privilege to attend that night they could buy a whole damn case of the scotch just for themselves.

Usually, my two guests are completely unknown to me. One of the conditions to bring a guest is that we have to have known each other for years, but that’s easily manufactured and no one checks. And then there’s the last club of which I am a member. That is the plum pudding club. Now do I like plum pudding? The short answer is, no I don’t. I detest it. I think it sticks to every part of the inside of your mouth when you eat it and you find yourself chewing it for days on end, unable to talk to anyone in fear of covering them with a mixture of plum pudding and saliva. A very potent mixture. Now the only reason I belong to that club is because I made it my calling in life to get them to add single malt scotch whisky to it. You have to pour whiskey over it as it ages, but the executive committee refused though they have never given me a good reason, other than it’s a family club and we don’t want any of the children getting drunk. I have tried to reason with them little by little. I’ve been a member there for 25 years and now they are beginning to give in. For instance, I finally got them to agree to taste my brandy butter with the plum pudding which they did and loved. So that’s now part of the tradition. But the plum pudding itself? Well, it’s going to take a few more years before they finally agree to soak it in single scotch whiskey. Until then, I won’t eat it, but Freda will. We bring our dog Sir Walter Scotch with us and he eats anything dropped on the ground which is always my helping of plum pudding. So, when they say he is the only member of the club who doesn’t like plum pudding, they are talking about me and they really mean it.