The Nettleham Gentlemen’s Club

This book introduces readers to The Nettleham Gentlemen’s Club, a collection of the bizarre, the inane, and the borderline bonkers. We meet Humpty Dumpty’s fat egg brother, Victor Drake, who inhales gin rickeys and cocktail sausages with the voracity of a starving vacuum cleaner. There’s Clarence Constable, a gentleman with a pathological inability to negotiate a cheese counter, and Charles Bumbridge, an individual with a finely tuned dislike of eggs and who cannot properly deliver his own favourite joke. They are joined by Henry Calming, a dedicated late evening walker (precisely at 10:00 p.m.) who sits by the window, sips his drink, and plays cards. There are nine in all--a collection of odd and idiosyncratic individuals who belong to a club to which, perhaps, no one else wishes to be admitted. Is there some overarching theme to their saga? Perhaps the docile joys of old age and a sagacious acceptance of death/the afterlife? Regardless, it never hurts to read a superbly crafted and odd story.