Monica Porter

Why I’ve quit every club I joined

Most lose their novelty pretty quickly

  • From Spectator Life
Members of the Frinton Golf Club (Alamy)

The famous Flyfishers’ Club, Britain’s oldest fly-fishing club, is the latest male bastion to have the fair sex banging at the door. Women feel they have been unjustly excluded throughout its 193-year history, and now they want in. Seeing as the Garrick has at last buckled to the demand to admit women, they say the Flyfishers should too.

I quit the venerable Society of Authors too, after discovering it isn’t primarily for authors anymore

But I, for one, will be making no such demand. And not just because I have zero interest in fishing with flies. The truth is, I am probably the least clubbable person you are likely to meet. Although it’s taken me most of my life to finally recognise this fact. Over the decades I have eagerly joined quite a few clubs and societies, only to just as eagerly jump ship.

It all started in the 1970s when, at the tender age of 18, I joined the Sherlock Holmes Society.

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