by Robert LaFrance
“Winter does tend to overstay its welcome.” – Kinley LaFrance.
As much as I hate to agree with anyone, especially my son, I have to concur that, in late January, winter has already overstayed its welcome. We have already had five January thaws, only two of them in January, and I am sure there is a rule somewhere that only one is allowed per winter. However, Prime Minister Harper may try to repeal that law anyway as he has tried to do with some other laws of nature and human nature; that pesky Law of Gravity may be next.
My sister is nestled in Florida for the cold part of the winter, but I am here, and this morning I had my first water pipes freeze-up of the winter. I turned on the hot water tap in the upstairs bathroom and found to my chagrin and consternation that no hot water came out. Indeed, H20 in no form came out. Once I had gotten over that shock, I grabbed my wife’s hair dryer and soon had the water running again, but that’s not the point, as you know.
The point is, when she finds out I dropped her hair dryer in a pail of ashes, I had better make tracks to join my sister in Kissimmee. It’s 25ºC there, and just about –25ºC here. There’s a certain amount of symmetry to that, but I don’t want symmetry; I want warmth and I want to discard my snow shovel.
Away from the dreary subject of freezing to death, I must say I was surprised this past Saturday when, in an opium den near Minto, a woman said to me: “You must have a lot of fans!”
(NOTE: It was actually a church supper and not an opium den, but I thought this way was more eye-catching.)
When she said that to me about the fans, I was quite surprised—indeed, shocked—because as far as I knew she had never been in my house, and certainly would have no legal way of knowing that there seem to be fans everywhere in this building that was constructed in the late 1880s.
Of course there are the usual number of ceiling fans for a house like this, a fan on the living room wood heater, on each of our computers, on the air purifier in the living room, in my wife’s hair dryer (enough said about that), above the electric stove, in the bathroom ceiling, vehicles, maybe even the doghouse. Kezman guards the place in exchange for his food and lodging, but one of these days he is going to realize that he deserves every amenity life has to offer. “It’s a dog’s life” doesn’t mean it has to be a dog’s life.
There is the downstairs bathroom heater fan, the little hand-held fan on the mantelpiece for those hot summers days (I thought wistfully), the portable heater fan, the microwave fan, and the refrigerator fan. Then there are the vehicle fans that tend to come on when the weather is very hot and you’re gone for too long a spin—remember those halcyon days? There are big cooling fans, fans in other appliances, the furnace fan, car heater fans, mysterious fans that come on in the middle of the night and scare the bejeepers out of me, and there are the rest. If I spent another half hour thinking about it, I could come up with a dozen more fans, but I don’t want to waste what few brain cells I have left on such a futile exercise.
Besides, by this time, I probably only have 25,000-30,000 fans left, you who read my column, so I better get on to another subject before I fan the flames of columnistic discontent.
It turned out though, that the lady hadn’t been talking about all the electric fans in and around my house; she was talking about my vast assemblage of fans, the ones who read my column every week and who are either amused, appalled, or nauseated. “I’m starting a fan club for you,” she said, and had another bite of the rum flavoured ice cream she was carrying. I could smell the rum from where I was. Funny thing though, none of the other people’s ice cream reminded me of Lamb’s Navy Rum as hers did. It is said that additives are everywhere.
See you all at Robbie Burns Night in Kincardine! Friday evening, January 27. No additives there. Unless that storm they're forecasting really arrives. Then it's Saturday evening.-end-
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