DIARY
What
month is it anyway? Thursday?
by
Robert LaFrance
I would say that I am in deep trouble,
or as George H.W. Bush used to say: “deep doo-doo”.
It wasn’t my fault. The cake was just
sitting there and I didn’t want to insult my wife’s cooking by walking by it,
ignoring all her hard work.
As they say in those cop shows, here’s
how it came down: My wife’s mother would celebrate her 96th birthday
on March 8, but nobody mentioned a word about this to me. If they had, I would
have known that the cake was for her birthday supper. Therefore, when my wife
gets up this morning and sees that THREE pieces are missing, it has nothing to
do with me, although I ate two of them.
It’s her fault for not saying to me:
“Bob, that cake is for my mother’s birthday, and whosoever touches it – even
looks at it – will be in deep deep trouble.” At this point she would have –
should have - brandished her new stainless steel rolling pin to emphasize her
point.
But no, that didn’t happen, so I am
blameless.
It’s past 8:00 am, so I don’t have
long to go before I have to face the music, and I ain’t talking about Mozart.
Here is how I got into this scrape: I came downstairs at about 7:05 with the
intention of having porridge, or perhaps a couple of fried eggs, for breakfast.
It was then I saw the cake, sitting quietly on the counter near the fridge.
“What can this be?” I asked, my sensors picking up signs of sugar and lots of
it.
Just then a quiet knock on the door
and my former friend Flug came in. By this time I had lifted the top off the
cake dish and Flug’s eyes widened. “I haven’t had my breakfast yet,” he hinted
as he went over to the cupboard to get a saucer. The cake, a lemonish looking
mélange (not to be confused with lemonade) was enough to make the mouth water.
So we settled down to devour some of
that mélange, two pieces for me and one for Flug. After we had eaten this, Flug
looked over behind the cake and said in rather a hushed voice: “Bob, aren’t
those birthday candles over there?” I said it certainly looked like it. The
awful truth was arriving. Knees a-tremble, I went over to the calendar where
the words were written on March 8: “Mum’s 96th birthday.”
Flug asked me why I looked so
(expletive deleted). I told him. He looked at his wristwatch. “Bob, I have to
go home and wash my hair, so I’ll see you later.” And he was gone. You may read
up above in this column and see that I described Flug as a ‘former’ friend. I
don’t need to explain.
I’m writing this on March 8. As I wait
for doom to come down those stairs, I am reflecting on all the good years. I
suppose my question should be: “Shall I ask for a cigarette and a blindfold
before my execution?” After she comes down, it won’t matter any more to me.
******************************
Today as I write this part of my column (to be
posthumously revised and edited – by someone else I fear - for the March 18
Victoria Star) we are also dealing with the change to Daylight Saving Time,
which means the clocks go forward an hour and we ‘lose’ an hour’s sleep.
I have heard a thousand times how DST
came to be and no matter how many explanations I hear it sounds like a big con
job. “They” want to fool us into thinking that spring has sprung when it fact
today is the same as yesterday was.
“Spring ahead and
fall back” sounds good, but what does it all mean? By losing an hour’s sleep in
March, do we really get to till our gardens any sooner? It was first enacted in
Canada during the First World War for reasons that escape me. If somebody wanted
to get working an hour earlier, then why didn’t they just get up earlier? I
guess it just shows that I’m never going to president of Microsoft.
In my
research on the subject, I found that during WWII Britons set ahead their
clocks two hours and called it Double Summer Time. Interesting, but it didn’t
explain why I ‘lost’ an hour’s sleep this morning.
In
Canada, it's up to each province to decide whether to use daylight time, and
not all do, like most of Saskatchewan. I now plan to lobby NB Premier Gallant
to have this Daylight Saving Time expunged from the books of New Brunswick.
When you’re my age, it’s already hard enough to figure out what time it is,
indeed, what DAY it is.
-end-
No comments:
Post a Comment