DIARY
“Poissons
to you too, fool”
by
Robert LaFrance
I am not mentioning a name of
someone who might be a fool, although it would be quite an honour for Flug.
It’s also called All Fools Day, and in France, according to legend, it started
out in the year 1508 as “Poisson d’Avril” which of course means “Take poison on
the first of April”.
Flug, reading over my shoulder,
said: “Bob, the French word ‘poisson’ means fish, not poison.” Sometimes he can
be a real pain, but at least he didn’t see what I wrote in the first paragraph.
The newspaper headline on this April
1st edition should be something like: “Tilley man (which I’ll always
be) wins $17 trillion in lottery.” There would be a nice photo of me standing
there and surrounded by cash.
Perhaps I would be like my dad, the
late Fred LaFrance, who, when I told him back in the 1970s about the $14
million lottery winner in Ontario, said that if he won that he would buy some
new chairs for the kitchen and maybe a colour television.
So happy April Poisson Day everyone,
and watch out for practical jokes. I have told everyone I know that I would be
carrying a gun all day, and my trigger finger would be very, very itchy. Very
itchy.
*******************************
Some random observations:
Yesterday morning I visited my old
friend Johan, a retired Mount Allison University Music professor. Sipping on
some lemonade in the living room, I asked him where his wife was. He said with
a grin: “Oh, she’s out Bach and Chopin wood. She’s Vivaldi this time of year.”
I almost spat out my lemonade, but didn’t. After all, it was lemonade.
English is a funny old language; a
dog can worry a bone and since I used to be a letter carrier in North
Vancouver, I can tell you that a dog can worry a postman. However, a bone that
is being worried is not itself worried while that letter carrier certainly is.
I believe I mentioned once before in
these pages that my Aunt Tilley was named after Atilla the hun. My question is,
why do we always say “Atilla the Hun?” We don’t say Hitler the Austrian do we?
How many Atillas were there around? Was there an Atilla the Swede?
My old friend Johan, whom I
mentioned earlier, owns a car that was made in the 1960s. Last week he lent his
nephew Glent that car and then realized the next day that his, Johan’s,
important keys had gone away with him. I asked Johan where Glent was and he
sighed. “He’s in Borden, PEI, in a Galaxy far, far away,” he lamented. “My Ford
Galaxy that is.”
What do the Toronto Maple Leaves –
okay, Leafs – have in common with the late bandleader Lawrence Welk? We know
about the Leafs, who have won one game in the past two seasons, and yet their
arena is packed full every game. Lawrence Welk, who sounded quite silly and was
the object of laughter by other musicians who felt he was a buffoon, didn’t
care about any of that. He was asked if the lack of respect bothered him. “I’m
laughing all the way to the bank,” he answered. So are the Leafs’ owners.
Why does it seem that every word any
politician (of any party) utters is aimed entirely at getting votes in the fall
federal election and is not concerned in any way with my or your problems? But
then I’m cynical; it helps for a reporter to be so.
Speaking of politics – and I’d
rather talk about soccer or hockey – I get the impression that Prime Minister
George W. Harper (as Flug calls him) is going to try and force Bill C-51
through parliament, but one rumour I heard was that he needs Mike Duffy’s vote
in the Senate to put him over the top. Mike, vacationing in Renous, NB,
(acclimatizing?) couldn’t be reached for a comment.
While I was preparing the first part
of this column, Spring sprang at me in the form of yet another blizzard even
though at 7:45 pm on Friday, March 20, Winter gave up and officially changed to
Spring. I hope Spring is proud of itself. Here’s something I want to say to it:
“I know March came in like a lamb and is supposed to go out like a lion, but
that old saying is referring to the last two days of winter, not the
last two weeks.”
I have reserved this last paragraph for
saying ‘thank you’. Although there are many people I need to thank, this time
it is the snowplough drivers. We’ve lived here since 1984 and they have been
great every winter. Thanks, guys, and no offence, but I don’t want to see you
again until next winter except socially.
-end-
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