DIARY
Well,
would you look at that? Spring already!
by
Robert LaFrance
This winter business is getting to
me. I’m glad it’s nearly over.
I know we’re not even out of January
yet, but the days are getting longer all the time and I’m beginning to smell
the crocuses on the lawn…under the snow. While it’s true that, as I write, it’s
–19ºC, I don’t pay any attention to that; spring is just around the corner.
“Have another drink of lemonade,
Bob!” roared my friend Flug as he read these sentences over my shoulder and
sipped on a lemonade of his own, meaning formerly mine until he had grabbed it
from the fridge.
Unlike Flug, I have always been an
optimist, cheerful and hopeful at all times, and I just have to ignore the
slings and arrows of those who tend to look at the bad side of things. Just
before Stephen Harper got sent to the wilds of Calgary on October 19, Flug
thought he (Harper, not Flug himself) would be re-elected. Indeed, on October
18, he was packing a grip for somewhere quiet, like Libya, to get away from
what he expected would be another four years of Harper.
The reader is wondering why I am
predicting that our winter is almost over. Of course it is because Prime
Minister (“Just not ready!”) Justin Trudeau spent some time in St.
Andrews-by-the-Sea, NB, and predicted sunny ways and sunny days ahead. Of
course anyone as optomistic as I am took those words to mean that we can start
putting away the snowblowers.
There’s also a certain element of
superstition in the equation. The Perfessor, who lives in Lower Kintore, has a
cat named Olive who has never been wrong in predicting the change of the
seasons. Last evening at the club we were discussing how this feline miracle
was able to be so accurate, which she always has been.
“I’ll stack Olive the Cat up against
any prognosticator on earth,” intoned Billy Catt, the bartender and lemonade
purveyor. That made Jack Monmouth leap up in protest.
“I don’t know why you keep yapping
about ‘all of the cat,’” he said. “How else could he predict the weather if he
wasn’t all there?” That led to some silent (Jack weighs 310 lbs) speculation about whether Jack was all
there. We have known for years that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer,
but now we’re thinking he may not be a knife at all.
*************************
In a couple of days it’s going to be
Robbie Burns Night here in Kincardine, and everybody’s excited about the
prospect of hearing me – in a kilt – sing “My Love is Like a Red Red Hose”
-
“I believe that’s supposed to be a
red red ROSE,” complained Flug, who was working on his fourth lemonade since he
arrived here for breakfast. His wife had refused to cook his, under the rather
thin excuse that she’s the President of IBM and is busy.
“In any case, Flug,” I said
patiently, “I shall be there and will be singing a solo for the audience to
enjoy…”
“You’re not on the program, Bob,
because I saw it,” he argued. And so it went, until finally I had to admit I
was not going to sing a solo and would not be wearing my LaFrance Tartan kilt.
Burns Night is Friday, Jan. 29, at 7:30 – storm date a day later – and Sunday
afternoon, Jan. 31 at 2:30 pm.
**************************
Yesterday Flug’s nephew Siddhartha
stopped by the Colony to say hello to his favourite uncle and ‘borrow’ some
money, although he said he was doing well as a valued ‘Associate Under-Manager’
at the Volkswagen dealer in east Hamilton.
Flug made some hot chocolate at his
estate and since I was visiting I had some tea. Have you ever tasted Flug’s hot
chocolate? Sid sipped away at it until Flug passed over some cash and then the
hot chocolate got shoved aside, much like ordinary Canadians from 2006 to 2015.
Sorry, I can’t help making political
references. Like oxygen, politics is with me always.
Later, Sid was complaining about his
landlady’s habit of pasting up signs in her boarding house which,
coincidentally, is three houses away from the one I used to infest.
Among Mrs. O’Reilly’s literary gems
were: “Always put the soap in the soap dish”, “Men, put up the flush cover when
you pea!”, “Close this window”, and “No loud music – ever”.
Did I mention that Sid was looking
for another rooming house? That’s why he wanted the money from Flug, who is
always a soft touch. Sid went on to say that he had put up a sign of his own:
“Landladies are to be seen and not heard, and they must refrain from putting up
stupid signs”. Somehow she guessed it had been Sid who had put up that sign. I
suppose his signature was a giveaway. Anyway, he’s toast at 127 Main Street.
-end-
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