DIARY
Not
a ‘reality’ show, but a reality show
by
Robert LaFrance
Unlike my previous columns, that
have been the model of organization and orderliness, this will be, in the words
of my friend and cousin Mack P., “just like a madman’s spit”. I’m not sure he
actually says ‘spit’.
Two days ago I received my first
seed catalogue in the mail and in the envelope was a notice that said, in
effect: “you haven’t bought any seed from us for two years and you had better
smarten up”.
Since I have an efficient filing
system (luck plus good vision) I was only half an hour finding my 2015 order
form with the notation ‘sent April 27, 2015’ and some other notes that
indicated my carrots had had a bumper crop, but my cauliflower yield was
‘dismal’.
Half an hour later I had driven the
27 kilometres down to the group mailbox and had dropped in a letter complete
with a lecture on THEIR record-keeping. In a separate package, I included a
small jar of the jelly I had made last fall from plants bought from the
company.
This has been a historic month because I had tilled my garden twice before April 27th. We’ve been here since 1984, but I am sure my garden has never been tilled even once before that date. A local mechanical expert came and got my tiller around April 20 and had it sleek and purring before the 25th, and a few days later he fixed up my Husqvarna chainsaw (bought from my brother in 1982), so I was all ready to go. The sawdust was flying that same day, and the tiller was soon doing its duty.
I should insert a note here about that 27-km drive to the group mailbox. That is a slight exaggeration as you might have guessed. It’s just that the whole idea of group mailboxes in this rural area is quite annoying, particularly since our own mailbox had been located about 25 metres from our doorstep. “Oh no, mustn’t have that,” said an Ottawa Canada Post bureaucrat back in 1991 or whenever it was. “Let’s call most of the rural mailboxes too dangerous and make them go to group boxes.” Of course they’re not dangerous, with cars stopped along the road and other vehicles zooming by. Bureaucrats!
On to the subject of radio
interviews (we were talking about that, weren’t we?) I am always amused when
the interviewer is talking to someone speaking another language with a
translator standing by. Just this morning CBC radio host Anna Maria Tremonti
was interviewing an Arabic-speaking guy from Jordan. Her question was a few
seconds long, the translator put it into Arabic, taking five seconds. The man’s
answer took the same amount of time.
Then came the translation. My best
estimate was 45 seconds. How this man’s 5-second answer in Arabic became a
45-second one in English was a mystery to me. Then Anna Maria asked: “Is your
family still in Syria?” The translator asked this question in Arabic; it took
40 seconds. My question: Is it time CBC hired a translator to translate from
the translator just in case the first translator is branching out on his own
translation?
One of the current ‘talking points’
in New Brunswick is the provincial government’s suggestion that taxpayer
dollars should go to shore up (so to speak) a shipyard in Bas-Caraquet to the
tune of $38 million. Immediately a big sign appeared at the edge of my
consciousness: “Have we forgotten about Atcon?” In that fiasco NB taxpayers
lost somewhere between $50 million and $80 million and investigations are still
going on.
Many people enjoy going to the
movies, but we rarely do, preferring to watch Jeopardy, Murdoch Mysteries,
Grantchester, Downton Abbey and suchlike. Whatever people prefer of the shows I
mentioned, it does cost money, so it’s not often that one gets to watch a free
and very entertaining show from his or her own front porch.
On Tuesday, April 19, my wife and I,
armed with coffee and croissants, sat on lawn chairs on our front porch and
watched the free show unfold. It was great fun.
I refer to the trimming of trees and
branches near the power lines across the road from our estate. Workers of a
company called Northwest Tree Trimming Inc. reached our area at about 11:00 am
and proceeded to clear dozens of evergreen branches and cut trees starting
three or four metres above the hydro. When we weren’t worried that the guys
going way up high were going to get electrocuted, we were marveling at how
skilful they were. In and out between the lines, looking down at the world, man
were they good at their jobs!
I’ll take that show
any time ahead of any ‘reality’ show because it was a reality show.-end-
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