Haggis is food? (June 28)

DIARY

Is poutine the new haggis?

                        by Robert LaFrance

            I am risking my life in this Scottish-obsessed household by making a disparaging comment about haggis (devil’s cake) and the same thing goes for any bad adjectives referring to poutine, but luckily I am on this side of the international border and can’t get deported for breathing. However, there are those who think haggis and poutine are the twin apexes of culinary delight; then again some people eat ants.

            Haggis, in case you didn’t know, is the national dish of Scotland. That’s the country in which bagpipes is the national musical instrument. Poutine is the national dish of Quebec.

            That Scottish ‘food’ is made from the innards of sheep or ducks (I can’t remember which) and contains anything from suet to “sheep’s pluck” to onion and possibly the skin of aarvarks and is incased in a sheep’s stomach; poutine, popular with many, is made from grease covered with grease with more grease inside if needed.

            I have never had the nerve to try poutine, but under family pressure (if you know what I mean) I once took a bite of haggis. Note the word ‘once’.

            This quote is from an E. B. White book of essays. “The Epicurean Circle of London recently declared that the Scottish national dish haggis is the most horrible culinary concoction in existence in the 20^th century.” I think we can extrapolate that to the 21^st century, can’t we?

            Amazing what people do their bodies. I fell off a Ferris wheel once and would still prefer that experience to eating a saucer full of haggis or poutine. That must be why the Scots and Quebeckers are so tough; anybody who can ingest haggis and poutine can conquer the world.

                                                ***********************

            On another subject, I recently visited the Hendersons (or was it the Andersons?) and was amazed at what I saw in their bathroom. Nothing scatological or anything, but I refer to the number and names of some of the shampoos and things like that.

            It’s none of my business I know, but if I stuck to things that are only my business I wouldn’t be a hard-hitting investigative journalist. (“You’re not,” said Flug, who had been reading over my shoulder.)

            One of the items in the Hendersons’ bathroom was something called Dove For Sensitive Skin. Having known the family for a long time, I can safely surmise that none of them has sensitive skin. More like hide if you ask me.

            Then there was something called Down Under natural’s, a conditioner for all hair types. I have no idea and can’t guess why the word natural’s has an apostrophe or why it doesn’t start with a capital letter.

            A plastic container called Aveeno Active Naturals goes on to say that it is a ‘Skin brightening daily scrub’. Like the stuff from Down Under, I can’t imagine how a material out of a plastic container can use the word ‘naturals’, but I suppose with fraud now rampant, it’s only natural.

            The last one I’ll mention by name is Alpen Secrets goat milk body wash. Do goats wash with this? It wasn’t clear, but the container does have inside something call Argan Oil. This, I would say, is vital if one wants to remain beautiful.

            This all takes me back to the 1950s, when my mother forced me to take a bath every Saturday evening before bed (it would be a little inconvenient AFTER bed). The old galvanized tub hung in the closet until after supper, usually beans) on Saturday and then it emerged. I really don’t think they thought that through, but I did.

                                                **********************

            I’m not sure if I should report this, but a couple of my neighbours are in the midst of a Hatfield-McCoy type of feud. No shooting, but you never know with those city types. They both moved here from Jemseg and, after years of bad feeling there – they had side-by-side houses – they each bought a house here in the Scotch Colony between Bon Accord and Upper Kintore. Harry says he lives in Upper Kintore and Solly says he lives in Bon Accord. I happen to know that both their houses are officially in the Leonard Colony suburb of Trout Brook West, but I have never bothered to tell them.

            The first sign of problem after they settled in this area occurred when Solly painted his house robin-egg blue. Within a week Harry did too. Then Solly painted his house a sort of peach, followed a week later by Harry. This could have gone on forever, but I told Solly about the paint colour called Zealand Yellow. It goes on yellow, but within a week it turns a brilliant red. Of course Harry had painted his house yellow and it stayed that way.

            Bottom line: They finally called a truce, and Ferney’s Paint Store filed for bankruptcy. People sure do strange things, but that’s what keeps the economy humming.
                                          -end-

" I had to answer the phone anyway" (June 21)

DIARY

The Norse goddess was named Frigg

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Not referring to the blowhard now living at the White House (that we burned during the War of 1812 and should have kept burning), people do lie, and automatically.

            Thursday morning my bedroom phone rang at 7:51 am and I stumbled over to answer it. (Someday I will put it next to my side of the bed.)

            “Halloo,” I mumbled, not meaning any more than “&^%$#@(*^!”

            “Oh hello, did I wake you up?” said this bright and cheerful voice.

            “No, it’s all right,” I mumbled. “I had to get up to answer the phone anyway.”

            Although I never lie (that’s a lie), there are times when one must lie to salve other people’s feelings. In the days before Political Correctness, these were called ‘little white lies’. I remember the day half a century ago when I asked a certain girl if she had any feelings for me. “You must be kidding,” she said. “You disgust me,” and she spat on the ground. You see how she spared my feelings by not telling me the whole truth?

                                                ***********************

            “Wow! That’s quite an edifice,” enthused one of the busload of Toronto tourists. She was gazing at Kincardine’s skyscraper, a 3-storey structure built during the Depression and still standing as a monument to our business community.

            It’s looking pretty shabby these days – its last paint job was in 1959 – but is still an imposing building. Flug’s Uncle Jeff owns it now and keeps chickens in it, something not unusual in these parts. His wife’s father had built it in 1932, as an answer to New York City’s Empire State Building that, amazingly, had been put up on time and on budget that year.

            Although I’ve lived in these parts for several decades, I never have figured out why a busload of tourists would come all the way down here to look at it. I’ve heard that  that city has several buildings more than three storeys tall. On Saturday I found out.

            Glenn Abbott is a tour guide of that bus line. He explained that neither he nor the tourists had any interest in a chicken house in rural New Brunswick. “The so-called tourists are homeless people,” Glenn said. “You see, Toronto can’t afford to put them up in apartments or even closets, so they hire us to drive them around the country. It turns out that it’s much cheaper to do it this way. When we leave here we’re heading for Minto, where there’s a petting zoo.”

                                                ***********************

            Yesterday evening I visited old Finsterwald who was watching television. He’s always watching television. It doesn’t matter if it’s Wheel of Fortune reruns, a Littlest Hobo Festival or War and Peace done in Swahili, with subtitles.

            While I was there yesterday, he did manage to drag his eyes away from a Manitoba Poker Tournament long enough to say hello the beer’s in the fridge, but that was about it, plus: “Pull up a chair. Coronation Street is coming on in three hours, after The Secret Edge of Tomorrow’s General Hospital Storm.” He loves his soap operas.

            The reason I mention this all is that while I was there, a short show came on and talked about ‘artificial intelligence’. I looked over at Finsterwald who wasn’t taking in what was being said. It was then I realized that his ‘Smart TV’ and Smart Car, both made with Artificial Intelligence, represented about the only intelligence that the Finsterwald house would ever see. I went home and watched Jeopardy and didn’t know one answer.

                                                ***********************

            Why I wanted to know this, I have no idea, not being intelligent, but last week I checked on Google to see where the names of our days came from.

            Obviously, or at least evidently (not even apparently) Sunday’s name came as a tribute to the Sun, or at the very least the Sun God Ra of ancient Egypt. Monday is talking about the moon; Tuesday is clearly in tribute to the Germanic War god Tiu (as if I had heard of him). Wednesday is from the Germanic Sky god Woden – we all knew that. Thursday is from the Norse Thunder god Thor, and then, last but not least, the name Friday is named after the Norse Love goddess Frigg. Google it if you don’t believe me.

            So when you hear someone say: “Holy Frigg!” when they drop a stitch in that sock they’re knitting, they’re really talking about love. Go figure.
                                           -end-

Waving with one finger (June 14)

DIARY

My cold doesn’t seem ‘common’ to me

                        by Robert LaFrance

As we speak, I am in, if not the depths of despair because of this cold, then certainly not many rungs from the bottom and The Big Swamp.

I, and I am sure most people, don’t want it to be called a common cold. It is not common to me, at least since last fall. To make it even worse, it’s a beautiful sunny day outside.

I was up all night coughing and my wife was too. It was a virtual symphony, and then Minnie the dog joined in. Far down in the valley I could hear the bagpipes being played by someone whose musicianship was dubious at best. A symphony indeed!

Why me? I asked of whoever might be listening. The answer came quickly from the heavens: “Because exactly four days ago you were telling your friend Flug that you didn’t get colds. You went on and said that you hadn’t had a flat tire for ten years. You must be demented! By the way, I hope you had fun changing that tire.”

                                    *******************

            Two days ago I drove by Flug’s house and looked in to see him washing his car. A Shop-Vac was sitting in his driveway. I waved to him with one finger. Communist.

            Down in the depths of the Scotch Colony and the heights of it (Upper Kintore) I spotted four more people out washing their cars inside and out, making a lot of work in spite of the fact that the vehicles would be dirty again in mere months, maybe six.

            I looked down at my floor mats and took great comfort that they looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned since Winston Churchill died (1965), which was quite a feat since the car is a 2014 Toyota Corolla. It wasn’t through lack of effort; I’ve had to work hard to keep Certain Persons from pushing her way into the car with three or four Shop-Vacs. You know what wives are like.

            So I continued my drive up along the Tobique where still more otherwise sober looking individuals were elbow greasing around their cars. If they would even take the cars out of sight behind a manure pile or something! It’s quite annoying.

It was after supper (Tilley Takeout) when I got home, and I had the eerie feeling that something was amiss. You know the feeling – you’re walking through a graveyard at 3:00 am and you start to get nervous when you see a headstone with your name on it. I walked into the silent house and couldn’t find anyone. That was suspicious right there; then I heard it – the sound of a vacuum cleaner and it was coming from outside, at 3:14 am.

You can guess the rest. It’s been two days now, and I’m still not calm after the treachery I witnessed inside and around that innocent Corolla. It’s as clean as a crow’s wing. It is clear that certain people can’t be trusted when there’s a vacuum cleaner around.

Even my son went over to the dark side and cleaned his car, inside and out.

Still on the same general line, cars, I was impressed that so many people cleaned their cars on June 6, which is of course D-Day, when the Allies hit the beaches of Normandy in 1944. Today D-day means something quite different and that’s why so many sad sacks are out washing their cars.

In 2017 the hyphenated word D-day stands for Daydream-day - which is what we should be doing instead of cleaning vehicles.

                                    ************************

At first when Donald Trump took over the rains (that’s not a misspelling) of power in the U.S.A., I, like many other journalists and columnists, was quite pleased because it meant we would have something to talk about,

However…he has ceased to be funny. I think he’s dangerous. I don’t think he is going to attack North Korea, because that would be the end of South Korea, but there is one country that should be wary of things ‘the Donald’ says and does,

I refer to our beloved Canada. Since the American public appears to both weak-minded (they elected him, didn’t they?) and ready to invade any country, why not invade the closest? Some people reading this are saying: “Mexico’s closer, you (t)wit!” But by the time he decided to send the troops into Acapulco, the Wall may hinder troop movements.

So let’s watch our backs and fronts.

Meanwhile, here’s a quote from George Faludy, whose 1986 memoir I recently read again. “Of all the good things about Canada, one of the best is that it is definitely not the United States.” Hear, hear.
                                       -end-

Beware of Mike Pence! (June 7)

DIARY

Hummingbirds calm down!

                        by Robert LaFrance

            This afternoon (I’m writing in the evening) I sat on a lawn chair on our porch and watched two hummingbirds fight it out over a bit of sugared water and thought about all the wars, battles, skirmishes and just plain bloodbaths that are occurring in the world as I sat there.

Did you ever watch a pair of hummingbirds fighting? One will go to the feeder and try to get a drink to give himself or herself enough energy to keep going, and before the sipping is finished the other bird will come along and attack.

It makes no sense – there’s lots of nectar for both – but they do it anyway, just like Sudan and South Sudan. If Greenland and Tasmania could find some way to go to war with each other they would. Remember the Falkland Islands war in the 1980s?

            On to a less violent subject, psychology. There is psychology in every aspect of our lives, even in grocery stores, and all the time I was thinking they just sold food. Two days ago I was near a certain store (not in Kincardine) at lunchtime and decided I wanted a snack. I bought a little package called Lunch-Mate Stackers, made by Schneiders, and figured that would do the trick for now. There were little round crackers, slices of alleged cheese, slices of ham and a very small Kit-Kat chocolate bar. Imagine my shock when I found there were 8 crackers, 8 pieces of alleged cheese, but only seven slices of ham.

            A lot of people reading this column probably think I’m going to complain, send a message to Schneider’s, sass the store manager, call in the riot police, etc. but I am not going to do any of that. In fact, I am rather pleased about the missing piece of ham. It gives me hope that somewhere in the world somebody else can make a mistake in spite of all the ‘smart’ technology that permeates our existence.

            Here in the neighbourhood where Flug and I have families and house pets, there is not much strife, except occasionally in the early morning hours in the club where we have canasta and auction 45 tournaments and allow lemonade to be served. It’s a weird community, half sane and you can guess the other half.

            One of the residents (he lives just down the road, beyond the big pine tree) resides a gent who is a prime example of the other half, the non-sane side (in my opinion). Fredson Blark is an antiques nut.

Born in the late 1960s, he’s not an antique himself, but I really think he sat too long in the sun in his younger years spent in Burma, what is now called Myanmar, full name Republic of the Union of Myanmar. He arrived here in the benighted Scotch Colony in the 1990 and promptly started collecting antiques, marrying 71-year-old Martha Grundge. (She calls HERSELF an antique, so don’t get mad at me.)

Within two years, he had their little cottage FULL of antiques. He would go to yard sales as far away as Arvida, Province of Quebec, and Halifax. Last week I decided to ask if I could visit and see his collection and it was true, the place was FULL of antiques (in case I hadn’t made that plain), but I didn’t realize just how full until I got ‘caught short’ as Aunt Ella used to say and asked to use the bathroom. I’m not kidding, he had no plumbing in the house. He directed me to his ‘washroom’, which turned out to be an outhouse, but with a difference. It was inside the house. How does he empty that? I soon decided I was in the company of a person who might be violent. I fled.

Speaking of nut cases, yesterday Flug came over and had a lemonade with me. When the subject changed to crabs, a topic I can take or leave, preferably leave, I was about to leave but remembered it was my house. He wanted me to go with him to Aleck  Gannon’s and see Aleck’s new crabs. It turned out that Alex had recently bought three crabapple trees, nothing serious. You never know about Flug – or Aleck for that matter.

            A lot of Americans are talking now about impeachment of their beloved president, and others are talking as if that gentleman may just decide to resign because he isn’t having any fun, but they had better think twice about what’s waiting in the wings.

            Mike Pence is their vice-president, and if people are uncomfortable with Donald Trump, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Pence would not only chop their health care and smile while he’s doing it, but he would probably ban income taxes on the rich – he’s a bit right-wing like that.
                                     -end-

Fishing licence hernia (May 31)

DIARY

A fresh pot of tea indeed

                        by Robert LaFrance

            A couple of months ago I renewed the registration on one of our many (two) vehicles and – I’m not kidding – I got a hernia lugging it out to the car.

Ten days ago I finally bought a fishing licence after catching a cod in Bubie Brook and got another hernia, just as the first one was healing up.

            Remember those days when the advent of computers meant a new paperless society? It is to laugh, even to guffaw. A few years ago our beloved New Brunswick decided that a neat little card was nowhere near a big enough object to carry around in our wallets or purses or glove compartments, so we started getting registrations etc. the size of a small softball field.

            While computer chips get small and smaller, the paper documents we all have to carry around get bigger and bigger. One DvD can contain the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica, but soon drivers’ licences will be the size of Canadian football fields. Soon the people will rebel.

                                                ***********************

            U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has told Haitian immigrants, refugees from the 2010 earthquake there, that they must leave the U.S. in six months because the Haitian economy has improved so much they can now seek their fortune back home.

            It was just over four months ago that the same government department clearly stated that the refugees from the earthquake that killed more than 150,000 should not be sent back for AT LEAST a year.

            The kicker of this news report was that Secretary Kelly said it was clear the Haitian economy was on the mend because the government was about to restore the heavily damaged presidential palace.

            Yeah, I am sure the cholera-ridden people are very pleased about that.

                                                ***********************

            Victoria Day, May 22. I find it curious that a national holiday – even Bert’s Takeout and Dairy Bar was closed – should be named after our area, Victoria County, New Brunswick. I would have thought it would have been the other way around in reverse, as Harold Green might have said.

            Another idle thought: Did you ever consider the relationship of Dagwood and Blondie? They don’t seem to have any, shall we say, lustful feelings toward each other. We should pay more attention to this kind of thing. They have two kids.

            A quick note to Aunt Bertina whom I was supposed to visit last evening. “Dear Auntie: I hope you haven’t taken me out of your will. I know I was supposed to drop by your cabin last evening, but something came up, so to speak.” I stopped at the club to use the washroom before I went to her place, and I had a little accident. The phrase ‘It’s not what it looks like’ would have been a lie, because it was exactly what it looked like.

            Sitting on my front porch yesterday afternoon, I pondered this question: what would I do if I were elected King of New Brunswick? That’s a bit of an oxymoron of course, because kings don’t get elected. The first thing I would do would be to enact a law enabling anyone born on May 11, 1948, to have a lifetime income in the 6-figure range. I could be home on that range. Then I would eliminate all diseases and potholes.

            I have often lived ‘beyond the pale’ which is to say that my behaviour was unacceptable. (The phrase comes from 18^th century Russia in case you wanted to know that.) Not enough to land in jail, but pretty bad, like my not visiting Aunt Bertina (see above) when I easily could have, or riding my lawn mower on the main road although it’s a push mower. Yesterday I was walking toward the henhouse, tripped over a bucket and landed on the ground. I swore. You might say my language was ‘beyond the pail’.

            Last week when I was over visiting Flug and his present wife, she asked me if I wanted her to make ‘a fresh pot of tea’. I said sure, that would be great, especially with  chocolate chip cookies, Melba toast and some grapenut ice cream. Just as I was leaving she put away the teapot into a cupboard that was already crammed with teapots. I couldn’t help but ask why. “Because Richard (Flug) likes a fresh pot of tea every evening,” she said. As a recent immigrant from Estonia, she wasn’t totally comfortable with the English language and thought that each time she had to brew the tea in a ‘fresh pot’, as opposed to brewing ‘a pot of fresh tea’. Did you ever notice, the English language is weird?

            “So are you, Bob,” said Flug, who had been reading over my shoulder as I typed.
                                                   -end-

Is today Wensday? (May 24)

DIARY

Phony fakes and other revelations

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Good morning, afternoon and evening. Here are some major comments about this year’s occurrences. Make of them what you will:

            So many things are not as they appear and so many words are mispronounced. Let’s look at the days of the week. The one in the middle of every week, the one pronounced ‘Wensday’ or ‘Wensdee’ is an example of mispronounced words that we all utter. I am guilty as the rest of the population, though I’m perfect in everything else. How about the day before Sunday – Sair-dee? That’s how I usually pronounce it. And the second month of the year – Febuary? Yeah, there are supposed to be two r’s there.

            Last week I wanted to take a look at some flooding – as long as it’s not around here – so I drove down to Majorville whose name had often been mentioned on the radio news. I looked everywhere and the closest I saw was a place called Maugerville.

            In my never-ending quest for new and interesting books, I ran across a German  one about a young (red-haired) girl who went to rural Bavaria to live with an elderly couple there and help them on their farm. Perhaps you’ve heard of ‘Anne of Green Goebbels’? It wasn’t until later that Flug, who knows about these things, informed me that Joseph Goebbels was a Nazi murderer. Who knew? I’m sure his employer wasn’t too pleased about that.

            I am sure you have seen the recent headlines about a criminal who stole thousands of dollars from a Widows and Orphans Fund and then decided to give herself up to the police. People here were puzzled when she went into the Colony Police detachment and took a shower before confessing her felonies. Later on a reporter asked her about it and she said she wanted to make a clean breast of it. She was a bit confused, what with the cannabis sativa and all.

            The Americans seem to be on every newscast these days and I suppose that’s just a continuation of what has occurred in the past century, when Canadian news media took the easy and cheap way out and just reported on American stories, most of them bogus. Wyatt Earp and John Wayne are both American Male Cow Manure. The point I am  getting at is that so many things in Canada retain their American names. Come on now: Canadians can’t bake beans? They have to be baked in Boston? New York Style cheesecake can’t be that much different than Minto cheesecake, and Idaho potatoes are just potatoes. It is to laugh and be depressed. In fact, I think I’ll go out on the porch and sip on a Manhattan.

            Do you watch any detective shows on television? I watch a few, and in almost every show, the cop refers to a suspect as the last person to see the dead guy alive. Nobody seems to consider that only the murderer himself or herself can be the last one to see the victim alive. In other words, that detective is getting a little ahead of himself or herself.

            Last evening I read that a certain Shirley Gonereah had been named ‘A Fellow of Dartmouth College’ (here we go again, in the USA) but than they realized she wasn’t a fellow at all, but a person of the female persuasion. Isn’t it time that we fixed up that little flaw in the English language? Come on, guys and gals, let’s put on our thinking caps.

            Two days ago someone in government, and I’m not going to mention New Brunswick’s Minister of Something-or-other Roger Melanson, referred to something as being ‘a new innovation’. In all my 69 years on this planet, I have never heard of an old innovation.

            I may have asked this question – like after every rain – but why do earthworms try to cross the roads and streets after a rain? When I go out walking on or near our estate after a multi-hour downpour, I find hundreds of the little worms on the road, and the odd thing is, some are going to the left and some to the right. One day I picked up a few dozen and put them in a nearby field, only to find them returning ‘en masse’ back where they came from. You can’t help earthworms who won’t help themselves, as my mother, looking right at me, used to say.

            What is a tinderbox anyway?

            A phrase that has been making the rounds for the past decade or more is ‘unintended consequences’. This is a code phrase for: “Wow! Did I ever screw up!”

               Another phrase we hear a lot, especially from government (non) communication staff members is that something has ‘grown exponentially’. I can tell you now, that person would not have been talking about my patience with bafflegab.
                                       -end-

At 69, my mind wanders (May 17)

DIARY

Keep (or start) that cash coming in

                        by Robert LaFrance

            It has come to my attention that I have forgotten to inform my readers in advance of my birthday.

            Any other year I would have mentioned in early May that my birthday was coming up, and that would have given folks a chance to go out and get me a nice gift, preferably cash. Preferably a lot of cash.

            Alas, this year I neglected to do so and will have to be satisfied with your best wishes, such as they are. This column appears (as they say) in the Victoria Star on May 17, but my 69^th birthday – actually anniversary of my birthday since we can only have one birthday – was May 11.

            On that day in 1948, I was born in a log cabin – well, it could have been a log cabin – at what is now 210 Churchland Road (north) Tilley. No hospitals back then and even if there had been it would have cost $100 or close to it. No medicare in 1948, but my mother was a retired RN and was her own obstetrician.

            One more note on financial gifts you want to send my way: ‘cash’ has the same number of letters as ‘best’.

                                                ***********************

            People in the rest of Canada think that we Maritimers are always going out on our fishing boats and saying things like “three points abaft the starboard beam, matey!” but we here in Victoria County, New Brunswick, are not exactly Jacques Cartier (who I believe sold diamonds on the side when he wasn’t ‘discovering’ new countries. Hint: Somebody was already here when he arrived).

            I was in my teens before I saw salt water, and it looked a lot like fresh water. A sailor I am not, but I do have a certain resemblance to Popeye the Sailor Man except I don’t like cooked spinach.

            Where was I going with this? At age 69 my ‘mind’ tends to wander.

            Now I remember. I recently went out sailing on the lake created by Mactaquac hydro dam. I was the guest of a certain radio personality, now retired, and was accompanied by my friend Flug, who had said he was a good sailor and therefore didn’t have to take any mal-de-mer pills before going to sea on the St. John River. I didn’t think to ask him where he had gotten his sailing experience. He said that it had occurred in 1981 when he rode the Barney Baker ferry in Medford.

            I should have been suspicious when he told me this; the last time that ferry was in operation was in the 1950s. People could go from Medford to Morrell Siding in minutes.

            Back to the present, the sailboat’s owner – we will call him Buford Johnston so he doesn’t get legions of fans storming his boat – cast off the line and called to the experienced sailor Flug to ‘weigh anchor’. Flug looked bewildered at first, and then went to work, pulling the heavy anchor up on deck, and then letting it fall back into the water.

            In the best seafaring tradition, Flug shouted: “Aye, captain, I would estimate the anchor to weigh about two hundred pounds.”

            The lights were on, but nobody was home.

                                                ***********************

            Johnny de Forte is in trouble again with his wife Zelda, who is a bagpiper.

            He is on a mental par with Flug, in other words as smart as the rest of us, but one neglected part of his education was any sweeping knowledge of that Scottish wind (and how!) instrument that Zelda had only recently begun to practise.

            How shall I put this? Johnny tends to sip away on lemonade – terrible habit! – when he watches TV so sometimes he doesn’t grasp all the facts and nuances being presented. So when a firefighter in full uniform came on the screen and suggested that May was a great time to “clean your pipes” before the summer, Johnny leapt into action.

            In a bit of a fog which is not that unusual, he decided he would do Zelda a favour while she was away at a ‘joy through tofu’ conference and take apart her pipes for a good cleaning. As Queen Victoria said the day someone made a joke in her presence, Zelda “was not amused” even if I, a bagpipe widower from way back, was.

                                                **************************

            A final note, this one on spring generally. Yesterday I was walking across the grocery store parking lot up uptown when a gent in a Gremlin hailed me. “Enjoying your column, Bob,” he said. Please remember that this man drives a Gremlin. Indicating the rain that continued to fall although we’d endured a week of it already, he said: “You know, I would rather see it snow.” My murder trial is set for July.
                                              -end-