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 18th
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-
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