NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY
I am an exercise maven…not
by Robert LaFrance
In spite of
the blistering hot days last week, I will take summer over winter, and if you
ask me again you will get the same answer.
My late
friend Mike MacAfee of Plaster Rock spent a lot of time trying to get me out
cross-country skiing, but he had to admit failure. If I woke up one morning and
wanted to strap boards on my feet and fling myself through the woods like a
partridge I would immediately turn myself in to the nearest building where they
take care of people like that – Alcool NB.
I don’t
mind walking for long distances – sometimes almost around the house – but the
idea (or ideas) of skiing, swimming, jogging or standing in a fitness centre
while running in one place is, as Grampy used to say, “about like sticking pins
in your elbow to cure a broken earlobe”. That was before he heard of
acupuncture, if he ever did. He died in 1976 at the age of 94.9 years and went
all that time without jogging. Or acupuncture. A daily ounce of Paarl brandy
was his only medication.
One day
last month I was going around the walking trail in the River Valley Civic
Centre and had almost completed a total of one circuit when an earthquake
happened.
Most people
don’t believe there really was an earthquake in Perth-Andover, but I was a
witness. I had been listening to music from my mobile phone when the announcer
broke in to say there had been an earthquake in the Phillipines. I was sorry
for its victims of course, but it didn’t affect me personally, or so I thought.
Continuing
around that brutal course of the walking trail, I came across a punching bag
that was hanging under the bleachers – and it was swinging back and forth!
No one else
was around to have started that swinging so I knew right away I was in a major
earthquake. Dashing down the trail and out the doorway, I made for my car and
hot-footed it up to Alcool NB. I felt better once I had gone home and saw the
dog who appeared normal, as normal as she gets anyway.
Although
the government has denied that there was an earthquake that day, I didn’t put
much stock in that and to this day I have refused any and all exercise. Beer
and french fries, that’s my diet now. You gotta look after Number One.
******************
For the
first and last time, two weeks ago I was the guest speaker at a public event
celebrating journalism and how it is we who keep the government on its toes,
although if any government were to get onto its toes, the world would probably
collapse.
As someone
who has written in newspapers for close to four decades, I was one victim of
this public event I referred to, but little did they know that just because
someone can make sentences appear on a word processor it doesn’t follow that
they can speak in public. They soon found out when I stumbled through my 2-page
(triple-spaced) collection of mutterings and mumblings. I don’t think I have
ever seen people so hopelessly confused since our former Prime Minister Stephen
Harper made his famous speech referring to himself as an environmentalist and
then opened up downtown Toronto to strip mining.
Back to the
real point of this comment, my ‘speech’, what amazed me most of all – even more
than the main course that was eel fried with avocado – was the way Kincardine
Mayor Clydge Moorix introduced me. I was ‘a medal winning columnist’ and an
‘internationally renowned journalist’. That got some people, including me,
scratching their heads.
After my
alleged speech, I went to Clydge and asked WTF he had been talking about.
“You must
remember that medal your Uncle George gave you for raising those Manitoba
Rambler hens?” he said. I allowed as to how I did vaguely remember that praise
and wondered what it had to do with my being a journalist. “You mentioned it in
a column didn’t you?” he asked. Yes, I did remember that. “There you go,” he
continued. “You are a medal winner.”
“What about
that internationally renowned business?” I wondered.
“You had a
few columns in the Fort Fairfield Review back in the 1970s, didn’t you? And
remember that little old lady at the IGA over there? She said it was wonderful
and funny, a breath of fresh air?” I didn’t remember those words exactly, more
like: “so you’re the one who wrote about (male cow manure)?”
So
there I was, being introduced as a medal winning columnist and internationally renowned journalist. It felt real good but it didn’t make my speech any better.-end-
