NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY
Power outages are fun, aren’t they?
by Robert LaFrance
“Due to unexpected high call
volumes, our representatives are serving other customers. Please remain on the
line,” said the confident voice after I phoned the 1-800 number.
I asked myself: Who are these
‘other customers’ and how to I get on that list? Maybe then I could have my
choice of background music. I could hire my 89-year-old nephew Jed to do squirrel imitations. The
generator next door sounded better. Maybe they’re giving poor musicians a
start.
I woke up at ten to eight Sunday
morning and felt that something was wrong, and it was. My neighbour’s generator
was on. I went out to check on the chickens but remembered I don’t have any.
It took so long (54 minutes more)
that I was playing a computer game on my ‘laptop when a ‘representative’
called. I said I didn’t have time to bother with him or her, who was a tired
sounding Jennifer – or Shirley, or perhaps Fred. He or she said: “Crew on
site’. Power on before 9:30.” I didn’t have the heart to make a fuss. It wasn’t
her/his fault anyway.
My takeaway
from all this? Let’s have a fundraising supper at Perth Elks or Burns Hall so
NB Power can rent some real music. This guy Mozart and his pal Don Messer would
be an improvement.
*********************
The big
chill is looming
When I say ‘the big chill is
looming’ am I talking about winter and the ‘S’ word, or am I talking about the
federal election sort of planned for October, or am I talking about Donald
Trump?
Who knows,
but since I’ve been throwing stovewood into our shed for the past week, I am
going to go with the first one.
I used to
actually like winter, believe it or not, but then the police confiscated my
cannibis sativa crop and I immediately wished I could win a lottery and spend
the period December 1st to April 15th in a warmer
climate, like Welland, Ontario.
My sister
lives there in the winters and in Tilley in the summers. No wonder she does
prefer Welland in the winter, because they get hardly any snow, the temperature
rarely drops below the freezing point and local churches sell homemade peroghys
(a kind of potato pancake). Also, two of the local pizzerias are tied for
making the best pizzas in Canada. When I lived in Hamilton back in the late
Sixties and early Seventies a place called Capri Pizza was on top, but that was
then.
I mentioned
Welland’s getting ‘hardly any snow’, that’s true, but about sixty kilometres
away is the city of Buffalo, NY, where a 60-cm snowfall is considered a light
dusting. During a given snowstorm Buffalo might get 50 cm and Welland might get
a trace of snow from the same storm. That situation arises because of what
meteorologists call ‘lake effect’ snow from nearby Lake Erie.
So that’s
why this year I decided to emigrate, at least for a while to that great nation
to the south – Mexico. You didn’t think I’d consider inhabiting the same
country as the disaster known as Donald Trump, did you? On the other hand, he
might get up one morning and tweet that he was about to take over Canada for
‘national security’ reasons. Don’t count him out. Trump is too incompetent to
be Minister of Garden Vegetables in the Canary Islands.
As I have
said before in this column, our late Prime Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau
compared living next to the USA to a mouse’s being in bed with an elephant
(we’re the mouse), but now it’s like a mouse living next door to a horse’s ass.
*********************
I was
browsing around the Internet and Facebook last week when I came across a video
called Perth-Andover Rap II, which turned out to be a follow-up or sequel to,
logically enough, Perth-Andover Rap I.
It was
wonderful! Those youngsters, led by Perth-Andover Baptist Church Pastor Michael
Fredericks, did a great rap video about the village of Perth-Andover and it was
GREAT! I won’t say any more about it right now or I might spoil it for you, but
I highly recommend it.
Sadly,
after I watched this video I heard that Pastor Fredericks had been transferred
to Truro, Nova Scotia. I don’t know whether this transfer was his idea or the
church’s, but this area will certainly miss his creativity and talent. I
interviewed him several times on various subjects and always found him bright,
articulate and helpful – and patient when he saw I got it wrong in the paper.
*********************
I am
getting the impression that that blackflies are bad this year, but I also said
that in 2018, 2017, 2016, etc.
“This is
the worst summer ever for blackflies,” commented Sid, as he paused in his lawn
mowing. I continued walking along Kintore Road and came across Shirley and Ed
McMahan, who both commented: “This is the worst summer ever for blackflies.”
Farther down the road, or up the road, whichever it was, Ron Gladmiun said:
“This is the worst summer ever for blackflies.” The Jackson twins, Diane and
David, stopped their 4-wheeler for a minute to say: “This is the worst summer
ever for blackflies.”
The
Perfessor agreed with them all. He had just ordered a 45-gallon drum of fly
dope.
end
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