Oh, what a lovely spring!
by Robert LaFrance
(Note: This column did not appear in the Blackfly Gazette, our Perth-Andover based newspaper that had to cease publication because of border issues during Covid-19. The paper had been printed in Maine. Chances are it won't be back. I will continue to write the occasional column and post it here.)
As I write
this column, it is Good Friday, except that last night about 25 centimetres of
snow fell on my driveway, and, as look out some other windows, I see that it
also fell in my orchard, on the roof of the garage, etc. Everywhere I look
except inside the house.
The first
robins showed up here on Tuesday, April 7th. Did they ever look
happy! This morning as I look toward the Kerr crabapple tree (the middle one of
three) on our front lawn I see four robins
perched on its branches. They look bewildered and appear to be glaring at me as
if the storm were my fault. Note: It wasn’t.
Scanning
over to the left, on my Honeygold apple tree, I see a murder of crows. Isn’t
that a weird collective noun? Recently I looked it up on Uncle Google and found
that the term came from Europe in the 15th century. After a big
blitzkreig the dead soldiers lay on the battlefield as thousands of crows had
lunch and turned the field black.
Back to 21st
century Kincardine, NB, while the robins and crows sulked in apple trees,
chickadees, junkos (junkoes?), and purple finches empty the bird feeder on the
porch. It just goes to show you that brain trumps brawn every time.
Sorry about
using that verb, but I have already typed it now.
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As we all
try and dodge this Corona Virus, we are seeing that ‘first responders’,
doctors, nurses and other brave people are on the front lines and are to be
much admired; we all must do our part, maintaining that 2-metre distance and
doing all the things we should be doing.
One thing I
would like to see happen is that the health professionals decide once and for
all whether we should wear face masks. One day it’s yes, and the next day it’s
no, even in Canada, but in the States it’s a total mishmash with each of the
fifty states doing their own thing. And every day that bloated demagogue with
the red tie is up there in front of a bank of microphones and giving people his
opinion gleaned from his vast knowledge of medicine.
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Changing
the subject for a while, I have been collecting euphemisms for quite a few
years as I have heard or saw them in various media.
I was at
the grocery story yesterday and as I was going through the cash (in more ways
than one except they only take plastic cards) and remembered a euphemism from
long ago. That cashier behind the glass was a ‘financial trust administrator’.
That could also apply to a bank teller.
When I
lived in Vancouver many years ago, in the St. Francis Hotel on Seymour Street,
I was whisked up to and back from my floor by an elevator operator. He was a
‘vertical transportation engineer’.
Many
decades ago I might have found myself in bars, where there was usually a big
hairy guy who threw out those who caused trouble. He was a ‘security appraiser’
but that name didn’t fool me. He was the bouncer.
A few
months ago, pre-Covid-19, I went with my wife and two of my kids to a movie in
Woodstock. The person taking our tickets was a ‘cinematographic administrative
executive’. After the movie a guy carrying a broom appeared. He was the
‘miniscule particle surveillance engineer’ (janitor).
********************
I might as
well get to the subject of this Corona virus. That’s the only thing on the news
these days, for good reason. Any of us could disappear at any moment.
Cabin Fever
seems to be the biggest effect of the days and weeks of isolation in some
cases, quarantine in others. For the past several years I have been used to
having restaurant meals two or three times a week and now that number has sunk
to…zero. I would have breakfast on Monday at Two Rivers Restaurant, maybe lunch
on Wednesday at Mary’s Bake Shop, supper on Saturday at Larlee Creek Eatery or
at Mister B’s, and so on. Now I have breakfast, lunch and supper at Bob’s
Diner.
Speaking of
food, one of the many things that have changed during this pandemic (which,
until this year, I thought was a cooking utensil made of cast iron) is that
people who had never so much as boiled an egg now consider themselves gourmet
chefs. My neighbour Clyde Barrow has been telling everybody and his dog –
especially the dogs! – that he now has developed four recipes for boiled eggs.
Clyde and his wife Bonnie are both now established chefs down at the dog pound.
And what is
this business about hoarding toilet paper? I saw on TV that a couple from
Brampton, ON, bought a tractor-trailer load of Delsey from a Costco in Toronto
and were trying to unload (so to speak) it at twice the price they paid for it.
It worked well until the police stepped in and confiscated it.
Gasoline
use is down because we don’t go anywhere so that huge source of provincial sales tax is down. People are
grinding their molars down to the gums because in normal times with gas prices
down forty cents a litre, they would normally be running the tires off their
cars.
Have
you been to the house of someone who is in isolation or quarantine? Those
people (I look in my mirror) are fat. Nothing else to do. Also,
here’s a prediction: nine months from now the obstetric wards will be full of
crying babies because the pharmacies can’t get a certain kind of pill. Good
luck!-end-
