Who is that masked man?
by Robert LaFrance
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, yet 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.
Since the Blackfly Gazette hasn’t been seen in public for a while, I have grown lazy and indolent, but there’s good news. I looked on my computer and found that I had written part of a column, so I can use that today:
“As I write this column, it is Good Friday, except that last night about 25 centimetres of snow fell on my driveway, and, as I 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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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’. 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).
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I might as well get back to the Covid-19. 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, even though some restaurants have re-opened, it’s still breakfast, lunch and supper at Bob’s Diner.
Speaking of food, I am finding 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 now considered 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 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!
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