Meanwhile in Vancouver, Canada, a couple of days ago, Mother Nature and Old Man Winter got together in a romantic embrace and — Bullshit! Last Thursday night, Mother Nature and Old Man Winter had spectacular, incredible sex — and they went at it all weekend like a couple of perverted porn stars. The result was (and still is) a snow storm of biblical proportions. The roads are icy, the sidewalks are impassable, buses are as rare as unicorns and you need to produce holy relics to get a taxi. In short, my town has turned into an illustration from the Book of Revelation.
FYI — There is a universal myth that my country, Canada, is a gigantic vertical refrigerator sprinkled with igloos and Inuit, while the rest of us cling to the 49th parallel as if the USA were a bowl of hot soup. The fact is, 99.99% of that myth is true, except for my town, Vancouver (Vangroovy, as it is affectionately called) where the local word for “bad weather” is — well — we don’t actually have one. Normally, we have the kind of weather California used to brag about — before the droughts, fires and pestilence. Our golf courses are open year round, it’s not recommended but you can wear shorts all winter and — on most days — play tennis in them. Trapped between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, Vancouver has weather so different from the rest of Canada that the children here think Disney’s Frozen is a horror movie.
And that’s the problem. We are not prepared for this white crap. We have no idea what it is. On Thursday evening, the snow was beautiful, drifting in the dark, covering everything in a crystal blanket that sparkled in the quiet light. But by Friday morning, it was showing its teeth — growling and snarling at anybody who ventured out — driving them into the ditch and shoving them off the sidewalk. Then on Saturday and Sunday, things just got nasty. It was as if Jack Frost was channeling Jack the Ripper and they were both trying to decide where to stick the icicle in next. Vancouver’s snow removal crew (three guys with two shovels) finally gave up and hid out in a bar, and the only thing left for the good citizens of Vangroovy to do was lock the doors and pray.
Now it’s Tuesday with no relief in sight. So would everybody who reads this please pray for rain in Vancouver — so we can get back to normal and the rest of Canada can start hating us again? Thank you!
I love the British Broadcasting Corporation! In a time when 99% of the gutter-feeding media are giving the other 1% a bad name, the Beeb (as it is affectionately called) is a bastion of reasonable thought. For example, last week they reported that the village of Saalfelden in Austria was in the market for a hermit. Apparently, the hermit they had retired last autumn, and they haven’t been able to fill the position. This is real news — the kind of news that not only informs us but also makes us think. Particularly, I was thinking, “Wow! I didn’t know the world still had hermits. I thought the old guy down the road, talking to his vegetables, was just nuts.” It surprises me that being a hermit is a genuine profession from which some people do retire. And that knowledge opens up a whole can of other questions; not the least of which is, for a hermit, what does retirement look like?
I took a little local flak for Tuesday’s (January 24, 2017) post, “I Love Getting Old.” The general consensus was, “Hey, (descriptive derogatory noun deleted) gettin’ old isn’t all beer and skittles, ya know.” This is true. So, in the interests of fair play, here are a few things about getting old that aren’t so nice.
WD Fyfe 