Rant

Even tho it was Xmas

Even though it was Christmas

I am as free as my father was free. He was free to walk on his walker, as far as he could go down the street. Free to walk in the wind and the rain. Free to sit on his neighbor’s wall when his legs and back got tired. Free to sit there, although it was raining, until he had recovered his strength and energy. Free to get soaked so badly that he caught a cold. And the cold was free to turn into bronchitis and the bronchitis was free to turn into pneumonia and the pneumonia was free to perform its assassin’s work as it tried to kill him. But my father was still free and strong enough to call the doctor and the doctor was free enough to call at the house and visit my father and write him a prescription for a free anti-biotic that would free his body from the pneumonia that was free to leave when it’s time was up and it felt ready to go. Pneumonia, the old man’s friend, they used to call it, sitting there, in my father’s lungs, muttering away to him, day after day, louder at night, and my father slowly getting stronger and the pneumonia growing weaker until one day it felt free to leave and freed my father from his immediate ills. Then my father was free to get up or to stay in bed. Being a free man, he chose to stay in bed all day and to listen to the radio and to read a book and when he got bored with reading he just lay there and counted the dots on the wall “one, two, three…” and “seventy five thousand, one hundred and forty three,” he told me one day when I was free to visit him, “though I have lost count once or twice and have had to start again from the very beginning. And the sun gets up at seven-oh-three, and strikes the third dot at seven fifty-three … and goes round the wall thirty-three dots to the minute; and leaves that third dot from the right at a quarter past three …” And there he stayed, day after day. But he was free. And sometimes the home help came and sometimes she didn’t, for she too was as free as the birds in the garden. And sometimes she remembered to buy him some food and sometimes she didn’t. And she was free to come and go, free to remember or forget. And my father was free to mumble or complain or grumble, though he rarely did. And he was free to eat, so long as there was food in the house. But when I went there to visit him I often saw that the cupboard was bare and my father had neither milk, nor eggs, nor bread nor cereal, nor tea nor butter. And all those people, those acquaintances, those friends, they too were as free as the sea-gulls in the sky. But to find the time to set my father free from the hunger and thirst he seemed predestined to freely suffer, they were never free enough for that.

Neither was I. Even though it was Christmas.

Even though it was Christmas
Voice Recording

This story is dedicated to all who spend time alone this Christmas, be they street people, homeless, or merely forgotten and neglected. Please consider sharing this story. And if you know someone who is alone at this time of the year, please phone them or visit them.

Anniversary

Empress 048

Anniversary

Kicked him out, she did, just like that. Told him to sleep in the spare bedroom. She couldn’t take it any more. She couldn’t sleep. He had to go. It was the diuretic that did it, mind, the diuretic.

After the radiation treatment, they gave him hormone injections, told him he’d put on ten to fifteen per cent of his current body weight, but not to worry. It was quite natural. It was the hormones, see?

He stood on the bathroom scales without a care in his heart. Watched his weight rise, five per cent, ten per cent, fifteen per cent. When he reached twenty per cent, he started to worry. Swollen ankles. Swollen knees.

At twenty-five per cent, he was really worried. Socks no longer fitted. Couldn’t put on his shoes. Couldn’t bend to tie his laces. Had to wear sandals and slip-ons.

At thirty per cent, he started to cry. He was ugly, so ugly. He was down to one pair of shoes and one pair of sandals that fitted. He went to the pharmacy. The pharmacist took one look at his feet and gave him a long list of Latin names. Told him he’d need a perscription, from his doctor, to get pressure socks, and medical shoes that would help him walk.

“It’s the feet, see, the feet. Once they start to swell, you’re in big trouble. There’s nothing we can do. Go see your doctor.”

“I’ve seen the doctor.”

“Go see him again.”

So he did. Broke down crying when he entered the surgery.

“I’m down to one pair of shoes. You’ve got to do something, doc.”

So the doctor wrote him out a perscription for pressure socks, medical shoes, appointment with a psycho-something, attendance at a clinic, everything he wanted. Then, just as he was about to leave, the doc stopped him.

“Hang on a sec,” he said. Sat at the desk. Checked the computer. Wrote out another perscription. “New tablets,” he said. “Take these yellow ones. Stop taking those brown ones.”

He went away happy. Stopped at the pharmacy. Got the new pills. Went home. Took them. And straight away started to pee. He peed all day and he peed all night. Every 15 minutes. That’s when his missus kicked him out of bed.

“Go,” she said. “Every fifteen minutes. I can’t stand it.”

So he went. Grabbed his faithful Teddy Bear and went to the spare room with its cold, lonely bed. Except he had his Ted.

Lost four pound that first night. Twelve pound the first week. Twenty pound the first month. God, he felt good. Tried to get back to his own bed. Missus wouldn’t let him in.

“Go sleep with your Teddy,” she said. So he did.

He’s looking pretty good now. Back down to ten per cent body weight up. Says he can live with that. Likes sleeping with his Teddy. Says it doesn’t snore. Or kick. Or punch him. Unlike his missus. It’s the first anniversary next week. He says he and his Teddy are doing fine. They’re going to have a Teddy Bears Picnic to celebrate.

No, sorry, I don’t know what his missus thinks about that.

Teddy Bear’s Nick Pit

Today’s the day the teddy bears have their nit-pick: and what a nick pit it’s going to be. Who knows who’s starting what? Who knows where it will go? Who knows where it will end? More than anything else it reminds me of the monkeys in the monkey temple, sitting on their steps and pinnacles, in hierarchical orders, each searching the other monkey for nits and fleas and squeezing them between thumb-nail and middle finger nail, with a blood-red ‘click’ and a life-ending ‘clack’.

“Great fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bite them. And lesser fleas have smaller fleas, and so ad infinitum.” I remember this from my childhood, but, more important, the rhyme bite ’em / ad infinitum goes back much father than that, as you will see if you click on this Wikipedia article. Oh boy, Jonathan Swift, and you thought I was bad. I am Canadian Maple Syrup compared to his Irish Thistle Honey. And don’t talk to me about Swift’s views on famine, and how to avoid it.

Anyway, who knows what will happen. Apparently, my former family and clan, the Brits, do not know the old Spanish proverb: ‘Martes, ni te cases, ni te embarques‘ / Tuesday: don’t get married and don’t set out on a journey. Why ever not? Because Tuesdays were apparently the days when the Spanish Inquisition punished the adulterers, male and female, set them upon donkeys, naked from the waist up, and whipped them round the streets while the town criers sang out their crimes in time to the executioners who wielded the whips and painted their sins in red stripes upon their criminal flesh.

Tuesday, bruise day: it’s going to be fun (gallows’ humor). What will become of (once great) Great Britain? What will become of Europe? What will become of our cultural and philosophical world order? Climate change, cultural change, ideological change, political change, the wind of change … I guess it’s blowing, but who knows in what directions it will blow us all? So easy to open Pandora’s Box: so difficult to pack everything back inside.

‘Martes, ni te cases, ni te embarques‘ …

By the bye:

I wrote this two or three days ago, before the test squad for the West Indies was selected. Today (Monday, Monday), Theresa a decided not to hold the vote tomorrow, Tuesday, Tuesday, which is now today. Does anyone really know what is happening? How United is the Untied Kingdom [sick]. I certainly don’t know. Meanwhile, the Teddy Bears are having a picnic, and they are all out there, in the woods, Sherwood Forest probably, watching out for the Sheriff of Nottingham, and nit-picking.

Name Game

Quacker-quack-quack: I suppose there are better names for a sort of quacking duck cartoon. But then, what’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But would it? What if we called it a dead rat or a mushroom riot fungal infection, would it then smell as sweet? Good question.

With names, we are looking for le mot juste, the single word or short phrase that sums up the moment and seizes it, framing it forever. As the Welshman once said, when Wales beat the South African Springboks rugby team: “Now I can die happy.” And that’s what he was called ever afterwards: Dai Appy. Then there’s Dai Arrears, who could never pay his bills on time, and Dai Lemmer, who never knew what to do, and Dai Alysis, who had a kidney problem, and Dai A’Beckett, who ate too much sugar and chocolate, and Dai Ear-Kneed, who always held his hand out for a little extra financial help, and Dai Lingual, who couldn’t speak any Welsh (you’ll have to think about that one), and Dai Ap Bolockal, who had a devilish sense of humor and always played practical jokes on his siblings, and Dai Urnal, who slept all night and only woke up in the day time, and Dai Heederal, who threw stones at sea-gulls, and Dai Nasty, who lived in a shoe with so many children that he didn’t know what to do, and Dai Rection, who always knew the way home no matter how much he had had to drink, and Dai Late, who never arrived early and thought he would live for ever, not to forget Dai Anthus, the florist, with a personality so split he was also known as Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Man, and there’s Dai Yallog, who always mumbling to himself, born in the Mumbles, mind, and mumbled so much his wife called him Mono, and there’s Dai Verse, a rotten poet, couldn’t ever make his poems rhyme in either unofficial language, and Dai Vulge, the village gossip, who could never keep a secret, and … and … One day, I will write a book about all my Welsh friends called Dai, and indeed, there are a great many of them. What adventures they would have. Enough to turn Under Milkwood sour with jealousy, probably.

Meanwhile, back at the duck farm, Quacker-quack-quack is looking for a nice, friendly duck name. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. And stop throwing sand in the Winky Bird’s eye: he’s got enough problems as it is.

Show Don’t Tell

A barber shop quartet, four of them, singing in unison, spring birds at a feeder, early morning sparrows at a jug of milk, abandoned by the milkman on the doorstep.

Except they were none of that. How could they be? They were four brothers, torn apart at birth. They never knew each other, never sang together, never embraced each other, never held each other in their arms. How could they have done so? The first one was stillborn. The second one survived for a while, but struggled to live, succumbed, and drifted away. The third one lived, marked for life by the scars on his forehead where they dragged him from the womb. The fourth one stopped struggling in the seventh month, but the mother carried him to term, even though she knew he was dead.

She carried them, blessed them, gave them all names, and buried three of them. They were her babies and she never got over their loss. Oh, she survived physically, but mentally she was destroyed.

The priests wanted to know what sins she had committed for God to be so angry with her that He destroyed the fruit of her womb. She had no answer. Some refused to bless her. Others ignored her completely. A few used her sorrows to drag the survivor into the tangled web of the church. “He has been spared. He will be one of us,” they said, and rejoiced at the potential strengthening of their celibate ranks.

Three of her children were ever before her. But the fourth lodged like an albatross on her shoulders and hung like a crucifix round her neck. She could never see him clearly. How could she? He was rarely before her eyes, never in the range of her sight. She tried to mold him like putty, but like water or sand, he slipped through her fingers.

Her husband hated him. Was he the father? It’s a wise man knows his father, or his son. Yet they looked alike. But no, they never thought alike, or walked alike. Nor moved in the same circles.

The father, a gambler, had borrowed a large sum of money and placed it with a bookie, betting that this third son would never live and that his death would make his father’s fortune, if the child was indeed a product of the seed his father deposited in his wife’s child bank.

The father lost his bet. The son lived. The father hated him every day of his life. A rich man he would have been, if … if only … and the scars of that lost bet raged ragged on his face as the father cursed the doctor who had pulled his son, if he was his son, alive and struggling from the womb.

If he was his son … a strong man, magnificently muscled , it was not his fault, never his fault, it was the fault of that worthless woman, the woman who had carried his seed, if it was his seed, the woman who carried his other three sons, and never brought them alive into this world …

The ostrich sees danger, and buries his head in the sand. The son sees danger and learns to run. The wife sees danger and learns to suffer, to be beaten, to be abused, to be the victim because yes, she is filled with guilt, and how could it be otherwise, when the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak, so weak that it cannot give birth and eventually takes to the black holes of victimization, of alcoholism, and eventually of oblivion.

And the son learned to hide, to make himself invisible, never to be there, never to accept responsibility, never to sit at the desk when the buck was about to stop anywhere nearby, never to be blamed … never to turn down the solace to be found in the darkest depths of those same bottles that finally destroyed the woman he loved, who was also his mother.

Instructor’s Comments:

Rewrite.
Next time, show don’t tell.
Minimally acceptable.

Siege Perilous

Siege Perilous

My second name begins with G … G for Galahad.

Siege Perilous: the chair calls me, sings out my name, craves my body warmth and blood. I move towards it, hear it groan to me in greeting. I feel it sink beneath my weight, feel its heat and comfort, sense the heart-sound of its old, carved, polished wood. My father sat here before me and his father before him, and his father … and so on down the ringing halls of time.

Siege Perilous welcomes me as it welcomed them. It cherishes me, nourishes my flesh and blood, my sense of belonging within a great chain of being whose links vanish backwards into forgotten, far-off mists. The chair understands that we are weaklings. It accepts us are we are, strengthening our strong points, filling in for our gaffes, gifting us with the ability that allows us to see ourselves as we truly are, willing spirits in an all too flimsy flesh. Impervious its wood to words or tears, it strips away our masks, dismantles our disguises, meets our inner being face to face, seat of wisdom carved from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

The chair rarely rejects us, though sometimes it senses the rot within and moves us on. More often than not, it brings light to our darkness, pierces our clouds of unknowing with its beam of sunshine, illuminates our darkest nights. It cares for us, wraps us in the warm wings of its radiance, carries us onward when we are alone, shapes our own heart-wood with its hand-carved arms that cling and clutch and cleanse of impurities. Blood warms its veins, the blood of the generations that have climbed here as children, sat on the elders’ laps, listened to their tales, then shared their inheritance, before sitting here themselves.

A sense of entitlement wraps its veil around Siege Perilous and the Forgotten Table. It shuts out doubt and fear. We feel its power transmitted through us, fear, fire, foes all defeated. Power: the power of good to defeat evil, of truth to conquer lies, of my people to survive. They may seem to be crushed, and yet they will rise; defeated, they will overcome; victorious, they will be magnanimous in their victory.

King Arthur: the Once and Future King … King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table … Siege Perilous … the Vacant Chair … the Holy Grail … Excalibur: the Sword in the Stone … Arthur himself … Galahad, Geraint, Percival, Gawain, Lancelot … all equal … all pure, honest, innocent, celibate … Camelot …

Merlin the Magician and Wondrous Wizard, conjurer of truth and falsehoods … the historian-poet adjusts his rose-tinted spectacles, smiles, clacks the false white teeth that spin-doctored so much verbal magic, so many mystical myths, fabulous fables, phenomenal falsehoods … and started, pen on paper, to create yet again another set of nonsensical, downright gut-jarring lies.

SNAFU 2

SNAFU 2

I drive to the hospital through falling snow. No wheel-chair parking when I get there. Damn. Not a walking-stick person hobbling towards a car in a wheel-chair space and nobody sitting in a car, exercising the engine, reverse lights glowing. That means a normal parking spot. Unless I drive round again and take a second look. I do just that. SFA. Nothing doing. The usual SNAFU.

I drive to the normal person’s lot, stop at the gate, lower the window, stick my arm out, but I can’t reach the button that will give me a ticket and raise the barrier. Behind me, the impatient parkers are a nose away from my rear bumper. Nothing doing. Arms too short. I open the door. Seat belt holds me back. Someone toots. I undo the seat belt. Lean out. Push button. Take ticket. Ticket falls onto ground. The gate opens. I get out of car. Slip on ice. Fall to knees. Cling on to car door with one hand. Grab for ticket with other. More people toot. I give them a one finger salute. Fall back into car. Finally drive through gate.

“Round and round and round I goes.
Where will I park? No one knows.”

Vast car park. Not a parking spot in sight. On the third circuit, someone un-parks right in front of me. I drive straight in to the vacated spot. Too fast. Car skids on ice. Oh no! Close, but no contact. Thank God. I’ve now got a spot about 100 metres from the hospital entrance. 100 metres. I used to run that distance in 10.07 seconds. With snow underfoot, even with my stick, I’ll be lucky to walk it in under five minutes. Drat. I am already late for my appointment.

I hobble to the foot of the steps and arrive there just as two large women, faces covered and dressed in voluminous head to foot robes start to walk down. They are arm in arm and enormous. One has a hand on the right-hand rail, the other a hand on the left. Together they take up the whole stairway. I wait for them to descend the twelve steps. They start to descend, then stop three steps from the bottom and engage in animated conversation. “He also serves who only stands and waits.” And waits. And waits. When they finish talking, they descend the final steps and the one on the right swings her arm and shoulder, nearly knocking me down. I lurch forward, grab the hand-rail to save myself from falling, and move slowly upwards. I hold the rail in my left hand, my stick in my right, and climb one step at a time, always the right leg first. Heart thumps in chest. Arteries surge. My head pounds. 12-11-10 … 3-2-1 …zero. I am at the top. I’ve made it.

I start to cross the road. Half-ton hell bent to park in now vacant wheel-chair spot nearly runs me over. I recoil. Start to fall. Get a grip with my stick. Lurch a little. And salute the driver. He doesn’t even turn his head. Bastard. Balance regained, I get to the hospital door. Young boy holds it open for me. “Thank you,” I say. “You’re welcome, grandpa,” he smiles. I hobble down the hall. Punch a simpler machine to get my number. Wayne Gretzky. Number 99. My luck has changed. The board shows #98. I am next.

Humorless, the lady who calls my number. Bad-tempered. Cold her little cabin. “Hello, bonjour,” she says and I reply in French. Grim glance. Speaks to me in English. Goes through the gears. “Have you fasted?” “No.” “Why not?” “They didn’t tell me to.” It’s here on the computer,” she stabs the screen with an angry digit. “It wasn’t on my piece of paper.” She checks the paper, sniffs, and tut-tuts. “You should have fasted.” My middle finger itches. “Can you pee in a bottle?” “I can try.” “Try hard.” “Wouldn’t it be better if I tried soft?” I get vicious, filthy look. “None of that or I’ll call the supervisor.” I read out loud the notice on her desk: Do not place samples on counter. “What do you think I am?” I ask. “A travelling salesman?” “Eh? What’s that?” “Nothing,” I mutter. She rumbles round, produces the usual plastic bottle and a see-through bag. “We need a sample. You know how to take a urine test?” “Of course I do, I studied all last night, didn’t I?” She grunts. I grunt back. I pick up my papers and my little gifts. And off I go to perform pee-pee.

The stalls are empty. I walk right into one. Hang stick on door. Free hands. Open bottle. Strain. Nothing. Man comes in whistling and washes hands. Running water. Miraculous. Pee-pee flows. Bottle overflows and I soak hands and fly. Shit. Well at least I don’t have to perform that trick. Yet. No plastic potty and accouterments this time round. I grab stick. Move to the washbasin. Wash hands. Go to door. Press the automatic door button. The door doesn’t open. I pull again, harder. Nothing. I hang my stick and my bottle on the automatic door button and pull the door with both hands …

“Doors marked ‘Pull’ reduce the speed,
of those who ‘Push’ before they read.”

The man on the other side of the door stops pulling and pushes hard, very hard, just as I pull, hard, very hard. Door flies open. I topple over backwards, hit my head on the floor, and see multiple stars. I have just enough time to wish I’d brought my plastic potty before my world turns smelly, then black.

Happy Hours

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As the inscription on the old Roman sundial announced: Horas non numero nisi serenas / I count only the happy hours. And, of course, the sundial is right. When the skies are cloudy and the rain and snow are falling, the sundial sleeps and refrains from marking the passage of time. But when the sun prances brightly through those heavenly meadows and casts shadows across the numbers on the clock, then the sundial counts the hours, precisely because they are happy.

I try to do the same. I try to avoid the shadows that are cast across our planet and I try not to count them. Alas, like the grains of sand on the beach and the countless stars in the sky, they are innumerable, though the latter are being named, numbered, and counted, much to their chagrin. Who wants to be called Welsh by foreigners, with all the negative connotations they associate with the epithet, when our real name is Cymraeg? And no, we don’t live in Wales, we live in Cymru, or better still, in Canada when we (e)migrate. Canada: I wonder what the real name is for this huge and wonderful land? And what about the local indigenous peoples? I can accept that they are First Nations. No problem. But who are our hosts and neighbors when they call themselves Wolastoqiyik (or Maliseet) and we call them Aboriginals (or worse)?

What’s in a name? North, South, East, West … simple, eh? How about Upstream, Downstream, Away from the River, Towards the river? Think names of the months, names of the days of the week. Now think guidance, think signposts, think culture, think separate cultures, think different ways of living, think different ways of life. Think possessive pronouns: my book, my house, my cat, my dog, my son, my daughter, my Wifi, my wife. Or as le grand Charles de Gaulle expressed it, in Le Canard enchaîné: “Ma France, mon coup de frappe, mon Europe … mon Dieu.” Maybe we would be better off without possessive adjectives. But then …

“Taffy was a Welshman,
Taffy was a thief,
Taffy came to our house
and stole a leg of beef.”

Taffy: a generic name for the Welsh. Any male person from Wales is automatically a Taffy from the moment he opens his mouth and speaks with anything like a Welsh accent. Taffy, from the River Taff that flows through Cardiff, aka Caer Dydd, the fort on the Dydd. There are many rivers in Wales, many regions. Men from the Isle of Mona, Llanberis, Caernarfon, Brecon, Abertawe, Aberavon, Castell Nedd, Caerfryddin, Pen-y-pont, Caer Isca, Usk, Cas Newydd, Pen-y-Bryn, Sgetti, Uplands, Trebanog, Llanelli, Llanfairpwllgwyngilldrawbwllchllantiisilioggogogoch, Cwm Parc, Trebanoc Cwmbwrla, Cwmrhyddiceirw … Taffies one and all, even if they were born miles away from the River Taff and rarely visited Cardiff, the very name of the river and the city anathema to them.

I once had a friend, a very good friend, or so I thought, educated in Harrow, Oxford, secret member of the ultra-secretive, fabulously expensive, well-endowed and super-privileged, ultra-elite Bullingdon Club. He had a triple barreled name of course: Somerset-Trilby-Frisbee or something like that, I forget now. Whenever I arrived at a reunion or a meeting, he would greet me with a bullhorn, bullfrog chorus that reached into the far corners of the room: “Lock up the silver spoons, the Welsh have arrived.”

Humor? His laughter would rock the rafters and shake the room once more. Racism? What racism is there in mocking the Welsh when you are English? Bigotry? No man with a three part surname, an English public school background, and a list of ancestors longer than your arm could possible be a bigot. Idiot? He was very intelligent, slightly unbalanced, and totally oblivious to any social norm or indignity, unless he was the threatened person, and watch out for vicious mousetraps if you made him the butt of your own humor and he took umbrage at the slight. Criminal? No way: the Welsh were always the criminals, for back in the legendary mists of time they had stolen a leg of beef and now they were here to steal the precious plastic spoons and knives and forks that masqueraded as silver …

… what’s really in a name? What’s in a grey day or a blue day? What’s in a cloudy day or a sunny day? What’s in our hearts when we denigrate our friends and doubly degrade our enemies and those we declare to be our enemies, sometimes on a gut feeling or a whim? Horas non numero nisi serenas … Time to look on the bright side, to walk on the sunny side of the street, to reject the shadow and live in the sunshine. Time, in fact, to turn the whole day into a succession of Happy Hours. Study the cartoon above. Now that is a portrait of someone who really enjoys a Happy Hour. And not a glass or a bottle in sight.

Turds

I love the sales shows on the telly. The sales lady comes and and starts talking and you can’t stop her once she gets going. My golly, once they start talking they’d sell you anything from snake oil to …. well, I heard a good sales pitch today. It went like this.

“See how delicately the necklace is carved? Then it is highly polished in a new process that leaves it bright and shiny, like a brown diamond.”

The model whirls and twirls, showing off her best points, not to mention what she is encouraging viewers to buy, the bracelet, the ear-rings, the shiny necklace. Television and online sales. No sense across the screen of touch, of taste, of smell. Just a temptation to enter a vision that the sales girl is selling. The model whirls, the music rings out, the camera focuses on the band in the background. The lead singer wears exactly the same jewelry as does the model: identical necklace, ear-rings, bracelet.

I struggle to catch the words, but you know how modern music distorts the lyrics, twists the sounds. Later, I put the words of the song back together. I recognize snippets, portions, and then the whole verse clicks. Intertextuality, I think, verse responding to verse across cultures and the ages. No wonder that I recognize it and can put the words back together with the help of the original.

“Only twenty left,” the sales lady says. The model smirks, wiggles, shows off her multiple gems, and smiles. “Call this number now,” the sales lady points to a number in the corner of the screen. “Nineteen, eighteen left, be quick. You don’t want to miss out on one of these.”

“Remember,” the sales lady says. “these are original dog turds. They say you can’t polish a turd, but you can. In fact, with today’s new freeze dry technology you can collect dog turds, freeze dry them, and then carve, shape and polish them. No more doggy bags and doggy waste. It’s one of the best forms of recycling.” The sales lady smiles at the camera and the show band breaks once again into that snappy song and chorus. While the lead singer sings, the camera focuses in on her necklace, her ear-rings, and then her bracelet. And I piece together the words:

“Gather ye dog turds while ye may,
for time it is a’flying,
and that fresh dog turd, dropped today
tomorrow you’ll be drying.”

“Looks like a dog turd.
Smells like a dog turd.
Feels like a dog turd.
Tastes like a dog turd.
Thank Dog we didn’t step in it.”

P.I.S.S.

I found the acronym PISS in the below the line comments section in the Guardian. I love it: apparently it stands for Post Imperialist Stress Syndrome, another lesser buzz-word from the referendum and its aftermath. It refers to the idea that a whole (and elderly) generation of Brits cannot get over the fact that they no longer have an Empire and yes, they want their Empire back. How that is going to happen is anybody’s guess.

So, here’s the weather forecast: heavy rain over Britain during Brexit. In fact, to use a local saying the rain will indeed be “pissing down”. For a while, everybody can wear rose-tinted glasses (you can see them in the cartoon), but soon enough reality will return and then the reconstruction of British Empire 2.0 can begin. The rich won’t suffer: they never do. But what will happen to those who are currently staggering under the current burdens of austerity? Nobody knows and the only ones who really care are the sufferers themselves.

Eau Canada: it’s great to live in a bilingual country where such fractures can be faced and overcome. Yet who knows what fractures face us in the future as we predict fires, floods, high winds, ice storms, power losses, and a host of climate change adaptations that will be as difficult to surmount as the political changes voluntarily sought by a small majority of 2% in a referendum where only 60% of the people voted.

As the Chinese curse would have it: “May you live in interesting times.” Whatever your beliefs, your faith, your vote, your IQ factor … interesting times are indeed upon us. But keep them at a safe distance from me, s’il vous plaît … And let’s watch it all unfold in virtual reality on the telly … I prefer to live my life that way.