The river and the riverbank needed each other. Without the bank there would be an inundation and a lake, without the river there would be no wet and an arid desert.  They were two different worlds but, of necessity, linked.  The tadpoles, the frogs, the ducks and the swans made the river their own. In the holes on the bank lived the voles, the rats, the otters and the occasional muskrat. Each went about their business and, of necessity, the twain ever met. The river was a calm, gentle, meander until the rains rushed and the cascades cavorted.  The banks were a haven of holes, a mine of dungeon darkness but with pathways and order, nests and homes, protected from the river but needy of what it offered.

This particular river was a happy place. The wildlife realised its place in the circle of things. It provided and was provided for. It was balanced and at peace. But, of late, there had come unusual ripples, eddying disturbances. The majestic swans who glided effortlessly with peaceful pride through bulrush and reed, through still waters and rough were noticing something untoward amongst their number. The trumpeter swan who had always lurked on the edge of popularity, was now more frequently paddling intrusively into the equanimity of his peers .He was becoming an unwanted incursion. As he aged he was becoming more and more aggressive, not only that, but his beautiful white complexion was ripening into orange.  There were whisperings on the river that he was stirring things up in a less than subtle manner.  For example, he thought there were too many salmon appearing during the spawning season and thought that they were useless anyway because all they did was give birth and die. He wanted to ‘drain them  from the swamp’ as he so crassly put it. On the other hand, he didn’t like that the eagles were swooping from nowhere and taking ‘our’ fish and ‘our’ frogs. He particularly didn’t like the fact that the neighbours who lived in the river bank were ever more frequently encroaching on our river and stealing our jobs and bringing in their diseases and eating our  young. He rallied together a group of his fellow swans and riled them into a frenzy so that they agreed that they ought to build a dam between them and the bank. “Y’all need a wall” was his catchy slogan.

Meanwhile in the bank Muskrat was burrowing and talking and raising banners and putting forth ideas. He had ruled the tunnels, the enclaves, the niches and the nooks ever since his grain supply had far outreached, by many billions, any storage that any other creature could hope to attain. He watched Trumpeter Swan from afar and saw in which direction things were going. He knew that as a native of the river bank he could never be a ruler of the river because foreign born rodents could not rule in such an environment. But he thought he could  influence and edge his way into some sort of power . Muskrat arranged to meet Trumpeter Swan.

Muskrat was invited to Trumpeter’s nest, a luxurious waterfront property in some reeds to the west of the river. It was named ‘Far-il-legal’.  Muskrat set off early one morning to swim the short distance.  He was a little bit annoyed that Trumpeter was not there to greet him but, it was explained, that he was attending a flock of swans and that, as he had elected himself their leader, it behoved him to stay as long as possible. The reason he gave was  that they could not get enough of his orange tainted oratory.  When eventually he did arrive, Trumpeter gave Muskrat the gift of a baseball cap on which was written, “Make our river great again’. Muskrat put on his MORGA hat, not because he wanted to but because he was in the throes of ingratiation.  Trumpeter talked non-stop about his plans for the river and, indeed, the riverbank, none of which made any sense to Muskrat. But he didn’t care about that, his two interests being power and wealth. Muskrat was wise and diplomatic enough to share only his plans to increase his wealth . He sensed that Trumpeter possessed one real attribute and that was an huge ego, a vast acreage of me, myself and I which he had spent years cultivating, a garden of me-den. His animal cunning, ‘cos he was an animal after all, knew that if he moved in on Trumpeter’s sense of entitled power he would be sent packing.  Accordingly he flattered Trumpeter when he spoke of taking over the local farmland, fawned when he spoke of buying up the distant forests and tried a smile when he pontificated  about making the riverbank the 51^st state.  He grinned and nodded, smooched and blarneyed, watched and waited.  Trumpeter’s trust for him grew.

At one well attended rally, Trumpeter asked Muskrat to speak. It was a hot sunny day so Muskrat offered any Trumpeter supporter free run of the cool riverbank tunnels and a limited access to his grain supply. Several cygnets, their necks with a strange red hue, not yet educated in the ways of the world or, indeed, in the ways of anything else, jumped at the chance. They swore an oath to the Trumpeter and were escorted by some of Muskrat’s minions over to the riverbank.

Time moved quickly and before long Trumpeter found himself undisputed leader of the river. Muskrat was able, with subtlety, to delay the building of the wall. He moved freely amongst his own kind and more and more he mingled with the inhabitants of the river. There he proceeded to influence with a quiet word here and an underhand bribe there.  Over a period of about a year, the river dwellers became slowly disillusioned with Trumpeter’s proclamations; slowly realised that Trumpeter’s truth was a holiday home visited infrequently ; that Trumpeter’s reality was a miasma of meanderings with a lost horizon beyond which lay a confusion of unknowns. They started to seek out Muskrat for a solution to their problems, for logical pragmatism. Gradually Trumpeter found himself being ruler in name only. He found that he could certainly promise the grandiose but that he could only deliver his plans with reliance on Muskrat’s generosity and benevolence.  It came as a shock one day when he spotted a wedge of his closest swans flying overhead and leaving the river for the riverbank. It became obvious over time that they were not going to return.  Their nests were no longer on the river but a little bit set back on the bank. No longer did they have to forage for their own food because Muskrat met their needs. Trumpeter tried to entice them back with promises of old jobs in old places. But they all recognised that a nest on an earthen solid was far safer than one on an unpredictable river.  Particularly when they saw that a climactic event had wiped out the homesteads of Trumpeter’s most loyal. He talked a good line about helping them recover but no aid, not a jot, was forthcoming.

Trumpeter started to age very quickly. His supporters began to distance themselves from him. Within the space of a couple of years, it became obvious that he was a naked shadow, albeit still an orange one. His roost was  becoming more and more isolated and eventually the court of ‘President’ Muskrat was where the power lay.

Meanwhile on a lonely wilderness lake in a northern country far, far away , a solitary loon had offered its plaintive cry and the other creatures had begun to listen.

As I entered my teens some 60 years ago, there was a moment when I discovered that I liked poetry. I no longer like poetry, I love poetry. Poetry has been my comfort and my joy for so long.

On solitary walks I will recite poems I have memorised to myself. If I am unlikely to meet people I will recite poetry out loud. If I awake in the night and am unable to get back to sleep, I will test my memory. If I have my back pack with me I will always ensure that I have a Robbie Burns anthology lurking somewhere within. If I am waiting for a train, plane or aeroplane I will reach for my book of poems. Just occasionally when I am in company I will burst into a rendition of a poem that I love. I don’t do that often because people become embarrassed when I do. So I guess we cannot pick our embarrassments. Every man to his own taste as the old wife said as she kissed the cow!

One would think that, with this expressed passion of mine, I would be keen to try my hand at writing poetry. I have tried my hand and am absolutely terrible at it. I guess that at some point in my life I was disappointed that I could not achieve anything of note in this sphere but I can’t remember being overburdened with chagrin. Instead I became more than happy to read and learn the poetry of others. I am overawed by the abilities of a Wordsworth, a Coleridge, a Tennyson to write with such succinct clarity and such rhythmical discipline. It is, perhaps, a sad reflection of my life that I can recite from memory over one thousand lines of Robbie Burns on a good day. Mmmmm, perhaps a bad day if one has to listen to it. So, Dear Reader, as we approach Burns Night on January 25^th, I am revisiting my Burns for something appropriate for the night. I am determined not to submit our guests to over 200 lines of ‘Tam O’Shanter’ as once I did. I tried to persuade them that it was not my fault but it was a duty I had to perform. Behind the glazed eyes I could sense that they were unconvinced. They would not be so polite the second time around, Dear Reader. Incidentally there is a valley in Iceland which probably still reverberates from this epic poem as I spouted it with vigour as I walked my lonesome way up it in 2016.  I now consider this to have been somewhat foolhardy of me because the whole island is an active volcano and nothing is more likely to stir up the lava juices than an hefty rendition of this Burns epic. Even worse might have been an outburst of ‘To a haggis”! This year guests are going to get a truncated version of “The Twa Dogs” which is a poem I have come to love.

Many years ago, Landseer the painter, painted Burns’ two dogs in magnificent detail. I stumbled on his picture on Amazon and could not resist ordering a print. Hopefully it will arrive before our party.

Burns was at his most effective when he used nature to propound his beliefs on the human condition His “To a Mouse’ is a wee gem of a poem. John Steinbeck quoted from it as the title of probably his most famous novel, “Of Mice and Men”.

“The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley”

Is the fuller quotation.

“To a Louse” never fails to produce a smile as Burns sits behind a young woman in church watching as a louse crawls up her bonnet.

“O wad the power the beastie gie us to see oorsels as ithers see us.”

And oh how one fails in that judgement of oneself. Dear Reader, just when I think that I have mastered the tightrope walk between hubris and humility, I am unbalanced and falling headlong into the valley of folly before the wisdom and honesty of Irene. But what happens to us if we have not an Irene to tell us who we really are? Everybody needs a ‘beastie’ and if that happens to be one’s wife then that is why she is the better half.

But back to those two dogs in “The Twa Dogs”, the one is the laird’s dog, Caesar. He is the rich man’s dog, the one with the fancy collar. His friend, Luath, is a plowman’s collie. Wealth meets poverty. After frolicking about, they eventually sit down and discuss each other’s station in life. In doing so they present a wonderful panorama of how society operated in the Scotland of the 18^th Century. Over 200 lines of perceptive brilliance, shrewd understanding and masterful rhyme and rhythm, all from the mouths of two dogs who are friends that cross the class divide.

Maybe when I first read this poem, I was tired, Dear Friends. Maybe I had a problem that needed solving. Perhaps there was a burning issue in my life that was causing angst. But there was a moment at the end when I had a lump in my throat, a deep feeling of pathos and sadness almost overwhelmed me. I think it was because in the last eight lines which signalled the end of their discussion, I knew that I was never to meet these characters again and I was saddened by it. That is strange to me, Dear Reader, because generally I am not that emotional about much let alone the written word but here are the last 8 lines of the poem which so demonstrably hit home to me:-

“By this the sun was out o’sight,

An’ darker gloamin brought the night

The bum-clock hummed wi’ lazy drone,

The kye stood rowtan I’ the loan;

When up they gat an’ shook their lugs,

Rejoiced they were na men but dugs;

And each took off his several way,

Resolv’d to meet some ither day.”

                                                               Happy New Year to you all.

‘For auld lang syne’, Dear Friends.

Aaah, Dear Friends, let me introduce Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Some of you may have heard of him and, no doubt, all of you would like to pronounce his name. Young Grant Harder, a name you probably can pronounce, is the only person I know who can say his name properly. I will try to get in touch with this most wonderful of teachers and ask him to help me out. But, in the meantime, Dear Reader, forget I ever mentioned him, Mihaly C, that is, not Grant Harder, and try to adjust your focus to my pathetic wee tale.

I walk with a friend every week. His wife drops him off and I take him home thereafter. I was so doing a few weeks ago but had on my mind a few tasks that had to be done. It would be fair to say that I was a bit distant that day, my mind was on other things. I had just had my car serviced and was told that I really needed to replace my snow tyres as two of them were looking somewhat worn. Another expense which I could have done without. I was also dealing with an annoying bureaucratic issue which was not being sorted out in the few days it should have taken. A friend suggested that I trek along to my federal MP and that, generally, Liberal MP Jonathan Wilkinson is an help in these matters. My son suggested an excellent tyre place and my friend told me where the MP had his office. They were 100 yards apart on a local street.

I had a wonderful walk with my friend, dropped him at home and suddenly had a thought. The tyres and the MP were on the way home but I really wanted my lunch. Did I really want to pull over at an area where parking would be difficult, line up to make an appointment for new tyres a couple of weeks down the road, then pop in to Mr. Wilkinson’s office to discover that it was closed and there was nobody to help? I would give it a try but I felt it was a forlorn hope. Maybe if I had downed a chicken pot pie and sated my hunger I would have been more optimistic. I am a simple soul.

There was no parking spot, just a jagged car free zone outside the tyre place. I shook my head and pulled over and parked illegally. I went into the office where the guy behind the desk was just finishing with a customer. I explained that I needed four new winter tyres for a Mazda 3. What type of tyres? No idea. Was the car here? Out front. He dashed out from behind his desk, turned the corner and looked at my car. He gave me a quote and told me to return in 20 minutes and it would be done. I was gobsmacked. I left. I wandered down the street, found the MP’s office and was told to walk up the hill to the back and buzz for entry. I was welcomed by a young man, Thomas, who sat me down and took all my details and promised to do his best. I left, walked back to the tyre place, paid the bill and was told it was parked on the other side of the street. I was unable to wipe the smile off my face during the 20 minute drive home, Dear Reader.

So, Friends, you will know what a state of flow is because you all will have had moments when things just fit into place seamlessly. You have all been there. It is the tennis serve that always goes in; the problem with which you have struggled for hours and walked away from and then found that the solution was bleeding obvious; it’s the lesson which you taught and suddenly found that all the children were immersed in it and had learned from it; it is struggling to find the right words and opening one’s mouth and finding that they are there. I would love to hear from you on my email about your personal ‘states of flow’.

I guess that the opposite of state of flow is ‘Murphy’s Law’ when what can go wrong, will go wrong. We have all had those events, have we not? I guess that this is a ‘a state of unflow’.

My erstwhile colleague and friend, Grant Harder, has a problem he doesn’t know he has yet, Dear Reader. You see, friends and I battle with the Globe and Mail cryptic crossword every morning. Sometimes nothing happens. Try as we might we cannot get started. The world is a blank, the words do not flow. Inwardly I start to panic. Age has caught up with me. That which once I had I have no more. My head droops, my confidence wanes. I ‘woe is me’ my way home, slump in a chair and try to find my sunny uplands, serene moments and better days. I dabble in other things, I look for wee tasks, I go for a long walk. I return home and there on the dining room table is my pen and my blank crossword taunting me, teasing me, mocking me. I shrug my shoulders and pick it up. Then there is a moment. I answer a clue and soon all is revealed, I have completed the crossword, admittedly with phone call help from my friend. But all is suddenly right with my world again. But if it continues to go wrong, then I mutter ‘Grant Harder, Grant Harder’ under my breath because if he had never told me about ‘unpronounceable’ I would have just accepted that blundering on was my state of being. It was how I had happily spent most of my life but now my friend had taught me that I could achieve something better. Soooo, when ‘better’ didn’t work, I mouthed monstrous mendaciousness towards Mr. Grant Harder.

But, at the back of my mind, there is a niggle. Why, Oh, why? What was it that a few hours earlier was so difficult and now was solved with relative ease?

Maybe Grant Harder would be off the hook if I could mutter Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi under my breath. But I can’t, as I said before, the estimable Harder is the only one I know who can pronounce him.

Seasons greetings to you and yours.

Here in 2024, the recent November 11^th Remembrance Day arrived on a Monday. Here in North Vancouver, Irene, Grant and I attended the ceremony at the cenotaph in Victory Square. It was an overcast, chill day but the rain held off.

I don’t know what I feel about attending this ceremony every year, sometimes I have to force myself out of the door. I do know, Dear Friends, that I will attend. I have learned more and more over the years about why I will attend.

In the early 1920s my grandmother found somebody to marry. She was lucky. Why? Because there weren’t many eligible men around at that time in the years after the First World War, millions had been killed in action. Jimmy Davidson found Eleanor Chessor at a church picnic. He was a miller in Aberdeenshire so had not gone off to war. Men in the farming industry were exempt from service. Britain needed to feed its people. My other grandfather was not so lucky. Dr. Peter Tolmie served in the war but he was a surgeon, so he was faced with the daunting task of saving the lives of young men who had become wounded. Fit and healthy one moment, amputated or blind the next.

When I was a teenager, every Christmas my father invited two sisters, the Miss Thoms,  for Christmas dinner at our house. With the self-centredness of youth I took no interest in why these two cailleach were suddenly in our house on Christmas Day and at no other time of the year. I later learned that both of them had lost their boyfriends in the ‘Great War’, as it was known then, and had never married. Presumably they had not found a young man thereafter because of the aforementioned paucity. But, I also think there was some survivors’ guilt, a determined loyalty to what could have been.

My father, Dr. Wattie Davidson, had completed his medical training before war’s end in the Second World War and had been despatched to India and Palestine. He did not last long. On December 17^th, 1944, his 20 year old brother serving in the RAF in Italy was shot down and killed over Forli in Northern Italy. He was sent home because he was the oldest son of a widowed mother.

In 1970, I was living with my other grandmother in Nairn and working in the Nairnshire Laundry. The time came for me to return home to the family in Somerset. My Great Uncle Jim who was living with Grandma at the time offered to help to carry my bags the half a mile or so down to the bus station. When I arrived home and let slip that he had done so, my mother was not at all happy with me. It wasn’t so much the fact that Jim was in his early 90s but,

“How could you, Peter, Jim was gassed at Gallipolli?”

Jim was about the fittest 90 something I had ever met and the effects of a gas attack some 50 years previously did not show at all!

At Lincoln Rugby Club in 1990, the club was about to lose players. Iraq had invaded Kuwait and the air force bases in our area supplied our club with rugby players. I saw the changes in their demeanours as they realised that they were very soon going to find themselves at war. Nobody wants to go to war less than the men and women who are going to have to fight it. My team mates were obviously scared.

I have just finished reading Victor Hugo’s epic novel “Les Miserables”, of course now the musical is more famous. I have been lucky enough to see the play and the TV version thereof. But, Dear Reader, as is often the case, nothing can compare to the book. I was at the Battle of Waterloo through his magnificent description. I was standing on the barriers during the riots of 1832. And I was escaping through the sewers with an unconscious Marius on Valjean’s back. Victor Hugo was more than an author and poet, he was a statesman who pushed against slavery believing that all mankind was guilty if there was but one slave left on the planet. He also believed in the United States of Europe and that war between Europeans was a civil war. He predicted that the 20^th Century would see the end of war. He lived between 1802 and 1885. It is no fault of his that we have not seen an end to war or poverty but, like Charles Dickens, he did not shy away from uncomfortable truths. There was a lump in my throat when I finally finished reading “Les Miserables”.

Spike Milligan was an humorist and raconteur. On his grave stone which my brother, George, stumbled upon recently, he has written in Gaelic, “I told you I was ill”.  Before a live audience of celebrities in London, he recounted one of his war stories. Late in the war his troop stumbled on a squadron of what they thought were American soldiers. They moved into the open only to discover that they were wrong when some German paratroopers opened up on them, causing them to duck hastily. One of that German troop matched the date and day and information on troop movements and many years after the war contacted Spike in London. Spike invited him to lunch at which they imbibed and reminisced far into the afternoon. As they parted, his erstwhile enemy asked if he could sign Spike’s menu. On it he wrote,

‘Sorry I missed you on February 15^th, 1945.”

They departed with chuckles and smiles and Spike asked him to stand up after he told this story because he invited him to be a part of his audience. This is a war story which I have enjoyed reading.

It only takes one man’s ego to throw the world into a maelstrom of hurt. And we know by watching the evening news that always, always it is the civilian population which suffers most in a war, ‘twas ever thus. So, Dear Reader, Davidson may grumble inwardly at getting his act together to pay respect to those who have seen what he would not want to see and to those who have done what he would not want to have done. But there is reason enough in a movement of my head to the left of my computer where sits a photograph of a young man in his RAF uniform at 20 years of age. All of his life is before him, except that it is not. He has an energetic, joyous smile on his face as you can see in the photograph at the head of this blog. The epitaph on his grave reads as follows:-

“To have lost him is grievous but to have had him is great gain that abides.”

That is all I need to get myself to the cenotaph.

Flying Officer Billy Davidson did not reach his coming of age, he was killed nearly 80 years ago before his 21^st birthday.

Lest we forget.

Sticks and stones will hurt my bones but words will never hurt me.”

I remember hearing this as a child. At the time I thought all such aphorisms were based on years of experience so made the assumption it must be correct. Experience has taught me that this one is totally untrue. Words hurt far more than a cracked rib. Words are far more a bad or good memory than a broken leg or a good report card. As I write this I recollect that rugby report card in the January of my last year at school.

“He has surprised many people, not least himself, by holding down a First XV place this rugby season”.

Forget academics, and I did, these words were the highlight of my 5 year boarding school career and are with me now.

The reason that I am writing this today is that Irene, my wise and thoughtful wife, was reading about a gentleman who had recently lost his wife after a long illness. He was dealing with the bureaucracy and red tape which so often accompanies the death of a loved one. Some heartless ‘suit in an office’  had referred to his late wife as his ex-wife! Now I don’t know about you, Dear Readers, but that term seems to imply divorce, maybe irreconcilable differences, possibly an amicable separation. It suggests legal proceedings. Who has the right to see the children when and where; who gets the family dog; financial flounderings; “Downton Abbey” or “Hockey Night in Canada”; Parent-Teacher interviews; Child allowances; how to handle the wants and needs of the children. It does not, I suggest, Friends, suggest the demise of a much loved wife after many years of marriage. Your man here was, plain and simple, a widower, as his wife would have been a widow had her husband died. To me this is one example of how certain groups of people or, indeed, individuals use language inappropriately. OK, I will come clean, I am one of the guilty ones.

Watching a documentary on the people who developed the atomic bomb I heard the commentator express the opinion that simply because people are very intelligent, that is nuclear scientists in this case, does not mean that they are wise. Of course, Dear Reader, we know this to be true, there have been very many wise illiterates throughout history just as there have been bibliophiles who have not had an ounce of common sense. Wisdom and intelligence are two separate skills although wisdom may be categorised as a type of intelligence, I think. Words matter.

Anybody who has worked for a living, and many of you still do, are only too aware of the dread that we feel when an expert is called in to help us solve a problem. Suddenly we are faced with a pontificator, mostly possessed with the people skills of a rock, who long since left the coal face for the ivory tower. He or she has found themselves a professional niche which suits people who shower in the morning rather than the evening. He has long since been removed from the day to day where hands on is the job of the great unwashed. She has become a trouble shooter in a suit; her awareness and wherewithal caught the last train out many years ago. In short, such people are about as welcome as flatulence in a space suit. Dear reader, we all need saving from a certain type of expert. “Expert” is a word that cannot be fumbled because it is too often dropped.

The world does, however, need to progress and move onwards through innovation and science. But, I suggest, some things can surely be left as they were. I have been reading much that is political at the moment. It seemed appropriate to read Jonathan Manthorpe’s excellent new book “On Canadian Democracy” at the time of the BC provincial election. The clarity, vision and wisdom of his book are going to have me referring back to it for the foreseeable future. Mr. Manthorpe’s words are exceptionally clear. Reading Bob Woodward’s recent publication, “War”, is very current and is based on many insights and interviews with the leading players and the one idiot in American politics. I read both these books in double quick time but felt the need to think of something else before sleep of an evening and thus settled on “Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius, an inspired Roman Emperor who lived almost 2000 years ago. The wisdom of the ancients, his stoicism in particular, shows that there is hope for the leadership of human kind, once the people realise that they have been duped by a self-serving clown. So with the upcoming American election, maybe the last time that democracy appears in that country for many years, I have been listening to political pundits, yes OK,  experts in their fields. Once such was a political science professor at UBC. She had some interesting points but she could not predict the outcome of the election any more than you or me, Dear Reader. And this is my point, yet again, about the use of terminology. Science is a subject whereby things are improved and discovered through rigorous research, it is where things are tried and tested and found wanting or otherwise.  Science, Friends, is, in my opinion, supposed to have a proven conclusion. Political Science is unpredictable and therefore inaccurate, I therefore suggest that it cannot be called a science, political studies might be more appropriate. But what do I really, really know?

There are two magnificent words which have entered the language in a different context to what they  originally meant. They are beige and hinterland. I love their new usage dearly. Billy Connolly, the comedian, uses beige to mean something bland and boring. Small talk at cocktail parties; household chores; automobiles; the qualities or lack thereof of various airlines; the British royal family; recipes; a long, long discussion between a Welsh and Aussie miner about the benefits of wooden pit props over metal ones! (There was no escape from this last one as we were in a pub waiting for a bus that was several hours late. It was, by a long way, the beigest experience of my life!) Exciting hinterlands are the solution, Dear Friends. Simon Barnes, an outstanding sports journalist, gave me hinterland. To him everybody needs an hinterland some distance away from the routine of their professional lives. Hinterlands are hobbies and pastimes, forms of relaxation that alleviate stress, methods that round a person off rather than allow him or her to persist in a cyclopean vision of life. They allow us to recreate and refresh. Hopefully, Dear Reader, none of us has a beige hinterland!

Spelling also matters. “I can still smell your colon on my pillow’, believe me is not perfume. ‘Due to unforeseen circumcisions, we are closed’ is unfortunate. Certainly, Friends, we can all chuckle at these but, of course, if we are prone to write we too are prone to mistakes. Because I am the victim of too much Latin at school, a decade spent studying a dead language always provokes the question ‘Why?” This is my excuse for writing exceptionally elongated sentences. If anybody dies because they couldn’t get a breath before the end, I could be held liable.  I have a tendency towards the elongated sentence:-

“Having opened my eyes, having decided to swing my legs out from under the bedclothes and placed them on the floor, I stood up, not noticing that the room was still dark, that dawn had not cast its first light on our eastern fence, that ‘jocund day’ was nowhere near ‘standing on the misty mountain top.”

It’s a disease, Dear Reader, and one which I have struggled hard to overcome. Keith Waterhouse said,

“If your sentence needs a comma, just to stop the reader collapsing in a heap before the end, you would do better to cast it as two sentences.”

I am trying to learn from Keith Waterhouse.

And “Remember to close all parentheses, we are not paying to air condition the entire paragraph.”

But, you see, Friends, I am a simple soul who really needs things spelled out to me. So I had no chance with the following:-

“Regulatory practices operating within discursive regimes that circumscribe the materiality of the subject through the citationality of norms”

 And

 “The illocutionary hallucination of the performative as a material event of subjectivity that emerges as a discursive nexus that can generally be named ‘impersonation’”.

The above is from an article from ‘The Times’ dated April 6^th, 2021 entitled “Academics are embracing gibberish studies” by Melanie Phillips. She is quoting The Wall Street Journal and describes what she has read as ‘gobbledegook’. Admittedly this is taken out of context but it is supposed to be a learned piece of work and, if that is the case, then spellcheck reveals that there is no such word as ‘citationality’ although perhaps there should be.

So this subdued rant has all been about words and such but maybe it should  have been about meaning and understanding. OK, Friends, I’ll come clean, this blog has become a therapeutic polyfilla because we now know all about the American election and I am lost for words.

Here is a German word to finish up with:-

Danaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan

 I have the meaning written down somewhere but what it should mean is:-

“Not on any account should one ever play Scrabble with a German”

Thanks for reading.

Ten years ago on October 27^th, 2014, our son, Grant, received a kidney transplant. He has Alport’s disease which he inherited from his mother’s side of the family. His kidneys had deteriorated some years before he received his ‘new’ kidney, indeed excessive tiredness in his early 20s showed the direction in which his health was moving. While he awaited his replacement organ he was on dialysis three times per week for many hours at a time. He managed to have these for about 5 hours per night, mostly on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This meant that he could go to work in the morning. He is a carpenter on a variety of construction sites here on the North Shore. During that time and after his two and an half years of dialysis, his girlfriend, Vanessa, was amazingly supportive. Grant is now 37 years old and is doing well although he has to take a great deal of drugs to prevent rejection of his kidney which is not a match to his own. He will be on this regime for life.

Grant has many tales to tell about his time in hospitals and waiting for appointments. He chuckles when he remembers picking up a friend from hospital who had suffered a broken bone. His friend complained about the wait, the delay for X-rays, the length of time he had to wait for a doctor, the delay over a diagnosis and finally the relief when the plaster was applied. As he was driving his friend home and listening to his litany of complaints, Grant said nothing. Eventually there was silence, an awkward moment when his friend realised to whom he was talking. He said ruefully,

“You know, don’t you”.

Grant smiled and nodded. Oh aye, he knew.

The reason that Grant had to wait so long for his working kidney was that it was proving difficult to find a match. He could have gone anywhere in the country if they were able to find a suitable donor. The deal was that I would give up one of my kidneys anywhere in Canada at the same time as he was receiving one from somebody else. I could have ended up sunning myself in Iqaluit or looking out over a different ocean in Halifax. The breakthrough came when research allowed for a recipient to receive an unmatched kidney. Thus Grant is walking around with a kidney which was 62 years old at the time. That would be one of mine. “Twould have been much easier on him if the organ had been a perfect match. But there we were and here we are.

None of us can predict how we are going to respond to periods of physical and mental stress. We can prepare for a crisis but come the crunch there are a variety of directions in which we can go. I was quite happy to be me on October 27^th,, 2014. Much better to be me than Irene. She had to watch while her husband went under the knife at 9.00 a.m. and her son did the same at 12 noon. I remember waking up to her concerned face and asking her whether Grant was in for his operation yet. She explained that the surgeon had gone for lunch. Gone for lunch! Of course he had. This was a normal day at the office for him, for us it was a momentous occasion. I remember asking who was looking after our kidney whilst Dr. Christopher Nguan was having his cheese sandwich. I was concerned that he might need a post-prandial nap! Of course he didn’t, the surgeon looked like he was 16 years old, just like teachers do to me now! Grant and I ended up in the next room at Vancouver General Hospital. The operation was on a Monday and I was out at a pizza place with Irene on the Friday night whilst Grant was still in hospital.

My wife, Irene, too has kidney disease but not yet in need of a transplant. Our daughter, Alison, is thankfully free of it to the extent that she offered to donate to Grant but was not allowed so to do. Both of the women in our family are extremely determined. They are careful what they eat and battle hardened to keep themselves physically fit. I am a bit of a sloth, could do with losing some weight and prefer to lift a book rather than a paint brush.

Grant is Manichean. He doesn’t know what that means but that’s what he is. There aren’t many shades of grey in our son’s thinking but there is white and, very definitely, black. If there is a problem, then there has to be a solution otherwise he is walking away from it. And most of the time it cannot be nuanced but has to be seen and fixed. If he finds attitude at work or play, then he will give attitude back. On the other hand, when he pulls up in his truck at a red light and out of the blue a little old lady, a complete stranger, opens his passenger side door and demands a lift, he is surprised and dumbfounded but also amused and happy to oblige. He did not, however, allow her to put the cake she was carrying on the back seat because there sat Frank the dog who would not have respected its privacy. Grant is generally helpful and kind. When a young man tripped and spilt his coffee at Tim Hortons recently he bought him another one. But when it comes to work he is not impressed when smoke breaks are taken; when jobs that should take half a day, take two; when initiative is not shown.  But when his company gets a gem of a hard worker, he shows great respect and will bend over backwards to help keep him to the extent of giving up some of his weekend to help the guy move apartments. His sister departed for the UK seeking work in her chosen profession. She has been there for 8 years, latterly as Copyright Manager at the British Library in London, the biggest library in the world. Grant is immensely proud of Alison.

So here Irene and I sit in North Vancouver. We are situated a smidge north of our three score years and ten, I being 72 years of age and Irene, one year older. We are both retired and happily so. We both fill our days. We look back on the challenges that our adult children have faced in their lives and there have been some that we and they could have done without. But we are both philosophical and phlegmatic (Possibly many other ‘ph’ for ‘f’ words that are out there, hmm maybe not ‘phased’!), but we are also grateful for so much. Our children are not at war; they can speak freely; they have jobs that they love; our daughter does not live in Afghanistan. Nobody escapes without challenges but it is what we do with them that matters. I cannot remember the blur of the years when our son was so sick but I know that I was functioning on something short of the full deal, always assuming, Dear Reader, I ever had the full deal in the first place. For example, after the kidney donation I was presented with a blanket as gratitude from the Kidney Foundation. It took me by surprise to discover that we had been assigned a social worker as well as a blanket. In hindsight it seemed the right thing to do. She seemed like a nice person and wise too. Her wisdom showed when she left us to manage on our own.

Neither Irene and I think that our children are exceptions. That is always, always the role of others to judge. And this, Dear Reader, is more than a bit of a self-indulgent blog for which I apologise, but I could not let this milestone pass without some comment.

But, Dear Friends, there is a message out there for people in government and it is this. Citizens should be asked to opt out of organ transplants rather than to opt in. There are some countries in the world, notably Wales, whereby if you are a victim of a car accident your organs will be taken unless you have signed a form to the contrary. I was always at fault in that I kept intending to sign up to have mine harvested after my death but it was years before I did something about it.

I refer back again to one of Grant’s kidney tales. He used to meet the same crowd when he was hooked up for dialysis. He remembers one older lady who had been waiting years for a new kidney. There was an accident on the sea-to-sky highway and three UBC students were sadly killed. Suddenly Grant’s acquaintance was no longer there. The speculation doing the rounds of the dialysis centre was that she had received a new kidney from one of these young unfortunates. To me, Dear Reader, this is tragic but joyful.

Finally, Friends, there is much criticism of our public health system and it is true we need more medical professionals, but the care that has been taken over the years for our kidney-beset family where three of us function on two and a half kidneys rather than six, has been outstanding. I still have an annual check up and, of course, my wife and son are much more frequent visitors to the nephrologist. We cannot say enough good things about our health service.

Now all that needs to be done is to persuade Baskin-Robbins to make an ice cream cake in the shape of a kidney to help us to celebrate the anniversary. Och yes, as you can see with the featured picture, Baskin-Robbins came through.

Thanks for reading.

Alports disease affects 1 in 5000—10,000 children. It can affect the eyes and ears (although thankfully not in Grant’s case) but lack of energy and blood in the urine are common.

There is an issue in my life, Dear Friends! Like every issue it needs a solution. But, sadly, I don’t believe there is one.

Many, many years ago, I spent 5 years as a pupil at a boarding school. It was an interesting, challenging period. I wouldn’t say it was a fun-filled frolic but close proximity to 79 boys in a boarding house taught me a great deal about what to do, how to act, how to accept and how to mix. I suppose that can be summarised as “Life.” I wouldn’t say that I have great social skills but I do know how to fade into a background in a group and be happy and contented so doing. I have the ability to be a part, yet simultaneously apart. But this wee tale is not about teenage angst.

British boarding schools in the 1960s prided themselves on creating fine upstanding moral paragons. There were some successes but there was also a cadre of privileged chinless wonders. These few believed that glittering prizes were a right. They made their way in the world by riding roughshod over the feelings and hopes of the great unwashed. Class based arrogance, inferiority masquerading as superiority.  They did not think there was anything malicious or wrong about this ethos, they just thought that it was the way things were. If you, friends, think I am being too hard on such institutions then take a look at a recent British Prime Minister who went to Eton. But, this tale is not about any aristocrat remittance man who was paid by the family to stay away.

There was much at boarding school that was enlightened but, Friends, the food was not it. I remember standing out the back of the boarding house when the butcher’s van arrived. We witnessed the meat being unloaded and drooled because it looked so wonderful and we were always hungry. Amidst the salivation, there came a moment when we collectively sighed, shook our heads and turned our backs because we knew that the next time we saw it, it would be swimming in a sea of fat with all the goodness and taste beaten out of it. It would, however, in a vain attempt to keep us healthy, be accompanied by vegetables, green growth, that had had all the goodness boiled out of them due to the cook’s tendency to bring to the boil and let simmer and simmer and……… Green became pale and unattractive, a beige boredom of brutish banality. ( Strewth, Davidson, just ‘cos it alliterates, there is no need, no need at all. Ho hum!) Had the vegetables been people the cook would have been convicted of cruelty. There is that saying that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’. There was only one of him and he spoiled everything. He had retired from the army some years before. We all believed that he had done so before he was shot at dawn, a treasonable saboteur planted by the Soviets attempting to win the Cold War.

I remember one morning being sat at the table with 7 other 13 year olds waiting for the prefect, Nick Hawkins, a 17 year old despot, to serve up the bacon and eggs that were on a metal tray in front of him. Nick was not good in the mornings, he stared into space, tongue hanging out, in a catatonic trance. We were not allowed to speak, forbidden to help ourselves, we had to wait for him to serve us. On this morning we waited and waited. Finally he blinked and reached for the spatula. The greasy mess was, by this time, cold. There was a collective shudder as we guzzled it. The fried bread was at least manageable.   

I ‘graduated’ from Millfield School at the age of 18, Dear Friends. And whatever I may think of my schooling I have had an extremely happy and lucky life thereafter so maybe it gave me something of use. On my last day, waiting for my parents to pick me up for the last time I did not realise that another part of me had also graduated that day. My taste buds, battered and bruised by five years of spotted dick, treacle tart and custard with a skin, and a terrible modern invention called cholesterol, had had enough. They breathed a collective sigh of relief, waited for their moment and flew off never to be seen again. I imagined them stopping on a branch of a nearby tree, looking back down on me, shaking their heads sadly, before making the short trip over the English Channel to France  where boiled cabbage and bland potatoes and tortured meat would never make it past the patrol boats of the French Coastguard. To this day I miss my treacherous wee taste buds.

So here I am today at the age of 72 years blessed with the ability to eat and drink anything and think it to be good. I will buy a bottle of red wine and share it with a good friend. I will ask him what he thinks. He will always smack his lips and say, “Good”, which always pleases me because I have no real idea whether it is good or bad. Not for us is there a bouquet to smell, no gentle sip revealing an hint of the Italian coast, no sense of blackberry with a touch of smoky peat, it doesn’t assault our mouths like an Olympic wrestler’s jock strap, nor hit us with the clear Ricola yodel of a Swiss Alp. It is, Dear Reader, just a glass of red wine. After a couple of glasses, it will be the nectar of the gods, a couple more, we will conquer the world. Yes, friends, I may have my pretentions but taste is not one of them. But now in my latter years, my boarding school experience has come back to haunt me. And, whether or not you want to hear how, the following is it.

My favourite coffee shop is “Bean around the World” a 15 minute stroll away. During Covid my friends and I were allowed to sit outside. We did so religiously through all weathers. When we were finally allowed to sit inside there is a lovely wee corner with just enough room to give us space to chat and do the crossword. It had a wonderful balance between private and public. Occasionally people whom we knew would wander over and spend a short time, a vignette of an experience which was inevitably pleasant. Only problem was that two of my friends did not like the coffee. So we agreed to meet  at Tim Hortons. This is a Canadian chain named after a famous hockey player. Its prices are cheaper and it is a more convenient stopping place for people on the way to work. It is always busy. Like everywhere else I don’t know whether the coffee is bad or good. But it is a more roomy place with no real corner to sit in. There are a number of passing acquaintances there with whom we always enjoy a chat but…..! (Here I am going to ‘but’ you many ‘buts’). Do I really need to know at 6.45 a.m. that our current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is the love child of Fidel Castro? Is it important to hear that so and so has 5 children by 5 different mothers? What do we do when homeless Patrick signals us through the window asking us to keep an eye on his large bag of cans while he heads somewhere on his bike? (I cannot see any of us standing up, dashing through the door and giving chase because someone is stealing Patrick’s recyclables. There would only be the slightest hope of us catching any thief and in the unlikely event of us so doing, what would we then do!!?) Soo, Dear Friends, Tim Hortons became too much of an early morning challenge. So now we are at Vomero, a bit further away but more relaxed of a morning. But to me, the victim of a childhood tastebudectomy, all coffee is the same.

If one was to pour the three different coffees into anonymous cups and ask me to place them in the correct café, I feel that I would fail because they would all taste umm, like coffee. Meanwhile somewhere in France there is a convivial group of taste buds, now in their early 70s.They sit at a street side bistro reminiscing about their time at a British boarding school and laughing at what they had to tolerate back in those days. They sip their hand-made coffee, use a fork to cut the light, fluffy croissant in front of them, still hot out of the oven, and they thank their lucky stars that they abandoned Davidson all those long years before. Then it was not too late to seek a newer world and, having done so, they were never going back.

Thanks for reading but suddenly, Dear Friends, we are back at Tim Hortons and Vomero and Bean!? Davidson and his friends now have a pendulous existence, swinging from one hang-out to another. Coffee, shmoffee, nobody cares about the coffee, I think and hope.

“Those whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.”

Classical scholars are unsure whether to attribute this quotation to Euripedes or Sophocles,  Dear Reader. But we know it is of ancient origin and from many perspectives the wisdom of the ancients seems to be a cut above some of the stuff spewed forth through social media these days.

It seems to me that the bulk of humanity tries very hard to do the right thing but, occasionally, we dive off the deep end and make an unwelcome splash. There are so many differing reasons which make us do this such as grief, lack of sleep, a family argument, a bad bio-rhythm, a piece of spinach stuck in our front teeth. We have all seen examples of road rage; anger flaring in unexpected places for unexpected reasons; rushes of blood to the head and such like. We all know that sometimes we take a wrong turning and later beat ourselves up for so doing.

He was so proud of his little group of hikers. They were all kitted out in their new orange anoraks, their footwear was appropriate. He was confident that they would be dry and warm if the rains and wind came. They had all been given a smattering of basic teaching in how to read a map so they had OS maps folded at the appropriate place in their new waterproof map holders which hung professionally about their necks. The wind was a breeze as they made the gentle ascent of Mam Tor in Derbyshire. It was hardly a world beater of a peak, in fact so rounded and whale like on its top that it was hard to call it a peak at all. Yet, it was Mam Tor on the map so it was there, it was the little man with a chip on his shoulder so the hiking world sighed, put on its boots, shrugged its shoulders and said, “I suppose so” and “If we have to” and summited. The teachers knew that the breeze on the way up would be a vicious and cold gale when they reached the summit and the subsequent ridge walk. Yet here was a group of teenagers being led by a group of committed teachers on an expedition which was a part of their week’s camp at Edale Outdoor Centre. At the top the wind was everything that they expected it to be so they urged the group to stuff their maps beneath their coats and marched off along the ridge. Sean announced that he had to stop for a pee. So the teacher turned his back and gave him some privacy. All too soon the boy was at his side, aghast and drenched in his own urine. Worse it had seeped through the new map-holder and drenched the map beneath. The teacher lost the plot and tore into the boy,  annoyed that the lad had not thought of the consequences of pissing into the wind but more annoyed that the new outdoor equipment had had an unwanted and unnecessary christening. Having given his  excessive blast the band of hikers continued on their way but now the mood was not the happy, bantering joy that it had once been. Eventually the teacher was surprised when one of his colleagues appeared at his side and asked him to wait behind. They stopped.

“Pete, let me ask you something. Did anybody die?”

I have thought about this lesson frequently since and thought about it as one of the best of my on the job lessons that I had over my 40+ years in teaching. My perspective was all wrong. I should have laughed it off and waited until we were back at the Outdoor Centre and joked about the fact that the lad was never going to pee into the wind again. Patted him on the back for completing an arduous walk and sent him off to get a shower. I have never really understood why I lost the plot that day. I could now seek excuses, plead all kinds of nuanced reasons, none of which could justify my poor behaviour. You will see the presence of me, I and myself in this paragraph, the presence of an ego was the real sin. Sean and his peers should have been the VIPs then. The hike was not mine, it was theirs and I had made it mine in the worst possible way.

Definitely worse happened a few years earlier when I was in charge of the Unit Group at a big London Comprehensive School. This group of teenage children were Special Needs. They came every day to the mobile classroom which was separate from the main body of the school. They were troubled children from troubled backgrounds. One day 16 year old Christine arrived at school at lunchtime, obviously very, very late.  I mounted my high horse and proceeded to lecture her about punctuality, homework and other irrelevancies. I missed every obvious clue about this child’s demeanour. I missed the fact that she was exhausted. I failed to note that one of the buckles on her shoe had fallen away making it hard for her to walk. I missed the fact that she was, at least, wearing her school uniform. I was annoyed that no explanation was forthcoming. A few days later the truth was revealed. She had been called to her sister’s place to babysit. The sister had returned home drunk at 2.00 a.m. and flung her out of the house. Christine had walked the few miles home through the streets of the London Borough of Hounslow, arrived home after 9.00 a.m. changed into her school uniform and walked the further distance to school.

Dear reader, one of the beauties of retirement is having so much time on one’s hands. But one of the curses is that one has so much time on one’s hands. Rarely but occasionally I cannot sleep because something of my past has crept into that space between wakefulness and slumber. So the Sean story has caused probably one toss and one turn and then I am asleep. But if, Friends, I am unfortunate to go down the Christine disgrace then I am condemned to some hours of sleeplessness. And, Friends, I know that this is no more than I deserve.

So looking back at the title of this blog I realise that losing the plot is part of our humanity. I also know that if we possess a modicum of humility we can admit fault. We can learn from our mistakes, resolve not to let them happen again and if also we have a smattering of wisdom allied to knowledge we can become better people.

But the reason I have picked this topic at this time is because we can recognise in our lives that we all have somebody whom we have loved and respected but that person has changed. Something has made them into something that they never were in the past. That’s fine. We all age, we all reach a peak in our lives, our own peak be it ever so humble, and then come down from the summit, trying not to slip on the way down, trying to be the same  person we were on the way up but fighting physical and mental tiredness all the way down. I think, however, there is a huge difference in selecting somebody to do a job when they are young, fit, capable and alert and then asking them to step aside when those qualities have dimmed. There is, however, no excuse for choosing somebody for a post when they have so obviously lost the plot before they have been selected. Joe Biden has become old and frail very quickly and rightly has stepped aside, his Republican counterpart, in my opinion, lost the plot long before he first painted his face orange, first donned the POTUS mantle in 2016. Reading Mary Trump’s book shows a terrible childhood built around conditional love and family values which are anything but. Her uncle never stood a chance regarding the acquisition of empathy, sympathy, gentleness, kindness, duty, patriotism, respect for women, respect for anybody, ideas of conviction. His understanding of ordinary people was never going to be based on down to earth practical experience. He was never going to ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ as George Orwell so famously was. He was condemned to lose the plot from an early age and there is nothing in his current performance to suggest he has ever found it.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

And that, friends, is what I feel about the American electorate if they should elect the Republican candidate for the second time.

Thanks for reading.

Lytton was a wee village in British Columbia. It was in the dry belt. It was peopled by a variety of peoples including a First Nations clan. Three years ago it was burnt to the ground in one of the many fires that plague our province every summer. It has yet to be rebuilt. This is a bureaucratic travesty. Phoenix rose from the ashes, Lytton didn’t.

In my weird way I think Lytton should enter the language here in Canada. To be ‘lyttoned’ should be ‘a file bound up in red tape, something that is rediscovered a century from now, dusted off and pondered with bemused benevolence before being returned to the archives’. “Lytton’ should be a synonym for ‘forgotten’.

“I lytton my cell phone at home”.  ‘I am becoming so lytton in my old age”. Replace the word with ‘forgot’ because that is what I think has happened to the village of the same name.

A ‘Lytton’ could become a type of government. A ‘Lyttonese’ government could be one that talks a good line, puts forward a wonderful message but then does nothing. Hmmm, actually we might have one of those already!!

A ‘Lyttonade’ could become a period of time when nothing is done.

OK, Dear Reader, I think I have belaboured my point. To me the bigger picture is a failure of democracy and a reason why the dictatorships of the world laugh at us, accuse us of decadence, realise that our indecision becomes their strength. Don’t get me wrong I love democracy. I love the fact that I can speak freely; that I can hold and voice my opinions; that I can walk the streets without persecution or threat. Let’s go further. I love the fact that my daughter is able to become an educated, individual, career woman. Democracy is important to me and my family. Winston Churchill gave democracy two cheers, he couldn’t quite manage three because no system of government is perfect.

Most working people whom I have talked to who attend meetings in their working lives want a meeting to result in a decision. As a teacher who has attended a great number of meetings in my professional time I can attest to the fact that most meetings were cosy and comfortable. Many times I would arrive with my cuppa coffee, reach into the box of doughnuts provided and sit back and munch myself into my own dreamy world. The glaze, Dear Reader, was more often over my eyes than on the doughnut. Then as the meeting came to a close it was often discovered that we were agreeing to meet again 6 weeks down the road to revisit the agenda about which we had decided nothing. At which point I would raise an objection because 6 weeks was far, far too long between free doughnuts and gratis cups of coffee.  We had all been ‘lyttonised’, seduced by a doughnut-induced dozy droning.

 This may seem to be a counter argument, Dear Friends, but I do not entirely despair of our systeml. I was mostly impressed about how democratic governments handled themselves in the pandemic. In fact the speed with which a vaccination was developed was outstandingly impressive. It proved that in a crisis western democracies, by and large, can step up. I am also impressed with our local democracy. Bushes in Alderwood Park two houses along from us had become havens for drug users with all the dangers of used needles and the debris of evacuated bowels. One of our neighbours got in touch with the District and asked that the laurel bushes be pollarded with vigour so that they are no longer niches for users. Result is that local day cares can now play again with impunity in the park. Local monitory democracy, Friends, can step up to the plate and act promptly. 

Dear Reader I had reached this point in the blog when an article by Doug Mason came out on 14^th August in ‘The Globe and Mail’ drawing a comparison between Lytton and the recent burning of the town of Jasper in Alberta. He does not believe that Jasper will still be waiting to be rebuilt in three years time. He talks long and hard about the various reasons for the Lytton debacle none of which I will enter into here. I do hope Jasper is rebuilt soon but I hope that Lytton is rebuilt sooner.

I love living in Canada. The country has done wonderful things for me and my family. I am proud that I can spout off my opinion with impunity. I am delighted that our girl child received an education; has not been married off as a chattel; does not have to kow tow to a male; can maintain independence in thought and deed; can be respected in her personal and professional life.  ‘Canada’ gave her that and she has been able to practice it in the UK for the last 8 years. But, Dear Reader, I am starting to despair over our governments, both provincial and federal. There is too much twiddling of thumbs, sitting and nodding. Smug indecision masquerading as glorious outcome. 

Hmmmm, maybe a ‘lytton’ can be a word for a national disgrace. Maybe it can be the Canadian equivalent of a ‘Watergate’ for a scandal or the Norwegian ‘Quisling’ which entered the lexicon for somebody who had committed a treasonable act.

We are not yet at that stage where our Prime Minister is making his horse a consul and ordering his army to attack the sea a la Emperor Caligula, nor are we quite at the point where the PM plays the fiddle while Rome burns although some fighting wild fires might suggest that he is.  We are not about to elect a clown, a Monty Pythonesque weirdo to the White House. I like the humour of Monty Python but I don’t think it should be running the most powerful country in the world. Maybe Ms. Harris will have something to say about that in November. (I should perhaps let you know that I am delighted that I am not living in the United States at this time, although it is 25 years since I have visited that benighted country so I shouldn’t pontificate from inexperience).

So there is hope. We just need to realise that we should be a ‘can do’ Canada and not a ‘Can’tada’.(Hmm, that’s a wee bit clumsy, Davidson, trying to be too clever by half) Sure and all we need to consider consequences before making a decision but we only need to reconsider them when something goes obviously awry. The expertise to rebuild Lytton and Jasper is here and waiting and waiting and…….. ‘Action this day’ to invoke Churchill again.

I believe, Dear Friends, that Jasper will be the Phoenix that rises from the ashes. My hope is that the Albertan government will put the ‘can’ back into Canada and embarrass  BC into action so that Lytton becomes the quaint wee village it once was.

Thanks for reading.