POSTING # 5:
Niagara-on-the-Lake at Christmas: Henderson Christmas’s; Hunter Christmas’s; Henderson-Hunter Christmas’s; The Magic of Mince Tarts; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Niagara-on-the-Lake at Christmas
One of the prettiest Christmas sights is Niagara-on-the-Lake at night.
Pat and I drove through the town the other night and marveled at how beautiful it is. The masses of tourists have gone, replaced by a few Christmas shoppers bustling from shop to shop. The stores give off a warm and cozy glow---not garish or trashy---and the trees and shrubs along the main street are decorated discreetly with strings of white lights.
A horse beside the Prince of Wales Hotel stomps its feet waiting for a young couple on a get-away weekend who would like to snuggle under a buffalo robe and tour the town.
The local Chamber of Commerce claims that Niagara-on-the-Lake is the prettiest town in Ontario, or perhaps Canada. From their advertising, it seems they are referring to the town in the summer, with flowers in hanging baskets and well-tended parks. And it is lovely then.
But Niagara-on-the-Lake at Christmas time is wonderful, soothing, reassuring, and magical.
Henderson Christmas’s
On Christmas day, the tradition in Pat’s family was to open the presents from Santa Claus and from each other in their home in Aurora, have breakfast and then set off for the farm in Oro, near Barrie where Pat’s mother grew up.
For the first 6 or 7 years of Pat’s life, until road plowing improved, Pat’s father drove them to Murdoch’s Service Station on Highway 11, north of Barrie. There, they waited for Pat’s grandfather to come in a sleigh to get them. The family would load the gifts for the grandparents, Aunt Margaret, Uncle Bob and the cousins onto the sleigh. Pat’s grandfather gave them warm robes and shouted, “Gett yup” to the horse.
When they arrived, Pat and her family would rush out of the cold into the solid brick farmhouse built by Pat’s great grandfather and revel in the smells of a real Christmas tree and cooking food.
Later on when the road snow plowing improved, they would drive right to the farm.
But some years there were problems. Barrie is in the middle of the Ontario Snow Belt and cars then were not as reliable as they are today. Sometimes Highway 11 was blocked by huge snow drifts and they had to turn around and go home to a Christmas dinner of bacon and eggs or ‘chicken a la king’ (toast with cream of chicken soup mixed up with some dead chicken leftovers.
On one occasion, they spent the Christmas day in an unheated garage in Barrie waiting for the mechanic, who had kindly agreed to forego his own Christmas dinner, to fix their car.
Pat says, “A feeling of fun and adventure prevailed on these occasions----the very idea of having bacon and eggs for Christmas dinner had us howling with laughter”.
Hunter Christmas’s
My family always celebrated Christmas at our home in Arthur.
During the year, Dad was normally serious and stern at dinner, but Christmas dinners were different and I remember them fondly. The ‘dinner’ was at noon after we had opened the gifts, passed around bowls of nuts, chocolates and oranges. We would start dinner by pulling Christmas crackers, reciting the silly jokes and putting on the ridiculous paper hats (dad included).
Dad would have a glass of sherry, the only meal in the year that Mom permitted any alcohol at the table---she didn’t want to set a bad example for the kids.
Mom would bring in the roasted goose and slice it. (It was always a goose, never a turkey. This was part of Dad’s heritage---his father had a bakery in Wales and he would roast the geese for all his customers, deliver them around the town and only then did the Hunters sit down to their own goose dinner.)
For dessert, we would have rich, dark plum pudding, made by Aunt Millie who lived in Perth, and mince tarts.
I remember one or two Christmas’s when the monthly cheque from the Ontario Provincial Police didn’t arrive on time. We were not poor but despite pretty careful money-management there was usually little money left by cheque time. If the cheque that normally arrived around the third week of the month was held up in the mail or by a snow storm, there was a problem, and the problem was magnified if this happened in December.
I can remember Mom explaining to us on one occasion that Santa would not be able to bring us the hockey sweater, skates, toboggan or whatever we had asked for. It was hard to understand why Santa with his unlimited resources would not be able to call at our house.
One Christmas, Mom decided it was time to introduce a little culture to the four men in her house (Dad, my two brothers and me).
On a visit to Guelph, our nearest city, she bought a 12 inch, 78 RPM record of John Charles Thomas, a famous American baritone, singing the hymn, Jerusalem.
Mom played the record and we were all impressed. He had an amazing voice.
Then one of us, I forget who, looked at the B side, something Mom had forgotten to do. It was Thomas singing Kansas City from the musical Oklahoma.
One of the verses goes:
Everything's up to date in Kansas City
They've gone about as fer as they can go
They got a big theatre they call a burleque
For fifty cents you could see a dandy show!
One of the gals is fat and pink and pretty
As round above as she was round below
I could swear that she was padded from her shoulder to her heel
But later in the second act when she began to peel,
She proved that everything she had was absolutely real!
She went about as fer as she could go
Yes, Sir! She went about as fer as she could go!
Dad smiled broadly, we boys giggled and Mom looked down at her fingernails, as much as to say, “That’s the last time I try to bring any culture into this family”.
Henderson-Hunter Christmas’s
We have generally had our Christmas’s at home but the dates have bounced around a bit, to fit in with people’s work schedules and relatives’ commitments. This year, we are in the midst of our Christmas as this posting is being finalized.
Our tradition has been to have pancakes and maple syrup first thing and then open the gifts under what was always a real tree until recent years. (Our trees were usually bought at the last moment and often looked a bit like something Charlie Brown might have selected. A neighbour up the street looked at our tree one year, shook her head, and said, “It’s people like you who give real trees a bad name.”)
The trees were decorated with a mish-mash of treasured items. Arab headdresses I had brought from a trip to Lebanon when the children were young, kindergarten creations made from toilet rolls and pipe cleaners, and assorted balls, glass angels and other bangles acquired around the world---all items rich in memories.
Early on, our daughter, Jen, appointed herself the distributer of gifts, even before she could read the names on the gift cards. What a wonderful job she did, making sure that everyone got a gift, including our dog Cassidy, before starting another round.
This early demonstration of family organization has carried on and developed, and everyone looks to Jen (and Pat, her husband) for the planning of family events.
The Magic of Mince Tarts
As I mentioned earlier, we always had mince tarts at Christmas time and I grew up believing that to have 12 months of good luck in the upcoming year you had to eat 12 mince tarts between Christmas and New Years. If you ate only 11, you would be OK until the end of November, but watch out for December!
Now, part of me likes to think that I am a rational, no-nonsense, non-superstitious person, but there is another part that doesn’t walk under ladders, that ‘knocks’ wood, and dodges black cats (except when I am in Britain, where a black cat crossing your path is considered good luck---go figure).
If there were a support group for superstitious behavior, I would have to say, “My name is John, I believe in mince tarts”.
It is hard to know where this belief in mince tarts came from---perhaps from my Welsh, Scottish or Yorkshire roots.
Or perhaps there is another explanation. As far back as I can trace our family tree, the Hunters were all master bakers. Did the guild of bakers dream up this idea a few centuries ago just to boost year-end sales?
(By the way, the Wikipedia Encyclopedia claims that in the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell, that Puritan spoilsport, outlawed the eating of mince tarts on Christmas Day, because, I assume, he was worried that the succulence of a warm tart would distract people from the religious significance of the day.)
Anyway, I brought this idea of the magic of mince tarts to our marriage and although Pat grumbled a good bit about getting out the rolling pin each December, she did it. I got my 12 mince tarts and although our fortunes went up and down, overall we have done pretty well.
Truth be told, Pat has bought into the idea so much that most years she forces me to eat 13 or 14 tarts just to be sure I haven’t miscounted. It should be noted that she has never joined me in the dozen of tarts tradition---she really doesn’t enjoy mince tarts.
All of which brings us to Christmas 2002. Pat and I were in Baku, Azerbaijan, where I was heading a project to reduce corruption in the public service (I can guarantee that future postings will have some stories about that experience).
We had gone out for dinner on Christmas day (to an Azeri restaurant---no turkey with cranberry sauce). As soon as I woke on Boxing Day, I thought, “We have forgotten mince tarts!”
Off we went to find some mince tarts or at least some mincemeat. Grocery stores in Baku had never heard of mince tarts or mincemeat. We kept getting shunted to ground meat in their butchery section.
Getting desperate, we went to the restaurant in the Radisson Hotel---a favourite of western expatriates. The chef said they had made mince tarts for a special Christmas dinner the day before but the tarts were all gone.
Could they bake some more? No, they were too busy preparing for New Years. Could they sell us some mincemeat. No!
We decided that we had made a good faith effort, that the fates would hopefully take that into account, and wouldn’t punish us. We had tried.
And anyway, it was just a superstition, wasn’t it.
The first indication that the mince tart fates were annoyed with me came on the evening of January 10th. Hans (not his real name), a German lawyer arrived in Baku. He was to help me by re-writing public service legislation to prevent (or at least reduce) corruption in the hiring, promotion and firing of Azerbaijan public servants. He arrived with all kinds of legal texts---plus a very high temperature.
It turned out that he had had an intermittent temperature in Germany after returning from a Christmas holiday in Kenya. His temperature would be normal during the day but high at night. His doctor told him it was just a virus.
I suspected malaria especially after he told me that he had not taken anti-malarial drugs while in Kenya---because, he said, he wanted to be able to drink and one can’t drink alcohol while taking those pills.
We took him the next day to one of the two clinics that western oil company employees used (there is a lot of drilling for oil in the Caspian Sea off Baku). His temperature was normal and his blood test showed no malarial infection. The Azeri doctor (trained in Moscow) thought it was probably a virus---take Aspirin, drink plenty of fluids and get lots of sleep.
Hans wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating much and was getting weaker and weaker, and I was getting more and more alarmed. Finally one night when his temperature was high, we took him to the other clinic. The doctor was a South African who had worked in the Canadian north and, more importantly, in Indonesia where malaria was common.
He immediately suspected malaria and the blood tests confirmed that Hans did indeed have malaria and not just that but a particularly nasty type that if not treated promptly could destroy organs. The doctor explained that blood tests can only detect malaria when the temperature is high---when the temperature falls it means that the ‘bad guys’ have temporarily left the blood stream and hidden in body tissue.
The doctor gave him a drug that he said would help but the best drug wasn’t available in Azerbaijan. He said we should use medical evacuation to get Hans back to Germany right away (a medevac jet with a doctor and a nurse could fly in from Moscow and take him to Germany).
At that point Hans told us that his travel insurance didn’t cover medical evacuation. His contract with the project included funds for insurance, but he had opted not to buy that insurance, and, instead, had pocketed the money.
He told us he couldn’t afford the $100,000 cost of an evacuation. He couldn’t even afford the $15,000 for a nurse to accompany him on a commercial flight to Germany.
Right!
His doctor took me aside, “This is really serious. He has to get back to Germany right away. He’s not infectious---Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. Get him on a commercial flight, tonight if you can.”
I called the agency in Germany that Hans worked with and the official said that if I could get Hans on a plane for the four hour flight, he would have a doctor and ambulance waiting when the plane arrived in Frankfurt.
Pat and I took Hans back to his hotel, packed his belongings and set off to the airport. Hans was wearing a brown, wool duffle coat with the hood up. He kept dozing off but I would wake him and coach him on how to behave at the airport.
“You will have to put the hood down.”
“But I’m cold.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ve got to convince the airline people you are OK to travel. Put the hood down, stand up straight, and don’t shuffle.” (Pat says that I added, “Right now you look like an idiot!” She remembers thinking that that was out of character for me, but it was a pretty stressful time.)
At the airport we helped him through the outgoing customs screening and then just watched and held our breath as he approached the airline counter. He held himself together until he had checked his bags, and got his boarding pass. Then the stiffening seemed to go out of him, he slouched, put his hood up and shuffled off, out of sight, toward the departure lounge.
We waited until the plane had left, just to make sure.
The next day the agency phoned to say he had arrived safely and was now in hospital.
A week of so later the agency sent us an email saying that Hans was now at home and recovering well. The agency thanked Pat and me for our help, saying, “If you had not done what you did, the result would not have been good.”
Looking back on it, we were enormously lucky that the SARS epidemic did not become headline news until several months after Hans was safely home.
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The mince tart fates had one more nasty surprise for us at Baku.
Six weeks after Hans left, I developed some aches, pains and a temperature. I thought it was just a virus (shades of Hans!!), perhaps a cold or maybe at worst the ‘flu.
A friend working on another project called to ask how I was. Pat chatted with him and then I got out of bed to tell him it was nothing and I would soon be back to work.
Then, I started feeling dizzy and collapsed on the floor. When I came to, Pat was shouting at the friend telling him to come over right away.
It must have been a terrible time for Pat, not knowing what had happened to me---a stroke, heart attack, or worse (at one point she thought I had stopped breathing).
The friend arrived with an Azeri colleague with a big SUV. I was bundled into it and Pat told the driver to take us to the clinic with the South African doctor. The Azeri fellow didn’t know the way to the clinic---while Pat knew exactly how to get their because of our trips with Hans---but he was reluctant to take directions from a foreigner. After all, it was his city. In the midst of caring for me, Pat had to shout and argue with him.
We got to the clinic in record time and the driver was clearly impressed with Pat’s knowledge of the tricky streets in that part of Baku. He was one of many fine Azeris we met during our stay in Azerbaijan.
After tests, the doctor said that I had just fainted, that I had prostatitis, a bacterial infection of the prostate, and prescribed a heavy dose of CIPRO. He said I would feel lousy for a week or so but would recover fully in a few weeks.
As he was putting away his equipment, the doctor said he was quitting and returning the next day to South Africa. He wasn’t sure who would replace him at the clinic. One of his reasons for quitting was that he wasn’t sure how he would be looked after if he became ill in Baku. Not reassuring.
The prostatitis was the last straw. I had been having fights with the project contractor on how to manage the project and now with the illness and the uncertainty of medical care, I decided that the time had come to part company. The contractor agreed (I think they were getting fed up with my insistence on dotting ‘I’s” and crossing ‘T’s’ on contracts with local employees), found a replacement and Pat and I returned home.
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So, the events of Baku convinced us that the mince tart fates are not to be toyed with.
We are leaving for South Carolina on Boxing Day and. I will only have time for a couple of tarts before leaving for the South. We are not sure that tarts or mincemeat will be available in the land of the pecan pie so we are going to lug along some President’s Choice mincemeat and will buy prefab tart shells!
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Brother Jim tells a story about a long-ago Christmas. He had written a letter to Santa asking for a sleigh, the kind of sleigh he had seen at the local hardware store. Unfortunately, when Mom went to the store to get the sleigh she was told that they had just sold the last one.
Mom must have been heartbroken, must have wondered what to do. In the end, she prepared a letter to Jim from Santa that started off “Dear Jim”. Santa said that he had got Jim’s letter and thought he would be able to provide a sleigh but things had come up, and he was so sorry.
Jim says that if he received the sleigh, he would probably have forgotten all about that Christmas.
But he has never forgotten the letter he got from Santa.
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We always got Cassidy a hermetically sealed tin of yellow tennis balls for Christmas, to replace the tired, grey slobber-stained balls from the previous Christmas. When the presents had been put out under the tree, Cassidy would circle around until he sniffed the tennis ball container. He would lie for hours on the floor, shivering, his nose pointing at his present.
When Jen put his present in front of him, he would tear away the wrapping paper and then look for someone to open the can.
Once he had one of the new balls, he would take off across the floor playing his version of hockey, batting the ball back and forth between his front paws. Sometimes he would forget and grab the ball in his mouth, a move that wasn’t permitted by the rules he had developed for his game.
Over time, he had discovered that if he kept an ear in his mouth he wouldn’t be tempted to grab the ball. So, he would swing his head back and forth until he could grab one of the floppy ears in his mouth and then resume stick-handling (paw-handling?) holding the ear firmly in his mouth.
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We once got Cassidy a soft rubber toy that squeaked. As he was sniffing under the tree for his tennis balls, he stepped on the wrapped toy. It squeaked and he yelped and jumped back.
He got his revenge after the presents were opened. He chewed the toy until the metal squeaker fell out and then pranced around with the vanquished toy in his mouth.
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THANK YOU----SEE YOU AGAIN ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY, 8
I am grateful for the kind comments about Letter from Virgil and for the memory-jogging suggestions.
It is great fun rummaging through my attic of memories.
Pat and I are taking off for the next few weeks---the next posting will be uploaded on Feb. 8.
We wish everyone a wonderful holiday season and a super 2009.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
POSTING # 4
POSTING # 4: A Job in the Middle East; British Roundabouts; Here’s Looking at You!; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
A Job in the Middle East
As we continue to settle into our new community, we are impressed with how civilized and comfortable it is.
A couple of examples.
We had some questions about the history of the area and enquired at the local library. The librarian said they had a resident local historian---imagine that, in a small town. Pat and I have since met with her and she’s amazing---knowledgeable, helpful and fun.
Then there is a fantastic Newcomers Club with an enormous scope of activities designed to help new arrivals find things they would like to do and friends to do them with.
As I say, very civilized and comfortable.
Unfortunately, not all the world is so fortunate.
A few weeks ago I was offered a part-time consulting job involving technical assistance to the government of Lebanon. Under the proposal, my part of the work would be carried out mainly in Canada but I would have to spend a couple of weeks each year in Lebanon.
The timing wasn’t great and there were some other problems with the offer, so I wasn’t all that keen on it.
But I liked the sound of the work and I like the people (and food) in the Middle East so I decided not to reject it out of hand.
As I mulled over the offer, I knew that Pat would worry about my travelling to Lebanon, given the attention the media has paid to tensions between Arabs and Christians, the influence of Syria, occasional bombings etc.
I wondered if it would help Pat if I suggested that she come with me on the first visit to the country so she could see that the country was safer than the media suggested. To sweeten the deal, I could also suggest that we stop over in Greece (a country we’ve always wanted to visit), see Athens and some of the Greek Islands.
I flew what you might call a trial balloon, mentioning a trip to the Middle East, and a side trip to Greece.
Pat was not impressed.
In the end, I decided not to take the job.
This week, as we watched television pictures of students rioting in Athens, Pat turned to me, “Right, and afterwards, we could have gone to Greece….”
British Roundabouts
Pat and I met in the basement of a boarding house in Toronto in the summer of 1959 (that will be a separate story). I was posted to the Canadian Immigration Office in Leeds, Yorkshire in October 1960. Pat came over at Christmas, we got engaged and then I flew home to get married, in Aurora, Ontario, in June 1961. After a trip to England on a Cunard Line ship, we set up housekeeping in a two-bedroom apartment on Spen Road in a pleasant area of Leeds, called Far Headingley.
One of the first things we did was buy our first car, a small but spritely Ford Anglia.
A day or so after we had taken delivery of the car and while we were still in the process of adjusting to driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, a personnel evaluation team arrived from Canada to assess the five officers in the Immigration Office. The team would recommend whether any of us should be promoted. I had my interview and it seemed to go well.
After my interview, the Officer-in-Charge said that he been hoping to take the team home for dinner but his wife was ill and he wondered if Pat and I could entertain them. I said I thought we could, called Pat and she responded wonderfully with a great meal.
After dinner, I offered to drive the two fellows back to the Queen’s Hotel in downtown Leeds.
I was feeling good as we set off---about the interview and the fine dinner. We were traveling along at a sedate clip on the ‘wrong’ side of Spen Road until we got to the roundabout at Otley Road.
I should break here for a discussion of the British roundabout. British traffic engineers claim, apparently, that intersections with roundabouts have fewer accidents than ones with stop signs or traffic lights (except for bicyclists, who tend to get mashed a bit at roundabouts). I wonder if anyone has calculated the accident rate of drivers from North America or the Continent encountering their first roundabout.
Anyway, I turned into the roundabout and almost instantly there was a loud scream from Ron, the more senior of the two evaluators, “John, you’re going around the wrong way!!!!”
Vehicles were coming right at us, with lights flashing and horns blowing. Looking back on it, I think the thing that saved us was my hockey training. You get three or four opposing players coming at you when you’re carrying the puck, and you learn to bob, weave and stickhandle.
Anyway, I managed to get around the intersection and onto the right (“wrong”) side of the road without damage to us or anyone else. I dropped the two fellows off at the hotel, safe and sound, if a bit shaken. I didn’t offer to pick them up in the morning to take them to the Immigration Office.
I figured that was it for any promotion but, no, a few weeks later word came that I was being promoted (must have been Pat’s cooking). The only lasting negative impact of my mistake came from Ron. Every time he and I met he would start off, “John, do you remember that roundabout in Leeds…..” and he would proceed to tell everyone within earshot about my faux pas.
After some thirty years of this, I told Ron that there had to be a sunset clause on dumb things (pieces of legislation sometimes have a sunset clause saying that if the act isn’t renewed after a set period of time, it expires). Ron just grinned---there was to be no sunset clause.
Here’s Looking at You!
Despite his joy in telling the story about me and the roundabout, Ron and I became good friends. He was an excellent Immigration official and a fine person.
Now, Ron had been badly wounded in World War II and wore a glass eye. Here is a story he liked to tell about the glass eye.
After the war, Ron joined Canadian Immigration and was posted to a number of Immigration offices in the UK. Often, he and his colleagues and friends would drop into a pub after work. Now, there was a custom in some British pubs at that time that if you had to go to the washroom but still had a good bit of beer left in your mug you would say that you had spat in the beer (some people went one step further and actually spat in the beer in front of their friends!) to deter anyone from poaching your beverage.
Ron had a different approach; he would quietly put his glass eye in the beer. His colleagues knew about this and no one touched his beer. One night, however, there was a newcomer at the table. He saw Ron take off for the washroom, saw a good bit of best bitter just sitting there and while the others were distracted by a disturbance at the door, downed Ron’s beer. As the glass eye went down, he gagged and shouted, “What the heck!” (or something similar).
As the saying goes, everything came out OK in the end. Ron wore an eye patch for a few days until nature took its course.
And the newcomer hopefully learned a lesson about how to behave in a pub.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
It was in the early 1990s at the start of the Personal Computer boom, before most of us appreciated the impact PCs were going to have on our lives. My brother Jim and his grandson, Brad, were baking some cookies---Jim was reading the recipe and Brad, about 5 at the time and very much into computers, was mixing the ingredients. Jim read out that they should add a half cup of milk. Brad was looking through the markings on his grandmother’s collection of measuring cups and said, “Is that one, forward slash, two, Granddad?”
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Years ago when even a penny was worth something, a young boy in Arthur was getting ready for Sunday school. His mother gave him two nickels, saying, “One is for God--- put it on the collection plate at the Sunday school---and the other is for you---get some candy on the way home”.
The little boy started off but he had to stop on the way to study water running down a grate in the road. Suddenly, one of the nickels slipped from his hand and fell down the grate. The boy started to cry.
A passerby asked what the trouble was.
The boy sobbed, “God’s nickel fell down the drain”.
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I better start this story with a bit of background for readers of this blog who weren’t around in the 1970s and 1980s. During that period, it was common to hang a round, blue disk in the toilet tank. When one flushed the tank, the toilet filled with blue water. The disk was supposed to disinfect and deodorize, but didn’t in fact do much of either.
Now the story.
Jean-Riel, the son of one of our Ottawa neighbours, was a bright lad but very quiet in class. When the teacher asked a question he left it to others to answer. Perhaps he was shy or bored, or just didn’t want to be tagged as a know-it-all---who knows.
His Grade One teacher was telling the class about colours and how they could be mixed to produce other colours.
“We haven’t studied this yet, but does anyone know what colours you mix to get green?’
There was silence, no hands came up.
Finally, Jean-Riel raised his hand.
The surprised teacher said, “You know the answer, Jean-Riel?”
“Blue and yellow”.
The even-more surprised teacher said, “That’s right, how do you know that?”
“Well, my Mom puts blue stuff in the toilet and when I pee the water turns green.”
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NEXT SUNDAY
Watch for some Christmas stories from our universe in next Sunday’s Letter from Virgil.
A Job in the Middle East
As we continue to settle into our new community, we are impressed with how civilized and comfortable it is.
A couple of examples.
We had some questions about the history of the area and enquired at the local library. The librarian said they had a resident local historian---imagine that, in a small town. Pat and I have since met with her and she’s amazing---knowledgeable, helpful and fun.
Then there is a fantastic Newcomers Club with an enormous scope of activities designed to help new arrivals find things they would like to do and friends to do them with.
As I say, very civilized and comfortable.
Unfortunately, not all the world is so fortunate.
A few weeks ago I was offered a part-time consulting job involving technical assistance to the government of Lebanon. Under the proposal, my part of the work would be carried out mainly in Canada but I would have to spend a couple of weeks each year in Lebanon.
The timing wasn’t great and there were some other problems with the offer, so I wasn’t all that keen on it.
But I liked the sound of the work and I like the people (and food) in the Middle East so I decided not to reject it out of hand.
As I mulled over the offer, I knew that Pat would worry about my travelling to Lebanon, given the attention the media has paid to tensions between Arabs and Christians, the influence of Syria, occasional bombings etc.
I wondered if it would help Pat if I suggested that she come with me on the first visit to the country so she could see that the country was safer than the media suggested. To sweeten the deal, I could also suggest that we stop over in Greece (a country we’ve always wanted to visit), see Athens and some of the Greek Islands.
I flew what you might call a trial balloon, mentioning a trip to the Middle East, and a side trip to Greece.
Pat was not impressed.
In the end, I decided not to take the job.
This week, as we watched television pictures of students rioting in Athens, Pat turned to me, “Right, and afterwards, we could have gone to Greece….”
British Roundabouts
Pat and I met in the basement of a boarding house in Toronto in the summer of 1959 (that will be a separate story). I was posted to the Canadian Immigration Office in Leeds, Yorkshire in October 1960. Pat came over at Christmas, we got engaged and then I flew home to get married, in Aurora, Ontario, in June 1961. After a trip to England on a Cunard Line ship, we set up housekeeping in a two-bedroom apartment on Spen Road in a pleasant area of Leeds, called Far Headingley.
One of the first things we did was buy our first car, a small but spritely Ford Anglia.
A day or so after we had taken delivery of the car and while we were still in the process of adjusting to driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, a personnel evaluation team arrived from Canada to assess the five officers in the Immigration Office. The team would recommend whether any of us should be promoted. I had my interview and it seemed to go well.
After my interview, the Officer-in-Charge said that he been hoping to take the team home for dinner but his wife was ill and he wondered if Pat and I could entertain them. I said I thought we could, called Pat and she responded wonderfully with a great meal.
After dinner, I offered to drive the two fellows back to the Queen’s Hotel in downtown Leeds.
I was feeling good as we set off---about the interview and the fine dinner. We were traveling along at a sedate clip on the ‘wrong’ side of Spen Road until we got to the roundabout at Otley Road.
I should break here for a discussion of the British roundabout. British traffic engineers claim, apparently, that intersections with roundabouts have fewer accidents than ones with stop signs or traffic lights (except for bicyclists, who tend to get mashed a bit at roundabouts). I wonder if anyone has calculated the accident rate of drivers from North America or the Continent encountering their first roundabout.
Anyway, I turned into the roundabout and almost instantly there was a loud scream from Ron, the more senior of the two evaluators, “John, you’re going around the wrong way!!!!”
Vehicles were coming right at us, with lights flashing and horns blowing. Looking back on it, I think the thing that saved us was my hockey training. You get three or four opposing players coming at you when you’re carrying the puck, and you learn to bob, weave and stickhandle.
Anyway, I managed to get around the intersection and onto the right (“wrong”) side of the road without damage to us or anyone else. I dropped the two fellows off at the hotel, safe and sound, if a bit shaken. I didn’t offer to pick them up in the morning to take them to the Immigration Office.
I figured that was it for any promotion but, no, a few weeks later word came that I was being promoted (must have been Pat’s cooking). The only lasting negative impact of my mistake came from Ron. Every time he and I met he would start off, “John, do you remember that roundabout in Leeds…..” and he would proceed to tell everyone within earshot about my faux pas.
After some thirty years of this, I told Ron that there had to be a sunset clause on dumb things (pieces of legislation sometimes have a sunset clause saying that if the act isn’t renewed after a set period of time, it expires). Ron just grinned---there was to be no sunset clause.
Here’s Looking at You!
Despite his joy in telling the story about me and the roundabout, Ron and I became good friends. He was an excellent Immigration official and a fine person.
Now, Ron had been badly wounded in World War II and wore a glass eye. Here is a story he liked to tell about the glass eye.
After the war, Ron joined Canadian Immigration and was posted to a number of Immigration offices in the UK. Often, he and his colleagues and friends would drop into a pub after work. Now, there was a custom in some British pubs at that time that if you had to go to the washroom but still had a good bit of beer left in your mug you would say that you had spat in the beer (some people went one step further and actually spat in the beer in front of their friends!) to deter anyone from poaching your beverage.
Ron had a different approach; he would quietly put his glass eye in the beer. His colleagues knew about this and no one touched his beer. One night, however, there was a newcomer at the table. He saw Ron take off for the washroom, saw a good bit of best bitter just sitting there and while the others were distracted by a disturbance at the door, downed Ron’s beer. As the glass eye went down, he gagged and shouted, “What the heck!” (or something similar).
As the saying goes, everything came out OK in the end. Ron wore an eye patch for a few days until nature took its course.
And the newcomer hopefully learned a lesson about how to behave in a pub.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
It was in the early 1990s at the start of the Personal Computer boom, before most of us appreciated the impact PCs were going to have on our lives. My brother Jim and his grandson, Brad, were baking some cookies---Jim was reading the recipe and Brad, about 5 at the time and very much into computers, was mixing the ingredients. Jim read out that they should add a half cup of milk. Brad was looking through the markings on his grandmother’s collection of measuring cups and said, “Is that one, forward slash, two, Granddad?”
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Years ago when even a penny was worth something, a young boy in Arthur was getting ready for Sunday school. His mother gave him two nickels, saying, “One is for God--- put it on the collection plate at the Sunday school---and the other is for you---get some candy on the way home”.
The little boy started off but he had to stop on the way to study water running down a grate in the road. Suddenly, one of the nickels slipped from his hand and fell down the grate. The boy started to cry.
A passerby asked what the trouble was.
The boy sobbed, “God’s nickel fell down the drain”.
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I better start this story with a bit of background for readers of this blog who weren’t around in the 1970s and 1980s. During that period, it was common to hang a round, blue disk in the toilet tank. When one flushed the tank, the toilet filled with blue water. The disk was supposed to disinfect and deodorize, but didn’t in fact do much of either.
Now the story.
Jean-Riel, the son of one of our Ottawa neighbours, was a bright lad but very quiet in class. When the teacher asked a question he left it to others to answer. Perhaps he was shy or bored, or just didn’t want to be tagged as a know-it-all---who knows.
His Grade One teacher was telling the class about colours and how they could be mixed to produce other colours.
“We haven’t studied this yet, but does anyone know what colours you mix to get green?’
There was silence, no hands came up.
Finally, Jean-Riel raised his hand.
The surprised teacher said, “You know the answer, Jean-Riel?”
“Blue and yellow”.
The even-more surprised teacher said, “That’s right, how do you know that?”
“Well, my Mom puts blue stuff in the toilet and when I pee the water turns green.”
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
NEXT SUNDAY
Watch for some Christmas stories from our universe in next Sunday’s Letter from Virgil.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
POSTING # 3
POSTING # 3: Canada Geese Drop in on Virgil, Waiting for a Woman in Amman, The World’s Greatest Vodka, Falling into a Storm Sewer in Kuala Lumpur, Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Canada Geese Drop in on Virgil
Our home backs onto a large park, and this week a huge flock of Canada Geese used it as a rest stop on their way south.
Now, I happen to like Canada Geese but I know they have their detractors.
Golfers hate them---remember the story of a angry golfer who killed a goose with his putter after the goose had swallowed his ball.
Airline pilots fear them---a goose can smash the windshield or demolish an engine.
Farmers get angry about the damage to their crops.
And people strolling in parks complain about the amount of goose poop---it is certainly true that geese poop frequently and copiously.
I guess what I like about these geese is the skill, dedication and, yes, love they show in raising their young. I enjoy watching the parents take 6 or 8 gosling for a trip on the water or land. The male leads the way while the mother stays back watching for goslings who try to goof off. You can almost hear her saying, “For goodness sake Herbie and Freda, get back in line!”
And when the family is feeding, one of the parents always acts as a sentinel, head up watching for dogs, hawks and other predators.
Male geese can be aggressive in defending their young---just ask a dog that has been battered by a flurry of goose wings---and also very competitive over food and mating.
We were wondering how the males managed to forego all that aggressiveness and competitiveness and become cooperative with others during migration. A biologist friend told us that nature had found a way to turn the males into more cooperative beings. As migration time approaches, the male birds’ testes shrink and they produce less testosterone. After the migration south and back north is completed, the testes grow back to their original size, ready for another round of breeding.
It seems to me that there may be a Nobel Peace Prize for some scientist who can figure out how to use the Canada Goose technique to reduce human testosterone levels during perilous times of economic, military and political challenges.
Just a thought.
Waiting for a Woman in Amman
A driver had picked me up at my hotel in Amman, Jordan to take me to an Embassy reception. First, we had to pick up a Canadian official at another hotel.
The driver checked the lobby but there was no sign of the woman official. He settled back into the van.
“Women are always late”, he said.
“You better not let your wife hear you say that.”
“My wife! I have three wives.”
“Oh.”
As we waited for the official, he told me the story of his three wives. He married his first wife but after a number of years there were no children.
He decided to take a second wife but didn’t divorce his first wife. She stayed in their apartment and he found another apartment for the new wife. He said that, as his religion required, he divided his time equally between the two wives.
A few years passed but there were still no children. He decided to take a third wife, and rented yet another apartment for her. He said that it was easier for his Bedouin cousins who lived in the desert---when they took another wife, they just had to buy another tent.
It was a case of third time lucky and they had a boy and a girl who were now 14 and 12 and, as he said proudly, both healthy and bright. He had hoped that they would be able to go to college or university but he was worried that there wouldn’t be enough money for tuition. Costs of everything were rising and it was expensive to maintain three homes. He was a veteran and the government had a modest program to help the children of veterans. And if the children did well in their exams they might win full scholarships but the chances of that were not great---competition was very tough.
The driver shook his head, “I don’t know what is going to happen”.
Just then the official arrived---she had been on the phone to Canada---and we set off for the reception.
Our discussion was in 2001 and while the cost of living in Amman was rising then, it has soared since the start of the Iraq war in 2003. I often wonder what happened to the driver, his three wives and the two children, who would now be 21 and 19.
The World’s Greatest Vodka
Talking of receptions reminds me of the many official dinners my interpreter and I attended as we travelled across Russia during the planning for the creation of model employment offices. Our hosts were always enormously generous with their food---wonderful local and national dishes---and with their vodka.
Prior to the first (of many) toasts, a local official would always tell us that we were about to taste a special local vodka that was clearly the best vodka in Russia, and therefore, of course, in the world.
At one of the dinners, I playfully asked about the criteria that Russians used in judging different vodkas. The usual response was, “Well, you just know”, but I would persist that we had to be more scientific; we had to isolate the key criteria. The question provoked a lot of good natured bantering and my interpreter and I used the question at many of our dinners.
After lord knows how many dinners and how many toasts, here are the criteria that great vodka must meet:
1. Clarity. It should be as clear as fresh water.
2. Smell. There should be no smell.
3. Taste. It should have a clean taste, not oily.
4. It should go down the throat smoothly, not burn on the way down.
5. There should be no headache the next day.
6. It should affect the legs before the head----after many toasts one can still talk even though one can’t walk.
7. Finally, if the vodka is really good, and there is enough, one no longer needs an interpreter.
The criteria for vodka served us well, breaking the ice and getting conversations flowing.
There was another gambit we used to break the ice. Almost all the dinners involved a course of borscht---my favourite soup. After praising the soup, I would ask which was right: to put the sour cream in the bowl and pour the soup over it, or to add the sour cream after the soup is in the bowl. And then, the interpreter and I would sit back and listen to the proponents of each argue that the ‘right way, the only way’ is this or that. It was fun.
Falling into a Storm Sewer in Kuala Lumpur
I was in Kuala Lumpur in November 1991 as a consultant to assess the Malaysian Employment Service and prepare a leadership training course for senior managers.
I had arrived on Friday and was using the weekend to tour the city and get over jet lag before my meetings started on Monday. On Saturday, after breakfast, I talked with the hotel staff and they gave me maps and instructions on touring the old part of the city. They said the weather would be fine for touring, sunny and hot, but they warned me that it was the monsoon season and there was likely to be a heavy rain storm in the evening.
I toured the old city and had an early dinner so I could get back to the hotel before a storm hit. Either I miscalculated or the storm came early that Saturday. I had just stepped outside the restaurant when sheets of rain started to fall.
Cities in Malaysia have to have ways of carrying off the heavy rains. In that part of the old city, there was a deep ditch along the front of buildings with slabs of concrete across that created a sidewalk. There was an inch or two gap between the slabs so the water could drain into the ditch. It is an excellent system that serves two purposes, getting rid of the rain and providing a sidewalk for people. Excellent, that is, unless someone steals a slab.
I was walking along, rain running down my face, trying to find a taxi when I stepped onto a slab that wasn’t there. Down I went, hitting my chest against a slab that WAS there and knocking the air out of me. When I caught my breath, I was standing in the ditch with water running past my knees. Some people helped me clamber out and find a taxi.
Soon I was back in the Pan Pacific Hotel checking the damage. Apart from a nasty scrape on the chest and some sore ribs I seemed fine. I had a hot bath, wrote an email to Pat telling her I had fallen into a sewer but was fine and went to bed.
The next morning there was an email from Pat saying that she had told B and B guests at breakfast about my sewer adventure. One of the guests knew Kuala Lumpur well and said that criminals used the storm sewers to dispose of the bodies of their victims---the water flushed them out to sea. Just what Pat needed to hear!
My chest was feeling pretty sore so I called the Canadian High Commission and they recommended a clinic they used to examine potential immigrants to Canada. A kindly doctor checked me over, gave me a tetanus shot and some antibiotic cream for the scrape. She thought my ribs were fine but ordered a chest x-ray to be sure.
The clinic was not used to dealing with tall people. As I stood against the wall, the technician strained to get the x-ray camera up as high as it would go. Finally, she took the picture and I went back to wait for the doctor. After thirty minutes, the doctor called me in. She was laughing, “Look at this”, pointing to my x-ray on the illuminated panel. The image showed the bottom half of my chest.
“You are too tall”, she said.
She felt my ribs again and sent me on my way, saying that if the pain got worse, I should get back to her.
As it turned out, my ribs were fine but I took a lot of ribbing (sorry about that) from colleagues who loved to tell about the consultant who fell into a sewer.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Friends took their toddler to a fine restaurant in Yorkshire. He sat in his high chair, ate well and was charming with the waitress. He then asked if he could get down and walk around a bit. Our friends looked at each other and decided that he had been so good they would let him. The boy wandered down to the back of the restaurant, smiling at the diners and chatting with them. Our friends took a deep breath and relaxed.
Suddenly, there was a muffled but distinct little explosion that came from the toddler. He stopped, felt in his diaper and then shouted, “Dus gas Mommy”.
One of our grand-daughters had received a first bike and she and her dad went shopping for a helmet. The salesperson brought out several models and he and our son talked about size, cushioning, straps etc. Finally, as the salesperson bent down to take another helmet out of a box, our grand-daughter leaned over and whispered to him, “I think I need a red one”.
Another grand-daughter, about three at the time, was shopping with her dad. They got back to the car and he discovered that he had left the keys in the locked car. The little girl sensed there was something wrong, and then the light came on. She gave a world-weary shake of her head, “Not AGAIN, Daddy”
NEXT SUNDAY
Watch for a more stories from our universe in next Sunday’s Letter from Virgil.
Canada Geese Drop in on Virgil
Our home backs onto a large park, and this week a huge flock of Canada Geese used it as a rest stop on their way south.
Now, I happen to like Canada Geese but I know they have their detractors.
Golfers hate them---remember the story of a angry golfer who killed a goose with his putter after the goose had swallowed his ball.
Airline pilots fear them---a goose can smash the windshield or demolish an engine.
Farmers get angry about the damage to their crops.
And people strolling in parks complain about the amount of goose poop---it is certainly true that geese poop frequently and copiously.
I guess what I like about these geese is the skill, dedication and, yes, love they show in raising their young. I enjoy watching the parents take 6 or 8 gosling for a trip on the water or land. The male leads the way while the mother stays back watching for goslings who try to goof off. You can almost hear her saying, “For goodness sake Herbie and Freda, get back in line!”
And when the family is feeding, one of the parents always acts as a sentinel, head up watching for dogs, hawks and other predators.
Male geese can be aggressive in defending their young---just ask a dog that has been battered by a flurry of goose wings---and also very competitive over food and mating.
We were wondering how the males managed to forego all that aggressiveness and competitiveness and become cooperative with others during migration. A biologist friend told us that nature had found a way to turn the males into more cooperative beings. As migration time approaches, the male birds’ testes shrink and they produce less testosterone. After the migration south and back north is completed, the testes grow back to their original size, ready for another round of breeding.
It seems to me that there may be a Nobel Peace Prize for some scientist who can figure out how to use the Canada Goose technique to reduce human testosterone levels during perilous times of economic, military and political challenges.
Just a thought.
Waiting for a Woman in Amman
A driver had picked me up at my hotel in Amman, Jordan to take me to an Embassy reception. First, we had to pick up a Canadian official at another hotel.
The driver checked the lobby but there was no sign of the woman official. He settled back into the van.
“Women are always late”, he said.
“You better not let your wife hear you say that.”
“My wife! I have three wives.”
“Oh.”
As we waited for the official, he told me the story of his three wives. He married his first wife but after a number of years there were no children.
He decided to take a second wife but didn’t divorce his first wife. She stayed in their apartment and he found another apartment for the new wife. He said that, as his religion required, he divided his time equally between the two wives.
A few years passed but there were still no children. He decided to take a third wife, and rented yet another apartment for her. He said that it was easier for his Bedouin cousins who lived in the desert---when they took another wife, they just had to buy another tent.
It was a case of third time lucky and they had a boy and a girl who were now 14 and 12 and, as he said proudly, both healthy and bright. He had hoped that they would be able to go to college or university but he was worried that there wouldn’t be enough money for tuition. Costs of everything were rising and it was expensive to maintain three homes. He was a veteran and the government had a modest program to help the children of veterans. And if the children did well in their exams they might win full scholarships but the chances of that were not great---competition was very tough.
The driver shook his head, “I don’t know what is going to happen”.
Just then the official arrived---she had been on the phone to Canada---and we set off for the reception.
Our discussion was in 2001 and while the cost of living in Amman was rising then, it has soared since the start of the Iraq war in 2003. I often wonder what happened to the driver, his three wives and the two children, who would now be 21 and 19.
The World’s Greatest Vodka
Talking of receptions reminds me of the many official dinners my interpreter and I attended as we travelled across Russia during the planning for the creation of model employment offices. Our hosts were always enormously generous with their food---wonderful local and national dishes---and with their vodka.
Prior to the first (of many) toasts, a local official would always tell us that we were about to taste a special local vodka that was clearly the best vodka in Russia, and therefore, of course, in the world.
At one of the dinners, I playfully asked about the criteria that Russians used in judging different vodkas. The usual response was, “Well, you just know”, but I would persist that we had to be more scientific; we had to isolate the key criteria. The question provoked a lot of good natured bantering and my interpreter and I used the question at many of our dinners.
After lord knows how many dinners and how many toasts, here are the criteria that great vodka must meet:
1. Clarity. It should be as clear as fresh water.
2. Smell. There should be no smell.
3. Taste. It should have a clean taste, not oily.
4. It should go down the throat smoothly, not burn on the way down.
5. There should be no headache the next day.
6. It should affect the legs before the head----after many toasts one can still talk even though one can’t walk.
7. Finally, if the vodka is really good, and there is enough, one no longer needs an interpreter.
The criteria for vodka served us well, breaking the ice and getting conversations flowing.
There was another gambit we used to break the ice. Almost all the dinners involved a course of borscht---my favourite soup. After praising the soup, I would ask which was right: to put the sour cream in the bowl and pour the soup over it, or to add the sour cream after the soup is in the bowl. And then, the interpreter and I would sit back and listen to the proponents of each argue that the ‘right way, the only way’ is this or that. It was fun.
Falling into a Storm Sewer in Kuala Lumpur
I was in Kuala Lumpur in November 1991 as a consultant to assess the Malaysian Employment Service and prepare a leadership training course for senior managers.
I had arrived on Friday and was using the weekend to tour the city and get over jet lag before my meetings started on Monday. On Saturday, after breakfast, I talked with the hotel staff and they gave me maps and instructions on touring the old part of the city. They said the weather would be fine for touring, sunny and hot, but they warned me that it was the monsoon season and there was likely to be a heavy rain storm in the evening.
I toured the old city and had an early dinner so I could get back to the hotel before a storm hit. Either I miscalculated or the storm came early that Saturday. I had just stepped outside the restaurant when sheets of rain started to fall.
Cities in Malaysia have to have ways of carrying off the heavy rains. In that part of the old city, there was a deep ditch along the front of buildings with slabs of concrete across that created a sidewalk. There was an inch or two gap between the slabs so the water could drain into the ditch. It is an excellent system that serves two purposes, getting rid of the rain and providing a sidewalk for people. Excellent, that is, unless someone steals a slab.
I was walking along, rain running down my face, trying to find a taxi when I stepped onto a slab that wasn’t there. Down I went, hitting my chest against a slab that WAS there and knocking the air out of me. When I caught my breath, I was standing in the ditch with water running past my knees. Some people helped me clamber out and find a taxi.
Soon I was back in the Pan Pacific Hotel checking the damage. Apart from a nasty scrape on the chest and some sore ribs I seemed fine. I had a hot bath, wrote an email to Pat telling her I had fallen into a sewer but was fine and went to bed.
The next morning there was an email from Pat saying that she had told B and B guests at breakfast about my sewer adventure. One of the guests knew Kuala Lumpur well and said that criminals used the storm sewers to dispose of the bodies of their victims---the water flushed them out to sea. Just what Pat needed to hear!
My chest was feeling pretty sore so I called the Canadian High Commission and they recommended a clinic they used to examine potential immigrants to Canada. A kindly doctor checked me over, gave me a tetanus shot and some antibiotic cream for the scrape. She thought my ribs were fine but ordered a chest x-ray to be sure.
The clinic was not used to dealing with tall people. As I stood against the wall, the technician strained to get the x-ray camera up as high as it would go. Finally, she took the picture and I went back to wait for the doctor. After thirty minutes, the doctor called me in. She was laughing, “Look at this”, pointing to my x-ray on the illuminated panel. The image showed the bottom half of my chest.
“You are too tall”, she said.
She felt my ribs again and sent me on my way, saying that if the pain got worse, I should get back to her.
As it turned out, my ribs were fine but I took a lot of ribbing (sorry about that) from colleagues who loved to tell about the consultant who fell into a sewer.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Friends took their toddler to a fine restaurant in Yorkshire. He sat in his high chair, ate well and was charming with the waitress. He then asked if he could get down and walk around a bit. Our friends looked at each other and decided that he had been so good they would let him. The boy wandered down to the back of the restaurant, smiling at the diners and chatting with them. Our friends took a deep breath and relaxed.
Suddenly, there was a muffled but distinct little explosion that came from the toddler. He stopped, felt in his diaper and then shouted, “Dus gas Mommy”.
One of our grand-daughters had received a first bike and she and her dad went shopping for a helmet. The salesperson brought out several models and he and our son talked about size, cushioning, straps etc. Finally, as the salesperson bent down to take another helmet out of a box, our grand-daughter leaned over and whispered to him, “I think I need a red one”.
Another grand-daughter, about three at the time, was shopping with her dad. They got back to the car and he discovered that he had left the keys in the locked car. The little girl sensed there was something wrong, and then the light came on. She gave a world-weary shake of her head, “Not AGAIN, Daddy”
NEXT SUNDAY
Watch for a more stories from our universe in next Sunday’s Letter from Virgil.
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