Ride Out of Town on a Rail

 

Victoria Regina Imperatrix

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“We are not amused”

It is the last Monday before the twenty fifth day of May, and that can mean only one thing; it is time for Canadians to head for cottages, open pools, fire up the BBQ and above all crack a “two four” of beer open.

Today is Victoria Day. Traditionally it is a day for the colonists to celebrate our contacts with Mother England, give a hardy three cheers for the Empire, and above all standardize the birthday of our reigning monarch to a sort of movable feast at the beginning of summer, thus giving us an excuse to get more than a little tipsy. “Rule Britannia” I say!

I’m sure in it’s earliest form, the Canadian celebration of Victoria Day would have found favour in her eyes. All tea, cucumber sandwiches and sticky buns, rounded up with a full chorus of “God Save the Queen” and the blaze of fireworks. Todays celebrations, while retaining the fireworks, is much more a rite of emerging from the depth of Canada’s winter. We’ve been pent up inside for countless months in the North American deep freeze and it’s time to crawl out of our parkas and soak up some sun, fun, and an inordinate amount of alcohol.

Loyal we remain to our Commonwealth heritage, but I’m not so sure that the namesake of this fete of the monarchy would be amused by how we do it now. 

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They also serve who sit and wait….

 

Nature or Nurture?

How do we account for the eccentricities in our lives? Are they the results of the random joining and recombinations of genetic material, or are they leaned during our formative years by our close observations of our immediate surroundings? I don’t have the answers to these questions. Perhaps if I had paid closer attention to the study of biology and psychology I might give it a shot, but sadly my interests in school were of a more limited concern – namely beer and pizza. All I have to offer is some anecdotal observation from my own experience, and it’s a little scary.

… I have become my Grandmother…

In every family there is the obvious identification with an ancestor. We have our Mother’s eyes, we have our Father’s hair, we have a host of physical and behavioural traits too numourus to enumerate that binds us to our families. Some of these traits lie dormant, like Cold War era Soviet sleeper agents, waiting to execute thier orders the moment they are activated. In my case, the sleeper has awoken and I have become my Grandmother.

Grandmother was the chief matriarch of a family that knew enough to listen to it’s women. Churchillian in her determination, will, and capacity to bring about her policies, she guided the family from her husband’s death in the late 1950s until her extremely ripe old age. These however, are not the qualities I inherited. Rather, I have grafted, seemingly unconsciously, her penchant for thrift. Grandmother’s thrift was manifested primarily in the reuse of the common tea bag. If you wanted a nice cup of tea, it was important to arrive at her house early in the day. The tea bags would be fresh. By the middle of the afternoon, the self same tea bags from the morning would have been used three or four times over again. That was some weak ass tea let me assure you.

In my case the trait has evolved from tea to coffee. I grind enough coffee for an individual cup each morning. I use a manual hand cranked contraption from the 1920s and I have a reusable one cup drip filter that sits on top of the cup. Add steaming hot water and soon a cup of caffeinated nirvana is obtained. When I was younger, each cup of java required, nay demanded, its own fresh grinding. As I age, I have discovered that a second, and even third cup of “joe” can be realized by just pouring the boiling water into the filter again. I seem to be OK with this, and that’s what is so surprising. I don’t even notice it any more. If you come over  for coffee at my house, be sure to remind me to grind fresh, unless you like it weak. 

Grandmother, no doubt, would be proud.

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