-by Frank MacDonald
Last summer there was a drought that lasted from mid-June into autumn. Wells all across the county went dry, gardens wilted. In a conservation effort people stopped washing behind their ears.
While the drought ravaged what would normally be fresh vegetables and autumn’s preserves, it did have a politician’s smile. Every day was a beach day, a distraction from the damage of global warming, a good place to campaign.
The Inverness beach, the one I grew up on, possessed sand dunes upon which Lawrence of Arabia could have been filmed. That was a lifetime ago, of course. But in a rundown and flat-broke former coal mining town, our beach was our greatest secret.
The beach today, which many visitors ohh and ahhh over, is a shadow of its former self to many of the town’s oldest memories. But it is a beach almost unrecognizable also because it now hosts Woodstock-sized crowds. Finding a place to place one’s towel is a grim real estate story.
We have come out of…or are still coming out of…a winter so deep in snow that melt in the Highlands is swelling rivers and streams, hopefully lifting the tidal level of rivers and brooks and rural wells, an element that can turn this year’s gardens and farms into a much more vitamin-enriched harvest. And hopefully help farmers become at least enriched enough to fend off last year’s losses.
Such are the wandering of a retired mind trapped between memories and maybes. And maybe this summer I won’t need to hesitate before trying out the garden hose.
About that hose!
It is roughly 20 years old, and spent most of last winter curled up under about five feet of snow because I never got around to putting it in the shed. This wouldn’t be the first winter I mis-treated, neglected, or forgot about that hose. It has been a good and faithful servant though, as it will say on its gold watch when I retire it. When…
The hose is still relatively leak-free and showed itself to be my willing accomplice when I hooked it up, turned on the water, and began watering the bird bath, as well as the flowers and weeds which I have never learnt to distinguish from each other.
Still, I can’t change the fact that the hose is old. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a new one, which means watching television ads. This is certainly to be the season for advertising garden hoses. Sometimes a single tv sitcom can advertise six different hoses during one episode, each one claiming superiority over all others.
Like muscle trucks and hamburger ads, each hose is the greatest thing since sliced bread. (I never lived in the world before sliced bread so I just take their word for it.)
This week, I watched an ad for a garden hose that advertises itself as bullet-proof.
Bulletproof!
This ad is probably the truest statement ever to appear in advertising. It is a conscientious ad, one that acknowledges the risks involved in trying to live to an decent age in this 21st century.
What I imagine while watching this ad, are parents trying to raise children through the age of air fryers, artificial intelligence, and drive-by shootings. Assuming I had a little tax deduction of my own running around the house, screaming to go outside and play, I would allow him that liberty. But not before we went out into the yard together where I could wrap the bullet-proof hose tightly around his vulnerable body to fend off stray wasps and/or bullets. (Maybe the company should scale up its bulletproof hose offering, make it long enough to encase your house.)
What if, though, the rain decides to pass us by again? In that uneasy weather pattern, a neighbour decides that you are watering your garden too heavily with the very water he plans to use for a shower. If your thirsty lilies and lupins don’t drink it all up first, that is!
Maybe he decides that your armoured hose has to go, and pumps it full of pellets. Or, what if he lifts his 30.30 down from its rack of deer antlers and decides to blow your offending hose to Kingdom Come! If you are still holding it at the time, Welcome to Kingdom Come!
I live on a street in a small town filled with quiet, friendly neighbours who keep mostly to themselves. None have ever given me cause for concern. But I’ve watched news coverage from other places mourning the shooting death of a neighbouring family. Always, survivors describe the gun-toting neighbour as “…a quiet, friendly neighbour who kept mostly to himself…”
How does one protect himself?
I saw an advertisement in a newspaper’s Arts & Crafts section offering courses in basket weaving. I am going to sign up, order about a mile and a half of bulletproof hoses, and weave a basket capable of holding this house, this lot, and this guy who lives inside it. Keeping one’s self bulletproof may be the surest way to ensure you can cash your next pension cheque.