I keep running into chaps who want a bridge across to the mainland and want it soon. Is that a good idea? It comes under the heading of “Great Projects,” I think, like the Welland Canal, the immense Churchill dam and of course our continental railroad. From my point of view I cannot see how we can move forward with anything, as no doubt mass marches will take place at the first hint of construction. Politically it is not worth it, I suspect, because which elected official wants to go down in history as the one who exterminated the last “Rocky Mountain gnat” or whatever is the bug of the moment? Also I am not sure anyone can criticize the First Nations without being accused of racism but it seems their agendas change daily as chiefs push their own viewpoints to the forefront. Our well-deserved national guilt about native history will bring decades of misery for all parties concerned. The past cripples the future and almost anything proposed will not be accomplished. I am sure that if we had to start the railroad today, it would never be built. Could one imagine our country without it? British Columbia would not have joined Confederation but for Macdonald’s promise to complete the “thin ribbon of steel” to the West Coast. I fear for the future as we have paralyzed ourselves into a vacuum of “someone is going to be upset.”
On a completely different note, the cats are at it again. Weeks go by with a wall of indifference between us as they invade Kitty’s life and leave me to mine. The one thing I insist on is complete silence when I am writing in my study, usually after a late lunch on Saturdays. If everything goes according to Hoyle I can finish by 5 or 6 p.m., allowing me to wallow in my first martini before Hockey Night in Canada begins. Do you see what I mean? My life has structure and depth when I am left alone. I can write what is expected of me, thereby dodging a phone call from my webmaster, a man of a taciturn outlook who is prone to long calls punctuated only by shallow breathing, which only fill me with more remorse.
All this to say the cats, Pericles and Bertram, decided recently not to play by the well-known articles of home law. At the time of this outrage I was deep into my Roget, looking for a synonym for evil (ominous, wicked, amoral, backsliding, etc.), ironically in the context of my wife’s cats, when my door squeaked open as only Pericles can squeak a door. My stream of thought was forever lost as I bellowed at P that regulations had been breached under Subsection 4, Rule 10004: to wit, no cats after lunch in the study. Did I mention that my mid-afternoon tea and crumpets had just arrived? Well, they had, and as I fulminated at Pericles, Bertram shot through the open window, snatching the top two crumpets, and leaving by the same route. I roared at the now heavily buttered windowsill while Pericles slipped from my grasp and was out the door to no doubt join his pal in a feast.
I rushed to my wife Kitty, who was sitting with friends in our heavy-with-chintz living room, and poured out my heart, looking for justified sympathy. I explained that I had been working on something very complex, a maze of adverbs and adjectives building to a climax, and now it was but mist. It is not possible to describe my feelings when howls of laughter engulfed me, a situation made worse when Pericles appeared, licking his stiffening yellow whiskers. To be laughed at in one’s own castle in front of friends and the miscreant himself was too much. I scampered to my club, where dear Rogers mixed me a stiff one. It is unjust, life.
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