Clear to The Stratosphere

Robert the Bruce and Tim the Enchanter enjoy a good argument. As I do. But for some reason it seems they have to beat me up in order to set me straight.

If I didn't get a reaction to my posts I would soon assume I'm wasting my time. I'm not saying I would stop doing it but a response means people are reading what I have to say and that is the purpose.

Still, I'm not inclined to let folk come ower ma door and into ma ain hoose and thump me to prove a point. First because it 'll no dae, ye ken and second because it's my space. I have control.

I just obliterated three spurts of venom from Evalina MacEachern who doesn't sign her name of course. But all people, and they are legion, who have received communications from Evalina recognize her style. Plus the fact she is always up and at her computer around the witching hour of twelve midnight when she does it. First we recognise the style , then we check the time, and ...Oh Yes, Evalina again. The blunter her expletives, the rounder my chuckle. I scored again.

Elizabeth Bishenden makes some good points about our love affair with the car. An argument is always better when there is logic on both sides.

I just bought an electric scooter. I rented one a year ago for the street sale and thoroughly enjoyed it. I knew it would be useful and fun to have. Still it took me a year to think about it and a sale with 25% reduction to buy one.

I am wheeling on sidewalks I haven't been on for more than forty years. Last time,I was pushing a pram with two or three young ones beside me. Sometimes when we went to the park,I felt like the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Kids came down driveways all down the street and joined us in a cavalcade.

Now it's like discovering a new town. When our subdivision was new ,there were few trees and no gardens. Everything was pretty bare. Looking at the same properties now is like a miracle has happened. The gardens are spectacular and owners all over have done beautiful things to their homes .And there is blessed shade. Forty years ago, it was like crossing a desert.

The scents of the spring flowering shrubs and trees fill the air.There's something special about getting out . I used to take one of the bicycles out at six in the morning. I'd ride from our house up to the abandoned orchard at the north end of town and sit on a tree stump and look down on the town. Wimpey built Orchard Heights there.

We sometimes walked across the fields south of Henderson Drive on a Sunday morning to the railway and sat on a hill and waited for the train to go by. One time, we saw a circus train with decorated animal cages.We shouted and cheered. Tamarack was developed there more than twenty years ago.

I grew up in a society where nobody knew anybody who had a car. We walked. Leather soled shoes wore right through to a hole.And then they might be stuffed with cardboard.

I remember walking to Mass at six o'clock one Christmas morning before going to work. Myself my sister and a couple of other sisters the same age who lived across the street. Each of us swore we had identified the Star that only appeared on Christmas Day.

Well...we were kids walking to church on a cold, dark, special morning with nothing to see but a sky full of stars over our heads. Obviously, we were good mystical Catholics.

There's a whole other world out there when you're not in a car.

I love my car as much as anybody. Its wheels are my wings. I can think of a dozen reasons why it might be necessary to take the car to the station. I just think that sometimes the easiest and most obvious solution is not necessarily the best.

Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.