Eye of the Beholder

I’m taking a break from the Jordan Saga to bring you a brief report from the confines of my Real Life. The weather continues dismal, cold and windy, permitting only a forced display of stunted daffodils and unhappy cherry blossoms.

My local newspaper offers the following comfort:

After enduring the coldest winter in 16 years and now persistent below normal temperatures that are chilling what should be spring, Islanders can be excused for asking what gives.

They may not like the answer.

Meteorologists suspect coastal BC is now being nipped by a trend of colder than normal winter temperatures that could last a decade. Or two. Or three.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is a phenomenon of alternating phases in which offshore ocean temperatures tend to run warmer and then colder – for 20 to 30 years at a stretch.

I’ll never be warm again.

The global picture doesn’t look any prettier. Doom and gloom cascade down from all quarters. My favourite British newspaper, The Independent, under the headline Seven Years to Save the World, fills me in on the upcoming G20 Summit:

The agenda is an ambitious one. Beneath all the news hoo-haa about grungy protesters, cancelled police leave, be-suited City workers being told to dress down and even the spectre of a terrorist dirty bomb lies the grim reality of a deepening global financial crisis. The task before the G20 is to rescue the drowning global banking system, rewrite the rules of the financial markets and stop a global recession tuning into a great depression.

Well! As the Chinese like to say when they’re in the mood for showing off their English translation skills – Any clue what’s happened? Lady Macbeth cleaned up on the stock market.

Which reminds me of how Canada originally joined the ranks of what was then the G8, way back in the 70s. Gerald Ford came up to Ottawa one July – his first visit to the Great White North - to complain about something or other and the prime minister (either Trudeau or Joe Who, if memory serves) invited him to play golf. Ford was blown away. He’d set forth armed with skis, a heavy parka and fur-lined gloves only to find nary an igloo in sight. He had to borrow Canadian golf clubs. And they worked! And the Greenside Bar served Budweiser Beer! Montreal had paved roads! He was so impressed he offered us the greatest honour he could think of – membership in the G8. Once you’re in, of course, you can’t get kicked out again unless you do something really naughty. And Canadians are so quietly polite that no one notices when we’re naughty – so our very own Stephen Harper will be in London next week helping to save the world.

The planet really is doomed.

Closer to home, this little gem appeared in my mail box at work yesterday morning:

Dear Employee Services Person,

I suffer from alopecia of the eyebrows and lost all my brows. As I am 64 years old, it is due to menopause and hormonal change. I had my eyebrows tattooed recently as it was getting quite embarrassing. Does my Health Spending Account cover this procedure?

Please advise. Thank you.
Esmerelda

At first I thought my frolicsome colleagues were having me on – but no, truth is always stranger than fiction. I sank to use of a cliché there because the unthinkable has happened. I actually don’t know what to say to Esmerelda. Words fail me. The world may be coming to an end long before its G20-engineered doom overtakes it.

I wonder what she had tattooed. Two lines of exclamation marks? A stand of pine trees? Two rows of little chickadees waiting to dive into a bird bath cunningly stencilled on her cheek? What would you choose to replace your eyebrows? Jesus Murphy. I put that down as an expression of semi-disgusted surprise – a loose equivalent to Good Grief – but I suppose it’s as good a choice as any. And a skilled tattoo artist could make the letters come out even over each eye.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
George Eliot

Off I go to collect my blessing.