Poem: Salamander

 

A bright orange salamander silently slithers

the length of the soft-pink stone-chip wall,

making faster speed than I could in this heat.

 

I sit, staring, mesmerized by this costumed athlete,

this splendid natural explosion of colour,

this distraction from the dull monochrome of my life.

 

With a desperate reluctance, I crack open the velcro

ties that bind me to the lizard, drawing back my focus

to include my companion and the unfinished wine.

 

“Let’s review where we are,” she says. “Yes,

let’s do that,” I reply from a distance, forgetting

where we’ve been in this conversation and why.

 

She clears her throat and continues:  “You and I

seem to be headed nowhere, neh?”    She pauses,

examining me for confirmation.  Perhaps I nod.

 

“As a couple, I mean.  We have to come to terms

with that.  We have to face the true nature of our failure

you and I.  We are not meant to be, that’s the point.”

 

I say: “I see.”   I feel her eyes burning me, expecting more.

Across the street, the afternoon shoppers flow in and out

of department stores and groceries and fish merchants.

 

“Well?” she presses.  “Am I right?  What do you think?”

I sip the wine, close both my eyes, and imagine

the cool cave where the salamander rests.

 

 

On Being Seventy-Three

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Today is my birthday, which I share with Bob Ross, Joseph Goebbels, and the ballpoint pen.

I am seventy-three years old.   Just saying that feels unreal.  When I was born in 1949, average life expectancy for a man in the UK was about 65 years; I have somehow managed to beat that.

I am part of the generation that didn’t trust anyone over thirty, and who made terribly dangerous choices on a regular basis throughout their thirties and forties. By the 1990s, what with all the drugs and the booze and the carousing, I was certain I couldn’t possibly reach fifty, and I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to.

Now, I have kids in their late forties, grand-children in their thirties, and I am sure that great-grand-children can’t be far away.

The fact that I am still here, walking and talking and pretending (to myself at least) to be young, is astonishing, a wonder, a miracle of modern medicine, and a tribute to the Everloving who takes such good care of me.

My future keeps catching up to my present and I hope it keeps doing so for a long time.  After all, I have promised myself my first ever Big Mac on my one hundredth birthday!

Image: Self Sequence

Night Music: Back To Black

Happy 100th Magnet Hardware!

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Magnet Hardware, which currently operates as a Home Hardware franchise on the corner of Commercial & Graveley, has been in business for exactly 100 years today. Magnet originally opened on 28^th October 1922 “in the gallery of the Cal Van Market” at 25 Hastings Street. By early 1923, the business was located at 1515 Commercial Drive.

Magnet was owned and operated by Allan P. Squires who had been a salesman at Terminal Hardware. Twenty-two years later, in September 1944, Squires decided to retire and sold the business to Fred Ross, a new arrival from Edmonton. At the time of the sale, the Highland Echo said that Magnet was a perfect example of the Commercial Drive way: starting out small and building to a substantial business.

In June 1954 he sold Magnet to E.J. “Ted” Walker, also from Edmonton, due to Mrs. Ross’s ill health; and Ross sold it on to local former-Alderman Syd Bowman in 1955.

The store and building were severely damaged in a fire on 5^th April 1963 shortly after Bowman left that night sometime after 9pm. Bowman rebuilt as quickly as he could, closing the store during weekdays for renovations, but opening on Saturdays for a fire sale. It re-opened on 20 June 1963 with “a brand-new interior, new stock and plenty of enthusiasm.”

In July 1964 Bowman sold the business to Sam Buonassisi who had been a successful entrepreneurial carpenter before buying Magnet. In 1972 the business took over the old Royal Bank branch at 1575 Commercial where it remains. They appear to have joined the Home Hardware group in 1994.

When Sam died in 2020, his son-in-law Ed Wilkerson took over the store and he manages it to this day.

Image: Greenspace #5

Night Music: Midnight Train To Georgia

Image: Capsicum Chaos

Poem: Magnetic North

 

 

You are magnetic north;

All my paths converge on you.

 

You are the tropics;

my Cancer and my Capricorn.

 

You are the forests;

the leafy groves where my dreams dwell.

 

You are the mountains,

with heights I could not imagine.

 

You are the seven seas;

I bob on your waves and tides.

 

You are the equator;

the widest part of my existence.

You are my world.

 

Shubh Diwali 2022

Image: False Creek #1

Happy 6,026th Birthday World!

According to the calculations of Archbishop Usher of Armargh, today is the earth’s birthday.  His calculations led him to believe that God created the world on October 23rd, 4004 BC.

Now, there are those who say his math is wrong, but let’s not quibble on our birthday!

Night Music: Walk On By

Thirteen Years Of Freedom

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Thirteen years ago today, I was called into my boss’s office and told that I was being laid off.

The locally-owned company where I had worked for a good many years had been taken over by a larger American group earlier that year, and they wanted to put their own people into senior management positions.  I wasn’t the first or even fourth senior manager to be sent packing, and I had expected this meeting all through the summer. I was almost sixty years old and bored with working for someone else. When the hammer fell, I was greatly relieved and happily accepted the generous severance pay they offered.

Luckily, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the first part of my enforced retirement. I was keen to write a history of Commercial Drive and over the next fifteen months, that’s what I did.  Along with this I helped establish the Grandview Heritage Group which kept me busy and interested.  At the same time, I wanted to become a lot more involved in local politics, knowing that a Community Plan was about to be thrust upon us.  Any regular reader of this blog will know that I was and remain deeply involved in those matters to this day.

The Community Plan experience led to my third book Battleground: Grandview which was published last November, and the Heritage Group has allowed me to continue my focus on writing about the history of Commercial Drive.

So, I have been busy these last thirteen years.  But the genuine sense of freedom has been the really exhilarating feeling. I wake up when I want, dress in whatever I want, spend time with the Everloving, cook, take long luxurious naps, read, write, and relax.  We certainly don’t have the money we had when I was working, but we get by OK, and I’ll swap the money for such freedom any day.

It has been a grand thirteen years, and I quietly thank my old firm for laying me off when they did.

Image: Egg Playing With Cat

Aberfan: The Death of Childhood

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Today is the 56th anniversary of one of the saddest days of my young life. A rain-soaked and ill-sited colliery spoil tip that loomed over the south Wales village of Aberfan collapsed, burying houses and a school, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Lessons had just begun for the morning when the 34m tip spilled 140,000 cubic yards of spoil into the village.

I didn’t know any of the victims, and had not even heard of the village until that morning. But I remember weeping as the news came over the radio, and I am tearing up now as I type this.

The National Coal Board and several employees were found to be responsible, and money was raised. But nothing could replace the lives that were lost due to management’s callous disregard for public safety.

Night Music: Annie Lennox’s “Whiter Shade of Pale”

Image: Coming In

Night Music: Gambia

The Drive: The Birth of a Community

I have today published a new article:  “The Drive: Birth of a Community, 1901-1907” which can be found at The Drive: Birth of a Community (1901-1907) (grandviewheritagegroup.ca)

This is the third chapter in a proposed history of Commercial Drive.  The previous chapters were:

The Drive: In The Beginning (grandviewheritagegroup.ca)

The Drive 1890s: False Start (grandviewheritagegroup.ca)

I hope you find it of interest