4 ~ Friday, August 6, 1993 - North Shore News

ont lines of life

DEAR NOEL Wright: My
dear Noel, there is no way
thai | would provoke you
into a debate.

As the old joke of around 50
years ago had it: I'd engage in a
battle of wits with you, but I’m
only half-armed,

As my brilliant colleague Jamie
Lantd says: ‘Tl may be a newspa-
perman, but I’m not stupid.”*

Your brilliant riposte, Noel, to
my gaily chattering little piece of
inconsequential fluff of two weeks
ago has left me thrown back on
the divan with a pale hand on my
forehead, fanning myself deli-
cately like a Victorian gentlelady
who has just caught her first
glimpse of an uncovered male leg.
Of course in my case it could be
the surprise at the startling ap-
pearance of the sun.

1 don’t have to explain the ex-
change of columns of which |
speak, since surveys have shown

Trevor
cautery

i

SS i

GARDEN OF BIASES

or less unnoticed.

Ten days ago our Mr. Wright
destroyed this ramshackle edifice
of brittle words with one casual
swing of his literary ball.

CT SER NATE ee

‘Gd Mr. Wright destroyed this ramshackle
edifice of brittle words with one casual swing
of his literary ball. 99

that Noel and I are neck-and-

neck with 122% of North Shore

News readers, including the 22%

who find us so compelling that
they read us twice.

. However, summer always brings
a few tourists who have not yet
had the privilege of reading the
News, so for them I dash quickly
through the background to our
brief and, on my part, entirely
respectful swordplay.

Two weeks ago I made the
egregious error of declaring that I
was not embracing with unalloyed
enthusiasm the prospect of, ah,
senior citizenship, with its shrink-
age of the old family homestead
into the one-bedroom condo, its
replacement of honest toil with the
sentence of eternal golf and
equally eternal cruises — torture
to the seasick, like me — and an...
empty nest where once the little
fledglings of children once smiled
up from the crib and filled their
diapers.

i This false freedom of, um, the
mature years, I rashly asserted,

this sitting in God’s waiting room,

no, matter how expensively
disguised, held small appeal to the
undersigned. oo
To be both childless and func-
tionless, said I; even in the case of
the healthiest and wealthiest of the
retired (awful word), is merely ex-
posing one’s flesh to the scythe
and steeling oneself for the
remorseless approach of the blade.
‘l was aware that this simpering
little piece was as weak in Chris-
tian apologetics as it was in
humor. But | hoped to slip it by
with its jerrybuilt polemics more

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I especially rejoiced, even
cackled loudly about, Noel’s
prescription for diverting the
noises that journey through the *
typical thin-walled condo: just ,
turn down one’s hearing aid. -

1 also shrieked uncontrollably at
his advice for forestalling eager
bridge-players in their relentless
search for new victims: simply use
the Wright Convention, which is
to ignore your partner’s subtly
frantic signals and bid seven no-
trump every time. | :

And I felt an upward surge of:
heart that occurs whenever anyone
underestimates our age by a de-
cade or two, when Noel implied
that] was just a kid when I got
seasick'on the bounding Atlantic
in 1954, Noel, Noel, I was 19
when I sailed eastward and 20
when | sailed westward. I grovel
with gratitude that you assume
that the youthful face peering out
at readers (see accompanying
brand-new photo) must have been

situated above knee-pants in 1954,
J admit, Noel (and my 122%
readership), that | was influenced
when indeed very young — a
teenager, how long ago! — by
Stephen Leacock's great essay,

Three Score and Ten.

Canada's greatest humorist was
privately devastated when he was
forcibly retired as a McGill Uni-
versity economics professor. At 70
he described old age as ‘the ‘front
line’ of life, moving into No
Man's Land.’* And he wryly
traced his advancing age through
the appelations of life: from being
called ‘ittle main” to ‘sonny’ to
“mister”? and onward. Wrote
Leack: ‘*f can still recall the thrill
of pride I felt when a Pullman
porter first called me ‘doctor’ and
when another raised me to
‘judge,’ and then the terrible
shock it was when a taxi man
swung open his door and said,
‘Step right in, dad.’ ”’

That, Noel, says it all.

But no? quite. And not for all
of us.

T assure you that when | wrote
my imprudent little screed two
weeks ago, I would never have
thought of you.

That would have crushed my
silly impulse forthwith.

For you, at 75, remain as fresh
as your prose.

Far from fitting the profile of
the jobless and the unproductive,
you are still diligently at work —
how happy the writer, yea, even
the journalist, for whom there is
no date ‘‘when time runs down
and no-more-time begins’’! —
and you have a fresh new mar-
tiage. How better to stare the
Grim Reaper square in the eye,
and tell the Great Timekeeper
where to stuff his hourglass!

And is it possible, you old
rascal, that we may yet live long
enough to read of the patter of
new little Wright feet, hmmm?

Yes, Noel, you are living the
only wise way: as if life is im-
mortal, and we ourselves are gods.

I praise you unreservedly, and
would follow your every word of
advice.

Except this.

You recommend that I cultivate
“clean living and a tolerant
outlook.’’

My dear Noel, you ask too, too

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WV store waits for hearing

WEST VANCOUVER'S Home
Hardware store, which burned
down in June, is ready to rise
from the ashes as soon as local
municipal council says the
word,

For the lack of one parking
space at the 1750 Marine Drive
location, owners of the prop-
erly will wait for a pubiic
hearing, September 7, before
they can go ahead with a pro-
posed new commercial and
residential building.

Coun. Rod Day told the last
summer meeting of West
Vancouver District! Council,
July 28, that the local advisory

design pane! is pleased with the
plans for the development.

The building features a
curved and glassed-in front
and rear, with the hardware
store on the main floor and
four residential units above,

Day said the need for a
public meeting could be waived
if the question of the one
missing parking spot. was ‘ad-
dressed.

But West Vancouver planner
Steve Nicholls said that it is
council policy to hold a
meeting when a new building is
proposed.

ing a docent is fun, educational
and gratifying.

f you enjoy
teaching children and

of English, why not
volunteer as a docent?

We are recruiting now for fall programs in Northwest Coast ‘Native

Culture, Archacology and Local History.

You must be available week days for 2 to 3 hours per week, from

October to the end of April. Training begins early in September

but enroll in the program now by phoning the ;
VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR AT 736-4431