Wednesday was ‘community’ day. That usually means working on the Q-hut (the woodworking shop renovation) but yesterday it meant working on the community ‘Bunkhouse’.

The ‘Bunkhouse’ is like a rustic home with a basic kitchen, wood stove and room for some long tables. It sits close-by the school being only about thirty paces away. The current concept for its use is as a community kitchen of sorts but it is also capable of sleeping a few people up stairs in a pinch. It had a bathroom but then it stopped working……….soooooooooo…..

So, the community group decided to fix the biffy, fix up the kitchen and renovate the areas that were looking a bit tired. After a bit of extended planning, the decision was made to expand the kitchen, make a new bathroom, add a front and rear deck and generally ‘spiff the whole thing up’.

The building currently occupies about 600 sq ft down and another 150 up give or take 10%. When we are done, it will be twice as big downstairs with about 400 feet of deck, 300 of which will be at the front.

Money is no object. There really isn’t any.

For the most part, this is a ‘volunteer’ project. We’ll do this project for (we hope) less than $10,000 including materials, labour and ‘equipping’.

On the face of it, you’d think we might have bitten off more than we can chew. You’d be wrong. This community has rallied together for projects larger than this time and time again. You should see the community-built gymnasium! It is gorgeous and the perfect addition for a school (albeit a small one) situated in a rainforest.

The Bunkhouse is a ‘community’ project. So is the Q-hut. This is a group that works! Well, OK, this is a group that mostly works! I am a member, after all. I try to keep my work to a minimum.

What I find really interesting is this: this is a politically sensitive, close-knit, ‘small village-type’ group that has wrestled with relationship issues for decades and yet, it all gets done and gets done well in the end. Any ruffled feathers here and there are pretty-much forgotten by the next project. It is pretty neat to see in action and even neater to see in hindsight. Their (and increasingly our) history is a good one.

Do we know what we are doing? Of course we know what we are doing! We are paying our dues and being part of the community. Think of it as a country club.

John dropped a couple of prawn traps before he went home yesterday. They were for us. Today we pulled them up from about 300 feet down. Netted about 60+ prawns or three pounds. Sal puts them in a sandwich bag with some water and we freeze them in blocks. In that way, we can have ‘fresh’ prawns every so often.

At book club on Sunday, one of the women took Spanikopita made with nettles (stinging) instead of spinach. I didn’t have any of this but I’ve had nettles before. They are delicious. We decided to get some and went on a hunt for the young, wild spring nettle. Nettles are good for you and good to eat if you catch them in their early spring growth and only harvest the top couple of inches. Lower than that and you will get the ‘stinging’ part.

We found some but there was only ‘buds’ so they are a still a harvest waiting to happen. Of course, we can always load up on Oysters and clams but today was already full with other chores. We left them to lie-in-waiting, too.

Eating off the land is not something I am actually too used to. Blackberries, the odd orchard apple, rarely a fish……….that was about it before we came out here. But ’round these parts folks very much augment their food regimen from the self-grown, locally-farmed and the side-of-the-road if not the actual ‘wild’.

Well, the ‘wild’ is represented by shell-fish and fish but not many people hunt game anymore. Sometimes a guy gets a deer but it is not a regular mainstay for anybody out here, really. Maybe the camo-ATV-beer commercial guy and his buddies from the city go a-hunting every year but it is not so much a routine out here.

But harvesting of sorts is still pretty big. All the berries are picked in season. Not ALL the berries, but all the species of berries are usually partially picked by some people, especially the wine-makers. Mushrooms, of course, but most of us are leery of picking the wrong ones so that is left to a few old-hands mostly. There are wild onions and other edibles that we might recognize but there are many more that we don’t. And many more that few but the aboriginals might recognize. There are special botany tours to learn about them all but we haven’t availed ourselves as yet. Just a matter of time, I think.

We do utilize a bit of seaweed now and then, tho. And, of course, some of the locals have fabulous orchards and gardens so, in that sense, we benefit from the bounty of the land. And then there are our own garden boxes that are beginning to supplement the larder. Local food is an ever increasing portion of our diet. I’d guess at 10%.

It may be more. Because as we use more and more local, fresh, wild and free, we are also using less and less processed, packaged and ‘wrapped’ food. The last time Sal went to Save-on she remarked, “I never would have imagined that I would be missing not only complete aisles but I am actually only shopping around the outside edge! In fact, I am not even using the whole edge! More and more I am simply NOT buying what is on offer here. I probably got 10% from the bulk bins, 60% from the produce section and 20% from the dairy and bakery. Boy have our habits changed!”

And we intend to keep it up.

Fire season is over. Firewood season has just begun. They are related.

Just as soon as we no longer need heat in the house – and that seems to be now, now that we have gone the last few days without a fire – it is time to get the wood in for the next season. We already have some in (left over from last year) but not enough and it is de rigeur to have dry wood when you need it. Nice to have the ‘left over’ for Fall start-up though.

So the rule is: chop now, dry in the summer and burn later. Ideally, we would be a season ahead of ourselves with a season and half of drying but it is hard to get that far ahead. Very few manage to do that.

John does, tho.

Of course, this seasonal event has come about when I am currently walking around slightly crooked from an uncooperative muscle group in the lower to mid back region. Cutting rounds and splitting them is made more difficult if you are using most of your breathing to scream out in pain.

And, during these primal outbursts, Sal is reluctant to get too close to help. Oh well, it keeps the wolves at bay.

Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t have the weight, density or sense of rhythmn that is required to split big rounds. It is one of my few abilities – I can swing an axe with just the right tempo, like a Motown Temptation. Dooo wop! Split! Another round in pieces.

I’m going to work on the lyrics.

A spine with an invisible screw driver stuck between vertebrae, however, limits one’s moves and so I am hot-water-bottling as fast as I can. I may have to rely on W’fers.

And so it goes around here. Just when you wonder how you are going to get something done, someone miraculously shows up with the answer. Yesterday, Sal got a present at book club. Seems we have two strapping Dutch boys/young men coming to visit and I will be introducing them to the splitting maul. Of that, you can be sure.

Perhaps, after that, I will be introducing them to the hot water bottle. We’ll see.

But we still have to get the logs up the hill before they arrive and, although I put the winch back together, I am still a bit reluctant to ‘work it’ as that process, too, takes back muscles. A handful of Ibuprofen should get us through, tho. Or two.

It is funny, really. You come out here and enjoy getting in shape, enjoy developing skills and enjoy getting stronger. It is definitely a good thing. At the same time, you realize that you have to get stronger. It is not an option. There is no choice. Get weaker and you have to go home to the city and buy a condo. Eat sushi. Get cable TV.

I don’t wanna do that.

It is a subtle lesson. Of course, we all know that we are dependent on our health but, in modern times, that has a certain general meaning – a minimal standard of functioning one expects from oneself (being able to sit on the couch and talk on the cell phone and make deals and reservations at the sushi bar. Maybe drive a car with GPS and cameras so as to minimize the effort).

Out here, that meaning is different. It is one that doesn’t show up often when you are healthy and going like a train but which stops you in your tracks when one of the wheels comes off. Out here, you can be as nutty as a fruitcake and dysfunctional in oh-so-many ways (not own a cell phone, a Blackberry or have cable or even electricity for that matter. Some don’t have cars!) and you can still get along if you have a strong back.

A good mind doesn’t help much with the wood getting.

And so I have a good mind to get W’fers.

“Yikes! You better get out here. It’s the wolves! They are making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I have shivers running down my spine!!”

Once I am horizontal, it usually takes the power of a billion nuclear explosions (aka the sun rising) to get me up out of bed but Sal looked pretty excited and I could hear the howling through the walls. They seemed very close.

We stood listening to a pack of wolves while in our housecoats standing together at midnight on the southside deck with the stars brightly hung overhead and a brisk SE wind in our face. Romantic in a Transylvanian kind of way, don’t you think?

Fiddich and Meg were hysterical. Running up and down the property, doing their best to join in with the singalong but, without larynxes, it is hard for them to make much of a contribution. So they just ‘struck a pose’ with muzzle pointed to the sky and grated out a Louis Armstrong impersonation of a howl now and then. Meg, of course, just pantomimed it.

It was up to me to answer. “HHHhhhhhhooooooooooooowwwwwwwwooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, HHHhhhhhhhoooooooooooooowowowwowowwoooooooooooooooooooooooo”

Everything fell silent. The wolves shut right-the-hell up and Meg and Fid looked at me like I had just said something completely in bad taste. ‘That was all wrong!’ They were embarrassed for me. Sal just muttered something about old dogs.

Another try (this time with feeling!) “HHHHHHhhhhhhoooowwwwwooooooowoowowooowowoowoooooooooooooooooo”

Meg and Fid were thrust back into the game. Sal looked away from me and back to the sky. And the wolves were set off on a blood-curdling chorus once again. My first faux pas de lupine had been forgiven. (I wonder what I said?)

The wolves were just letting it all hang out and they were less than a quarter of a mile away. There seemed to be a half dozen ‘voices’ but, it has been verified that they have the ability to make a couple sound like a choir so there is no telling just how many there were. But it seemed like a lot.

It was scary.

And, when they are that close, our muted mutts may be heard by the pack. And that would not be good. The wolves would come over (swimming en pac across the water that divides our peninsula from the main part of the island) and send an attractive female over to play which would almost certainly lure Fiddich to his demise. Meg would have caught the next ferry to town so she is less at risk. But Fid would be putty in a female’s paw.

Gee, remind you of anything?

The Call of the Wild. Literally. At our back door. Very cool.

Sal likes rustic furniture. So do I. So, she ‘fishes’ worn boards and sea-scrubbed branches from the ocean now and then and drags it all up the beach to dry out. Then – when her energy is high – she tells me to make something.

When we are working out at the garden boxes, we are, of course, mostly standing but lately we have been taking a thermos of tea and having more frequent breaks than before. But there is nowhere to sit so the next ‘rustica’ is supposed to be a bench.

“Can we have arms this time? I’d like to have arm rests, you know, for the tea?”

“Arms? Sweetie, I can barely make the legs reach the ground. And I have gravity on my side. I can’t imagine adding ‘arms’. You sure?”

“Yeah. Arms. And a nice back. Something to lean against. Maybe a curved back kinda thing……………ya know?”

“Sure. Why not? I just hope the sea coughed up the right materials in the right dimensions and some of it is curved just so. If not, you might have to be satisfied with RUSTIC ya know?

“Sal, the charm of rustic is that it is, well, crude and clunky and make-do. Ya gotta accept ‘clunky’ if you want rustic”.

“Yeah, I know. I just want comfortable, ‘nice’ rustic. You know. Something like you’d see from those other rustic furniture guys.”

“I am too rustic for you! You are shopping me?”

“Well, arms would be nice.”

So, there you have it………….the ugly side of rustic furniture making. The keeping up with the Hatfields and the McCoys and their logs and branches, flotsam and jetsam boards.

The competition is fierce.

I know, I know……..can’t help it, tho. Sorry. Get on a tangent and the words just flow. Sorry. I’ll try to be more brief.

How do I know this (the last blog was too long)? Simple: the comments drop off. No comments means that the topic sucked, the writing sucked or it was too long a read to determine whether it sucked or not. I prefer to go with the latter explanation. Let me cling to that.

‘Course, I just used some of my ‘current blog’s’ words up with that………….

Anyway. Back to building for a sec………

……..if you are 60 or older and thinking of building a cabin off the beaten track, don’t do it! Sal and I started to build when I was around 55. We left it almost too late.

It took us three years – two years of ‘heavy slogging’ and six months on each end ‘starting up’ and ‘finishing off’. We only built 1200 feet officially but we also built a genset shed, a wood shed, a food shed and a lot of deck. Plus a lot of other stuff that doesn’t have ‘shed’ as a suffix.

It was all done ‘one nail at a time’ as Sal succinctly puts it. It was hard. And, to be honest, I could not do it again. Even if I could, I would not.

Think about it…………how long ya got, really? Say you are 63 (as I am) and say that you remain healthy and active (I am workin’ on it) til you are 80. That means that you are stretching physically, mentally and financially for a 17 year stint.

Frankly, the law of diminishing returns starts to enter the picture. Or diminishing lifespan. Take your pick.

Yes, I know there are some who keep chugging along. Sal’s 86 year-old dad will outplay just about anyone I know at badminton and still climbs on the roof all the time to…….well, we think he is fixing things ……. …………….hmmmmm………now I have to wonder why he goes on the roof so much?

Back to the point: if you’ve only got 17 good years left, why spend any of it tempting fate by building?

OK, to be fair, it seemed like a good idea at the time. For us. And it was! AT-THAT-TIME! But, today? Well, today, at 63, I would not build. I’d buy. Ask me again in five years and I’d say, “I’ll rent.”

Yes, I would.

I would buy something that was NOT my dream house and I would then pretend that it was. That is easy enough to do. I’ve rationalized things to that level before. I can still do that. That kind of thinking would save me three years and countless pints of blood both of which are getting in shorter supply as I age.

Hell, I am getting shorter as I age!

Think about it. This is now the age of least resistance. We are no longer irresistible forces and most of our challenges are now immovable. I say, ‘accept that gracefully and buy-already-built or rent’.

But there is a hidden point to all that. Do it! You don’t have to build. You don’t have to ‘go nuts’ but time really is running out. If you have a dream, go for it. Go for it now!

I am glad we did.

Building a retirement home is, unquestionably, a big challenge. But it can be made even more so by the initiator being barking mad. Or, perhaps, better put; being so woefully ignorant about what they are about to undertake that they waltz in casually where even fools would not dare to tread. I know all too well from whence I speak.

Arf Arf!

Actually, to be fair, some things were done right on our cabin and the experience was greatly rewarding. Other things, as you’d expect, were done wrongly and the best that can be said when things went terribly awry is that lessons were learned and tails were spent tucked firmly between legs for lengthy periods of time. Or were bandaged heavily and treated with antiseptics. Hard lessons. Life-is-tough-and-then-you-die kinda lessons.

Some were even harder.

I am reminded of all this again by reading Barry Golsom’s attempt at building in Mexico (see book: Gringos in Paradise). Despite not doing any of the construction and not having to build the infrastructure into which the so-called dream house was being placed, they were still beaten about the ears, the pocketbook, their schedule and their hopes and dreams! And they did fairly well!!

The American dream is really the American fantasy.

They undertook their task ignorant of the building process, lacking any skills or even perspective on construction and with the limp wrists and spoiled tastes of New York magazine writers. They were motivated by whim and habit, clichés and ‘image’ and, of course, by picture books. Those damned, cursed, picture books. Trust me; I know the path they took path well.

Oh my Gawd! There is a special place in hell for the photographers of architectural pictures, ‘views’ ‘settings’ and ‘features’. Those damned pictures that instill an unachievable image as the standard to which one should aspire.

No matter how well you do something, no matter what skill is called on, no matter how much money is spent or how many attempts are made, it is impossible to replicate a scene from an architectural digest or even a Home Depot flyer for that matter.

Best not to even try. I call it the Lee Valley syndrome. Whatever they picture in their catalogue is a lie. Even the Hummingbirds shown feeding in the gardening catalogue are stuffed and hung from string to get ‘just the right shot’.

The tool is not that shiny. The work shop floor is not that clean. The skill levels displayed on the featured woodwork were computer driven and are humanly impossible to replicate. You will never see any of that. Ever.

Maybe the compost.

Think of the Lee Valley catalogue like you might the Victoria Secrets catalogue. Pure fantasy.

You see, the pictures are ‘set up’ to achieve the best possible image for some ‘dupe’ being lulled into thinking ‘our house/garden/baby-doll pajama wearer should look like this’. It never will.

The flowers in the background are fresh and bountiful, the table setting is clean, beautiful and sports expensive ‘designerware’. The artwork is chosen and rented for the setting. It did not arrive by way having shared your life. The floors are shiny and all the lights are on. Real life ‘shots’ have wet gloves that fell from the rack and lie on the floor along with a muddy set of boots and an even muddier dog. Maybe a dust bunny or chew toy.

Sorry, dear readers, I am way too smart to carry the Victoria Secret comparison any further……

But trust me anyway: do not let designer books influence you too much, if at all. Floor plans, maybe. Picture absorbing from magazines and architectural renderings are to be considered at one’s own mental, emotional and financial peril.

You want the first step? Camp out on your property for a summer. THAT is the first step. Second step? Camp there for a week or two in the winter!

I mention this because most people start envisioning their new ‘place’ from the comfort and warmth of their old one. That is the wrong place to even start to think.

They see pictures of log homes, timber frame homes and designer homes and imagine themselves living in them – but also in the invisibly installed ‘infrastructure’ in which they already live. They don’t see the sewer or the power or the road or the stairways.

They imagine their boat bobbing nicely at the dock. But don’t see building the dock. They imagine a drink in hand without carrying the fridge up the hill or starting the genset. Or the drinks, for that matter (they came a long way, too). The sun is always shining in the vision. Flowers are exploding over designer gardens. The dreamer has clean clothes.

You can do that too, if you want. I did. And it was wrong.

Suggestion: read Gringos in Paradise. It ain’t anywhere near that easy!!!!!!!!!!!

I am currently reading about some couple in their late fifties who chose to leave their urban New York life behind and start anew in Sayulita, a small Mexican beach village just a bit north of Puerto Vallarta. It is called Gringos in Paradise.

The author talks about how his friends wonder if he is crazy, how he wonders if he is crazy and how the transition from one life to the other is made through colourful-but-mild anecdotes that confirm his craziness.

Barry and Thia also, natch, build their house and that, in essence, is the bulk of the story. They have to find architects, don’t you know, and builders and potted plants. So stressful. They don’t actually build anything and, for the most part, seem to spend a great deal of time worrying and fretting about colours and plants and copper pots. Still, even tho our story is considerably more macho, skilled, daring, heroic and bloody it is – as much as I hate to admit it – much the same.

I hate him.

To be fair, running away to join the squirrels or parrots is not new and neither is building your new house once you get there. This retirement journey has been told before. But Barry tells the story with much the same wide-eyed wonder about the ‘new life’ as I do and, even tho he is considerably more useless at building (he is a New York writer, after all), we are both still telling similar tales of being out of our elements and hurting ourselves while our wives blossom and grow more beautiful in the sun.

Worse, his book seems to be loosely based on a journal-cum-diary. It is largely chronological and loose-boned, having no real theme except ‘look at me’.

I hate him.

Clearly, I am going to have to kick this blog thing up a notch.

We got blood. We got pain. We got life threatening accidents. But he’s got sweat. Barrels of it (especially in the Mexican summer). He’s got foreign government red tape and a different language to deal with (tho my new neigbours are mostly odd, monosylabic or both and so we are pretty close on that one).

He is also retired-before-his-finances-allowed and, given their penchant for shopping, his financial predicament may be a smidge worse (hard to imagine). Plus – this idiot figures to earn a a few bucks now and then from his writing!

I hate him.

We don’t share a lot in the background but we seem to share the basic story: couple leaves familiar for unfamiliar and finds life lessons for the umpteenth time.

Sheesh! Life as a cheap B flick, subcategory; romantic comedy for him, romantic action comedy for me.

My brother turned 60 today! Harsh.

But, as I am the older brother, I have little in the way of sympathy for him. Too far apart in our ages for much empathy either. 3 years is a long time in family politics. Mom always liked him best, anyway. So did Dad now that I think about it and my sister claimed neutrality to my face but they did hang out a lot together. Ours was a divided family, really. Over me, anyway. Of the five of us, only one really thought I was great and he suffered from severe doubt now and then. Four against one on a good day, a unanimous majority against on most. Oh well.

60 was a number, eh? I remember it well. About the only thing I do remember well, actually. Not the year, of course, just the number. I’ve still got 1-100 down pat, even at this age. Gasoline prices climbing as they do have me pretty good to 130 as well. As I recall, my 60th year was spent living dangerously on a remote island up the wild BC coast. I must have been crazy.

Funny thing about age……there isn’t any. I distinctly recall the incidents of my giggling uncontrollably disappearing before I was 21 and the frequency of laughing hilariously beginning to dissipate around 30 – 35 (coincidentally with the arrival of the children). I laughed out loud and guffawed genuinely less and less after 50 and I have chuckled with mirth only at Xmas when I am wearing rosy cheeks, red long johns and drinking rum eggnogs by the gallon. I can’t help myself. I just ‘let go’.

Nowadays the best I can muster on a daily basis, as a rule, is a smirk of sorts, sometimes a leer depending on where we are and who’s nearby. I occasionally pop a ‘snort’ when someone says something surprising but, of course, at 63, less and less surprises me. Hilarity, it seems, is the second thing to lose as you age.

I confess to feeling the edges of my straight, thin lips trying to turn up a bit when the new motor got the boat, fully laden and all, up on a plane yesterday. That was good times! But I was simultaneously trying to keep a straight back in the light chop as I had strained it earlier this month and have been whining about back pain ever since. Won’t do to start giggling after putting Sal through Hell for the last three weeks. Mind you, she looks like she could use a good laugh or at least a gallon of rum eggnog. Poor sweetie. She should not have to live with an old geezer with a bad back and a worse disposition. The woman is a saint.

I am quite pleased, however, that Spring has sprung. Hard to explain the change in me now that winter has seemingly passed. And Sal is positively giddy. We are definitely more attuned to the seasons and that means susceptible to the blahs of winter. It was always our intention to ‘get away’ for a month or two in the winter but it seemed more like an option before. Now………..well, let’s just say that the it is less of an option and more of a necessity.

So, there you have it: the retirement recipe is 10 months in BC and 2 months elsewhere, preferably sunnier climes. No more pretending. Next year will see rosy cheeks and rum by way of the Caribbean beaches and bars. Or a reasonable facsimile.

Unh, just in case – would you remind me in November that I have plans?

The following uses Anne and Roger in the Springroll, so to speak. But that is simply a literary device to illustrate a point. They are only as guilty and innocent as the rest of us. I used them as the subjects this time and beg their tolerance of it.

You can find them at most electronics shops and, of course, they are at Costco. They are billed as having a range of up to 20 miles but we know better – if they go two or three, we are lucky. I am talking about walkie-talkies, those little palm-sized, hand-held, two-way radios made by Cobra, Motorola and Uniden, just to name a few makers. We rely on them up here.

By ‘we’, I mean my neighbours John and Jorge and our summer neighbours John and MC. Roger and Anne are our half-year neighbours and they, too, rely on these little communicators.

Or, more to the point, they rely on me. Kind of.

They shouldn’t really. But because Sally and I use walkie-talkies more (while we range all over the property and nearby) and because we live full-time here, I seem to be able to program the devices a bit better than my neighbours. A lot better, actually. It is a skill that so far has proven elusive to the others. That is mostly because we are all post-60 and if some ‘local feller’ can do it in a minute, why vex yourself trying to figure out the instructions? So, they don’t.

Plus the instructions are in some weird kind of tachno-babble as interpreted poorly by a non-English speaker.

When the radios need reprogramming, they bring them here. We sit around and I press ‘menu’ and jump around prodding it this way and that while we have tea and cookies until, somehow, we have found the right channels again or deprogrammed the alarm or whatever. It is an annual neighbourhood ritual that bonds us.

The daily communication that goes on via walkie-talkie between our separate home sites is what sometimes passes for entertainment around here. It’s more interesting than watching the fire in the woodstove, and definitely more amusing.

The ringer-noise-bell goes ‘toodle-oodle, toodle-oodle’ and then there is silence. The just-arrived-for-the-season caller has forgotten the long established protocol; since we are all on the same channel, the caller must follow up the toodles with a name-call to a specific person. That is because there are 7 others on the ‘party line’ and we don’t want everyone disturbed, only the target audience. After a dozen or so unresponsive ‘toodles’ Anne, for example, will remember and then shout out: “Sally, Anne calling. Sally, Anne calling. Can you hear me?”

Because everyone seems to have to relearn the system on arrival every year, Anne might also leave her finger on the transmit button the first few times which prevents her receiving an answer so despite Sally trying to respond, we subsequently overhear, “Oh, I guess she isn’t in. I’ll just call later.”

I have often wondered to whom those words are spoken but I digress……….

Of course, we could hear all of that soliloquy(it is on transmit, after all) but couldn’t respond. And, because she didn’t get Sal, she immediately turns the radio off to save the battery and Sally is rarely quick enough to slip in with an “I am here! I am here!”

So, Sally gets on the ’emergency’ airhorn and bellows a few ‘aah-oogahh, aah-oogahs’ in the direction of Anne’s cabin a half mile away but, of course, Anne was calling from inside her house and doesn’t hear it. But Roger, who was outside, does.

Toodle-oodle, toodle-oodle! “Roger here. Anne can you hear me? Why is Sally using the airhorn?”

Sally: “It was me calling, Roger. Sally. Anne was trying to call me but left her finger on the transmit button. She couldn’t hear me.”

Roger is a bit hard of hearing himself and so he counters with, “Who is this? Couldn’t hear what? Are you alright? Is your walkie-talkie working?”

Sally: “Yes. Yes it is. We are talking on it now, actually. Roger………..Roger?”

Roger’s finger remains tightly on the transmit button (as is the custom in the Spring) and so, not hearing anything, he gets worried and rushes up to the house to check Anne’s unit. He is thinking that it may be just that his unit has a dead battery. When he gets there, he takes Anne’s unit and, in the process, he releases the button on his and Sally can get through. “Roger? Roger? Can you hear me now?”

“Yes, Yes, I can hear you now. My radio wasn’t working there for a bit. I can never figure out why that is.”

“Never mind. Anne was trying to reach me. Can you put her on?”

Roger passes the unit to Anne and asks, “Anne. Were you trying to reach Sally because of her airhorn going aah-oogah?”

“No. I didn’t hear any airhorn. What a coincidence that she was trying to reach me. I was trying to reach her. But now that she’s home, I’d like to talk to her.”

“Well, you should turn on your walkie-talkie then! I’m going back to work!”

Sally and Anne make another attempt at talking but working the transmit button has not, as yet, been habitualized for this season and confusion reigns. Finally, Anne decides to come over to have their radios looked at ‘by the expert’.

I pretend to fiddle with the radios while Roger, Anne, Sally and I have wine later that day and catch up on the news. In that way, we get our messages conveyed. All thanks to walkie-talkies, when you think about it. In their own indirect way, they facilitate communication by ensuring get-togethers. It’s a modern wonder!