Summertime spin cycle

Don’t worry, all you weather whiners out there: if Mother Nature — that sick and twisted what- I- wouldn’t -call- her presently serving up one of the most God-awful Julys on record and creating a backlog of patients at shrinks’ offices throughout St. John’s — has an out of character moment of sympathy and gives us two or three hot days in August, we’ll forget all this crap.

Selective memory, that’s what will get us through this summer.

A rotten July will be forgotten as quickly as a one-term backbencher who earned his keep by appearing at the odd barbecue or wedding in his district, running for coffee for his favourite cabinet minister, making the occasional bootlicking phone call to an openline show, dozing through most of his days in the legislature (understandably), and then waiting for an appointment to a Crown corporation board of directors.

There is, though, a scattered Newfoundlander out there who actually finds damp and cold weather more preferable to the roasting, 30-degree C temperatures they’re basking in just across the Gulf.

Take a late uncle of mine in Grand Falls, Bill Judge. I recall one hot July day 20 years or so ago, and Bill was staring out at his front yard from the living room window of his house on Elm Street (I was there on one of my countless visits, glorious occasions when he and my Aunt Vera, gold-medal relatives, always found a place for me to rest my noggin).

“Jesus, Bob,” Bill said. “What I wouldn’t give to see two feet of snow on the ground out there.”

Bill was one of the funniest men I’ve ever known (and one of the finest, I should add), but he wasn’t necessarily seeking a laugh on that afternoon; he genuinely hated the hot sun, and was longing for the fall and the winter when he could traipse through the woods cutting birch, catching rabbits and, best of all, shooting the odd moose, in or out of season.

Now Bill was in the minority. At least I think he was. As for me, I love heat (or, as my father was fond of saying: “I love being in heat”), and just wish that that evil and dastardly climate change environmentalists continue to warn us about — the sky is falling — would kick in more often on this side of the island of Newfoundland.

But getting back to selective memory. It’s a valuable tool, as I say, for weather complainers, right up there with perspective and context, both of which drive me around the bend, as in: “Well, it could be worse; we could have tornadoes and wild fires and floods,” or, “at least our lawns aren’t brown like that poor crowd in Vancouver.”

Or, “Those poor farmer in Alberta, the drought and all.”

Or, “Imagine, Torontonians having to take turns watering their grass.”

Then there’s “spin,” as in: “Everything is so green and healthy-looking here on the Avalon; my God, it looks just like Ireland.”

Guess what? I don’t give a you-know-what. I just want to sit out on the deck with a cup of tea at least one evening before September, and not half freeze to death.

Spin, of course, is something to which we’ve grown accustomed here, and in Canada, but it usually pertains to politicians and their never-ending, selfserving verbiage.

Just last week, there was Premier Paul Davis trying to suck in the electorate, just a few months before polling day, on a possible deal between Ontario and this province on the development of Gull Island.

Now, there’s spin. Newfoundlanders are still trying to grasp the viability of Muskrat Falls, and still wondering whether Danny Williams’ going-away present to his legacy is the grand answer to our electrical needs for generations to come or a financially disastrous project that will place us in perpetuity in an economic sewer.

So Gull Island talk was not met with shouts of rejoicing and high-fives in kitchens throughout the province, despite the electioneering spin of the premier (the same premier put in power by a couple of hundred Tory sycophants, disciples of the party that tore the hell out of Liberal Premier Roger Grimes for using nothing more than a leadership convention as a governing mandate. “Hypocritical” is the word I hear most often whenever that topic arises).

Then there was Stephen Harper trying to put a spin on that astronomical, mindblowing hike in child-care benefits (a variation on the program was called “dicky dough” by Newfoundlanders just after that mixed marriage with Canada was consummated on the eve of April Fool’s Day, 1949, and new Canucks, from Hare Bay to Herring Cove, were being encouraged to pop out youngsters by the dozen).

Again, it was electioneering, and, in case there was any doubt, federal Minister Pierre Poilievre was wearing a Conservative party-branded shirt when he made the latest dicky dough offer this past week.

And back here, there was Judy Manning, trying to spin her way back into the good graces of Newfoundlanders, at least those on the Cape Shore, hoping no one would remember her inauspicious, disastrous political debut not so long ago.

But let’s just stick to weather spin for now. Many require it, just to stay half-sane.

Bring on those three days of sun in mid-August. Bring on selective memory. Whew! The heat! What a grand summer!