More on the unexploded bomb situation

Following yesterday’s shock discovery that there were a number of unexploded bombs in a wetlands area we have visited regularly, if not frequently, I decided to do a little more digging. It turns out that the local administrative authority, the National Capital Commission (NCC) actually knew about the bombs before they purchased the site. The feeling was that the bombs were very deep in the bogland and therefore posed little or indeed no risk to the general public. Therefore, with public money, they bought the site. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am all for these acts of largesse, you know, buying things with money I contribute through taxes, rates, etc., for the benefit of myself and those other members of the public who might wish to avail themselves of them. (There is also the general proviso that none of them approaches me or talks to me unless I give them the curly finger.) But one of us hasn’t read the small print. Deep down in the table of contents, I am sure there is written “do not spend my money on things that might cause me to either die or lose a limb”, and I am positive there is a “no unexploded bombs” clause. So, quite what the NCC has been doing is beyond me. Could they not, for example, have bought the land having first asked the Department of National Defence (DND) to, you know, provide a map of the areas in which bombs were dropped and give an actual number of how many are down there? Is that beyond the realms of reasonableness?
 
Instead, it looks like we have wandered once again into the light rail situation. By that, I mean, the person in charge says “oooh, look, that’s shiny, I want” and goes ahead and buys it. For a completely naff system that makes passengers change trains twice between downtown and the airport, replace it with a multi-hectare site/wetland with live bombs. What I want to know, and what I haven’t been able to discover yet (mainly because, I admit, I haven’t looked) is why the situation has changed. Has there been an explosion? Is Trump trying to divert attention away from his new Gaza Theme Park? Is Boris Johnson involved in any way? Is there any possible way I can tie Pierre Poilievre into this? Either way, something must have happened for the “no risk to public safety” line to have changed to an “oh fuck, we’d better close the whole site straight away.” As I intimated, the whole thing smacks of a Trump-Johnson-Poilievre snafu, even if there is no possible way any of them could have been involved. We wait with bated breath.
 
After that excitement, today was rather a damp squib. I didn’t get up till around 10, for a start. “Why?” you might ask. No idea. I just did. I have been feeling pretty exhausted of late, and obviously needed it. When I got up, I did bugger all too. I sorted some papers, did a little writing, and finally caught up on a phone call with a good friend back home in Liverpool. We’d kept on not meeting either virtually or physically for far too long, so it was time to just bite the bullet and share each other’s tales of woe. As always, I come away from these calls completely blown away with how lucky I am. His son, who is 31, has spent the past couple of years coming to terms with something called post-viral fatigue. Nothing to do with Covid, but more of a ME issue. On top of that, he got a bad concussion falling off a barstool – and nothing to do with alcohol, before you assume, as I did, that it was – and he has had a couple of brutal incidents in his private life at the same time, none of which have helped. So, there am I, beaming with pride at my son and how well he is doing, and listening to a really good friend telling me how difficult things are for his son. It brings, as do other people’s blogs and blips, things into perspective. I really must do better in bringing my own minor issues into perspective.
 
As I write this, Mrs. Ottawacker has taken Ottawacker Jr. to his goalkeeping practice, despite the rumblings of distant thunder. I have been left behind to cook dinner and do various other things. There is a lot to be grateful for. Not least that I have also just discovered that my renewed health coverage with the Public Service (when I retire) will enable me to cover a portion of any orthodontist work Ottawacker Jr. might need. It’ll be a fraction mind – we get up to $2,500, which may be a fifth or less of what it will/might cost. The North American fetish with straight teeth is beyond belief. Even a rational human being like Mrs. Ottawacker gets sucked into it. Teeth are as teeth is, I always say. And even if the great Martin Amis might disagree with me, I know in my heart, I am right. So there. The blip is of my teeth. Completely imperfect and completely unstraightened.