Navigating
this instalment
of the
Cottage Diary:
(Part One of the 2015 edition of the Cottage Diary
which began way back in 2001)
Ready... Set... GO!!!
Thursday, July 2, 2015
(I sent out this email today, to an Internet correspondent)
I apologize for being unable to connect with you on FaceBook recently. This is the first quiet moment I have had, after a week of intense activity.
Last Friday there was a dinner at our apartment for some women who had gone to law school with Heather. Each year on the anniversary of their call to the Bar, they and their husbands get together at one of their homes for a celebratory dinner. This year was our turn to host, and the evening was elegant and enjoyable... and of course our apartment had been rendered spotless and un-cluttered in preparation for it. Which kept us quite occupied.
The next morning we not only had to pack for three months at our cottage in Québec, we had to prepare our apartment for guests! A young couple at our church had sold all their stuff last year and moved away, because the husband had got a job teaching at an International School in Armenia, one of the former Soviet republics.
Now they have come back to Winnipeg for a visit, and (because we will be away ourselves) Heather offered to let them live in our apartment. They have two children under five years old, so we had to make sure there was nothing that little children could touch that might hurt them, or that they might accidentally damage. Which was a lot of work, it turns out. So, we did both: packing for three months at the cottage, and preparing our home for this young family.
On Sunday I packed up our little utility trailer with suitcases, and various supplies for our cottage, then we moved out. Before leaving town, of course, we had to go to the airport to meet the young family, who were due to arrive at 6:00 PM from Armenia via Georgia, through Turkey and then Toronto. We needed to give them the keys, show them how things worked, introduce them to the neighbours, and generally get them set up in the apartment.
But they were not on the plane that they were supposed to be on.
They had no means of communicating with us in transit, but I found out online that the plane from Turkey was eight hours late. Once they finally did arrive in Toronto, they were able to phone us, but by then - late Sunday night - there was no flight available to bring them to Winnipeg. Air Canada put them up in a hotel.
We slept at the home of friends, and on Monday morning met our guests when they finally arrived, exhausted. After getting them settled in, we began our long drive to Quebec. Seven, eight, and on the last day, ten hours of driving took us the 2,400 kilometres to Hudson Quebec, and the home of John and Karen Bradley, our lifelong friends, where we are now. We are so tired out by the drive, and all that had happened prior to it, that we decided to stay here an extra day before going on to the cottage. John and Karen are delighted that we’re staying the extra time: we enjoy one another’s company hugely, and have done since 1973. In fact, John and I became friends way back in 1960, long before either of us were married; he, like me, became an Anglican Priest, and is now retired after many years of full-time ordained ministry.
Tomorrow we must buy groceries, then go to the lake. There, Heather and I will get into a small plastic boat, that we have stowed in the forest nearby, and row it across the lake to the cottage. The boat is too small for us to bring across our supplies, but we will unlock the cottage, and Heather will begin setting up beds and dishes and generally make things liveable. My jobs will be:
- turn on the electrical power;
- begin to charge up the battery for the boat’s electric motor;
- connect the water system and start it;
- launch the 14ft aluminum boat;
- because the battery for the boat’s electric motor will not have had time to charge properly, row the aluminum boat back across the lake to where we leave our car;
- load the groceries and supplies from the car into the boat;
- unload all the stuff that’s in the utility trailer;
- push the trailer into the bushes and cover it with a tarp;
- load its contents into the boat, if there is room; otherwise row the car’s contents across, unload and carry that stuff up to the cottage, and then row back across and fetch the contents of the trailer;
- install the boat bumpers on the dock, and the swim ladder (which happens to make getting in and out of the boat much easier);
- finally, go into the cottage and collapse in a heap.
So, my friend, this is the much longer email that I wanted to send you. Now that it is written, I may (if you don’t object) adapt it for my personal website - which is sadly in need of updating!
Next: Disconnect!