April for Fools

Forgive me for I have sinned. It is two days since my last post.

Things are hectic, things are frantic, shuffling between the two houses. The sale is now definite, so we can move in fully whenever we want. I want it to be when we have internet access there. Can't manage without now.

At work, the spring programmes have begun and someone at the City has issued a works order for a septic field to be dug in the middle of all this.
In Britain, everything would have come to a full stop. No child would be allowed within a 100 metres of the ongoing work, it would be cordoned off and notices would be posted.
Here, we just weave the children in and out of the city trucks, concrete mixers, move orange cones out of the way, get them to leap across newly tamped tarmac, walk past heavy duty electrical cables and over freshly planted grass.
All in a day's work.

It's strange, this transition. Not knowing where things are, where things are going to be, the comfort zone disturbed. Time itself is disturbed. Where can I curl up and unwind?

On the news this morning, the presenters amused themselves by making up stories. Why do we need this? I have never understood the amusement value of the practical joke either. Putting someone out, inconveniencing them. How side-splitting.

And then the news that Stanley Park's 'Hollow Tree' is to be pulled down. It is a dead tree. Fascinating that it is so huge, local people have fond memories of being photographed inside it, cars, truck, all being pictured inside the hollow tree. But time and weather have taken their toll and now it leans over impossibly, threatening to brain or squash the public, drinking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in attempts to preserve it, mad old ladies making fervent cases for its preservation. Why do they feel the need to do this? To preserve the dead in the same form forever, like having a community that speaks Latin instead of allowing it to rule the Classics.
I get that it is history. But like history, it must move on, make way for the new.