A close call

My students were back in class today, and this morning I asked if they had been up to anything exciting or had had any interesting experiences during their break. There was the usual collective shrugging of shoulders and shaking of heads so we moved on, but at break time I found out, from a student in another class, that one of my students had been involved in a car accident yesterday evening; in my book that's interesting!

The road from the airport here is long and winding, but unlike Lennon and McCartney's it's also very narrow. When you add into that mix the icy conditions and the fact that the snowbanks piled up on each side make seeing round corners almost impossible, negotiating it successfully is a tricky business. Annie-Claude, who runs the residence with Roland, picked up some of the returning students from the airport yesterday, and on the way back there was a slight altercation with a van coming in the opposite direction.

Air bags deployed, crumple zones crumpled and everyone was OK in the end, but it was a bit of a shocking return for both the students and Annie-Claude, who had only just returned from holiday herself. Never had this kind of trouble when it was all dog teams up here you know.

A sight for saw eyes

Whilst nowhere near 100% I'm still here, so you can call off the search parties. I stayed at home yesterday, but a few hours of daytime TV convinced me of the need to return to work today. In actual fact, the cable service went down for a few hours during the day, maybe due to the high winds that gave us a weather warning for a brief period; winds like that in the winter are going to give us some spectacular blizzard days!

As I said, I still don't feel too well, but being a typical guy I haven't yet paid a visit to the nursing station. Whether I have H1N1 I'm not sure - it could be R2D2 or C3P0 for all I know - but I guess I ought to get checked out if I don't feel better soon. We have a ped day on Friday and this, coupled with the Labour Day holiday on Monday, at least gives me a long weekend in which to recover; a story I heard today also made me realise that perhaps I should show a little more resolution.

The council are laying new water pipes in the street where our friends, the Beatties, live, and as they were leaving the house yesterday morning one of the workmen was attempting to cut a pipe with a circular saw. I say 'attempting,' because the saw proceeded to bounce off the pipe and cut into the poor man's face and neck, narrowly missing his jugular but leaving a huge gash from the nose down. A bag of frozen peas quickly appeared to act as a cold compress - I think this was actually the reason for their invention - and once the ambulance arrived the Beatties made their various ways to work. When the first of the Beatties got home at the end of the day there were still workmen attending to the pipes, and guess what? One of them was sporting an impressive display of stitches from his nose down to his neck.

They breed them tough in Canada.