May 30 2011 How I turned 65 without incident

I will be a bit personal in this post: I want you to imagine that this is a real person on this Luxury Pioneering holiday, not just the super-human blue-collar giant defying death and, yes, even this Cape Breton weather... dream on...
I never expected to turn 65. I thought I would blaze for a brief moment in the 20th century and then go down aged 39 in a Hollywood moment, clutching an empty breast pocket in my crumpled white linen jacket at the Casino in Monte Carlo. I did get to Monte Carlo when I was 30, but I was hanging Donagh’s nappies out the back of the camper van. No, hold on: the picture clears and I see Deborah hanging out the nappies. I am on the side of the road talking to a Balkan gypsy about the Casino.
I never thought I would be a grandpa, mainly, I suppose, because I never experienced one myself. I certainly never thought I would become eligible for Old Age Pension while staggering round in the Cape Breton bush heaving 500 pound beams onto mounting stacks.
Well, I did turn 65, celebrated in the style to which DC has made me accustomed, and survived, even though news comes in from all quarters of the dead: Elaina’s dad in Sudbury and poor Elaina stopped in her tracks as she rolls towards an even bigger success in Ottawa; my first Cambridge friend, Hugh, whose brain just let him go in Manchester leaving Margaret, optimistic and pragmatic, sitting wondering what happened to him and when he's coming home; and my Irish cousin, bright and beautiful Marian, Uncle Bill’s first daughter and the new spirit of Graiguenamanagh, finally succumbing to cancer. Makes you want cry.
So, instead of bawling, we drive over to Port Hawkesbury, our metropolis, to shop for the week and to pick up a roof drawing stamped and commented on for the BI (Building Inspector)by our engineer. I knock on the office door and go in. No one there. Everything open. Where is everyone? I could have emptied the office by the time Cathy arrives, but then, come to think of it, the office was pretty empty, a bit like private eye Philip Marlow’s office, spartan, a place to leave, a place to get shot at. Cathy tells me they left the office open overnight once and no one took anything. I look around: not much to take here, Cathy.
In the photos for the day, the MB raises his fingers to indicate that he’s got 2 beams out of one log. We need 40+ beams and each one weighs 400 pounds, maybe. We now have 15. we have to put two of these together with collar beams and hoist them up on the walls. I hope my strength picks up. I drop one on the MB's chest and later in the afternoon he drops one on my thigh. It’s as bad as a heavy head-on tackle by a South African rugby player. These logs then have to be ferried back to the garage for storing out of the sun (loud sopping wet laughter heard all over Nova Scotia). The pile mounts. We drink Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon and eat a delicious chicken as the birthday continues... Surprising how a roast chicken can eradicate the idea of hard work.