Matsek Cleans My Clock

Matsek Cleans My Clock

By John Taylor; 2006 July 18

I return to writing after several days called away. We had guests for the weekend, three Czech sisters with whom Marie lodged as a child, the daughters of her godmother's sister, and the husband of the eldest, Olga, whose name is Vashek -- I kept calling him Matsek, which means "kitty" in Czech, an error I regard as fortunate, since most of the Czech words I have picked up over my years as spouse of a Czech are somehow related to the bathroom. Matsek is working in Sherbrooke, Quebec, as a telecom programmer. Anyway, the highlight of the weekend for me were the table tennis matches with Matsek, who cleaned my clock, who cut me a new rectal sphinctor -- to clean up a favorite expression of Kurt Vonnegut -- by beating me five out of five games. He told me, in broken English, that his grandmother had a Ping-Pong table and in his youth he had several cousins to hone his skills against. He had a twisty, complex little serve that I could not figure out for the life of me.

The lowlight of the weekend was our toilet, and it was a very low lowlight. Consider that having my clock cleaned was the highlight and you know how low things got. All day Saturday I reluctantly drove back and forth from Canadian Tire, desperately trying to get it to work in time (I hate do-it-yourself stuff now, unlike when we first bought this house). They arrived before I get the job quite finished, so with four guests we had to make do without our upstairs toilet.

Worse, when we were in Niagara Falls yesterday Grampa decided that he would fix it for us. He failed. Worse still, his hearing is not what it used to be, so when we got back, tired and up to our elbows in cranky kids, we found the house flooded out. He thought that he had shut off the water but, his hearing not being what it used to be, it was only half shut off. We had very fortunately come back from the falls earlier than expected, otherwise the house would have floated away. Nor was that all. While at the falls I had taken a nap under a tree and some bold thief walked off with Silvie's scooter, which I had lain beside me.

I slept in a tent on the back lawn, an inconvenience that turned out for the best, since it was much cooler out there over this heat wave weekend. I woke very early and, the house being full of sleeping guests, I had no choice but to putter in the garage. This too was good, since I succeeded in cleaning off all of the junk covering the surface of the workbench. For the first time in many years I now have a free working space there, a tremendous relief. Strangely, the same part of the brain that I use for writing I also use for organizing junk, for making that tough decision, keep or toss? Okay, those who have a low opinion of my writing will not find this so strange. Anyway, for whatever reason, I cannot do that kind of cleanup task afternoons or evenings, just in the morning.

We returned from the Falls early not to save the house from flooding but in order to attend Thomas's Monday night atom level soccer game. He has turned out to be something of a star goalie for his team, though as a defenseman he is inattentive and apathetic. By my count in his half of the game in goal he made about a dozen saves and was scored against twice, and the team was leading. When he played defense for the second half it was a different story and the team lost miserably. The guests brought with them some jigsaw puzzles as a gift and to my surprise Silvie started at hers right away. Until now they have turned up their noses at jigsaw puzzles. She has hers almost solved, with help from the two younger Czech sisters.

These sisters turned out to be real beach bunnies. They insisted on going to the beach at every opportunity. Marie explained that the Czech Republic does not have any large bodies of water and Lake Erie is a change for them. I long ago gave up trying to drag the kids to the beach, but they went along without a peep and had a great time playing in the waves. Once I went into the bush to change out of my bathing suit and discovered a virgin raspberry patch. Thomas was thrilled and insisted on going back; we both enjoy the hunt for berries. I enjoy this more than fishing, which I did a lot of in my youth; berries are less work and you come away with a prize every time.

We kept forgetting to bring our camera to these events, so the guests offloaded their pictures to our computer just before they left this morning. Now we have a photographic record of a tourist's first views of Niagara Falls. I know, hardly unique in the world, but better than no pictures at all. The technology of cameras dazzles me still and I cannot get over the convenience of photo sharing.

I hope tomorrow to get back to something more serious than personal diary writing.

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