Tales from St Anthony Part V -- Shiver me understatement

"Picked a nice day for a walk," Barry said nonchalantly leaning on the counter of Strangemore's, St Anthony's slashie (SEE FOOTNOTE).

I laughed but the look on my face, equal helpings of terror and confusion, was one of my 'tells' that gave me away.

It was obvious I wasn't a local. Fluffy earflaps aside, a local would have listened to the weather report that morning which would have alerted them to the fact a snow storm was going to hit St Anthony in the early afternoon.

A local would also have been driving a car and not burrowing head first through a curtain of snow on foot.

"What are you doing in these parts," Barry raised an eyebrow when he heard the accent.

He stuffed my bottle of wine into a brown paper bag and listened intently as I rattled off my comedy routine, two Australians living at the northern tip of Newfoundland is a novelty.

Snow built up against the front doors, the early-afternoon blizzard was raging turning grey rocks and potholed roads into white bumpy slippery slides.

I had earlier been test driving our prospective new car, returned it and began the meandering walk home when the white descended from the north straight off the Labrador mainland, whisking together harp seal breath and polar bear angst.

Less than an hour before, the day had looked promising, blue sky lurked mischievously in the background but now I couldn't see the road.

"How you getting home," Barry asked.

With my plan to walk home clearly foiled, Barry jumped to the rescue.

"Come on, I'll give you a lift," he urged pointing me to his massive truck.

Here I am a stranger in his town and Barry just up and offers me a lift. Gentlemanly and generous.

On the trip home I learnt several lessons as Barry demonstrated the benefits of traction control and just how slippery the roads.

The most important thing I garnered from the experience was the need to buy a front wheel drive car, the second was that passive smoking is part of life up this way and thirdly that the weather moves quicker than the style of life.

"If you're going to drive in this," Barry said, pointing his cigarette at the snow as we passed the only set of traffic lights in St Anthony, "drive to the conditions," he continued, "the biggest problem with some folk when they come up this way, is they want to drive the same way in snow as they do in normal weather. Well that's not going to work now is it?"

Barry, you are right. If you can't see the road or the bonnet of the truck it seems foolhardy to try and drive at anything but the speed of a moose on Valium but Barry assures me that some people are foolhardy.

Earlier in the week I had been chatting with the lady in the local thrift store about the weather, a popular topic in these parts.

It's obvious why too.

If you talk about how nice the weather is you don't have to talk about how awful the cod prices are.

The woman in the store told me how lovely the past winter had been and how hardly any snow fell.

"See, that's where the snow came this year," she pointed to a black pen mark on the front window about five and half feet up. The building is on a two foot footing making the depth of snow at about seven feet. She caught me gawping at the mark.

Typically understated.



(ENDNOTE: A slashie, I have learnt, is the name for a place that does many things and is a reference to the slashes between its services hence Strangemore's is the liquor store/video rentals/electrical goods/misc)