I love living here for many reasons, and often comment on our small-town happenings — almost always in a positive vein and I strive not to be judgemental.

Each of us comes from a different background and therefore we all have different terms of reference.

Please allow me to ramble this week in a helter skelter fashion.

The first few minutes for many visitors to NOTL is spent mentally and physically wrestling with our downtown parking meters. Surely this longtime lingering problem can be fixed.

Many people are late for Shaw plays, restaurant reservations and free walking tours due to our complicated and mechanically weird parking procedures. And there seems to be no urgency to rectify this embarrassing situation.

And will it take a serious injury or death before we finally place a well-signed crosswalk between the post office and the ValuMart?

Locals and tourists get confused, and we get compared to other tourist destinations, from Ellicottville to Aspen to Huntsville to Nashville (or “Nashvul”). Why don’t we solve this problem?

And how about the corner of Queen and Regent? Scary.

The intersection of Queen and King — or is it King and Queen now? — begs for creative improvement. Other busy tourist areas like Hamilton, Bermuda show us the way.

Let’s consider a traffic expediter dressed like Sir Isaac Brock in a red coat uniform and cool black hat, perched on a two or three-foot-high platform, signalling for drivers to proceed straight, stay in place, turn left or turn right.

Spend five minutes on a busy day watching the current gong show, and wonder when a nervous tourist or local is going to get in a loud and disconcerting crash. What a way to ruin a day!

Now, to motorcycles for a paragraph.

In my younger days, I dabbled with a Honda 90, a Triumph 250 and a Kawasaki 325. Now though, even with impaired hearing, from my viewing position in front of the Court House, I am appalled by the thoughtless, arrogant and macho displays of loud and aggressive bike riders.

Usually travelling in groups of two or more, their handheld devices must be telling them to rev up and be really obnoxious when they pass our cenotaph.

And, when they power down when parking, or power up when leaving, plug your ears and delay that conversation.

Now talk to me about vaping. What can possibly be the attraction or benefit? Unless one believes that creating a cloud of smoke is cool.

Ah well, at least vapours don’t litter our sidewalks and gutters with cigarette butts. Each day in Canada, literally millions of butts are thoughtlessly left for others to clean up or admire. With today’s prices, who can afford to smoke or vape?

In our lovely town, so many visitors wax effusive about our flowers. Is there a way we could discreetly place little laminated sheets that would picture and name the plantings?

Our bylaw enforcement officers are hard-working, determined and single-minded. But hardly part of the welcoming attitude we strive to provide here in Shaw and wine country.

Think about it for a moment. In Honolulu, the parking squad wear fun and multi-coloured aloha shirts, and in Bermuda, pink Bermuda shorts. Simple sartorial strategies that send such positive and effulgent vibes.

As I weekly rambler, I try my best not to be a grumpy old man. But here I am, nailing it!

Writing creatively to this week’s conclusion, let me describe a very meaningful retirement party I happily attended last Saturday.

A great friend of mine, my athletic idol since he won an Olympic silver medal in 1996, retired after 27 years with the St. Catharines fire department. Looking around, I was reminded that firefighters have great-looking girlfriends and wives.

But, they also seem to have an unnatural attraction, almost primal and indeed physical, to what I thought they would hate and avoid: at the party, after great food, icy cold drinks and lotsa’ love, the highlight and finale was a bonfire.

The tension was palpable as two large, previously felled trees were chainsawed a bit more, and a jerrycan of gasoline was poured on. Then, ignition.

The retirement was apparently complete, as flames leapt skyward in the darkening sky.

Many times I have felt completely at ease on an Algonquin Park composite at dusk, sitting around a relatively small campfire on a rocky point.

As Robert Service rhymed, the silence is broken only by the maniacal laugh of the northern loon.

The happiness and obvious joy that firefighters seemed to feel as my pal’s retirement bonfire roared was somehow disconcerting. But I ramble …

Stay tuned for the announcement of the unveiling of our new and improved cenotaph. Before Remembrance Day.