Cherry Delight!

One of our top honchos told me once, he would have a double shot of scotch at home after a council meeting. I used to go home and watch Barney Miller, a comedy in a cop shop in the N.Y.P.D. I watched it so often, I practically knew all the dialogue.

Every show took place in a single shift. The players were detectives, arrestees, wives and love interests of detectives, a short cop from downstairs who brought up the mail and aspired to be a detective, a close to retiring inspector with a proclivity for political incorrectness and presiding over it all with perpetual bemusement - Barney Miller, the station captain.

It was mostly dialogue, and because it was so believable, it was sheer genius and pure enjoyment.

Nowadays I watch West Wing. It's a drama. Again, dialogue is it's strength. In the last season of the show, they changed writers. It was still good but the characters had too many lines and they were too clever. I watch it but it's not always enough. I still I lie awake thinking.

The other night my thoughts were about change in the council agenda. An item in every meeting calls for “new business”. Councillors can bring forward matters without having to go through the formal process of filing notice etc. They can seek explanations or draw attention to a problem or give notice of motion. But... that's not how it's used now.

My daughter always asks how things are going in the new council. I told her about the new practice. I said it's like it used to be when you were in kindergarten at Show and Tell. I gave her a couple of examples. “Oh no, mother," she said,”Nowadays that's called Sharing."

“Right” I said, light dawning, “That's exactly what it is!”

I didn't go to a number of the Mayor's gatherings that started within thirty-six hours of the election. I don't know the advice given to new members.

Obviously, there is change. So, how do I deal with change? Do I have to deal with it? Maybe, I should just “get with the program.”

That's how, when I was lying awake thinking about “the program”, the idea came to me. I knew it was fiendish because it was my idea, and it made me giggle into my pillow.

I would obtain a crown, a sceptre and an orb. I would don the regalia in council at the new business item on the agenda and declare myself to be “EvelynBuck.com... Queen of Blog” and I would invite everyone to visit my blogspot.

I confided my plan to my friend, Heather, “She of Artistic Layout of Blog”. She immediately sourced a supply, a shop on Main Street in the town immediately to the north of us, which shall be nameless.

“What about a purple robe trimmed with ermine tails?” she said. “I found a pattern.”

“I have purple velvet in my fabric stash,” I said.

“Great!” she said, “I'll bring the camera.”

Then she said the fateful words, “You wouldn't really have the nerve, would you?”

“Indeed I would,” says I. And for the rest of the day until mid-afternoon, we elaborated on the plan.

My life is like that. For the first several hours of every day, all things are possible and potentially hilarious. Life is a bowl of cherries. As evening approaches, so does sober reality and I know I can't do it.

The town is a business corporation. Council meetings are for the purpose of ...don't laugh....dealing with the town's business.

They are not simply and solely an opportunity for self-promotion. It is clear councillors have been misled and not to their's or the town's advantage.