canny granny

Beryl, who goes to Bingo with me, firmly believes in the recent sightings of Blessed Virgin Mary, but she’s worried that her framed velvet Mary art and hot pink plastic rosaries won’t save her budgerigars from the Chupacabra.

Granted, the reports of mysterious Goatsuckers in my neighbourhood are few and far between, but all the same I intend to keep my Border Collie inside at night.

Dreadful attacks have been perpetrated by the Chupacabra, which always involve slain livestock with telltale marks on their necks. The victims, most often goats and chickens, are reportedly drained of all their blood, but are otherwise left intact.

I tried to tell Beryl that these creatures only plague various regions of Puerto Rico and other faraway places of a similar rural nature, but she says the Chupacabra has kangaroo-like qualities, so they must be local.

I may borrow a set of rosaries myself.

My Grandma could stop a brewery horse dead in its tracks.

The havoc this caused is a story for another day, I only mention it because, although Grandma was a fine figure of a woman, she had a nasty reptilian look about the eyes.

Now my numerous cousins tell me that I am beginning to look like her.

“You’ve got her look about the eyes, Queenie. Pity you couldn’t copy her smile.”

Well I have news for them. Just like you, I didn’t copy my frown from my father or unconsciously pick up a grimace from Grandma. Conscious or unconscious has nothing to do with it

(I had plenty of chances to learn from my Grandma, she was just plain unconscious at least once a week)

Scientists at the University of Haifa have concluded that facial expressions are genetically determined. You can’t beat your genes. And it’s too late to beat Grandma.

All this time I thought if you pulled an ugly expression, the wind might change, and the expression would stay forever. Grandma told me that.

I know what to do about the poor soldiers in the impenetrable forests of giant marijuana. No one has told their superiors that marijuana combats Alzheimers disease. The effects are only beneficial for older people, or so I’m told, and that explains the preponderance of smiling old ladies you see around such dense forests.

THC, the psychoactive substance in marijuana, has been used for some time to help reduce agitation and increase weight in people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. And now researchers have shown that cannabis can help older subjects perform better on a spatial memory task.

I wonder where these tests have been carried out? And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the ladies at my Lawn Bowls Club have been subjects in this research. A couple of them are always smiling. Don’t you think that’s suspicious?

I’m a bit worried about the soldiers. Apparently Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan have encountered an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet-high marijuana plants.

These forests are used as cover for both sides, soldiers slip in and out and armoured cars are camouflaged with giant plants. They tried burning the foliage but successful incineration has its own drawbacks.

“A section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and we decided that was probably not the right course of action,” said an Army spokesman.

Ill effects? Perhaps nobody wanted to do any more fighting.

It’s true, I didn’t make it up