St. Andrews by-the-Sea — It’s a bad weekend to be a New Brunswick boyfriend, husband, partner or friend-with-benefits. Unless, of course, you’re the type of boyfriend who enjoys dull days spent in small tourist towns where the main attractions in the wintertime include scented candles, novelty wind-chimes and $10 packages of saltwater taffy wrapped in ribbon.
Late this week, nearly every girlfriend, wife, and pretty much any heterosexual female between the ages of 15 and 75 in the province has demanded of their significant other a spur-of-the-moment trip to St. Andrews. In unrelated but coincidental news, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced that his first cabinet meeting will be held at the historic Algonquin Hotel in the seaside town from Jan. 17 to 19.
“I just love St. Andrews this time of year,” said Fredericton resident Gabby Harris, 29. “The bitter winds, the choppy sea, the subzero temperatures — it’s truly romantic. It really only occurred to me this week that James and I hadn’t been there in years.”
“Yeah, real romantic,” grumbled James Williams, Harris’s boyfriend of 3 years. “I wonder why she wants to stay at the Algonquin? Could it be that ‘Justin’ will be there?”
Other girlfriends were quick to defend their allegedly non-Justin-related reasons for wanting to visit St. Andrews. “I’m an aspiring photographer, and the fishing boats and all those cute little tourist shops make great photo subjects,” claimed Jenna Ward, 32. “The closer to the Algonquin the better… like, because it’s such a photogenic hotel. It’s just a nice backdrop for my winter selfies, I mean.”
“I’m totally sure she only wants to go there at all to catch a glimpse of the PM,” wrote Ward’s boyfriend Tom in a private email to The Manatee. “I’d already made plans for this weekend, but she texted me at work yesterday and said if we don’t go up on Saturday, she doesn’t know whether she can see much of a future for us. She’s annoying, but I’ve had worse girlfriends, I guess. Gonna be a boring-ass weekend, if you ask me.”
One woman, Teri Handler of Boiestown, went so far as to pledge that nothing — absolutely nothing — will stand in the way of her visiting her favourite town in the world, you guessed it: St. Andrews. “I love it there and always have. I want to visit, and it has to be this weekend. Is that so much to ask?!” she yelled menacingly as our reporter slowly backed out of her kitchen.
“For heaven’s sake! She’s never even been to St. Andrews,” Handler’s husband John later confirmed. “Let her go, I say, and I’ll stay at home. At least I know there are no good-lookin’ men there who could steal her away.”
This would be a good time to go visit my sons at NBCC Sain A drew.
Hilarious! And so close to the truth.
The Manatee! When I saw news that a Breaking Bad script-writer is writing scripts for new TV series of Anne of Green Gables, I thought for a few hours it was a Manatee piece — only realized upon rechecking that the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction connection between Walter White & L.M. Montgomery wasn’t a Manatee story.