For all of you fellow disgruntled, stressed-out city-types out there contemplating a move to the country, read carefully. No, this is not intended to be a scare tactic; but just know what you're in for. And know that I'm not making any of it up.

Christina Lake, population 1500 or so year-round, multiply that by 4 in summer for the tourist contingent, is rich in natural beauty. There. Now that that's out of the way, here's what it's lacking:

1. Decent food.
2. Traffic lights.
3. Shopping.
4. Dry cleaning facilities.
5. A bank.
6. Jobs/Ambition
7. Culture.

Let's explore each of these deficiencies more closely:

1. Decent food. The local grocery store, which shall remain nameless, is a throwback to the 60's and 70's, and that's just about how long most of the inventory has been occupying its shelves. There is a fossilized, chemically preserved shrimp ring in the freezer case that pre-dates either of us (meaning our births, not just our arrival in town), and has enough freezer burn to cloak its true identity in absolute opaque secrecy, were it not for the presence of the product label. Many a time we've walked in there to use the antiquated, 80's-era bank machine (the only relic of post-70's vintage) and take a quick stroll around the aisles. Not to purchase any food, because by our standards, there isn't any. Just to carbon date the cans of baked beans and Spam, along with the other shelf-stable marvels of modern processing; and the withered, pesticide-laden produce trucked in from who knows where, and who knows how long ago. It's as close as this town comes to a museum, but that's jumping ahead to gripe #7, and I digress.

It's not that there's a shortage of food production in the region. There just isn't a local retailer who will sell it. If you want to peruse a cornucopia of fresh, organic B.C. produce grown within minutes of here, drive 400 miles to Alberta and shop there. If anyone here were to take the "eat local" challenge, they'd starve and perish too quickly to even wax smugly about their high principles and environmental correctness. Ironically, their decomposing flesh would provide excellent nourishment to the soil; but whatever grows there would, no doubt, be swiftly exported.

And an ice-fused, giant Life Saver ring of shellfish older than I am has no place in my digestive tract; though I recognize that the shrimp may hold, in its state of chronic, subzero preservation, numerous profitable, exploitable anti-aging properties. This tangent could easily whisk me too soon to gripe #6, so I'll stop here.

Next installment:

2. Traffic lights. And why they matter in a town with more bars and drunk rednecks than food and jobs.