columnist
Ron Mickleburgh opens

In mere days, Vancouver’s turn in the Olympic spotlight will
be just six months away.

a curious circumlocution which provides us with an excellent
example of the chronologically relative tense – also known as the
tense, after the
Kurt Vonnegut novel which features a character who has become “unstuck in
time.”

’s Vancouver bureau has provided us
with an early draft of Mickleburgh’s piece, which, in its initial state, began

Two years, seven months and a few days from a week ago next
Wednesday, we will be able to cast back our minds six years, four months, three
weeks and two days to a point in time when the opening of the 2010 Winter
Olympics was still four years and six months or so away.