Squalls

Frustrating day really.
Arriving at church I was sidetracked into the office to sign stuff. Then I had to do someone else's reading, which I don't mind at all, but I like to be able to re-word beforehand so as to avoid sexist language.
After the service we had a film about Gay and Lesbian Christians. Guess what, the only people who went to see it were those of us who are not homophobic. But it was an interesting film nonetheless.
It followed the lives of some ordinary American families who had been suddenly educated by one of the children in the family coming out. Most of them responded -in the end- admirably, but not before one lesbian daughter had committed suicide.

Leviticus was shouted about a lot by the sort of people who you wouldn't expect to even be able to pronounce a word with more than two syllables, but Leviticus is easily debunked by moving back a couple of verses from the ones condemning homosexuality, to the ones telling us not to plant two seeds in the same place, wear certain fabrics together or eat a whole slew of things that we do eat.

Bishop Desmond Tutu said that it had never occurred to him that God thinks less of him because he is black, or less of a woman than a man, nor less of a homosexual person than a heterosexual.
It was a powerful film and when the lights went back on, everyone was crying.

Back at the Schloss, things were not going well. I turned on the computer and found...nothing. Bugger. Kevin had spent the weekend - if by the weekend you count Thursday and Friday - fixing someone else's laptop, and our entire TV system, and now mine was dead. Fortunately, he resurrected it, but there are odd things that couldn't be retrieved. I only have e-mail from last November and my pictures go up to the same time - many of which I had in fact deleted. Ah well. The important things, my documents, are there.

I spoke to Austen and he pointed out that there would only be two more Sunday phone calls until they are all here. Put like that, only one more Sunday phone call until Ben is here.

The weather breaks tomorrow.

Elevation

'Resting' - day 3. If cleanliness is next to Godliness, which of course it is, Schloss Schneewittchen is getting closer all the time.

Another elevation is that of my strawberries. Having been impressed by Sleepy's strawbs - which look like the ones that you might buy, and by her friend's comment that his, grown on the roof, do too, I have hoisted ours up to a level where they might get shone upon more.

Giddy up! Auntie Beeb is going to be doing a one-off programme showing Del-boy Trotter as a teenager. They won't get it in Britain until this time next year, but I'll be waiting.....

The last couple of days have been windy, making it too cool to sit out on the balcony in the evening, but tonight, after a blistering day, the balcony is the place to be. And...I can sit here with the laptop and watch the wizard's ball changing colour. I think it reminds me of the coloured lights in the rock gardens on the front in Southsea. Sometimes our parents would take us there as a treat of a summer's evening. Not much of a treat really, to pre-adolescent girls, but a lasting memory nonetheless.

Unemployment is a challenge.
The first challenge is to keep busy, but then, I don't have much of a problem there. I have more of a problem fitting in everything I want to do in a day. Might be different had I been laid off in the winter of course, not so much gardening to be done then - even for those of us who garden mainly in pots.

I can see that it could also be a strain on relationships. It's important to be aware of each others' feelings, acknowledge and be sensitive to them.
When I first arrived in Canada, I went from a job that was full-on and took 60 hours a week of my time, to being becalmed, like a ship with no wind in her sails. Plenty of the other kind of course, but not in me sails. It was easy to get depressed.

Now, I've gone from a job that was a little over half of those hours, and a third of the pay, but it gave me a feeling of worth. So whilst Kevin goes to a job with long hours and which is horrendously stressful at times, I get to stay home.
Normally, by evening, the last thing I want to do is to go out, yesterday, we had arranged to go to a friend's, and I was quite up for going out for once, Kev could probably have done with getting home and relaxing.

But however much I feel undervalued and let down by my former employers, I never feel that way in my own home. Even, in fact, when my extreme cleaning causes Kevin extra stress because he comes home and I've broken the bug screen and he has to fix it.
But then, this is only day three.
I know I can rely on him, but will I crack?

Desmond

Today is a Bank Holiday - Canada Day and unlike the USA's Independence Day, ours is about a union rather than a separation. The British North America Act of the 1st of July 1867 saw Canada created as a country of four unified Provinces.
A rather confused bus went past us yesterday, with its electronic sign reading 'Happy Holidays' which frankly, is code for Christmas.

In personal terms, far more importantly than Canada Day, my daughter Alex gained a good honours degree in English with American Studies from one of the country's most prestigious universities, and we're all very proud of her. My own Bachelor's degree is in French with Philosophy, so I found it quite fascinating reading her draft dissertation, it gave an insight into the literature of the southern states of the USA that I had no knowledge of.
I'm always chuffed to little mintballs when I learn stuff from my kids - not an infrequent occurrence.

I see that British grande dame of sitcom, Molly Sugden has died. One reason this seems bizarre is that she was pre-deceased by another grande dame of British acting, Wendy Richards, who played the young sexpot in 'Are You Being Served?' to Sugden's middle-aged frustrated spinster, who constantly referred to her pussy. Just for laffs you understand.

This page has a video of the building and burning of the Ghost Ship to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Naughty King Hal's coronation. Alex says it was phenomenal, not her exact words, but that was the impression.
Crazy, crazy, Pompey and King Harry would have been made for each other, if only he hadn't stood and watched the pride of his fleet, the Mary Rose, sink into the Solent.

Entranced

Last day of work today, which is weird, especially weird since tomorrow is a Bank Holiday - Canada Day.

This evening we finally went to see the Star Trek Movie and it was SU-BLOODY-FECKING-PERB. I was entranced, spellbound, from start to finish, and for every second in between.
I have just one question arising.
Why do Vulcans have English accents unless they are half-bred Vulcans?
No, that wasn't it, erm...
Oh yes, say you star in, basically a low-budget stoner movie, 'Harold and Kumar do a little something something'. Which direction would you prefer your career to take - advise the real life President Obambi on how to be a kick-arse dude, or star in the remake of a legend?
Mmm....I think I'd have to go with 'star in Star Trek', seemed like great fun.

This is the Wizard's night-time ball.

Wizard

So, I now have a wizard's....ball. Only a wizard would use this crackled glass item. Of course, I have to work out whether a witch really is just a female wizard, or if not, what the difference is - I know what the difference is in Pratchett terms of course - duh, who doesn't - but I need to know the REAL difference. And why doesn't she have a ....wizard's ball.

Anyway, so....the wizard's...ball. It's solar-powered, as I imagine are all wizard's.... magical equipment, at night, it changes colour, it's quite, quite mesmerising.

Yesterday, Kevin and I dragged our unhappy carcasses out of bed at the crack of dawn, oh well alright, around 9.30 and schlepped over to Kitsilano for the backstage tour at Bard on the Beach.
It looked decidedly deserted.
'Oh,' said the girl at the window, resembling a gazelle caught in the headlights of a Hummer, 'didn't someone call you to tell you it had been cancelled?'
Dear God how I had to restrain my sarcasm diodes.
I WANTED to say,
'But yes, of course they did, I merely got up early on a Saturday, drove through Saturday morning Vancouver traffic and presented myself at your window because I naturally assumed the person was lying and I wanted to catch you out, having a tour without me,'
Instead, I bit my tongue and merely said,
'Oddly, I wouldn't be standing here if they had,' and then smiled, although it was probably a mad, twitching rictus.

SO instead we went and bought solar lights.

For some reason, AskOxford.com directed me to what seems like an out-of-date but fascinating page on their website. It has a list of words that entered the language in a particular year.
Apparently it wasn't in the sixties that sex was invented, it turns out it was 1929, but we didn't get sexy until 1956. Some are as you might expect, Blitzkrieg in 1939, snafu in 1941, but megabucks goes all the way back to 1946, and Wonderbra to 1947. Despite that, spellchecker doesn't recognise it as a word.
And here's how out-of-date 'awesome' is - 1961.

Wizard was the word of the year in 1922. I presume as in 'wizard prang!'

Persimmon

Yesterday we had big, pouring, teeming, drumming, drenching rain. And it was good.

Anyroad, apart from the rain, it's that time of year again, yes! Bard on the Beach. Last night we went to see the dress rehearsal of 'All's Well that Ends Well'. And it was, as ever, most excellent. Even the weather added to the atmosphere, right at the end, the cast were competing with the noise of the heavy rain, which was perfect. My only small reservation was in that it was set, notionally, in Victorian times, and since this play features the King of France, it seemed an odd choice of time period, given that fifty years before, there had been an absolute surfeit of 'Off with his and her head!'s across the channel. Still, mustn't split hairs.

Tonight we ate home grown broccoli and a minuscule amount of courgette. Made me feel ridiculously healthy and happy, which just goes to show it's all mostly psychological.

Sleepy has bought me some potato bags, bags in which to grow spuds. This also makes me ridiculously happy, but first, I must find seed potatoes. Home Depot claims to sell them, but I don't know.... Still, I feel that this quest is going to be most fruitful, in a veggie kind of way.

So, today seemed to be English-as-a-completely-unknown-language training day at Stuporstore. And that may seem like a crass thing to say, but I genuinely bow down in admiration at the sheer determination of some of them. They make EXTREME eye contact and they watch your lips as you speak, which sounds impossible to be doing both at the same time, but maybe it's like photons, you observe them either as waves or particles, depending on how you choose to observe them. The photons, not the checkout assistants. And they still manage to do their bloody jobs! (The checkout assistants, not the photons, although since we can see stuff, I suppose they do too). I got my groceries, with all the coupons taken off. We did have a sticky moment with a persimmon though.
'What is please?'
'A persimmon.' She looks through her list,
'Please?'
'Persimmon,' Perhaps it's my accent, so I attempt something that may or may not sound more Canadian. Blank. I offer to look through her list, we don't even call them bloody persimmons in Britain anyway, we call them Sharon fruit, and Stuporstore has a bizzare habit of randomly deciding to list something by the English name. But then she found it and squealed, causing me to jump.
'Ah, puhsmn Fuyu!;
'Ok.'

In the car park, a man driving a boat starts beeping at me.
'What!?' I scream at him. I'm not in his way, he doesn't appear to be trying to get into my parking space, he is just....beeping. I wave my arms at him. He has what my friend R refers to as a 'crip tag', and she can, because she has one. In my head I am telling myself, 'Mustn't call it a crip tag, mustn't call it a crip tag.'
I wave my arms at him again and he winds down the window.
'Leave your cart there and I'll give you the loony when you pull out of your parking space,' (a loony being a one dollar coin, which we put in the shopping trolley to release it).
'Please,' I remind him, 'and why do you want my parking space, you're right next to the disabled space.' He says he hadn't seen it. Hmmmm. He does an eighty-seven point turn and finally manages to get his boat into the space. I wait for him, it would seem rude to put the trolley back now.
'Oh,' he says, 'I'll get another cart now I'm in the disabled,'
What? Argh. I consider kicking his good leg, but decide against it.

On to the Petrol Station. Back to the non-verbal communication.
'Can you fill it up with regular?' I say, handing over my credit card.
'Fii uu, reglah,' the student watches my lips and makes an attempt at the unfamiliar words. BUT...I got my petrol and my receipt and coupon and yet again, I am impressed.
They're both probably nuclear physicists in some other country.
Not the bloke with the crip tag though. He can speak English and doesn't bother to be polite.
Bloody non-foreigners.

Magic and Politics

This was weird. On Sunday, I noticed there was something wrong with Word, I mean, seriously, terminally wrong, and Word plays quite an important part in my universe. So I wrestled with it, we both did, there was swearing. Almost tears.

Yesterday, I wrestled with it again. Not only do I NEED Word, but since the advent of the 2007 version, I have been spoilt, because that is a thing of great beauty, as software programmes go.

This evening, wrestled again. Went away, watered the plants, did some stuff, then there was an e-mail from my friend M, asking me to do something that...yes, involved Word. But as soon as I saw her e-mail, I knew what to do, and I did it, and it worked. I'm beyond stunned.

I'm also stunned, and again, in a good way, by Obambi's speech about the treatment of protesters in Iran. Nicely done my friend. Of course, Gordon Brown did it first, just that no-one noticed because he's not the flavour of the millennium.

Both Margaret Beckett and Ann Widdecombe are quite splendid MPs, both of whom have been knocked out of the race for the job of Speaker of the House of Commons.
Of course.
But wait...the MAN who was elected seems to be annoying his own party by being pro-choice, not homophobic or misogynistic,and generally, sort of...not very Tory like.