Meditations

Red Letter Day

2012-02-18T08:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (Thursday) was an all-systems go, start to finish day. First thing we went to the Register Office in Portsmouth for our friends' wedding. The perfect wedding, since they had been married for some time, but needed the legalities done. So this was what it was, no rings or vows exchanged, just papers signed in front of witnesses.

The brides treated us to an amazing lunch at a very high end restaurant, my goodness are those waiting staff polite without being obsequious. Food - out of this world.

In the evening, fate had accorded us a rare treat - Ben's band were playing in Pompey. And my god were they amazing! just phenomenal, of course I'd seen them on YouTube, but live - just awesome.

Back to Pulborough for a rest, seeing a friend locally tomorrow:)

V-Day

2012-02-14T12:30:00.002-08:00

The story so far.
Friday, took Whisky to Kev's parents' house, went to work, came home, my friend Yvonne picked us up and took us to the airport. Plane left on time, slept most of the way, sorted.

At Heathrow, not so sorted. Even the new, swishy terminal five was not working like the well-oiled machine it should have been. We waited ages for the shuttle train to take us to Arrivals. At baggage reclaim, and how is it this can happen? one bag came out almost straight away, the other, handed over at YVR at exactly the same time, took another half an hour or so.
Then Avis - who managed to rent us a car with a huge dent in it. If I'd wanted rent-a-wreck, I'd have done so straight off the bat.
Oh well.

Then we had difficulty finding Austen and Sue's new place, Google maps weren't as helpful as I usually find them, and the country lanes were dark, very dark. Luckily, navigating the narrow, windy, unlit roads and passing people coming in the opposite direction by a fraction of an inch, all came back to me.

West Sussex is lovely though. There's a tawny owl roosting in a tree next door. The countryside feels very comfortable and we're enjoying the walks and the ruined castles and such like. There's still snow on many of the fields and hills.
Oh, and Sainsburys, which, admittedly isn't confined to Sussex. Sainsburys has this awesome new scheme. They monitor their main competitor's prices daily on everything they sell, then they give you a money back coupon for the difference on any item that their competitor was selling more cheaply that day. Certainly keeps me coming back!

Tomorrow we'll re-connect with Portsmouth. Tally-ho!

Lego State

2012-02-03T21:43:00.000-08:00

Washington State has passed a law to allow marriage equality. This should come to pass in the summer sometime. Naturally the bigot wheel has been rolled out. I can't even be bothered to look at their spew to be honest.

I see that the weather in Britain has become colder, even colder than here. I look forward to it.

A YouTube clip about Lego has me gobsmacked. It seems that real research has linked enhanced development in the thinking skills that are needed for science and engineering, in children who play with Lego.
The Lego company, according to Spokesperson Mads Nipper - has spent four years trying to find out how to market Lego to girls. You think I'm not going to say it, don't you?
But I'm afraid I am.
You make it pink and purple, you put the little people in short skirts, and you have them do girl friendly Lego activities such as keep house, visit the hairdresser's and, well, just generally hang about being girls. Of course I like arranging my house and going to the hairdressers, but I also like dinosaurs, sciencey things, splitting the atom, and other not-very-ladylike activities.

But, if you think about it, you don't really want girls going in to science and engineering, because there might not be enough to go round. Or it might become not cool, because girls like it.
Or something.

Good gracious. There are so many freaking layers of patriarchal oppression, tis difficult to know where to start.
And four freaking years to come up with what most people could groan and predict in five seconds.
Here's some free advice Lego, just market it to girls by simply putting girls in your ads, showing girls playing with it, by radically changing your mindset to the fact that girls like dinosaurs, aeroplanes and building things.

Zombie

2012-01-30T16:58:00.000-08:00

Yeah, no, not her.

So, one of the ongoing REALLY BIG QUESTIONS is, how to make Zombies interesting - except of course for those who find Zombies inherently interesting, not me, I don't, but lots of other people who I like, do.
Where was I?
Oh yes, 'The Fades'. My goodness, what a little gem of a TV series - BBC I think, but it was on our telly, and such a quirk that we found it. Since we rarely watch the telly as it happens, we are rarely channel surfing, but we did, once, and we found this. Awesome series. Never let up. Watch it and then we'll enter into dialogue about whether the Fades count as Zombies. Um, and not just the first episode,

Another unbelievably fab series is 'Call the Midwife'. It is about a group of midwives/district nurses operating out of an Anglican convent in the East End of London in 1957 - yes, the year of my birth. Utterly fascinating, and finally we are getting some programmes about women's work.

Ever thought of this ? - You know those questions you get where someone asks you who from history you would most like to meet? And you say, 'Eleanor of Aquitaine'. Well, I would. And what if we DID get to meet that person and it turned out that actually we WERE that person. That in a previous life, we were them. How would that work? Spookily, I feel.

So, that aside. Saturday evening, returned from work, straight down to the Static. Icy rain, dark, I cycle to the barely heated swimming pool. I swim, alone, every time the wind blows, the awning - the bubble - over the pool, shudders and icy water rains down through the holes in its roof. Enjoyable though. I put my jacket, trousers and trainers on over my cossie and towel, and cycle back through the icy rain, and realise I am racing a skunk. Who knew they could move like that? They always seem to amble along - waddle almost, but this one was really legging it. Important to outrun a skunk though.
You could argue - training for the zombies apocalypse.

Solar Flare

2012-01-24T21:51:00.000-08:00

So, bit of confusion over the Year of the Dragon - thought it was yesterday, so did the rest of predominantly Chinese Richmond, but the Chinese astrologer in the local rag reckons it's 4th Feb. This is the same local rag that this week brought us the gem, 'We got a funnel!' Indeed.

Still, the year of the dragon appears to be heralded by severe solar storms raging out in the ...well, solar system. The Aurora Borealis is apparently so active that the lights can be seen down here. Not quite sure what you have to do to see them though. I've peered out at the night sky. There is a stunning sliver of crescent moon and a bright star, but no light show.

On Friday we awoke to really big snow, the sort that makes you think you've moved to Sleepy Hollow, but by the evening it had been mostly melted by the driving rain. And the rain is still driving, let me tell you.

It comes home to you how many channels on our TV are from the US when Obama is giving his State of the Union address. This evening I had to scroll through quite a few before finding an actual programme.

Amazon recommended me a bunch of books based on my recent purchases - according to them."Hokkaido Highway Blues : Hitchhiking Japan". Seriously, they got this from a bunch of British Field Guides and some random fiction?

Trinity Baptist church on Granville Street, Vancouver, has a sign outside that declares that God's favourite word is 'come'. Hmmm..Well I suppose God's name does get called a lot at that moment.

Why does Julian Assange think he's worthy of a TV prog? Good grief. Must be the solar storm messing with reality.

Big Snow

2012-01-18T21:38:00.000-08:00

Well, biggish. We had snow on Friday evening. When I drove to work from Birch Bay on Saturday, the fields to either side of Route 99 were insanely beautiful. The evergreens were draped with sparkling white, and in one blanketed pasture, a bunch of dark-coloured llamas were kneeling down. Right at the tope of bare-branched deicduous tree, a bald eagle looked hunched into its feathers. Yet the eagles love the cold weather, they simply own the sky.
There was another sprinkling overnight on Saturday-Sunday, but when we got back to Richmond, there had clealry been more.
Very early this morning it started up again and the drive to work was through driving snow. If I didn't have the windscreen-wipers on all the time, then the snow froze as the blades cleared it. The roads hadn't yet been fully cleared, but at least people were driving at sensible speeds and with a good stopping distance in between.
For now, we are not due any more until tomorrow night, we'll see. Today, the top temperature has been -6.

Just Bleuch

2012-01-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

My day off! So typical then that I felt suddenly so rough around midday and throughout the afternoon, that I thought I might be seriously ill.

I took my pulse and found I had none. Rather than assuming I had hit the wrong spot, I naturally wondered whether I was in fact dead and hadn't realised it.
This was probably more as a result of watching a British TV programme yesterday called 'The Fades', where people who couldn't find the way through to the afterlife, wandered around, unable to interact with the living world, and getting angrier and angrier about it.
I noticed that I was in fact able to interact so the chances were that wasn't what had happened. When I did find my pulse, it seemed to be a fairly normal 68.

Still, waves of nausea, feeling that I was going to faint and feeling hot and cold wrecked my day. I know several people who have had truly awful bouts of gastric flu in the last couple of weeks. This, I was not keen on.
I'm still hoping it won't develop, and I certainly feel much better than I did earlier, but haven't been able to face any actual food. I've drunk water and hot Marmite and lain around like a sickly heroine.
Feeling cold's a bit of a novelty.I think I could handle it without the nausea and faintness.

Apocalypse...sometime

2012-01-05T18:39:00.001-08:00

Television's coming back. It has been away for about a month, and we had almost exhausted our saved-up British TV programmes and then the new episodes of things started to trickle in. This Sunday, it starts up in earnest and of course soon, so will the meetings.

This week we have had Noah-esque rain, although today was dry and by the end, clear. And thus, colder. In fact, when I left work this evening, the sky was an almost-dark blue, rather than black.

We've been watching a programme about the people who believe the Mayan prophecy about 2012. It seems that it has been downgraded to more of a 'something bad will happen sometime'. Yes. If we don't stop warming up our planet, the climate will change cataclysmically.
Apart from the man who thinks it will happen earlier. Say wha'?

Happy New Year

2012-01-02T19:45:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year wherever you are.

We were down at the Static for New Year, a friend stayed over and we had a quiet but enjoyable evening, food, film, wine, sparkling wine and oddly timed fireworks. They seemed to go mad between nine and nine thirty and then nothing.
Today we returned and took the Christmas decs down, swept the floor of fir needles, put washing on.

Our Christmas period entertainment has been mostly Downton Abbey. England's obsession is our obsession. With just the two-hour Christmas special to go, we face the long, dark teatime of the soul until the next series appears.

Sometimes, the Christmas period seems interminable. Sometimes it's over in a blink of an eye.

I don't have any resolutions. I have things I want to do, to explore, to face head on, but nothing as specific as a resolution.

Today would be my friend Anne's birthday. I have been typing up some of the 'missing' chapters from her novel. I have the hard copy, but no electronic file. For one reason or another, I had to photocopy some of the pages. As I typed them up, I put them in the recycling. One morning over the past week, I awoke to a familiar, yet unplaceable scent. It came into my head that it was Anne's soap, yet I still couldn't say, 'oh yes, of course.' I went down to make the coffee. I was standing on the opposite side of the kitchen and suddenly, the pages of Anne's novel lifted up from the bin and fell down the stairs, as though they had been moved by a breath of wind. Of course, there were no windows open and there is no heating vent anywhere near the recycling bin. Coincidence I guess, at a time when my friend is very much in my thoughts.

I still find it unbelievable that she is no longer here. In the grand scheme of things, I hadn't known her that long, but we were good friends. When I think of friends that I don't see, or don't see very often, but whom I've known for almost my whole life, it seems impossible that the world could continue without them being in it. At some point in my life, I guess I'll experience that - or they will. And I can't imagine it, nor do I want to.

New Year.
Makes you think.

Rain Tree

2011-12-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

Christmas was wet, very wet, not a single flake of the snow that I had ordered. Actually, Christmas is still wet. We are heading towards a record-breakingly dry December, so natch, the weather gods had to try to avoid that and unleashed water from the sky.

We've had a very Downton Christmas, it must be said, but we can't even watch the Christmas Special until we've watched Series Two.
Great Doctor Who Christmas Special though.

There was no Midnight Mass in church this year, just a Mediaeval Christmas service which includes lots of Latin. Unfortunately, having studied Latin for many years at Grammar School, I understand it. Back door sexism. `Really, I don't care about the lack of Mass anymore. Instead, I drove to the airport to collect Kev's brother, flying in from Toronto.

I have eaten much good food, Kevin did us proud. Now I need the feeding frenzy to settle down.
Back to work tomorrow.
Redemption the day after.

Solstice

2011-12-22T20:34:00.000-08:00

Solstice at 5.30 this morning. I led a Solstice Walk at 15.00. I enjoyed it, and did some meditation exercises with the people who came. They all seemed to enjoy the experience.

Kevin sent me this article. Seems as though Atheists get a raw deal. I sent this article to my friend Raymond. His response was 'It's the cross we bear,' which I thought was chortle-worthy:)

And women continue to get a raw deal. Feminist Hugo Schwyzer explains how women suffer 'gaslighting' and why he disagrees with people who use it as a strategy whilst claiming to support women.

Tuesday Jelly

2011-12-20T21:53:00.000-08:00

I keep thinking it's Tuesday. You know those dreams where you are struggling against jelly and you try and try to move forward but you don't get anywhere. Yes, that. I haven't even bought any cards, so that's not happening. Fortunately, we only do pressies for the kids and grandkids, and we've gone with green, by default, but we have. They have money and tokens. They seem happy enough.

Happy Chanukkah for anyone who Chanukkahs.
I have a number of people signed up for my Solstice walk on Thursday - Solstice. I'm looking forward to that.

The weekend at the Static was relaxing. Well, just a day for me because I had to come back up Saturday morning for work, but I did manage to swim and sleep and clear up a bit, no appreciable internet still but, whatever. Monday I cleaned back here, or let the energy flow as I see it.

Weather's gone warm again, that's not so good, but then even that's relative.

I suppose, in a manner of speaking, I'm ready.
Bring it.

Trudeau

2011-12-15T21:04:00.000-08:00

One of the few Prime Minsters that Canadians actually seem to like, was Pierre Trudeau. His son, Justin, is now an MP and currently sporting some dashing and altogether rather embarrassingly awful facial hair. Post Movember I'm told.
But right now, he is a bit of a hero.

The greater embarrassment for Canada, far greater than Justin's beard, Celine Dion and Bryan Adams all rolled into one, is the fiasco of the Durban Climate Conference when Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol. In truth, we had a commitment to reducing emissions by 6% by next year, whereas emissions in this country had actually risen by 30%. Epic failure on that one.

Canada's so-called Environment minister,criticised another minister who took up this awful state of affairs with him in the House of Commons, but he had personally prohibited the other ministers from going. Trudeau, in parliament, called him a piece of shit.

Like a true Canadian, he then apologised.
But he was damned right.

Eclipse

2011-12-10T21:12:00.001-08:00

I was awake and outside extremely early this morning, in the hope of seeing the lunar eclipse. The world was sparkling from the hardest frost I'd ever seen, beautiful in the darkness. The sky however, was overcast and there was no sign of any moon, eclipsed or non-eclipsed.

On the way to work, a slew of annoying ads on the radio. It seems to be compulosry to trot out jewellry and perfume ads during the lead up to Christmas, but the jewellry ones are, of course outdated and sexist. As for perfume, do people still buy it? I mean, it's not as though I don't own any, but one is rarely able to wear it these days.

Another radio ad, for some seller of holidays offers same for 'adults or couples'. I mean... have I missed something?

We've been watching 'Once Upon a Time', a series filmed in the posh part of Richmond, Steveston, although confusingly for those who live there, the area now frequently has the sign up that says 'Storybrooke'. Most enjoyable series. We have also been watching 'Grimm'. This, astonishingly, isn't filmed up here. The characters are named in German. I get the wolves, they are called Blutbad, or bloodbath, fair enough, the pigs are Bauerschwein, ok, the three little pigs - farmer pigs, ok, ish, but the rat wranglers, 'Reinigen'? 'To clean'? No, you've lost me I'm afraid. Still, mostly enjoying the programme.

Cold Comfort

2011-12-07T20:52:00.001-08:00

It's astonishing how people are willing to believe in a Mayan prophecy but not in climate change.

And on the subject of believing, from the Guardian...

"The UK government has been accused of being "extraordinarily naive" over tar sands information given to it by Canadian diplomats as part of a lobbying campaign, but which has since been contradicted.
Chris Davies, the MEP who is the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman in the European parliament, told me: "It is extraordinarily naive for ministers and officials to take the special pleading by Canada as though it were gospel truth, rather than what it is - an attempt to protect narrow financial interests."

Gaagh, how embarrassing.

Happy 25th

2011-12-06T20:55:00.001-08:00

Happy Birthday Laurence, 25 today. We've been to Ricky's, we had an ice-cream cake from DQ. All good.

Frat Party

2011-12-05T17:29:00.001-08:00

At the weekend, Kevin's frat Christmas party was at our house. People take it in turns to host and this year, well, we offered. Sounds like madness, doesn't it?

In fact, it was incredibly well-organised. The young whippersnapper frats in their best bib and tucker, shirt neatly tucked into trews, ties, nicely polished shoes, came and set up. All the food and drink was provided. The youngsters ran the bar, no-one drank too much, and at the end, the 'pledges' cleared up. It was a sort of rent-a-party. Totes civilised. Who knew?

Hmm, Kevin did, I must admit, this is how he had told me it would be, and it was.

My own part mainly took the form of dog-wrangling. As soon as strangers started arriving, Whisky became insane dog, but I put him in the car and took him for a walk. Er...a drive and then a walk. We have a place we go down by the river, which is normally deserted, but yesterday evening, at twilight, there were more cars driving past than I'd ever seen there before. Followed by a police car.

An elderly Chinese lady wearing a coolie hat was clipping the grass verge with a pair of garden shears. There are no houses there, this was just a random piece of grass verge.
'Cars very fast,' she said.
'Yes,' I agreed, unable to think of anything less anodyne to say in the face of surreality.
But the dog came back calm.

Score

2011-11-28T22:06:00.001-08:00

My friend has succeeded in having a sexist advert removedfrom TV.

Volkswagen ran an ad that showed a woman in labour being taken tohospital by her male partner. But the paramedic who meets them, is stunned bythe amazing car they arrive in and both men are soon engrossed in car worshipand ignore the woman.

My friend filled in the complaints form on VW’s website,pointing out that they had trivialised an event which claims thousands of women’slives every year. The reply she got was anodyne and grammatically toe-curling.I made a complaint on the website, pointing out that it was also sexist towardsmen. This is an offensive stereotype that suggests that men are all puerilecretins who don’t care about human life. The e-form barfed back one sentence atme and said this had a syntax error. Kevin said this just meant their server isfracked and you couldn’t really tell whether it was rejecting or giving areceipt.

Next, my friend e-mailed them again and said that theirresponse was unsatisfactory and that unless they told her they were removingthe ad, by a certain date, she would be informing certain newspapers and media.She then received a swift reply saying that the ads were being pulled and thatit would take a few days to remove them from all networks.

Booyah. Result, and a good one.

Nicely done.

Scheduling at the Schloss is hectic and for various reasons,I have had to go to the Static on Sunday afternoon and stay over until Monday.

I called in at the Market. A smallish child was hoverin bythe pepperdew peppers as I was making towards them.

‘Are they very hot?’ Sheasked.

‘No,’ said I, ‘not at all, they’re quite sweet really.’ Thenthere was a moment when the unspoken thing hung in the air and we looked ateach other.

‘Ok,’ said I, ‘I am British, we have a different scale,’

‘They’d blow my head off, wouldn’t they?’ she asked,

‘No, no, but….’

‘Maybe too much for a seven year-old?’

‘Yep.’

The Abbey

2011-11-23T19:40:00.001-08:00

The temperature goes down, it goes up, and now, hopefully, it's back down a touche, Hurrah. Except that the number of road traffic accidents has become horrific. I suppose that's not so much temperature as weather related.

So, on the recommendation of just about everyone back in Blighty, we've started watching Downton Abbey, and I must say, I am rather enjoying it. Thought provoking. And it really holds the key to the English, I wouldn't like to say the British necessarily, but certainly the English.

I find it difficult to appreciate the gravity of the Amish 'haircut attcks'. I know, I know. But to compound it, the leader of the breakaway haircutters is called Sam Mullet.

Mercury's going retrograde now for two weeks. I'll try to stay calm.

Froideur

2011-11-20T17:45:00.001-08:00

"I hear those sleigh bells ringing..." yep, already, outside of Superstore, the Sally Ann have stationed a Santa replete with bell.
Inside Superstore, an elderly lady was wearing a tiger-striped fun-fur hat with ears and dangly bits. I feel this is a stroke of genius, it makes seniors seem cute and lovable, which in fact many of them are.

It's very cold right now, Janis cold. I actually had to put a coat and gloves on today - awesome.

Today, up at the crack of dawn to take Laurence to his forklift training, about a million miles away - a good fifty minute drive at any rate. We actually did watch day break and it was breathtakingly beautiful. Along Route 99, Bald Eagles were sitting in trees, enjoying the morning coldness.
Froideur.

Laurence now has a forklift licence. Good job laddie, made it well worth getting up at 6, driving across Surrey before the world was awake, and then down to chilly Washington State to rescue Kevin and Whisky.

First Snow

2011-11-19T21:13:00.001-08:00

Yesterday morning we awoke to snow. Not deep snow, but a fair covering. Whisky was keen to investigate.
Me too.
Gone by this morning.

Crow Flying Backwards

2011-11-14T20:14:00.001-08:00

Wild weather at the weekend, rain, torrential rain, get-your-ark-ready rain, and wind. Still windy today, bringing-down-trees wind. And crows flying backwards wind. Backwards flying crow - why isn't there a yoga pose called that? Maybe there is.

Finished 'The Elegance of the Hedgehog'. Alison Anderson, (translator) I did you wrong. The book has been re-translated into US English. I found this out thanks to the function on Amazon.co.uk where you can read inside the book. I searched for 'dime store psychology', the original translation said, 'amateur psychology'. I rest my case. It was a great book.

I'm liking US Prime Suspect. I like Maria Bello's Jane Timony, she's like an updated Christine Cagney, I loved Cagney and Lacey, but I'm peeved that it is called Prime Suspect. It has nothing to do with the original series.

Today was an excellent day, my day off, and Kevin took a day off so that we could spend the day together on our wedding anniversary. And we have had a fab day, doing really quite ordinary things, but together.

And we started the day watching telly in bed - the much recommended Downton Abbey. Excellent.

Rhizomes

2011-11-09T20:50:00.000-08:00

Misleading actually, it has been raining a fair bit. Apparently it's going to rain a fair bit more too.

The World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Report for 2011 has just been published. The UK, USA and Canada are huddled together in 16th, 17th and 18th places respectively.
Sheer freaking disgrace for all three. And how is this disgrace being addressed? The usual lip service of course.

Yet two interesting pieces of research could inform us and allow a more spirited campaign to do something real about the situation.In June of this year, Science Daily summarised a study that showed how 'daily acts of subtle sexism' by both women and men, impact the lives of women. But when women were made aware of the 'unseen sexism', such as sexist language, they were more inclined to correct their behaviour, when men were made aware, they didn't see it per se as discriminatory, they needed an extra factor, such as empathy for women or certain women.

At the end of October, another study demonstrated a clear and strong link between the sexism exhibited by individuals and the extent of the gender gap in the society in which those individuals live. Jigsaw pieces falling into place? The subtle and often unseen sexism that is daily perpetuated by individuals, is self-reinforcing and reflected in the size of the gender gap.

Until we properly address what too many think of as 'pet peeves' and annoying whinges rather than the rhizomes of what become human rights issues, this gap will not close. And whilst men have privilege in those three western societies that should be shamefacedly shuffling their feet right now, the reality is that not all men benefit from that Patriarchy. The men who are important in our lives, lovers, sons, fathers, friends, are for the most part good men, good and supportive men who are also the losers in a system where a minority shit on the rest.
This is something that can be achieved by ordinary people for ordinary people.

So why don't we do it?

Twenty-five Hour Day

2011-11-06T18:57:00.000-08:00

The clocks have gone back. It's nice to have that extra hour in the morning, but also confusing, in spite of the fact that most of the clocks change automatically.

But then when I took Whisky for his teatime walk, the sun was already setting. The sky was clear and denim blue, kissed with pink at the treeline. The almost full moon was already visible and the colour of platinum.

This weekend we stayed in Canada. Yesterday I had a day of really interesting workshops at a not-particularly local college. Today I pottered, getting my energy channels cleared by doing routine taks that had needed doing for too long. Therapeutic, good. Good for me in any case.

First Frost

2011-11-04T21:43:00.000-07:00

Although I don't like that I have to drive to work, there are mornings, like today, when it is compensated by the sheer, jaw-dropping beauty of the mountains and the fields, and the mist and sparkle. It makes the soul soar. Intense.

One of the local mountains had snow, Snowvember? We'll see.

This week's expression de la semaine (see what I did there?) 'not in your/my/her/his wheelhouse'. An odd expression.

November

2011-11-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

November.

So, Greece, what a freaking mess, huh? 'Backstabbing, skullduggery and political intrigue...' Well I never. And the formerly rioting citizenry think they are being blackmailed into agreeing to their country being rescued by the EU. Difficult to find any wronged party in it all.

Yesterday I discovered I was eligible for a free flu jab on account of being on blood pressure meds. The pharmacist seemed happy to have a customer, even one getting something for nothing. He offered me a lollipop, I declined, natch.

The Brompton Mix have an agent. Rock and Roll lads, rock and roll.

Samhain

2011-10-31T16:04:00.000-07:00

Quarter past six, standing in the dark, watching the film of cloud drift gently over the morning stars. The last morning of October. My routine blood tests were due this month, so that's where I was.

And the day has turned into a spectacular one, clear skies, and wind that makes me feel part of everything and a strong need to recite,
'O wild, west wind, thou breath of Autumn's being...' and I did. Whisky was dead impressed, so were the trees and the birds. On the phone, later, Alex listened to my recitation and humoured me. Only seven hours between here and there this week, the veil is thinner than usual.

Brightest blessings for Samhain.

At the Static

2011-10-30T17:36:00.001-07:00

A weekend at the Static, yes, a weekend. I had Saturday off to make up for working an extra day earlier in the month. AND...a weekend when miraculously, we have internet. This hasn't happened since spring. Makes a difference. You think you want to step outside of the worldwide web, but only until you can't get back in.

I am reading a book that is very enjoyable apart from the sloppy translation that sends us back to the fifties. 'The Elegance of the Hedgehog' is an amazing read, but the gendered language of French does not need to be translated so literally into the ungendered English language. Yes, I know I could probably read it in the original and be less annoyed, but I didn't want to wait three months to have a copy couriered by tortoise from France.

'Flavorwire' (sic) gives us ten U.S. sitcoms that moved women forward. Of course, they are just that, sitcoms, and there are other shows, such as Cagney and Lacey, that really did the business. There are even other sitcoms that showed women as able to think for themselves, such as 'Cybill' and that leads nus right back to Britcoms such as Ab Fab, Girl on Top and The Vicar of Dibley that did the same. There are still programs that get it almost right, Bones for example, but then when you look at this season's offerings, sometimes women seem so peripheral to everything, you'd think we lived in a different realm, oh wait.....

And at least in the UK, that isn't going to get much better, since 'Bird's Eye View', a festival that screens films by women, has had to be cancelled due to funding cuts.

British TV presenter, Eamonn Holmes (Irish, but works on British TV), ended an interview with a rape victim who had the presence of mind to deliberately leave evidence at the scene of the crime, the rapist's car, by saying to her, 'well I hope you take taxis now.' Yes, yet again, blame the victim Eamonn, well done, not. Sometimes you've just got to wonder how the person gets the job.

After Dark

2011-10-25T22:51:00.000-07:00

Monday night, Skytrain downtown. Walking to my friend's house, Vancouver after dark. City of tents outside the Art Gallery - Occupy Vancouver, the denizens high on something and righteous indignation.

Firefighters practising climbing a ladder while waiting for something to go wrong. Face it, they get called when something goes wrong, but meanwhile send the lads and lasses up high steps into the dark.

A pair of well-fed skunks amble along the pavement, snuffle in the undergrowth. They go undisturbed, people see the stripe, white against the darkness and skirt around them. Not fierce, this pair, they look fluffy and adorable, but when frightened, oh, no-one wants to go there.

Turning onto my friend's street, a dog approaches, on a lead, but with a bicycle's rear light attached to its collar, blinking red as the dog takes its owner for a walk, it too sniffing the foliage.

An ordinary evening in the city that never snores.

Colonel Who?

2011-10-20T22:31:00.000-07:00

Who knew that Gadafi's first name wasn't 'Colonel'? Why didn't Noah Webster try to change the spelling of 'Colonel'?
Was Colonel Gadafi actually Fatima Whitbread?
I think we should be told.

When I took Whisky for his walk after I got home from work, three young men were quite openly smoking the stinkiest weed I'd ever smelt. Of course, even living in BC, my experience isn't extensive, but this did smell very strongly. That in itself doesn't warrant comment, but the fact was that each of them then got into a different car and drove off. Kevin had told me the same thing had happened yesterday. If it happens tomorrow, people will be informed.

Bees, Birthday, Band

2011-10-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

Finally the leaves.

On Saturday I went to a fundraising event for work. There was a great talk on native bees. I don't understand the passive-aggressive response of some women.
Just like when I used to play Betty Bee, many of the women whooped and clapped when the speaker described the envisceration of the male bees after mating. Alright, not really that passive. Why, in this society, will women still accept being addressed as though they don't exist, and yet they will revel in such detail? Again, when laid out like that, the two do seem to go together.

This has been a week of meetings. Just two, but every evening counts.

My sister's birthday today.

Last Friday, Ben's band played at Indig02, and reports were that it was an amazing gig. Still no video up on YouTube. Their next gig is playing for the after show party of Liam Gallagher's new band.
Rock and roll.

All Over the Map

2011-10-12T21:20:00.000-07:00

See if you can do this, I readily admit I was pretty poor at Geography at school, but I think this is more politics than Geography, and it still took me a while.

During the course of my researches today, I discovered this little piece of distress. If you remind women that breast cancer is a disease that predominantly affects women, then they are less likely to donate to cancer research, if you make it more gender neutral by, ooh, disassociating it from the colour pink, then they are more inclined to donate. Yes, women hate being reminded that they are women. Either that, or secretly, they really do hate pink. The men who love them are far more forgiving though.

Harvest Thanksgiving

2011-10-10T18:50:00.000-07:00

After a cool, wet spring, and then a cool, wet early summer, followed by six weeks of endless sunshine, the trees have been late changing colour, which they finally, now, have done, or I should say, are doing. There are some coral pinks and dark reds out there, even a few golds from the Cottonwoods, but it's a fairly lazy turn this year.

I came up from the Static on Sunday morning because I was reading in church. There were a couple of typos in mine, and God seemed to be issuing decrees, commands and statues. Now, given that a fair proportion of our congregation probably do still think of God as an elderly gentleman, the random presentation of statues would be in keeping with the ageing process. And it made me wonder - because some of the other readers would simply have read what was written on the page - whether God's mysterious ways may indeed seem more geriatric than mystical.

The Schloss's own harvest has been sparse this year. (The picture is not representative).
We have a number of late-ripening tomatoes, both red and yellow, a massive amount of parsley, and likewise of lavender. But we live in a place and time where my own lack of success in the garden has not impacted my family's ability to obtain food, and for this I thank my Goddesses.

I know we live in a privileged society where there is no cause for anyone to starve, and yet people still do go hungry because whilst we pay lip service to all people being equal, when push comes to shove, we don't really believe it. We like to blame, somewhere deep inside, we buy into the concept of the 'undeserving poor'.
We mentally point a finger at street people, drug addicts, people with mental health issues and reassure ourselves that we are righteous, we do the right things not to be like them, and thus condemn them through our disregard.

At this time of Harvest Thanksgiving, where is our concern for humanity, where is mine? When I think about the contempt for the Earth, for the Environment, for the health and welfare of the other travellers through space and time, I realise the importance of the long, dark, teatime of the soul. Because whilst we're feeding our faces, are we starving our souls?

Orb

2011-10-06T21:27:00.000-07:00

Kevin says it's a raindrop on the lens, I say it's something supernatural or otherworldly. It totes wasn't the moon.

Driving to work is something I haven't had to do for a very long time. Actually, I can't remember ever having to drive to work, but there must have been a time. Mostly, I'm going in the opposite direction from the majority of the traffic, but Tuesday night I was forced to do a long stretch of the road in second because there had been an accident involving 'a police cruiser and a truck carrying cranberries'. So very specific to our area at this time of year.

Kev and Whisky are down at the Static, Kev having taken a couple of extra days off before the long weekend. Even I get this Saturday, in lieu of Monday, which is the Harvest Thanksgiving holiday. Of course, some of the harvest was spilt on the slip road to the Queensborough bridge.
To whom do Atheists give thanks?
Hmmm....

Waxing Moon

2011-10-04T23:32:00.000-07:00

October. Luvvly.

Saturday after work, I drove down to the Static and thence to see Kev's folks. Cousin from Spain was there. Apparently peanut butter is in short supply there. And why shouldn't it be? Much as I like a bit of beurre d'arachide meself, I'm sure the Spanish have more exotic things to spread on their pan.

Sunday, one glorious day of rest, swimming toute seule, since it's way too cold for anyone else to be doing lengths outdoors. Again, apparently.

Yesterday, Vancouver for a seminar followed by an evening seminar. The evening one was excellent.

I feel that Facebook is getting bossy. It e-mailed me to tell me I was missing all sorts of updates from my friends. Rookie mistake. What they should have said was, 'In the time it takes for you to read this fatuous e-mail,you could have checked out your friends' status updates.'

Yeah, well, quod non erat demonstrandum.

Casino Blah

2011-09-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

Two mornings ago, a day when I had two classes arriving for a programme first thing, and another in the afternoon, there was a fatal motorcycle crash just outside the entrance to where I work. The police had a long stretch of road leading up to it cordoned off for most of the day, so I got to learn a new back way that I would never have thought existed. Live and learn. Except for the motorcyclist who was pronounced dead at the scene. The thought of that haunted me, someone's child, lover, parent, probably going to work first thing in the morning, and never returning.

Today, I had to go to collect my renewed Permanent Resident card from somewhere in the over-priced bowels of Vancouver. Actually, more like the appendix.
The young man at the counter asked me why I hadn't yet applied for citizenship, since I was illegible. Yep, he said that, he didn't say eligible, he said, illegible.
Remembering I was in Canada, I swallowed back the sharp reply, smiled sweetly, and said I was going to get onto it straight away. And I will, since Kevin keeps reminding me and it will make crossing the border easier still.

I went from there to YVR to update the information on my NEXUS card. The skytrain goes right into the airport, it's well thought out.
A German tourist who was trying to buy a ticket from the machine, asked me if I could split a $50 note. Again I swallowed back my sharp reply and simply told him I didn't have any cash. This was true, and I rarely have as much as $50 on me.

Coming back to Richmond, you have to change at the station that overlooks the Casino. This is the most painless train change I can imagine, you simply step across the platform and an electronic reader board tells you that the next train will arrive in 4 minutes. Done.
The Casino, sorry, Casino Resort, boasts all sorts of facilities, also increases the crime in the area by a factor of something like 500%.
There is some kind of entertainment place there where tired old celebs whose names we've all long since forgotten, come to earn their crust. Forthcoming attractions include Mitzi Gaynor and Matt Goss.
I rest my case.

Rain and Telly

2011-09-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

Monday, and madre mia is it wet. Wet and blustery. And my day off. Whisky and I were scheduled for walkies but it was rained off. I have seen some quite astonishing driving today.

We watched the first episode of the US version of Prime Suspect. It has Maria Bello as Helen Mirren's character. Of course, Maria Bello is exceptionally good, but Helen Mirren she ain't. And I guess that Mirren's Jane Tennyson and Bello's Jane Timoney are quite different characters. The premiss of the US version seems to be a woman detective trying to be accepted in amongst a bunch of male detectives. Now, whilst inequality in the workplace due to gender are most certainly alive and kicking, the extent of the hostility in Prime Suspect, really does seem to be more a mark of the 70s. I dunno. Another police drama, but I think it's playing too heavily on the name. We'll see, I'll give it a few more episodes.

We also watched Bridesmaids, which I enjoyed, but I felt that rumours of the inherent feminism were rather over-hyped. Maya Rudolph's character's wedding was still being paid for by daddy, and I do mean daddy, not parents. It was fun, but it wasn't the sensation I'd been led to believe. Melissa McCarthy was undoubtedly the unintended star though.

The Schedule

2011-09-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

Haven't taken any pics recently, although I am now getting used to my new routine, so here's a random picture of Mae West,
'I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.'

Ah, the Autumn TV scheduling. It hath commenced. And there are some new goodies. Zooey Deschanel's new comedy 'New Girl' was funny, as was Christina Applegate's and Amy Poehler's bloke's, (my, how many genitives can you get in one sentence?) whatever his name is, but the sitcom's called 'Up All Night'.

There was another thing that started, I forget its name, what it was about or who was in it, but it was shit, don't watch it.

Michael Tuesdays and Thursdays appeared dull at first, but picked up.

Harry's back, in 'Harry's Law', and just as awesome, only I don't like that they've moved to a bigger office. We don't like that, we discussed it.

New series of Modern Family - fab as ever. As for the rest, I feel it's my duty to watch and report.

As well as Justin Bieber forever lurking, as mentioned yesterday, every bus stop seems to have a rather creepy picture of Simon Cowell signalling the start of X-Factor over here. Quite unnecessary in my opinion. No-one needs that.

And, out in the real world, rampant misogyny continues unabated. In India, girls are being denied heart surgery by their parents because they would rather spend the money on their boys. Also, scars from heart surgery might be detrimental to the girls' marriage prospects.
Oh, shucks. Perhaps those girls should go and become heart surgeons.

Good freaking grief.

Herewith, a trailer for the film about the life of Women's Rights activist and author Alice Walker 'Beauty in Truth'.

At ease.

Lurking and Crawling

2011-09-21T20:23:00.000-07:00

Here comes the rain again. It has that heaviness normally associated with November.
And as in November, the light from the shops draws you in from the gloom. In Shoppers' Drug Mart, life-sized cardboard Justin Bieber lurks and watches you.
Creepy.

The dumpster in the car park has a huge sign declaring that banned items are not allowed. Gaagh.

On the way home, two stretches along Route 91 westbound are crawled in second gear, still, not parked, like the eastbound stream. Made worse though by Bryan Adams on the radio, really, there's no call for that.

At home, Kevin is making the adjustments easier, sharing the work without my having to even say anything, like moving wordlessly into a different dance.

The mornings when I do the tours at the Nature Reserve, I'm finding out about hockey habits. We meet in the car park of Planet Ice. We use their loos.
Before the kids were back at school, small boys would arrive, lugging sports bags bigger than themselves. On Saturday, 'Coach Kim' teaches little girls to skate. Today, two teams of men, all ages, turned up. Yes, men play hockey on a Wednesday morning, I wonder if their other halves think they're at work.

Genie, Bottle, Go

2011-09-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

Still trying to get that genie back into the bottle. She'll go eventually. Although it seems a bit harsh really, putting sentient other-dimensional beings into bottles.

So, we're on puppy poop watch again. Whisky ate 8 earplugs last week, all in one go. They are re-appearing gradually. Good thing they're bright orange.

Today is my day off, so I've spent it trying to do everything around the house and un-garden, oh and car, that I didn't do last week. I'm still not there yet, but I think I've broken the beast's back.

At the weekend, we had rain, glorious, thumping, pouring, rain. The ground no longer looks parched and at least at night and first thing in the morning, the temperatures have been lower. By this afternoon though, I could have done with wearing my cozzie.

And finally, finally, on Friday, I received a letter from the PR card people telling me I have an appointment on 29th September. Canadian border services seemed pretty pleased about that. The US border services seemed less happy. Not to do with me, but they seemed to be having problems. The computer system chose Friday at around 19.00 to reboot. This caused way more problems than can possibly be imagined. For example, this was the 'every three month' visit to secondary inspection to get my visa waiver re-done. And the big problem came when anyone went to pay. The credit card machine was down, the machine that gave you change wouldn't work, and in the middle of it all, the Cascades train arrived.

An absolutely brilliant commentary on some kind of North American food(ish) product called 'Slim Jims' (only for men).
Read it and weep :)

Freedom is in Peril

2011-09-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Isn't it always?

Today I had the disconcerting experience of a very, very angry teacher calling me at the office and wondering why I wasn't standing beside her waiting to do the nature talk-and-walk. I can understand why she was angry, but there was nothing to tell me there had been a booking. The offices are also about a quarter of an hour's drive from the Nature Reserve, but I got in the car and drove, hoping to goodness that the insane traffic jam that I'd witnessed on the opposite side of the road coming in, had cleared. It had. By the end the teacher was smiling, singing and generally in a much better mood. I never got to the bottom of the booking mystery however.

I'm also fairly astonished that people think there are still bears there (there were, but they were removed some years ago, because the encroaching road was stressing their habitat and thus behaviour), and yet they are still prepared to allow their students to wander round. Too much Yogi Bear I think. I'm not sure whether they think I'm the Park Ranger, and should there be any trouble I'll just whip out a picker-nic basket from my rucksack or simply that I have some secret knowledge that will keep the bears away. If I meet any, I'd have to rely on confusing them with Existential arguments the same as anyone else.

Still, I enjoyed my walk, enjoyed the class, who seemed none the worse for having waited over an hour, and enjoyed the rest of my day.

Keep Calm and Carry On

2011-09-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

Adjusting to my new schedule. Still adjusting I suppose. I had to go to the hairdresser's in the evening, instead of a Tuesday afternoon, but it was relaxing, nice, no-one else in.

And getting used to the changes on Blogger, which seems to have undergone the sort of overhaul that small creatures in chrysalises go through.

Anyroad, I received a Keep Calm and Carry On birthday card, which I loved.

Autumn Air

2011-09-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

The clouds have come in and the temperature has dropped, not much, but enough to make a difference. With the nights drawing in, there is a definite autumnal feeling in the air. This evening we took Whisky for a long walk in and beyond the off-leash park and at dusk we saw this single cricket clinging to a blade of grass.

11th September 2011

2011-09-11T17:57:00.000-07:00

Full moon.
Hottest day of the year.
My 54th birthday.
We're sitting out on the balcony and there's a turkey in the oven.

This morning, I sat in bed with my coffee and waffles and read my greetings on Facebook and thought about how I enjoyed that tecnological progress has led us to this. Pleasant memories of opening paper envelopes on my birthday, but happy to be in a different world now.

A bumper sticker on a car in Blaine, Washington last week, proclaimed that Hatred is NOT a Family Value. And how true. How much the parties that call for a return to family values, in fact preach hatred. I'm not pretending I don't hate, because I do, everyone knows the things and kinds of people I hate, but I don't keep harping on about Family Values, nor do I believe there is any such thing.

Today, this time, this place, this headspace, good to be in.

On the Boardwalk

2011-09-06T20:45:00.000-07:00

A long weekend down at The Static, which was very pleasant indeed, then back on the boardwalk today. Not literally you understand, today I've been finding my way around and writing stuff, but I'll be presenting programmes soon enough, Monday in fact.

In the meantime..... a superb and concise post at The F-Word, about the same old arguments we get given for why Feminists are wrong. Lovely, I recognise them all.

And from 'Good Health', a post on how marriage affects women and men differently, women tend to put on weight and (some) men use this as an excuse for leaving their partners, and after the divorce, they put on the weight, but do not suffer the social stigma that women do. What-ho Jeeves, didn't see that one coming. Much.

The air has a pleasantly 'autumn is just around the corner' feel to it, although the days remain hot, and at present, getting hotter.

Whisky is coming to terms with being on his own during the day. Today, Kevin took pity on him and cycled home at lunchtime. This sounds easier than it is, since lunchtime doesn't always have much meaning at his job.

Ah well, it's nice to be back at work, and even though I now have to drive there, at least I'm going in the opposite direction to most of the traffic.

A Presumption

2011-08-31T17:28:00.000-07:00

No way! Seriously?! I haven't posted since Saturday? What the hell's wrong with me?
Well, actually, I have been interviewing for a job, which I have now been offered and accepted, start Tuesday. There is a weird irony to this, my friend Canadian Karen finishes work next week and long have we plotted world domination - or Ikea at least. But the universe has kept us from our megalomania. MY megalomania.

I was trying to think of a collective noun for writers. I like gang. Mostly because I fancy talking about 'my writing gang', but also because it makes us seem like some kind of bonded bunch of people who might come round your house and aggressively write.

In the same vein, posse. A posse of writers, who saddle up, sling their pens and notebooks over their shoulders and venture forth to root out poor writing in one-horse towns.

I'm also taken by a murder of writers. My writing group, sorry, gang, are like crows in that they are very intelligent and community-minded. We'll also eat almost anything and we squawk a lot.

From somewhere in the ether, the word 'presumption' came to me. I have no explanation or basis for this, simply that I like the sound, 'a presumption of writers'.

But maybe I'll settle for a platter. A platter of writers, we are after all, a veritable salad of writing styles, but we all fit perfectly together and complement each other.

Depths

2011-08-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

I have been surprised by the improvement in Laurence's all round attitude and state of mind, as a result of his having given up smoking. To some extent it's because he finds he is able to sleep better. No amount of telling by us that nicotine is a stimulant made its way in, of course, discovery learning is always better.
And then there's the money he's now not spending. Again, a cliché until it becomes your own reality.

I was surprised to learn, and by surprised, I mean horrified, that amongst the US Republican party hopefuls for Presidential candidacy, are some so right wing loony, that Sarah Palin and Mit Romney won't join them. I loved Stewart Lawrance's description of a planned forum for expressing their hatred of humankind in general,

"DeMint's so-called "Freedom Forum" thus promises to be yet another white-hooded gathering of die-hard and highly vocal Republican homophobes."

Don't love the concept though.

And thus my learning curve of right-wing politics continues. Margaret Thatcher was right wing but from an ideological standpoint, whereas she couldn't meet with Sarah Palin, because she's a nutjob and is right-wing because she fundamentally doesn't believe in sharing. And in her turn, Palin is less crazy than Jim deMint et alia because she isn't homophobic enough. Please let it stop there.
How much lower can it go? I don't mean that as a challenge.

Enter Stage Left

2011-08-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

It feels like the end of summer, even though that's a month away.

On Monday we had rain, pounding, torrential rain, the first rain of August. It watered the parched grass, and has left my front flower patch smelling of ambient lavender. Beautiful.

But it also beat some of the already autumnal coloured leaves from the trees, and now it seems as though they are patchy. On one side of the park, still summer, the other side sliding into the fall.

This evening, in spite of the lingering, residual heat from the day, as I brought Whisky back into the house after his evening doings, I felt that gentle reminder that September's on her way. Just something intangible in the air.

Yesterday, one of Canada's favourite politicians died. Jack Layton was a man whom everyone seemed to love, although none embraced his politics, he was a sparky, intelligent man who fought hard for gender rights. We knew he was ill, we didn't know how ill. He leaves a gaping hole in the political party that he led, with no obvious successor.

And as though to truly herald the autumn, it seems that Vancouver hosts an annual Zombie walk.
Well why not?

Pause

2011-08-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a collection of essays by Alice Walker. I have already learnt several things from her interesting perspective on life, the universe and everything.

In one essay, she talks about the Pause, the turning moment, the silence after achievement. She puts forward some ideas about the feminine. This is different from the theory that femininity is a social construct, so it becomes important to differentiate between the feminine and femininity.

She talks about an Amazonian tribe called the Swa, who hold that women and men have different but equal roles. The men's role is to chop down trees for canoes and firewood, to kill animals when protein is needed, and to make war if necessary.

The women's role is one of nurturing and conserving. They tell the men when to stop. They say when there are enough canoes, enough firewood and animal protein to eat, when to stop the war.
When Swa were brought to North America they perceived too much maleness, they asked when the women were going to tell the men to stop.

Walker goes on to say that after 30 intense years of Feminism, she despairs of 'the ease with which.... women have chosen to erase their gender in language, by calling themselves and each other 'guys'......What does being called 'guys' do to to young women? To little girls? Isn't the media responsible for making it 'cute' to be a guy, as if that was all the Women's Movement was about, turning us into neutered men, into 'guys'.....SO if you've turned in your breasts and ovaries for guyness, you've really lost out...'

She's right, but it's another interesting way of viewing it. She says this is something we should ponder in that pause.

But for now, I will pause and read the new Ikea catalogue, delivered to my almost doorstep on my return from The Static. There are people in our complex who have irritated me and don't deserve an Ikea catalogue, therefore I have taken two.

Different Day, Same Answers

2011-08-19T16:08:00.000-07:00

Many churches seem to feel they must compete for the cheesiest quotes on their reader boards. I've driven past one a couple of times that claims, 'There are some questions Google can't answer!'
Well I beg to differ Our Saviour Lutheran. There is no question that Google can't answer, I know because I have tried plumbing in random strings of letters with a question mark at the end, and it always comes up with something.
The answer you get may be meaningless or incorrect, or just plain not what you wanted, but it always gives you something.

I've had a moderately busy week. I went back to New Westminster for another job search related workshop, and I've also been to the admin office of a women's shelter organisation that I'm going to be volunteering at - the office, not the shelter itself.

I'm going to be writing an article for LIB, a new UK feminist magazine, fab.

Not much else really, the weather continues to be sunny and warm, the grass and flowers at the front on the Schloss, continue to be parched.
Mustn't grumble.

Another Wheel Falls Off

2011-08-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

Another wheel has fallen off my wagon. I swear it is because Mercury is retrograde, I have an intimate astral connection with Mercury. (Which reminds me of an excellent scene in 'Breaking Bad', ((fulminated mercury))but giddyup).

So, last week, re-entering Canada from the United States, my Permanent Resident card, which has expired, flagged their system, but this time, the man said - in a way that indicated that he really, really meant it - that I needed to talk to NEXUS about this. So I did, today. I went to the NEXUS office at YVR. This seems quite frenetic in comparison to the one I go to in the USA, but mainly it seems because no-one respected that it was NEXUS, and just dumped their arses down on the seats to wait for their flights.

The young woman behind the counter couldn't answer my query, but went and fetched a woman in uniform, who told me in no uncertain terms that henceforth, until my new PR card comes, I must get in the regular lane when coming back to Canada.
Crap.
This makes the whole thing irritating.

And that's without mentioning that the goalposts on the whole PR card renewal keep being moved further apart. Currently they are quoting 134 days from receipt of your application. I sent mine in in April. They are currently working on April, according to their website, but that is without the good auspices of Canada Post being taken into account, who can easily take several weeks to deliver something across the country.
No-one challenges either of these things, why? Because the people who could challenge, like me, are in the vulnerable position of potentially being further stymied. The UK passport office can turn around a passport in two weeks, guaranteed. Just saying....

On a better note, The Brompton Mix have another track up. Choose 'She's the One for Me'.

And Austen sent me this link to a very funny monologue by a U.S.American comedian David Sedaris, who lives in France with his partner. This particular one is amusing because Sedaris has the opportunity to be ridiculed by a fellow American who thinks he is 'a Froggie'.

Ten more days for Mercury to be retrograde and potentially another month for travelling back from the US to be miserable. And that's if I'm lucky.

Blackberries, Noise, Spain

2011-08-12T14:58:00.001-07:00

Ooh cripes. Friday.

Today I learnt something that should have been crashingly obvious. Never put blackberries in your handbag. The fruit that is, not the mobile phone thingie.

Yesterday, being Thursday, was, as ever, the noisiest day of the week. The garbage trucks and the recycling trucks seem to circle round, which causes excessive dog barking, but yesterday, there was a very noisy council vehicle chopping and chipping a tree just across the road, at 8.30 in the morning. Oddly, and mercifully, the dog ignored that one.

Yesterday also, or maybe today, I'm not sure which midnight counts as, Austen and Alex rescued Ben from Gatwick, Austen having previously rescued him (presumably by credit card), from Spain. He had gone out there with his mates, then developed tonsillitis, and keeled over, feverish and throat almost swollen shut. None of them seemed to have been able to locate any medical help or even any proper painkillers, so in the end he contacted his sister, who contacted the sensible brother and Austen organised an early flight home.
Penicillin seems to be doing the trick now.

The Equality Illusion

2011-08-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

Two things set me thinking in more than a 'constantly-there-background-noise' kind of way about the illusion of equality.

Firstly, my daughter-in-law is reading Kat Banyard's book, 'The Equality Illusion'. This is a very readable book, but comes up with some interesting points that the reader may not have thought of.

When I spoke to Sue on Sunday, she mentioned the point that Banyard makes about how young children's clothes differ according to gender. Not only do the colourways scream gender difference, but even at the age of five, boys are being introduced to the corporate world through the use of logos on their clothing, whilst girls are kept firmly out of it by the lack of them.

Secondly, my friend M's son-in-law or outlaw or whatever, remarked to her that women and men have equality. Which seemed too dim to even comment on to some extent, and was probably said as a wind-up, and yet, does make one re-visit.

Equality, by it's very nature, is dependent on difference. Well, by definition really. 'Four equals four' is not a statement about equality, it's a statement about sameness. Four is the same as four. 'Two plus two equals four' is a statement about equality because an element of difference has been introduced.
Why do I mention this?
Because at a very basic level of misunderstanding, people will say, 'but women and men are different!' Yes indeedy, that's the point, they are different, but they should be equal.
They should have equality.

If you, for example, believe in God, you would have to believe that women and men are equal in the sight of God, but this does not mean they have Equality.

And one could point to all the indicators that women and men do not have equality, the Gender Pay Gap, the lack of females in political leadership, the paucity of acting roles for women on TV and in film, the existence of violence and sexual violence against women, the lower value given to anything female, I avoid the use of the word feminine, and the casual sexism that is not in fact inherent in the English language, but which is imported by those who may or may not even think about their words.

But underlying this inequality, is the notion of opportunity. Another frequently whined out mantra is, 'well there's nothing stopping women doing/achieving x, y, z, but they just don't want to.'
This, currently, is a load of old botox.

For example, just one example, for a woman to enter politics, she needs to have equal support at home over childcare and housework and she needs to have the same level of emotional support that a man in a similar position would have. She also needs to not encounter sexism in the political campaigning, such as that endured by Hillary Rodham Clinton, and she needs to not encounter sexism in her workplace, such as that suffered by our own Provincial politicians. And, that needs to be true for all women, so that every woman has the exact level of opportunity as a man, to make her bid.

But more than that, she needs to not have been brought up in a society that undervalued everything female, that imposed upon her the notion of 'femininity' and made her feel that she must conform to it or be less. And oh dear, the social construct of femininity, includes being soft and submissive. Damn, Catch 22 already in the game.
OR...she can go for the 'be like a man' option, which ensures that she may be one woman who makes it in, but thereafter, opportunity for women withers on the vine because.....she will undermine other women and a female way of going about things.

And then there's the confusion that goes back aways, that she has been brought up in a society that has laboured the point that the 'female way of going about things' is to whine and manipulate to get her own way, because of....Stockholm Syndrome, or Wartime Occupation syndrome, where the person in the dependent position has to survive by playing the role the kidnapper/occupying force wants them to and then subsequently comes to be emotionally attached to the dominant party.

The French Resistance, for example, were a courageous bunch of people in appalling circumstances, but not everyone can sacrifice their all to resist, because they were resisting on behalf of their people. The people had to find some way of enduring the occupation, and those who didn't, en masse, were frequently annihilated.

So, in years to come, and were lightyears not a measurement of distance, but of time, it might be those away, we may still have a Gender Pay Gap, we may still have fewer women in authority, but if we have equality of opportunity, then those will be because of true choices that women make, because they will not have been brainwashed at an early age to accept the lesser role, and they will not be disproportionately the victims of rape, enforced (even by economic factors) prostitution and trafficking, and they will not be marginalised and objectified through pornography, and when those things do happen, they will be taken seriously by society, and the perpetrators, not the victims, will be seen as deviants.

Wow, that was such a long sentence, it should probably have a German verb at the end.

Roughage

2011-08-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Nottingham. Not nice, not nice at all, my girl is in Hackney, kept awake all night by helicopters and police sirens. There'll be a return to punk, you mark my words. If Britain has to be in the grip of Tory misrule, t'would be better were it in the grip of proper, strong Tory misrule, not this namby-pamby bunch of ne'er-do-wells.

So, medical details. This is what I have returned from the seventh circle of, if you don't like medical details, read no further, if you fear knowing my medical details, read no further.

It seems I have an internal pile, or haemorrhoid. Piles are easier to spell, and of course, a more common name in Britain. Throughout four pregnancies and in fact almost 54 years of walking upright on this earth (well, give or take the nine months at the beginning when I must have crawled or stayed relatively still), I had escaped this particular form of torture, thus I did not suspect piles nor did I know they could be internal. I'm relieved it turned out to be something so common and mundane, but horrified at the level of pain involved.

I'm fairly poor at being poorly. I expect whatever I have to be banished within a maximum of two days. I expect my immune system to kick in and kick...well, let's not say arse. So, eight days of being hors de combat, of which a good five were haunted by waves of white-knuckle, teeth-clenching spasms, has never been part of my action plan.
The whole thing was further complicated by my having returned from the States for a workshop - and that whole getting in and out of the States thing was fraught with the potential for unpleasantness, since my PR card has run out and, in spite of having applied in April, not yet been renewed - and thus abandoning Kevin with no car, whilst my condition deteriorated to a point of no return. No return by car to the States that is.

Kevin's holiday week was ruined, my....week was ruined, but at the last, I rallied, True Brit that I am, and drove, buttocks firmly clenched, so that Kevin could drive us both back and thence to the doctor. At that point, when the worst was over, I could finally be prescribed the level of drugs that would have made the whole experience less awful throughout.
But then, isn't that the irony? When you are truly, rock (oops!) bottom ill, you cannot either get to, nor sit in, a doctor's waiting room.

All of which puts me in mind of how eating habits have changed. Mine at least. I remember the frequent administration of Senokot and Syrup of Figs as a child, ex-lax as a teenager - we must have lacked the necessary fibre in our diets. My diet.
But since early adulthood, I don't recall ever using laxatives. The diet had improved, no shortage of roughage as it used to be called.

When Alex was here, she had us all adding Psyllium husk to our morning fruit or cereal. It can treat both constipation and diarrhoea, it can reduce cholesterol, it can help control blood sugar levels, it can choke you.
What?
Well, only if you fail to take enough liquid with it.

As Director Kevin Smith said in his autobiography (which Kevin has read, not I),
'If you don't have your anal health, you have nothing.'
Yes indeed.

Hors de Combat

2011-08-05T17:59:00.000-07:00

Golly, the fifth of August and no posts yet.
Well, the blip in service has been due to a)Excruciating pain all week, for which I now have prescription painkillers and other unspeakable medications to make it all better and
b)Lack of interwebs, exacerbated by Kevin being down in the States, where there is ALMOST no interwebs.

My illness has pretty much shot his holiday week to pieces, but meh, what can you do?
At least I have been able to read a couple of books, but mostly I've just watched house buying/improving/fantasising shows on TV. And of course, as always when in bed and semi-delirious, one viewing of Maury, which hasn't in fact changed at all since the last time I was in Britain and ill. He still has people on who don't know who their baby's father is and have to test a whole slew of men whilst the audience just seem to randomly sling abuse.
I normally (when ill) also like to watch Judge Judy or Judge Marilyn, but all I could find was Judge Joe, who seemed to be a very weak substitute.
Ah well.

Saffron

2011-07-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

Saffron-coloured nasturtium.

Why did I say I wouldn't have to get used to the loaner car? Because I wanted to tempt fate, clearly. Before half past eight yesterday morning, the autobody shop had rung to say they would need to keep our car until Friday. Friday afternoon. I managed to not drive anywhere yesterday, today I had to stop being a weenie and get used to it. Still smells. Still over-revs the engine, grumble, grumble.

The weather has taken a turn for the seriously hot. Sunny and hot. And we have been watching 'Hot in Cleveland'. Lightweight, but funny.

The other night we watched, 'Never Let me Go', a British Movie with Carey Mulligan and one of the blokes from 'The Social Network'. Excellent, but my advice, don't watch before bedtime, unless you have some episodes of 'Hot in Cleveland' to take the creep-factor edge off.

Loaner

2011-07-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

This morning I took the car into the auto repair shop to be fixed. Of course, I knew what was coming, the courtesy car, the loaner, the automatic. Nothing to be done about it.
The man in the rental place remarked on my accent.

'Ah, British,' he said.
'Yup,'
'I have a man in here yesterday, I ask him if he British, he say, 'no, Scottish,'
'Scottish is British,' say I.
'Yes! See, I know this! This is why I say British!' said he,
'Right,' I smiled,
'You see I know because I used to work for HSBC,'
'Ah. Actually in Hong Kong?'
'Aha! You see! Only a British person would know that HSBC, Bank of Hong Kong. But I'm from Philippines,'
'Ah, mmm.Good,'
We walk out to the loaner car.
'It's automatic I'm afraid,' he said.
'Yes, I knew it would be,'
'British people mostly drive standard,'
'Yep,'

And whilst he demonstrated to me the wonders of the Hyundai and how you couldn't turn the engine on unless it was in 'Park', and told me of all the countries in the world where they also drive standard, and why vehicles that need more power needed manual gear change, and how some lady friend of his had coped badly with an automatic, I somehow missed where he told me that the bloody control thingie that replaces the gear stick can only be changed from Park to anything else when you put your foot on the brake pedal.
But he was kind, and well-meaning.
And with an afternoon appointment looming, I spent a frantic quarter of an hour trying to get the control thingie to move until I put my foot on the brake out of sheer frustration, and loss of a clutch, and lo! It all magically changed. Or at least it allowed me to move it.

Fortunately, and rather bizarrely, the car, which incidentally stank of stale cigarette smoke, had Alberta number plates, which seemed to make some other drivers keep their distance, and others to tailgate me, presumably because they expected an Albertan driver to speed off at any second.

Later, when I was trying to prepare Cannelloni for supper, and found the pasta to be mouldy, I begged Kevin to drive us to Superstore rather than having the stress of driving it myself again today.

I suppose in the end I'd get used to the bloody thing, but I certainly don't want to.
And whilst I don't need to - well, I guess I won't.

Broomsticks

2011-07-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

I was annoyed by Mormons this morning, who tried to suck me into their web of stupidity by pointing a Bible at me, open at a page of insane and potentially syphilitic ranting by some obscure Old Testament beardie. They persevered over Whisky's loud and frantic yapping, plus the wind whipping strands of dust right into the face of one of them, from the broom I had been using when they came along and interrupted me.
Witches ever had brooms.

'God has revealed Her purpose to me, and She wishes for more gender justice, please mind the steps on your way down,' I bade them.
They retreated with no further ado.

Across the road, the set of gardeners who insist on wearing coolie hats, were using a loud leaf blower to blow stuff, another job more efficiently done with a broom.

Yesterday, a kindly gent of my church proffered me a two page piece of tosh written by some unimaginative Irish priest about the King James Version of the Bible.

The tired old drivel followed the usual format, page 1, how important it was for people to have a Bible in English. Yes, yes, there is MAYBE some point to this, aside from the fact that at the time, a minuscule percentage of the populace could read. It could also be argued that had they not had the Bible in English, then perhaps the whole thing would have died a death and we'd all be happy Druids by now. It did, however, drive a nail into the coffin of compulsory Catholicism in Britain, so there is that positive.

Page two deals with how we would have missed out on such great works of the English language as Milton's 'Paradise Lost', 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and The Gettysburg Address.' Would we? Would we really? Methinks the Gettysburg Address would still have happened, it would simply have been different.
Had we never have had 'Paradise Lost' and 'The Pilgrim's Progress', would we be any the wiser? Would we be worse off? Were these works really worth the suppression of women, non-whites, homosexuals and Jews? Seriously?
It's easy peasy lemon squeezey to say, 'we wouldn't have had this or that,' but what about the things we MIGHT have had?

When the most phenomenal writing in the English language is now coming from women, who are, let us not forget, STILL oppressed, just not as totally as previous generations, might we not have had a Hilary Mantel, whose prose in my opinion is sublime, a Carol-Ann Duffy, a Margaret Atwood...I could write paragraphs of today's great English-language women writers, might we not have had them earlier? Of course, we'll never know, but it would seem to be a logical conclusion.

And this evening, this English-language woman writer will be attending writers' group after a couple of months' absence.
Tonight's venue is probably close enough for me to travel by broomstick.

Vision and Fuckery

2011-07-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, predictably, someone on the Skytrain station came and asked me a question in a manner that suggested we'd not only been friends for years, but had been travelling together for hours. I could easily tell she was from New Zealand,
'We're from New Zealand,' she said. I nodded. And very personable the woman was too, the man wore the same kind of shorts that Steve Irwin used to wear, but unlike the Croc Hunter, he said nothing.

I met up with my friend Danielle, in a small coffee shop on Ash Street, just off Broadway and it had quite the most lovely seating area at the back. I was never more taken by a coffee place, and now I wish I'd taken photos.

Friday was the last day of career planning and we watched a very dated video about being assertive. And it actually WAS a video. In spite of the 70s style clothes, hair and specs, the video itself was an absolutely perfect example of how to plan a lesson - or an instructional video. Equal numbers of women and men, equal positions, equal amount of time speaking. The problem was modelled, discussed, solved, and re-modelled. Good pacing, perfect length of time. Super-critic moi, was dead impressed.

We also made a vision board. This sounds like a totally dire exercise, and yet I found it incredibly interesting and felt I learnt something about myself from the exercise.
Overall, as well as having greatly enjoyed the past three weeks, it has been a personal voyage of discovery too, and I've met some fantastic people.

On the one hand, I now feel re-energised for my job search, on the other, now I have to get down to the hard work of re-writing my CV and applying for jobs.

It was depressing to read about Amy Winehouse's death. No doubt it was not only foretold, but writ large, still though, every death is a tragedy to the family members, and when talent like that is cut short, a loss to a wider audience.

The whole thing that has happened in Norway is beyond horrifying. What the fuck is wrong with people? I'm utterly, utterly at a loss to get my head round why someone thinks they have the right to take away the lives of not only innocent people, but people who are doing a damned fine job into the bargain. And then to claim to be a Christian. I feel as though something pure has been ripped open and its entrails scattered and trampled on.

To quote the now late Amy Winehouse, 'What kind of fuckery is this?'

The Boonies

2011-07-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

My friend Lori used to talk about the Boonies, you’d ask her where something was and she’d say, ‘oh, out in the Boon Docks,’ as though it were a real place. Well I’m here although I’m not convinced it’s real. The normal laws that govern human behaviour and …well, traffic signs for example, are simply changed, or absent. There are boonie people circling the car, I’m wondering whether I’ve driven so far that I’m near the Thunderdome, I’m pretty sure Mad Max has been past a couple of times in an old reverse-pimped-out pickup.

The people are like characters from Little Britain or French and Saunders. One, Jabba-like, has been sitting on a BC Hydro (electricity) box - it has a picture of a person falling back, a red zig-zag of lightning bisecting them. Another keeps striking a pose, carefully NOT looking at the car out of the corner of its eye(gender uncertain) and two more appear to be taking cats for walks. Beyond the frontiers of civilisation.

I'm happy to get out of Dodge, but wait! Getting out of the rabbit warren, where the houses are actually labelled 'Cluster X', I find that the road only goes in one direction! it's like a bad dream, it's like a story from Kafka. But as in some surreal film, I find a bizarrely placed Mexican restaurant, the restaurant almost at the end of the universe, and I can creatively use its car park to turn around in.

We stop half way back so that Laurence can call in at Krispy Kremes and I can go to the loo. In the Boonies, you probably have to trap your own doughnuts - but I didn't wait to find out.

Decisions

2011-07-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

Today we learnt about how people make decisions - how WE make decisions. Some people accumulate information, some need to see a bigger picture and make decisions intuitively and some need the input of significant others.

In the afternoon, the sun came out and it became really hot, hotter still forecast for tomorrow.

We've been rather on the periphery of the whole Rebekah Brooks, News of the World phone-hacking scandal. I mean we've seen it play out, but we couldn't exactly say we have been in the fray.
There is, however, one question I would like answered. Is Rebekah Brooks actually Mick Hucknall? I think we should be told.

Took the car into ICBC - the Insurance Company of British Columbia - and the man who went into the back of my car had called it in and admitted responsibility. Good, good. That makes that part easier. The whole, having to organise it business is still annoying though.

One day, some future project, I would like to go to the Edinburgh Festival. I see that Marc Almond is appearing there this year. He is, annoyingly, the same age as me, and yet, despite two decades of severe drug abuse, looks younger.

Weather

2011-07-17T19:11:00.001-07:00

Biblical weather yesterday - that's what Kevin had down at the Static, up here - a single clap of thunder and some serious rain.

When I awoke this morning, the sun was shining, and the birds were on Facebook. Or twittering or something, pretty loudly too. I cycled to church, without the ridiculousness of last week, Alex's bike is a lot more comfortable than the one I had to take before. When I came out, the sky had clouded over, and this afternoon we've had more rain.

In an odd mirroring of my last week's fender bender, Austen also sustained damage to the car, however, his was due to an encounter not with a driver who wasn't paying attention, but with a deer who....was not paying attention.

On TV, we've been watching 'Game of Thrones'. Apart from the unnecessary and gratuitous female nudity without which HBO seem not to be able to make a series, it has been quite addictive.

Wednesday's Child

2011-07-14T16:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my kids' grandfather on their father's side, died. It was fairly unexpected, he'd been taken into hospital last week - a fact my kids and their father found out via Facebook. He had quadruple bypass surgery, but didn't regain very much consciousness and then Alex found out that her grandfather had died - via Facebook. Yesterday I managed to track them down to a pub in Woking where sorrows were being drowned.
Then both kids and their dad were anxious to ensure that Laurence was sat down and told properly rather than find out the same way, and thus it was. He finds it difficult to process that type of information, the others want him to go back to the UK for the funeral - well, two funerals in that part of the family as it happens, but he's not feeling up for it, given where he is in recovery. I've told them I'm just presenting the options to him and not pressuring him either way and he felt that his dad had done the same thing on the phone.

So today, coming back from my Career Planning workshop, a truck went into the back of me. There are two lanes of traffic coming off this particular bridge, the Queensborough, the right-hand one goes towards Richmond, and this is the one I was in. A yellow works truck, two vehicles in front of me, slowed to a halt and so the line of traffic did too. I think everyone must have thought it was going to move on, because no-one tried to move over into the other lane, but eventually, it seemed like it was stopped for some purpose, so I waited until the traffic in the lefthand lane cleared, then signalled to change lanes, and started to move over. The vehicle behind me did the same, and as we started to move, then the humongous truck in front of us decided it would too, and since my options were, stop or be crushed, I opted for stop. The gent behind me didn't, however and thus, my rear..well, got ended. It's a pain to go through all the rigmarole that you then have to go through, made the more frustrating by it being someone else's fault, and it occurred to me, that even if you argued that more than one person was to blame, you get down to three drivers, the works truck, the goods truck and the construction truck behind me, all of which are being driven in a work situation and yet who pay no attention to other road users. Aggravating to say the least.

Then there's the whole ESTA debacle. Now normally, every three months, because I'm not a Canadian citizen, I have to go into secondary inspection, when crossing the border into the USA, and get a visa waiver. Now, the situation is changing and you have to go online and get the same ESTA authorisation that anyone travelling from Europe would have. Ok, so I was told by the people at NEXUS, to google ESTA. This I did, and came to a website called USA e services. Clearly the website set up by the US to deal with the authorisation. But no. It is a website that does the work for you and then charges you way above and beyond the $14 the US government want. But they don't tell you that. In fact, all I really needed to do, had I not been hoodwinked, and given my personal details to someone not in any way connected with the US government, was to go to the government's own website. So in fact, I should not have googled anything.
And what-ho! The BBC are already onto this scam, and have a report on it!

And full moon.

Team Colours

2011-07-12T16:02:00.000-07:00

I was doing a survey for British Rail, and one of the questions had the red, italicised instruction 'tick all that apply' and the options were yes, or no.

The reception desk at the place where I do my course, is staffed by two very nice ladies, one of whom is Glaswegian. Not that this is in any way pertinent. There is also a glass vase there with slips of paper with thoughts for the day on them, some are, as every better than others, but the course members have become used to starting the day reading out the thoughts in the way that one sits around the Christmas dinner table and reads the mottoes out of the crackers.
One person came in this morning and gave us a thought for the day he'd heard elsewhere,
'Forgiveness is when you finally accept that things could never have been any other way.' And it was successful, because I'm still thinking about it.

Yesterday, we talked about barriers to employment and it is an astonishing thing. When I look around the room, I don't see a bunch of no-hopers, in fact, quite the opposite. Both my writers' group, and the church council, are groups of educated, intelligent people. This group of unemployed people are educated, intelligent, able to work as part of a team, have amazing personalities and are all people you could happily do a year-long course with. The course co-ordinator is spectacularly good at her job, every aspect of the job. So the barriers that keep all these people out of the workforce, are not only keeping them from making a living, us, I should say, but keeping companies, government organisations or whatever, from having some tremendous personality and talent. It kind of makes you want to knock some heads together somewhere.

Today, we were doing 'career cruising', so one of the participants suggested we all wear red, white and blue, these being of course (tchyeah, everyone knows this, right?) boating colours.
And everyone did.

A Snickety Start

2011-07-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

A Lemony Snicket start to the day.

But let me start two days earlier.

The boy has had a relapse with the street drugs, the street drugs I didn't refer to earlier, but maybe now I can.
I have.
It took him a week to tell me, but fortunately, he told my friend R straight away and she said he must talk to us about it.
But as things sometimes do, several things have fallen into place over this. He has finally rung a support service we get as part of a benefits package from Kev's work, the anti-depressants the doctor has given him are starting to work, and we have found a support group for him. BUT....I didn't feel as though I could leave him this weekend. So Kev went to the Static on his own. Well, on his own with Whisky.

So, all I had to do this morning was to cycle to church, which, considering I used to cycle four miles to Mayhem every day, should not have been a challenge. I would take Alex's bike, and Kevin had pumped up the tyres.
HOWEVER....and typing this I feel foolish. I couldn't get the kick stand to go down. I even sat on the floor and tried to wrench it manually, but sans result. SO I undid the bolt and took it off.
Ok, result.
Nope. Then, the mudguard was loose and scraping against the tyre. So I tied it back. But however tightly I tied the thing, it kept coming back down.
Nil desperandum, there was a back-up plan. I would take Kev's bike. I needed to lower the seat, because I couldn't sit on it and still reach the peddles, but it has a quick-release catch, so no problemo. Yeah, right, no problemo if you had the strength of Thor. So that wasn't working for me.
But there are back-up bikes! Neither are in working order...except that Kevin has fixed one, and I hoiked it down from the rack. Seat too high again, but this time easily lowered with some WD40 and a spanner.
It was by no means a comfortable ride, and the gears are semi-stuck in a really high gear, but I got there in time to grubbily shake hands with a few people.

While I was doing all this, I was thinking, 'a few years back, (quite a few), I might have thought, "now this is a situation where I do need a man",' but the truth is, it was simply a situation where I needed someone more competent than me and in the end, I got there anyway.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

So, unrelated to that, The Brompton Mix, Ben's band, have had a great review in an online magazine, Apple Juice.
Nice one.

And, although I've posted this on Facebook, it's so good, I'm going to put the link up here too. Nineteen percent calling Beyonce out on 'Run the World'.

This is a long video, 50 minutes I think, but it is a fascinating review of new research on how negative stereotypes affect career choice. It is amazing how subtle some of the factors are.

TGIF

2011-07-08T23:21:00.000-07:00

Hah! Friday has a different meaning when you're doing something outside of the home.
Yesterday we did an exercise about one of the Myers-Briggs components. These are personality traits as applied to the workplace. It was one of those lightbulb experiences.

One thing with all of the tests about personality and preferences is that we all have years of experience that have given us skills so that we often work in a way that overrides out natural ways of working. Several of us realised at the same time that we may have a natural tendency towards approaching something perceptively, but that at work, we would kick into a more logical mode. I think this is something it's important to understand before starting the tests.

Today, we did an activity to determine our transferable skills, it turns out I have a lot, although I feel that knowing what your transferable skills are doesn't necessarily get you anywhere, BUT....I shall not judge.

This afternoon, we watched an inspiring video, although, aside from some beautiful photography of the Tasmanian landscape, I didn't feel that inspired. Or, inspired at all in fact. It was decidedly uninspiring, and difficult to read my book with the lights off. Other people were though, so I just think I need to be prepared in case something like this happens again.

I'm looking forward to lying in tomorrow morning - I feel like a grown-up again.

Signs

2011-07-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

Signs I saw today - on the Doctor's surgery (I kid you not) 'walk in's welcome'. On the florist's next to the doc's 'flowers for bar and hat mitzvahs'. Yup. And in the corridor that leads to the loos in the shopping mall where the offices of the career planning people are, 'service penetration prohibited'. Phew.

Today we did personality stuff. Interesting. In some ways, it's the stuff that goes on in between the stuff we do that is the most revealing. An example. Yesterday we did an activity to find out our values. Most people put appearance and popularity last. One man said that we don't value appearance because none of us has to really worry about it.
At lunchtime, I managed to spill balsamic vinegar salad dressing on my light-coloured top, couldn't remove it with a wet wipe, and then was pre-occupied with it all afternoon.
I learnt that lesson alright.

People-watching is fascinating. Some people you can see are just ordinary people that have fallen off the bus through no fault of their own, and simply can't get back on. Some, you realise, would never catch it in the first place. And some genuinely have gone as far as they can go on that particular bus and need to work out which one to catch next.

And now it's hot, quite, quite hot.

Victim Blaming

2011-07-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

So, at the career planning today, we had a team activity. We were told a story, illustrated with a map, and then given a question to answer.

The story was as follows.

A woman and her abusive husband, live with their two children, on one side of a river. The woman has a man friend on the other side of the river. She goes to visit him and then finds she doesn't have enough money to pay for the ferry back. The friend has no money to give her. The ferry captain says if she can't pay, she can't take the ferry. There are piranha in the river. There is a bridge, but it is 'guarded' by a bandit who is known to shoot people. She takes the bridge and gets shot.
The question is, who is most responsible?

The group I was in, went into another room, and one man and I immediately said, without any collaboration, 'it's obvious! It's the bandit!'.
The others said, 'it's the woman's fault.'
'But that's the same as when a woman is blamed for 'getting herself raped','
'Oh, yes!' said one other man, 'you're right, it is like that, I get it,'
Another man said, 'oh but all sorts of people are responsible,' and the first man said,
'Well, there are contributing factors, but you can't argue that the bandit isn't responsible,'
'Oh,' said man three, 'yes, contributing factors, I like that, no, you're right.'
The two other women in the group still felt the woman was responsible, but actually couldn't argue with the conclusion.

The other group all felt the woman was responsible. They had various reasons for blaming the victim, she shouldn't have left home, she shouldn't have tried to get back, she shouldn't have left home without enough money to get back, and she knew the bandit shoots people.

It worries me. It illustrated a couple of things to me, one was that not everything can be decided by consensus, because sometimes, there is just a right answer and a wrong one. Secondly, that good leadership is essential to good decisions. This was demonstrated because of this conversation with a woman from the other group.

'I think it was the woman's fault,' she said, 'because I think about my sport of roller derby. I know that an opponent is going to go all out to win, so if she injures me, well, I knew the risk,'
'But this isn't the same situation,' said I, 'to use your analogy, if the opponent deliberately killed you, then it wouldn't be your fault, because when you go into the game, you might accept the risk of injury, but you don't agree to be killed,'
'Oh,' she said, 'you're right,yes, that's true.'

Victim blaming is wrong, and it is always wrong. Sometimes people do things that put them in risky situations, but ultimately, when one person deliberately takes an action against another person that deprives that person of their life, or dignity, or control over their own body, that is simply wrong and in many cases, illegal.

The Return of the Non-Native

2011-07-04T21:35:00.000-07:00

Back.
We had a lovely week and a bit, Laurence was with us for the first weekend and was supposed to be with us for the second, but the wheel fell off the wagon to some extent.
The weather at each end, each weekend, was spectacular, but during the week - a bit of a curate's egg.

Whisky, the little sea-dog, got to ride in his trailer behind Kevin's bike, along the seafront, romp on the beach, and do a bit of whitewater kayaking. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but there was a bit of white on the waves.

I read books and we watched films.
We watched the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost film, 'Paul' - brilliant, funny and referential. Superb. 'Red Riding Hood' - excellently atmospheric. 'The Lovely Bones'. Sadly, that was complete shit. And finally, 'Red', which was, if not extraordinarily engaging, at least not disengaging and only sent one of us to sleep, although, on reflection, the one of us was Kev, and it takes a LOT to send him to sleep.

Books. I had a fabulous book week. The first one was 'The Other side of the Bridge' by Mary Lawson, a Canadian author and a damned fine read. The second one was 'Secret Daughter' by Shilpi Somaya Gowda, a good story woven around the horrors and delights of India. But the last one was an absolute page turner and superbly written. 'Mistress of the Art of Death' by Ariana Franklin. Totally satisfying, gripping, historically fascinating and just generally utterly enjoyable.

This week, and for the following two, I am on a course for Career Planning. Today was most enjoyable, I discovered that I need to be many things and only need to spend another ten years at university to do any of them. Still, I was both impressed and depressed at the general educational level of the group and the fact that there was a very similar set of values shared by most. Basically, if you are environmentally aware, are up to your ears in degrees and are concerned about social injustices, you're probably in that group.

On Holiday

2011-06-26T21:54:00.000-07:00

At the Static. Be Back Later.

Joining the Dots

2011-06-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

So what's everyone talking about in beautiful British Columbia? The tax known as HST. Wow, how fab and fun. Yeah, no.
So here's what happened.
We start off, as you know, with a shit system. Yes, I know shit isn't an adjective, but bear with me. You never know the actual price of anything because it's always quoted before tax. Yeah, I know, don't ask.
Now, onto the goods and services, there used to be added two taxes, GST and PST, and between them, these added up to 12%. The Provincial Government decided to go for a new streamlined system which replaced these with just one tax called HST. HST was 12%. So, no biggie, you would THINK.
Wrong!
In comes rent-a-mob in the form of some clapped out old has-been who jumped up and down and told everyone they were being shafted. Instead of everyone just ignoring him, they get all aeriated and the leader of the Provincial government who introduced it, Mr Gordon Campbell, is forced to resign. Yep, that's what politicians fall on over here, people missing the point entirely, unlike in Britain, where they get ousted for more important reasons, like having ginger hair, or speaking with a Welsh or Scottish accent.

Still not getting it? Nope, it is incomprehensible. The new tax, being basically the same as the old tax, has caused us to have a referendum, and for people to start talking a load of old bollocks about how it's a bad tax. But these people are seriously confused.

Firstly, the leader of rent-a-mob, let's just call him BVZ, has been simply talking bullshit and pulling figures out of the air, also making them up. This YouTube video, which Gail pointed me at the other day, takes the stupidity apart.

But back to the simplicity about the whole nonsense, the HST is applied slightly differently on some goods and services from the previous two taxes. So what some people seem to be bizarrely unable to see, is that the tax itself is irrelevant. It is no different from the previous two taxes, it is the applications of that tax they should be focussing on. Application, not function.
Egads.

But then, the same thing happened a couple of days ago. Kevin was reading an article which came up with the term 'benevolent sexism'. Utter stupidity, based on the same inability to take in and process information.
So where is the blockage?
Sexism is discrimination on grounds of gender, just as racism is discrimination on grounds of race.
So what is discrimination? Aha - here's the short circuit.
There are two dictionary definitions of the word.

From the OED:-
"

discriminate

Pronunciation:/dɪˈskrɪmɪneɪt/

verb

[no object]

1 recognize a distinction; differentiate:babies can discriminate between different facial expressions
[with object] perceive or constitute the difference in or between:features that discriminate this species from other gastropods
2 make an unjust or prejudicial distinction in the treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race , sex, or age:existing employment policies discriminate against women

Thus, somewhere, someone has failed to read to the end, someone has not noticed that one definition, is relevant in this context and one isn't. One does not end in an -ism, and one does.
You cannot have a benevolent prejudice in treatment in different categories of people.
Having made one almighty error, the writer apparently went on to list a couple of practices which were intensely sexist, with a bunch of others which were, in fact, not.

No joined-up thinking you see.

Obsessively Boring

2011-06-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Firstly, and possibly most obsessively, I meant to say a tiny bit more about 'Thor'.
Thor's hammer seemed to be emblazoned with a Celtic trinity. This seems odd, since the Celts and Brythonic Britons were constantly battling the Saxons and Norse invaders. In the film, the Norse trickster, Loki, is shown as the (adopted) son of Odin, which kind of works in the film, and yet is annoying in that he wasn't in Norse Mythology. But of course, as long as one doesn't actually believe in the Norse Gods, one can play fast and loose with their relationships, characters and even powers, but exactly that - as long as one doesn't believe in them. Well, but I do personally spend a lot of time reading about Celtic legends and then use them in my own writing as I see fit. I suppose I would never see fit to change parentage because it is part of the character itself. I might meddle with the story, but not the character.

Ok, so secondly, I have been reading about and then the work of, a Californian Feminist, Hugo Schwyzer. And from there, I have been led to the website of a Vancouver-based group, The Feminist Media Collective. There is an exceptionally well-written and argued blog on the site. I listened to their radio broadcast on Monday and it was an interesting piece about the de-criminalisation or otherwise, of prostitution.

Hummus is very filling.

The sun has been shining fora few days now, and it is noticeably warmer, but mercifully, not so warm that I have had to have the air-conditioning on in either house or car.

I dreamt about Anne last night. Every time someone important in my life has died, I have always had this same kind of dream. I know the person is dead, but there they are, and I can talk to them and interact with them, all the time knowing they are dead. I hugged Anne and was surprised how solid she felt.

I had an appointment in New Westminster today. The thing about New West is that many of the roads are called (Number) Street or (Number) Avenue. The streets go one way and the avenues another, it's confusing and a person might easily get lost because they went along a street when they were supposed to be on an avenue, this did indeed happen to me and has done several times before. Oh well. I found the place in the nick of time.

The Male Side

2011-06-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I went to look through my friend Anne's books. I did get a bit distressed as I neared her house, but then I saw the signs for a local Realtor, Randy Mann, and this seriously and eye-wateringly un-distressed me. I can't decide whether his name is more amusing than my friend's union person - Brother Moist. Difficult. Perhaps they're both the same person, after all, one could follow after the other.

Thursday, Laurence and I went to see 'Thor (3D)'. Excellent film, I greatly enjoyed this, Laurence, not so much I feel.

I'm currently reading 'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver. It was slow to engage me, but now that I'm into it, it has me in its grip. My sons continue to educate me on the continent where I spent my very earliest years. The Congo, however, seems harsh even for Africa. Bible bashing preachers can be even harsher though.

Ecce Vancouver

2011-06-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

On the full moon that was Wednesday, the finals of the Stanley Cup were played out in Vancouver, and the Canucks lost. But gracious in defeat. It goes without saying that I hadn't actually watched a game, but it has been as impossible for my sports filter to cope as with Pompey and football, so I know that there has been a lot of foul play, and much of it has gone unchallenged.

After the game was the riot, orchestrated by people who came into Vancouver specially for that purpose. Arseholes. Our friend Steve, who was at the game, said that the crowd cheered the winners, most stayed to witness their celebration, in contrast to the way the Canucks were treated when they were playing away from home.

On the streets, families were told to leave the city before the game had ended, individuals tried to stop the vandalism, bars and restaurants closed because Molotov cocktails were being served outside.

But in the morning - the glory. The people, children included, just went out there and cleared and cleaned up the city.

Ecce Vancouver.

Squirrel

2011-06-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

Hmm. Squirrels. In spite of their real place in the batting order, their being rather less-intelligent rats, they are pretty cute and fluffy. Annoying, however.

I had suspected in the autumn that they were stealing my bulbs, eating them no doubt, and most certainly fewer came up than I had expected. Now I have identified one of the mystery plants in my balcony boxes, and I pulled this little batch of baby oak trees from just one container. Yep, squirrels bury acorns and then can't remember where they've put them.

Another mystery plant in amongst my flowers, has turned out to be spinach. No problems with that one, the more, the better. I have moved them to where the spinach grows.

Meanwhile, rocket, which is not going great guns where I've actually planted it, has self seeded by the side of the garage door, and a mighty, robust plant it is too. So flourishing is it, that it blocked the garage door's sensor earlier this evening.

Still, squirrels eh? Rubbish at hide-and-seek, fab as gardeners.

Elephant Day

2011-06-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

Saturday was a blue elephant day. I think I may have spoken of the blue elephant before - once, when I was in Germany with a school party, one of them lost their passport and we had to go to the British Embassy to retrieve it. Of course, we had to take the whole seventy of them. We parked not far from the Brandenburger Tor, and two of us went off to get the passport, whilst the other teachers stayed on the bus with the kids.
When we got back, they said they'd seen a blue elephant, and some people had given them free samples of coca cola. All this turned out to be true, they even had a picture of the blue elephant. The sky itself was endlessly blue, and so it all sticks in my mind as a surreal day set against an azure sky.

When I got up on Saturday morning, it was warm and moderately sunny, but snow appeared to be drifting through the sky, twirling and gently falling to earth. It was Cottonwood fluff, and very late in the season to be released.

I had to go to the NEXUS office at the border, and as I drove along H street, speed limit 25mph, a dog appeared and ran along behind the car for a way. It looked well-cared for and had a collar, but there was no owner in tow. Later, as I drove back, it had reached the main road intersection, and was sniffing cars as they stopped at the traffic lights. Impossible for anyone to get out however, without causing an accident.

A road sign read, 'Ped Xing'. Living where we do, and not concentrating, I wondered why there was a Chinese person's name on a road sign, before my brain clicked on again, and I realised it was short for 'Pedestrian Crossing'. It certainly seemed to be nowhere near one.

Another sign, this time by the side of the road, promised 'Camp Wood'. I wouldn't think wood could be particularly camp, but life constantly surprises me.

Paling into Insignificance

2011-06-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

I'm finding the whole Margaret Thatcher / Sarah Palin stand-off really quite entertaining. There are just so many angles.

Firstly, there is the fact that medically, Thatcher is suffering from actual dementia, whereas Palin is simply demented.

Secondly, because of this, the whole, 'have my people speak to your people' thing takes on a new dimension. Thatcher has 'a circle', she has 'allies' and as such, they can say what they really think. And they really think that Palers is nuts, so that's what they have said. They really think that it would 'belittle' Thatch, or 'Margaret' as they call her, to meet Palers. They talk about 'the level Margaret punches at', and Palin is beneath that level. Frankly, I have to admire this circle of friends, because they are REALLY getting under the skin of the ludicrous-right wing of the USA, whilst showing that as right-wingers themselves, they consider there to be a serious right wing to US American politics, but Sarah Palin simply isn't it.

Thirdly, there is the very entertaining aspect that comes from the fact that Thatch can't actually speak for herself. Rush Limbaugh for example, blames, not Lady Thatcher, but her friends and the Guardian, because he knows Thatch from her glory days, and she would NOT behave like this. Which has led to this superb quote from Andrew Sullivan, of The Dish Blog,

""As usual, the tired old bigoted comedian Rush Limbaugh took offence that anyone could call Sarah Palin 'nuts,' even though she is quite obviously a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and her grip on reality is, shall we say, tenuous. And as usual, Limbaugh blamed it on the left, ie the Guardian's Wintour/Watt blog.

"What he doesn't understand is that Palin's nutsiness is not a partisan matter in Britain, or anywhere else in the world. It is an obvious truth marvelled at by all. Palin's emergence as a serious figure in American politics has made the country a laughing stock across the world. The idea that a stateswoman like Thatcher, in advanced dementia, would be used by such a crackpot is simply unseemly." "

Give it up Palers, you've been out nut-jobbied.

Just Not Cricket

2011-06-08T17:10:00.001-07:00

The German man who lives opposite the Schloss, has been irritating the hell out of me all day. He has been power washing the pavement outside his house since about mid-morning. The equipment he is using seems to have its own generator, and generators make an annoying noise, constant, continuous, but annoying. But aside from that, aside from the ridiculous amounts of energy and water that he has consumed in this project...wtf? Are people now not allowed to walk on the pavement? May birds not crap on it? I mean it's nice when it has a bit of a sweep to get rid of the dead leaves and fag buts, but this looks as though it has been whitewashed. You can just about see it through the hanging basket, gleaming across the road.

Vancouver and its surrounding area, has gone home early. Yes, in the way that WC Fields once said, 'I went to Philadelphia once, but it was closed,' if you came to Vancouver tonight, it would be closed. Well, obviously apart from the annoying pavement washing that continues across the road.
What, you might wonder, would close Vancouver. Well, duh, hockey of course. The Canucks are in the finals of the playoffs and the temperature may be cool on the ice, but it's rising throughout the city.

Back in Blighty however, it is cricket that's getting fans all hot under the collar, and not without cause. The Surrey Cricket Club have outraged male and female fans alike by deciding to use 'walk-on girls' for one of their matches. And you might well wonder what a walk-on girl is. It is just that, a girl, or more likely woman, who wears a lot of make-up and potentially not much else, although this seems to be up for debate, and who walks the guests or players, or some important male people...on. And then she walks off. So a bit like an armed guard, or a nurse in a mental hospital only less useful, unless you consider glamour to be an important function.

A Weekend

2011-06-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

We had a weekend. The two of us, together. And the weather conspired to be super duper too.
Luvly.
We cycled, (a reasonably long way, with Whisky in the puppy trailer)we kayaked, we ate outdoors and we had a fire. I swam. We stayed outside all evening because it was just warm and wonderful.

The interwebs however, conspired against us. This wouldn't maybe have mattered but for the fact that it did manage to deliver us a voicemail that was important and needed answering, and it allowed me one outward e-mail and then that was my lot.
Ah well.
It were still a luverly weekend.

Via the F-Word blog, I see that writer and Nobel winner VS Naipaul thinks no female writer his match. Right. Clearly he simply can't read. But the interesting thing about this article is that at least the first batch of comments I read, were intelligent and anti-misogynistic.

I loved this story yesterday. Brigitte Marcelle, who had been working as a page for the Canadian Parliament, walked in, wearing her uniform, and holding a placard that read, 'Stop Harper'. What backbone!

TV, as I've said, is sparse. Not such a drag when the days are sunny and long. This evening I watched Criminal Intent, which seems to have popped back up out of nowhere.
I was reminded of the difference between the words father and mother when used as verbs. If you say someone fathered a child, it means they supplied the sperm, if you say someone mothered a child, it means they looked after them in a warm and loving way.
One of the characters said of another,
'He has Irish Alzheimer's, he forgets everything but the grudges.'

The Wrong Insomniac

2011-06-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

It seems impossible that on Wednesday I felt better. Physically I did I suppose, Thursday, I was a wreck, emotionally. I suppose I hit a really big wave and succumbed.

And yet, although yesterday started early, it started well. One of the residents of our strata complex, let's call him Doris, has been illegally parking his taxi for...well, ever really. He has had warnings, he has been aggressive to his neighbours, he has had fines, which he doesn't pay, and the situation had to be dealt with. For two days running, Kevin, on the request of the Strata Council, had put a notice to tow on his car, then called the towing company.

Wednesday, whilst I was clearing the kitchen, I saw Doris driving his car out at 09.10. I saw the tow truck turn up at 09.25. The tow truck then had to leave because Doris's car wasn't there, it turned right, the driver waited for a couple of minutes, and then drove off. As soon as he or she drove off, Doris reappeared from the left, so clearly it was all a game of cat and mouse.

But Doris was playing his game with the wrong insomniac. At four on Thursday, Kevin was wide awake. He called the towing company. He waited for the towing company. He watched as they towed Doris's taxi away.
And then he came back to bed and dealt with his work e-mail, sending a message to his line manager, who was astonished later on, to have received an e-mail timestamped 04.30.
Still, if you are awake at 4 o'clock, you might as well make it count.

Feeling Groovy

2011-06-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

At least, spades better than yesterday, which all in all seemed to be my worst day.

Flaming June.

So, Canada Post are poised to go on strike, at the one time when I am actually WAITING for a piece of mail which will mean I can then send one, and all of this is time sensitive.
And they really do seem unrealistic in their demands when I compare them with the great Royal Mail postal workers, and at a time when snail mail is at an all time low - which has been pointed out to them.
And really, we're in a recession, this is not the time to strike.

The whole 'killer cucumber' deal is not by any means funny, and yet, I can't help thinking how difficult it was to find any kind of veggies in Germany, especially ones that didn't begin with the letter K.
Still, I don't understand why farmers in Germany hasn't learnt from the experience of their sisters and brothers in California with the whole spinach e-coli thing from only a couple of years ago. Furthermore, it begs the question, what are German farmers feeding their cattle? Cattle that are fed corn instead of grass, have 80% more e-coli bacteria in their digestive tract, but why would this happen in Europe?

I'm feeling less groovy as the day wears on.

Summer may not yet have arrived, but summer TV has - ie sweet Fanny Adams on. Last night we watched the old Simon Schama 'History of Britain', the episode about the 14th Century, which has to rate as possibly the least enjoyable century to live in. Black Death, witch burnings because they were blamed for the Black Death, more Black Death, and the now fully grown ten-year old king getting all out of control and then quelling the Peasants Revolt, which, admittedly, was itself quite out of control.
Still, the upside of the Black Death was an end to serfdom, and if you survived it, you may have made out like a bandit in the inheritance game.

Britain has had the driest spring in over a 100 years or since 1990, depending on where you are, BC has had the wettest since records began. Such a pity we can't share weather a bit more.

In my garden, the onions are so far coming up a-plenty, enough for a whole tour-de-France I feel, but the spuds, not so much, and even the tommies, whilst numerous, are somewhat stunted so far. Be we are promised (threatened?) a long,hot summer, so they could rally.

I have finished another good read, 'Lyrics Alley' by Leila Aboulela. Seems like if you want to get something published these days, it'd better be about Africa. Lyrics Alley was set in Egypt and the Sudan, interesting stuff, I won't deny it. Now I have 'The Memory of Love' by Aminatta Forna, which is about Sierra Leone.
Good stuff.

Now I'm going to fade.

Hot and Cross

2011-05-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I spent all day in the Cathedral. This annoyed me and ultimately made me ill. It was too hot and it was airless and the seats were very hard, although that last one may not have contributed to the sore throat, fever and achyness, headache and fiery sinuses.

The morning's speaker was a woman from Kentucky, a very slick, polished speaker. The trouble was, what she was saying started my decline into anger, I feel.

She was speaking to us about parish finances.
On the one hand, she told us basically not to fret about the money we didn't have, 'the resources God hasn't given us', but to use wisely what we did have and to spend the time we save, praying and being nice to people. And you know what, if you say that in a smooth, Kentucky accent, it doesn't sound stupid for a few seconds, a bit like how Kenneth on 30 Rock can say bizarre things in an oh-so, 'this is really quite normal' way.

On the other hand, she told us we should be 'tithing'. Everyone should tithe.
'Wait!' I hear you cry, 'I remember this from history lessons, didn't they do that in the Middle Ages before taxes were formally introduced. And then taxes were formally introduced?'
Of course, good memory.
She (the very large woman from Kentucky who was dressed in bright yellow like the sun), explained to us how Jacob invented it. Mmm..interesting. She entirely left out the intervening four thousand years or however long it is since Jacob, during which time much of the world developed many systems based on the Christian Faith, which is now so deeply embedded no-one actually believes it's there, and one of those systems is taxation.

So then she showed us a little filmed sketch about a family going to a church where tithing isn't practised - ie most. The family had to fish out their dollar notes and credit cards at each stage. Oh my, how much easier would it be if we simply introduced a system of taxation, I mean tithing, was supposed to be the message. However to my now sore and cynical mind it said,
'Why are we going to church? Let's not bother, it's too much hassle, let's just go and do something that isn't so annoying.'

In the afternoon, which lasted over three hours, three hours during which time we were encouraged to go downstairs and finish off the food - the food being in fact, cakes leftover from first thing in the morning, because no lunch is provided, and unless you happened to be on the end of a row, it was nigh on impossible to get out anyway, we all wriggled around on our hard wooden chairs until close of play.

There were the Resolutions, this is really what we were there for, except one man, same as last year, wasted our time by trying to get us to 'direct' the Bishop to play nicely with the homophobes.
We didn't.
But one of the people who felt obliged to stand up and give her opinion on the subject told us that she's learnt from this morning's speaker that homosexual people hadn't been given the resources by God to have sex with the opposite gender, therefore they were not to blame. She actually said that, I promise you.

And the finances.
So, as well as running our own churches, which finances I can assure you are very tight, we have to contribute towards the pomp and circumstance that is the diocesan machinery. Part of that is paying for the event we were attending. Ok, so more foot shooting.

All well and good if you are being paid to be there, or could take time off in lieu, but the majority of us were simply giving up our own time for free, so aside from not providing lunch, and keeping us pinned in uncomfortable chairs, there was unnecessary time-wasting.

A man was there from the Lutheran church, 'observing'. A very dull man who simply told us what he'd seen, because we, obviously, didn't know what had happened. He actually made a joke about the word 'trenchant' because he'd been asked by the bish to make some trenchant observations, as though this was a most unusual word. Clearly he confused trenchant with banal.

Then, there was a woman whose job it was to thank everyone by name. Oh, not those of us who were there voluntarily, no, well, fortunately, but everyone who was there, just doing their job or receiving some kind of honorarium. I know, right?

I was pissed off by the end of it, when they stood up to sing another hymn I ran to the toilet and escaped, my head was pounding and I needed air and I was starting to question everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING.

Now of course, I am sacrificing my third day because it's the second day I've been ill.
And I'm grumpy as all get out.

After the Storm

2011-05-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

And after the storm,
Run and run as the rains come
And I'll look up,
On my knees and out of luck, I'll look up.....

M (Bozo5) and I spent part of the afternoon sitting on a low wall in the sunshine, shooting the breeze. Certainly unplanned, we met at our friend Anne's house to go through some of her writing, but her daughter must have been delayed. I think maybe Anne arranged it like that, M and I have spent so many hours talking Oxygen levels, BP and heart rate (all meaning way more to him than to me) around a hospital bed, fearful, tearful, that just to sit on that wall, with the sun shining down on us, and Anne's old basement suite to our backs, was like taking a deep breath.

An Indian lady shuffled back and forth a couple of times, and the smell of skunk washed over us every so often.

They say that if you want to keep a friend, you shouldn't talk about religion or politics, and those are mostly what we did talk about for the whole time we were there. Maybe if you want to test a friendship - sometimes to destruction - those are exactly what you should talk about.

Politically, we probably have common idealogical ground, but to an outsider it would surely seem that as far as religion goes, we are at opposite ends, and yet when it comes down to it, very little separates our views.

And no tears. Until on my way back, when I stopped at Shoppers' Drug Mart, that thing that happens so frequently, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of someone who reminded me of my friend and my heart dropped like a stone.

"There will come a time you'll see,
With no more tears,
And love will not break your heart,
But dismiss your fears,
Get over your hill and see,
What you find there
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair."

Alex and the Pirates

2011-05-26T19:56:00.000-07:00

Wild goose chase to get hold of Alex and wish her a happy birthday. I phoned her brother and sister-in-law's house and spoke to pirates. Pirates and a ballerina, but no Alex. I phoned her friends' house in London, but no-one seemed to be there.
Ah well.
In many ways it was worth it to speak to the pirates and the ballerina.

Happy Birthday my darling girl!

Pouring

2011-05-24T18:10:00.000-07:00

Quite an odd weekend really. Four days without Kevin and Whisky, four days of weird weather, and in the middle of it, going to see my friend in the nursing home where I see her every week, only this time, she was dead.
She was well protected though. From the walls, the Hindu god Shiva smiled beatifically at her, over her bed a First Nations catcher of dreams or spirits or bad vibes, and cedar at the window, I presume to heal her. Muslims were coming later to perform some kind of last rites type deal, and tomorrow there's a three hour requiem mass. Unless it turns out that Judaism is after all the one true religion, I think she's pretty much covered.

Tuesday evening the funeral rites began. The 'Wake' turned out to have little in common with an actual Wake. It was more of an audience. The deceased lay in her casket at the front of the room, and people spoke about her, then there were snacks, but Kevin and I ducked out at that point. I had feared this, feared my own inability to consign my friend to 'memory', read-only. And feared the unscripted bit, where people are invited to come up and speak. I've experienced this before, and people do feel they have to speak, even when they have nothing to say, nothing can go on indefinitely. But it was tolerable. The family had done an amazing job of organisation, truly amazing.

This morning was the Mass. The original e-mail had advertised 'Full Catholic Mass, 11.00 - 14.00.' (Probably didn't say 14.00, but hey, why not upgrade?) Thus, again, I feared, this time feared a three hour requiem mass. In fact the Mass was over in under an hour, and then snacks.
But I had forgotten the extent to which unreconstructed Catholicism batters innocence with patriarchy. I felt dirty, unclean. Everything was male, feudal. Lord, Lord, Lord. Male priest, male servers, ten (yes, ten) pale-skinned, reddish-bearded Apostles and Caucasian crucified Jesus. Mary, mid-brown haired, fair Mary, the token female.
The priest claimed to, but in truth did not know Anne. And he then 'reminded' us that only practising Catholics could take communion, which in any case was swift, the line being given just a wafer, no kneeling, no gentle words, no wine, just wafer, move, wafer, move.
The family are lovely people, they and my friend deserved better, but hey, that's what she signed them up for.

When I got back, I received an e-mail from someone I used to work with, informing me that a co-worker had died last night. A friend. Not a close friend like Anne, but a woman I liked and valued.

And it's raining again. It never rains, but it pours.

21st May 2011

2011-05-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

Today would have been my mum's 86th birthday.

Today my dear friend Anne died, aged 81.

I hope they'll hang out together.

Thank-you Michael for the photo.

Stray Bar

2011-05-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, when I phoned the cable company to complain, a message informed me that 'an asiant would be available soon,' I listened twice to make sure I hadn't made it up.

Last week, on the Sunshine Coast, north of Vancouver, a small dog fell from the sky. It fell onto an Old Folks home, my weren't they surprised. It seems the dog had been taken by a bird of prey, presumably an eagle, I can't see that anything smaller could carry a dog, and then dropped. And before that, it had been either a stray, or horribly neglected. It's nails had grown round and into its pads and its teeth were decayed. Poor thing. Added to that the claw marks and broken ribs, and it definitely needs some TLC.

Pu-Pu and the Hat

2011-05-19T23:46:00.000-07:00

Ye gods and little fishes, it has been a long and frustrating day, with a few twists of weird for flavouring.

The weather, for the ooh, third day in a row methinks, was glorious, a good-to-be-alive day, an oh-what-an-amazing-place-to-live day. Whisky and I had errands in Steveston, so I took him for a walk by the river whence Mount Baker can be seen in all its majesty.

After lunch however, things started to stall. Firstly, the internet was being flaky. Sometimes when this happens, a simple reboot will suffice. Sadly, the computer decided it didn't want to come to life again until Kevin had come home and sprinkled magic engineering dust on it and said abracadabra a few times. Hmmm...I really do him an injustice there, since that makes it sound easy. Anyway, resurrection did eventually take place.

In the park, Whisky saw his friends Toby and Newton, and another dog whose name is, I am told, Pu-Pu. Pu-Pu's owner was sitting on the grass wearing his 'should-have-gone-to Specsaver' glasses and one of those hats that look like a small umbrella that attaches to the head. In camouflage green.
Yesterday, there were 8 dogs and their owners, all speaking Cantonese, except moi of course, it made me wonder whether Whisky were the only dog who doesn't speak it, is he disadvantaged as dogs go?

On the way back, a boy racer in a penis extension car with the windows down was driving too fast and erratically, as they usually do, yet incongruously, the music blaring from the stereo was Nessun Dorma.

But back to today, the day that kept on giving. I took Kevin and Whisky to the Static, and our usual 45 minute journey took two hours, a semi had ploughed into the median on the freeway, so we did a mighty long stretch in first gear. Gaagh.

On the way home, I arrived in Blaine just in time for the longest train I've ever seen to be rolling along the track that crosses the main road. It looked as though it comprised all the leftover bits and pieces that were lying around in the train yard at the end of the day.

Back on the 99 on the Canadian side, late night road works were going on, the smell of skunk, mixed with tarmac, as though a steamroller had mowed one down.

And so to bed.
Goodnight.
Mwaah.

Zowie

2011-05-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

According to Andre and Jeremy, who e-mail me regularly,thank-you lads, Uganda has caved to global pressure and abandoned its evil bill that would have allowed homosexuality to be seen as a crime, and one punishable by death. Excellent news.

I do have a fair amount of religion in my life. Religious arguments for life after death are unconvincing, and utterly dependent not on logic, but a sort of 'get out of gaol free' card known as Faith.
In short, the arguments don't work, you just have to believe it's so.
And there's a lot of motivation for believing that it is so. It's almost impossible to contemplate our own cessation, or that of people - and for some, animals, we love. And it is this that speaks to me at the moment. When I go and visit my friend Anne, I simply cannot believe that just because her body is giving up, that Anne will cease to be. The past two weeks, she has been ill again. Last week, mostly asleep, but whenever she did wake up, she was immediately Anne.

Ever wondered what happened to Zowie Bowie? Seriously, you never wondered? Well, according to a copy of The Week, that I recouped from Alex's recycling bin, he changed his name to Duncan Jones at the age of 18 and has been leading a perfectly normal life, well, granted he's a film director, but that aside, normal.

Monkeys, Zeitungen, Stupidity

2011-05-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

Haha! At last! Blogger has been 'read only' for two days.

Yesterday, I spent a whole load of time sitting in the car in neutral and moving forward in no higher than first gear. In front of me, a sticker on the back of a car warned that said car contained little monkeys. I really would like to know whether any research has been done to find out if the whole 'baby on board' sticker phenomenon has made any difference at all to the way people drive. It just seems to me that anyone would drive as carefully as they could all the time, and if you're an arsehole driver, would this sticker suddenly transform you?

This week has seen the sudden rise to fame of a little known Orthodox Jewish newspaper, die Tzitung, by virtue of its having shown the now iconic picture of President Obama's inner circle watching the take-down of Osama bin Laden, with Hillary Clinton photoshopped out. The other amazing phenomenon is that the comments on the Jewish Techs' blog, where the story has been discussed, are so incredibly sane. One points out that this sect of Jews are 'our (their) crazies' - well we all have plenty of those, don't we? Another asks, why, if the picture of Ms. Clinton is so offensive, would they print the picture at all. Another points to another Orthodox Jewish newspaper, where a picture of Bibi Netanyahu's government, was printed with the faces of the two female ministers replaced with male faces. Quite bizarre.
Of course, the assumption is that Hillary's picture was omitted because merely showing a picture of a woman inflames the passions of men beyond endurance, and they shouldn't have to endure, natch, but my theory is that they couldn't show the horror on her face.

A 'for goodness' sake get over it' story also had mostly sane comments. Parents (white, privileged) at a school in the city of Burnaby, protested when the Principal wanted to add a clause to their anti-bullying policy, prohibiting bullying on grounds of homosexuality. One problem for them is that it marginalises heterosexuality.
'Heterosexuality cannot be marginalised,' says one commentator, since it is considered the norm and therefore dominant. Exactly.
But no-one's standing for this nonsense anyway. The students want the clause in, and say that the parents can butt out, they don't go to the school, and the Principal says he doesn't care how many people protest, he wants to be able to sleep at night knowing that he's done whatever he can to prevent discrimination.
Plus, do these parents want their kids not to be able to get on buses, as happened when the Little Flower Academy discriminated against a teacher in a same-sex relationship?

Give Us This Day.....

2011-05-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

Our Daily Red.
Happy Birthday Sleepy, bottoms up to you!

So, we have a bit of bother at the Schloss. It involves Laurence, but I can't blog about it, though I'm fine to share details with anyone who e-mails.
Anyhoo, suffice to say, it has been and will continue to take up a fair amount of our time, energy, sleep, and peace of mind.
There have also been some rather odd coincidences, spooky stuff, however nothing so far that tops the 'Bruce' word verification when I commented on Raymond's blog when Anne was at death's door. (Bruce, Raymond, Anne and I were all part of the same writers' group and Bruce died).

I now get e-mails from an e-card company, and I thought it rather over the top that this week they have Osama bin Laden cards - until I saw the message, 'All I want is a job where my existence is as politely ignored as bin Laden's was in Pakistan'. Chortle.

The office where I got the oximeter rang up to ask for it back (I returned it bright and early last Friday), then they rang back and apologised for the previous message. It was someone else entirely they were supposed to ring. I'm guessing the results won't be waiting for me at the doc's tomorrow.

I've just read 'The Island' by Victoria Hislop. Interesting premiss, and horrifying. Until 1957, the island of Spinalonga, off the coast of Crete, was a leper colony, and the story follows the lives of two members of a family who develop leprosy and are exiled on diagnosis, leaving behind the people they love, with no hope of return.

Frightful Upstart

2011-05-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

So, this morning, on the CBC news, so our equivalent of the BBC, the newscaster asks a young woman of 20 who has just been voted in as an MP, whether this made her frightful. Good grief. No shame, no shame.

Then Laurence showed me a You Tube video of his company, and the owners were being interviewed.
'This is a new, upstart company,' says the incompetent interviewer. I'd have slugged her for that. Well, not really, but I'd have wanted to.

Tonight, I have to sleep attached to an oximeter, this is a machine which will determine whether I have sleep apnoea. I figure it can only determine that if I can sleep while attached to it, otherwise, it'll be one long apnoea.
We'll see.

The Fire

2011-05-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening, when Kevin took Whisky out for his pre-bedtime pee, he noticed what looked like a huge bonfire behind the houses opposite us. In a manner of speaking it was. From the upstairs window we could see that some buildings not too far from where we live, were on fire. The Fire Brigade were already there, and thereby hangs a tale, because they had warned that if these particular wooden-framed buildings went up, they had been built too high for their water cannons to reach.

And unlike in any TV programme, where person A rings person B and tells them to turn on the TV and lo! They are just in time to see the exact news item their friend wanted them to see, we turned on the local news just in time to miss the item, and then the cable provider went down, followed by the power across the street.

This morning, there were lumps of smouldering charcoal in the dog park, and more significantly, on the path that runs behind the houses - this path being on the edge of peat bog. This afternoon, Cambie Road, where the fire happened, was still blocked off and guarded by police vans. The scene of the fire was still smoking.

This evening, the larger pieces of charcoal debris had been trampled and spread about.
Ahead of us we could see Whisky's friend Peanut going for a drag. Other dogs walk, or saunter, sniffing everything around, Peanut, small, but not accessory small, and certainly not an overweight dog, simply lies down and refuses to move,so that she has to be dragged along.

Since I've lived in this city, there have been some remarkable and spectacular fires, one caused by a small plane, piloted by a man with a known heart condition, ploughing into a block of flats in the centre of Richmond. Another, caused by a small plane ploughing into some buildings behind Ikea. This one seems to have no small aeroplane involvement.

This morning I visited my friend Anne. She was waiting for the doctor to come, as she has had a bad and rather rough sounding cough since Easter. The male doctor arrived, sadly, as I suspected, one of my own countryfolk, and in spite of his North of England accent, was as condescending as only we southerners can be. My friend wanted to query the dosage of one of her meds. He went and fetched the report that came with her from the hospital. My friend and I were sitting in chairs facing each other and he was standing to the side, but between us. He opened the report and turned to me,
'Can she read this?' he asked,
'Better than I can,' I replied.
It reminded me of the old BBC radio programme for people with disabilities. It was called, 'Does he Take Sugar?' because that's the way people with disabilities are often treated.
To be fair to him, many of his patients there are...well, not all there, but still, my friend is sharp as a tack and could run rings around him with anything involving words.

Beltane

2011-05-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

...was yesterday. And a very good Beltane it was, warm and sunny enough to put my plants out, and since today it is raining, yet still warm, they look fairly happy for the time being.

The death of Osama bin Laden finds me oddly elated. I wonder who'll play him in the film? Probably Jake Gyllenhaal. This is quite the coup though, and I hope it'll go some way towards pacifying President Obama's detractors. Here is a President who doesn't waver when it comes to protecting his people, but who will honour the dead, giving a Muslim funeral service followed by burial within the time frame demanded by the dead man's faith.
I do feel (personally) let down by Pakistan though. They have not acted honourably in all of this and I don't think we should let them play in the Test Match until they've shown us how sorry they are. Maybe they could stand in the corner too.

Yesterday's sermon from visiting priest Lois, was very good. She talked about the importance of 'Doubting Thomas', who wanted proof. She emphasised how vital it was to question and to come out of our comfort zones, and she quoted Frederick Douglas, 'They want rain without thunder and lightning.' Lovely.
Personally, I like rain, but thunder and lightning are a great bonus.

Kev's Birthday Week /End of Whirlwind Tour

2011-04-29T16:27:00.000-07:00

The whirlwind tour has ended, all too quickly, sad to say.

The rain finally gave up somewhere around Tuesday, which apart from that, was rather a downer of a day.

Wednesday however, was Kev's birthday. Alex took us to a taster bar in the evening, which was an interesting experience and enjoyed by all. Dairy Queen ice-cream cake for pud, some of which is inexplicably, still in the freezer.

Thursday, we had intended to go to the States, the border wait was reporting at 80 minutes, but we were in a great snarl up of traffic just to get to the tunnel, so at that point, and after that stress, we abandoned the trip and turned round, ending up at Havana for brunch.
We took a walk down the Drive, just for the craic.
We weren't disappointed. As we crossed a side-street, a driver was doing something unusual and potentially dangerous on the main road, and a man was standing in the street behind her shouting, 'Chinese! Chinese! Chinese!', I imagine in case the driver was unsure of her ethnicity.
We also noticed a couple of places where someone had nailed those Ikea plastic bag-holders to trees, so that people could stuff plastic bags in, and dog-walkers could take one out.
The Drive is so cool.

Yesterday, Alex had invited people she worked with to a Royal Wedding Party. I was instructed to wear a frock, and a friend was set to making bunting. Alex made lavender cocktails, which were....interesting. She had also made cucumber sandwiches and dipped strawberries in chocolate. The Royal Family are far more important when you're not living in the same country as them. Watching the service, however, made me pretty proud of my own church here. How tired and archaic the old, sexist language seemed, how the Church of England seems to be withering on the vine. I couldn't help comparing the sad old ceremony with the personalised, and meaningful one of my friends Margaret and Andrea last summer.

I do, however, have a wonderfully clean and tidy house as a result of yesterday's exertions, and tomorrow, I will be planting out my seedlings.

Easter Monday

2011-04-25T19:34:00.000-07:00

Good Friday and St. George's day were fine, sunny and warm, really warm in the sun, but Easter Day the rain started, started in earnest. Again. I drove up for church on Easter day, spent some time with Alex and Laurence, phoned England and went back again.
As we left the Static today, puddles were turning into small lakes.

On Saturday, warm, sunny, clear, we loaded up the kayaks and drove the five minutes to the beach - where it was still sunny, but cold, very cold, and the wind was whipping up the water so that even the ducks were looking scared. We bailed and went home.

We've been re-watching the Simon Schama 'History of Britain' series. Alfred the Great gets some air time and then Edward the Confessor. You might think there was no-one in between, but in fact there were eleven kings that separated the two, seven of whom had names beginning with E. Pointless trivia I suppose, but who can't help wondering about them?
Alright, I can't.

Blood

2011-04-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

Ah, the routine bloodwork, it comes up every once in a while. The first step is to fast for ten hours. On the one hand, not eating for ten hours hardly seems like a fast, it's a bit of a low-key one, on the other hand, I find not eating during the evening much harder than it should be.

So having done that, I tried to go to the lab place as early as possible. It opens at 06.30, so I'm there at 06.40. I'm number 30. The small waiting room is packed full of mostly Chinese people wearing pyjamas and Uggs. And for some reason, it seems that the ones who have been sent to have their blood tested, are the ones who speak no English. The woman on the desk has infinite patience, explaining over and over again the most simple things, like 'take a number and sit down'. Some have had the foresight to bring a friend or two, one of whom may speak a little English, but this naturally has the effect of making the room even more full.

And it turns out that under Canada's Constitution, although as a country we have two official spoken languages (plus International Sign Language), any Province or Territory apart from Québec, Manitoba and New Brunswick, are allowed to have whichever and however many official languages they like and they don't have to include English or French. The three aforementioned can also increase their number of official languages, but French and English must be two of them.
Thank-you Kevin for that, the link I mean, I know you're not responsible for this bizarre constitutional anomaly.

In the meantime however, before BC announces that Cantonese and Mandarin are its official languages, at which point it'll make not a blind bit of difference, since there are signs that have only Chinese on them anyway, and Canadians are notoriously bad at being told what to do, things are being right royally held up because of the language barrier.

The jhumming and boshing of the neighbours' house has now been going on for over two weeks, I think they could have re-built it in less. It has, however, been going on for so long that the dog no longer takes any notice of the noise. Small and meagre mercies.

The Home

2011-04-20T16:43:00.000-07:00

I have been doing battle with forms and I have been being creative with writing. It's all quite tiring and the first one is trying and tiresome. The more you look at a form the more complicated it gets.

This morning when I visited my friend in her nursing home, I brought her down to the ground floor where there is a living room type of area. We sat and talked and I noticed that opposite us, three women in wheelchairs were lined up one behind the other as though they were in a train or on a bus.
After a while, an alarm starting going off intermittently. An orderly dashed out and checked to see if the lift was stuck, or a smoke alarm was going off, and then she noticed that one of the ladies in the wheelchairs, the middle one, was pulling an emergency cord on the back of the wheelchair in front of her.

The nursing home is both hopeless and hopeful. The state of some of the people tears at your heart and makes you wonder what their experience of life is at this point. But the staff are cheerful and patient and the nursing home seems so much more lively and present than the old folks' homes of yesteryear, or maybe of Britain.

Still, not quite sure why we call it a home.

On Footwear

2011-04-15T15:18:00.001-07:00

The reason footwear has been on my mind recently is that my absolute favourite pair of shoes are about to give up and die. I love these shoes, they are Nike slip-on trainers and are all kinds of comfortable. Sadly, I will never be able to find another pair the same, because I bought them from the outlet shop in Gunwharf and they were being discontinued.

Today my mind was once more focussed on the foot, as I waited at a crossing light whilst a woman in a ridiculous pair of heels actually tottered across the road as though balancing on something too small, and then suddenly, I really, REALLY got the whole Ugg boot thing, because following her was an almost identical woman, wearing the ubiquitous Uggs. How weather appropriate, I thought, given that yesterday we had sleet that had clearly fallen as snow on the mountains, followed by hail that stayed in piles around the frame of the windscreen. Today is sunny, but cold. The Ugg woman looked comfortable and in control of her own body space.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for sassy heels, most definitely there is, but today, on the pedestrian crossing on a main road and in the middle of the day, did not seem to be it.

As for my beloved Nikes, well, something better'll come along and I'll no doubt forget all about them, just as I've forgotten how insanely I loved my Dr. Scholls in the 70s.

And not in any way footwear related, Ben's band are interviewed on Eagle FM on Sunday night at 21.30 GMT.

Green Days

2011-04-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we watched the first episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution in LA. On the one hand, it was pitiful to see the intransigence of everyone he tried to deal with. It was as though he were an alien from another planet speaking in clicks, although, to be fair, no-one tried to dissect him. At best, a bunch of parents watched as he demonstrated how much sugar their children were eating, making tut-tut faces and then all cleared off. But what bothered me, was that I could see myself standing there, trying to convince people at my church that racism and sexism are wrong. I WAS Jamie Oliver, but on a teeny, tiny scale and without using sexism myself.

Every week, or, more accurately, at random intervals, I receive an e-mail from the Guardian's Environment section. This week's was particularly edifying.
Firstly, the World-in-Wildlife pictures were spectacular.

Then, I found the explanation of the difference between internal and external radiation quite fascinating, although the spat between the two environmentalists was disturbing.

I love the idea of seedbombs, even the instructions, the sort of terrorism one's grandchildren could do. Nice. What's not to love about random acts of environmentalism?

Lastly, I love the idea of that a whole street could co-operate in monitoring and decreasing their own energy use. Let's hope it's an idea that spreads like a seedbomb.