Alex and the Pirates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.....

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

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

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

...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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Alex and the Geese

Alex is here, this was a last minute plan, and I have been under a gag order until she'd surprised everyone. And she has surprised people, there has been much screaming and general...well...surprise.

The Snow Geese are also here. We took Whisky for a walk along the dyke - shows how long I have been here that I can even type that word - and the snow geese were abundant, rafts of them floating on the river, blankets of them just hanging out, and then gangs of them squawking and taking off.

In the garden, my spud bags have been half filled and spudded. At the first hint that the weather is warming up, I'll be planting my pea seedlings out, and probably some onions. I have also planted carrot seeds left over from last year. The biggest problem is that I'm following instructions on the BBC's Gardeners' World website, which has a week-by-week checklist, but temperatures are clearly higher in the UK than here right now. Unfortunately, I can't find a local equivalent.

Anarchy really isn't my thing. Just saying.

I'm entirely ready for the Royal Wedding. I have my stylist here. Easter will have passed, so I'll have my chocolate stash to consume. That's about it really. Is there a special, loud musical instrument for the celebration? No? An oversight I'm sure.

Oh, and this is how far we haven't come in the desire to just be allowed to be who we are and not to be judged on an impossible and undesirable goal.

Saturday Special

Friday morning was frosty, making me glad that my seedlings are still inside, even though I have been preparing the ground for planting when the weather warms up.

On Thursday, the general doggie mayhem caused by all the garbage and recyling trucks, was greatly exacerbated by the jhumming and boshing going on next door. No-one yet seems to have moved in, but of course, why miss an opportunity for hammering and noise? And to add insult to injury, since it was sunny, the gardener for the strata was out with his big man-toy leaf-blower, which succeeds in doing a less efficient job than a broom, whilst adding to sucking life out of the planet and simultaneously winding up small dogs (ie not just ours).

The past couple of days, I have found myself, bizarrely, having to talk people at my church out of a bit of casual anti-Semitism. And I have by no means yet won the debate, but the most ridiculous argument I have had thrown at me is, 'it doesn't matter if we do it since the congregation are intelligent enough to know we don't mean it.' What a freaking wonderful catch-all argument. Let's just indulge in the occasional sexism, racism, homophobia because everyone else is clever enough to know we don't mean it. Well guess what? that excuse is no excuse at all. The leadership of absolutely anything is supposed to be better than that and furthermore, if we do it, even once in a while, then we get tainted by it.

For the second weekend running, internet access at the Static has been as good as non-existent. This is annoying and frustrating but oh well, what can you do?

I have been mightily taken by one of Raymond's posts in which he talks about a Japanese idea that the brain works better when the head is cold and the body warm. I thoroughly concur with this, being a woman of middle years, it is my head which always feels uncomfortably warm most of the time, and at this discomfort stops me from concentrating fully on other things.

Simon Schama, whose name I have now learnt how to spell, continues to enthral me with his History of America. I think I admire Thomas Jefferson quite a lot, and many members of the Meigs family. I'm also still quite focussed on the growing horror of many Americans, particularly in the north, of the practice of slavery, whilst the south were willing to go to war to protect the 'right' of white people to 'own' other human beings. It's just quite incomprehensible to us now.

Mothers' Monday

A weekend without internet. For some unaccountable reason, it was running like a dream last weekend, and was completely dead this one. Still, we had a splendid fire, managed to find new bricks for our firepit and there was a hummingbird at our feeder.

I received a delicious selection of e-books for Mother's Day, what a fantastic surprise, especially since I didn't receive the notifications until the evening when we got back. AND....how very brill of Kobo to offer this service. I wanted to send a book as a gift to Austen, for his Kindle, they, sadly DON'T offer the service, they must be missing out on a lot of potential (and eco-friendly) sales there.

I am currently reading two books, both paper copies. One, 'Kissing the Hag' is about accepting the things that make us female, rather than trying to apologise for them, or hide them.

The other has been sitting on my desk for about two years since Austen told me it would be a good book to get. Simon Sharma's 'History of America', apparently there was a TV series based on this book, or vice versa.
But what an interesting book it is turning out to be, and what a sublime writer Sharma is. One of his opening lines is,
'"America has never been a warrior culture," just because it was Dick Cheney said this didn't automatically make it untrue,' and then we you are thinking, 'what the hell?' he goes on to show you how the founders of the country really did try to build something that was different from the warrior cultures of the Old World, and how, when it became necessary to defend themselves, (from the French who were rather put out by the signing of a peace agreement with Britain) put in place a college where future officers would learn about honour and duty and how war was not to be taken lightly.

As Sharma moves us forward towards the Civil War, he shows us a mirror. You can so easily see modern schisms reflected in the horror of slavery expressed by some, and the arrogance towards the lives of other humans displayed by others.

To feed our addiction for 'The Killing', we watched the opening of the U.S. (filmed largely in Vancouver) episode last night. It wasn't bad, although I feel as though watching the original, you were not only drawn into the mystery, but also their world, and so, in spite of an attempt to re-create even the Birk-Larsen's house and business premises, the atmosphere isn't there. The actor playing the Lund character is a good pick and yet lacks the essential brooding closed-off nature of the original. There are three poor castings in my opinion, Larsen's side-kick, (Vagn in the original), Lund's co-officer (Jan Meyer) and Lund's fiancé.