Hair today, gone Saturday.

Jeannette is the hairdresser I have always wanted. Don't get me wrong, I had a couple of really good hairdressers when I lived in Pompey, but Jeannette is creative. Women's mags always tell us to ask our hairdresser what they suggest, that has never worked for me.... until Jeannette. So now I am all cut and coloured once more, I always leave it until the last minute.

But there is something in the air here. Vancouver is such a creative place. How can I explain this? When I went to Montréal a few years back, there was just a French feel to the place. It wasn't just the language, there was a style, a way of thinking that was French, it was all around you.
The same is true of Vancouver and its creativity. You are aware all around you of the art, theatre, film, photography, writing, music, cuisine. People here know about it, they talk about it, they are IN it, like fish in a creative sea.

That's not to say that Britain doesn't produce great art, films, plays, writing, cuisine...egh, not so much of that. So where does it go on? In garrets I guess. When I think about it, if you wanted to find any of the above in Pompey you could, but you have to seek it out, you have to winkle it out of people.

Even I have discovered a creative-ish side, have been to a writing class, joined a group. I feel constrained by my Brtishness, the need to analyse and correct into oblivion. But I'm getting there.
The writing group also gives me, I realised, one of three forums for discussion of language itself, along with my Dutch-English study group and my crossword.
I do the Guardian's online crossword everyday, just the quick one, I can't do those cryptic ones. But we can e-mail the editor and he sends out a newsletter. At the moment there is a sciency discussion going on about his clue for the word LASER.

 "I was brought upstanding
by a complaint about the following clue for LASER, which appeared on
December 16: "Device for concentrating light (5)"
The complaint was clearly not trivial since it came from someone
working in the Quantum Optics and Laser Science Group in the Blackett
Laboratory at Imperial College. But first a digression. "Laser" is an
acronym of "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation".
But, my complainant tells me, the way the devices work is by
oscillation, not amplification. For some reason it was felt that
"light oscillation by stimulated emission of radiation", or LOSER,"
was not an ideal name for the invention."

So there you go.
I was once able to complain myself. A clue had called for a Canadian city and the answer was Ontario. I received an e-mail within the day and an apology was published. 

Not long ago, one of the Dutch people on the study group list had queried the difference between 'to go up the road and to go down the road.'  Usually you can expect a spirited discussion on such trivia, not this time. I posted that I felt in common usage there was no difference at all. One other Brit posted something else and that was the end of it. I told Kevin about this. His take was, 'well if the Brits won't get worked up about it, it's a sure sign there's nothing to discuss.'
I realised that a background noise to my working life in Britain had been this ongoing discussion of language. In the modern language department we were seen as the reactionaries. All teachers were responsible for teaching literacy (and numeracy and moral and spiritual, personal and social, the list was endless). To me, that was at the basis of what we taught. We were supposed to correct English spelling, that was a directive. So in briefing I queried whether American spelling was acceptable, since I know from American friends that both English and American are acceptable there.
The English department was asked to comment. I don't believe the words 'Heresy!' or 'Burn the witch!' were actually said as such but you get the idea.
I only knew we were having any impact as a department because someone in English told me that kids were now writing ALL nouns with a capital letter as is done in German. I thought they should be pleased that we had done such a great and mighty task as to get them to identify nouns, but then hey, I was trying to work out how much longer my department could get away with pretending not to have noticed the German spelling reforms.
Report writing was another time of aggravation. The then Head of English would pick out the most archaic reasons for sending reports back. As head of a different language department I was consulted by the annoyed, the judged, the damned.
'Can I spell 'recognise' with a z?'
'I guess,'
'SHE says it's American.'
'Don't think so, not that one, just an older English spelling.'
'I KNEW it.'
'Course I could be wrong..... want to know the French for it, German?'
One head of year sent a report of mine back with the word 'amiable' crossed out. Discussion over whether I have made this -I thought commonly used word- up from a French word.
It was useful to me though, being in this ongoing process of language maintenance because my department were looked upon with suspicion, often hostility as outsiders; in a country of Xenophobes we were collaborators.

Work, creativity, the one improving the other, keeping each other in balance, yin and yang.

And in the world of labour, Sue's goes on. It must be 23.00 in Britain now and she went into hospital for the second time this morning at 9 am. I know she's in good hands but I hope she delivers soon.