Happy New Year

Happy New Year one and all - may it bring us all wisdom, clarity, insight and personal peace, and not necessarily those found at the bottom of a bottle.

New Year's Eve was somewhat hectic.

At work, we had the ratcatcher in. He sat outside in his van, smoking up the cab. When he came into the building, rank with dead rat smell, he announced that he couldn't smell anything. My colleague, a smoker herself, assured me that when you had just come from your smoke-filled cab, it was guaranteed you could smell nothing.

His first port of call was the roof. Only his ladder wasn't long enough. Colleague found him a longer ladder.
'I can't go underneath the building if it's too wet,' he told us in his French-Canadian accent.
'That rat isn't lying in water,' my colleague told him, 'that rat is stinking because it's drying out and the smell is being sent along the heating ducts.' He went under the building.
'I found nothing,' he said. He was subjected to the Spanish Inquisition but eventually we had to let him go.
'Happy New Year,' he said,
'Et Bonne Année,' I replied.
'This sounds French,' he said,
'Yes,' said my colleague, 'did you think we couldn't tell?'
'I'm from Brazil,' he told us and then entered into a good-humoured account of some differences between the Spanish of other South American countries and the Portuguese of Brazil.
Fair do's.

In the afternoon I had my hair chopped short. The hairdresser's was hectic. The world and her partner were in there.

In the evening, despite threats of more snow, we drove to North Vancouver to our friends' home, where the men cooked a fabulous meal and we women, well, we just sat around putting the world to rights.

When we left, the snow had started, so we drove the whole distance at 40, trying not to brake except when some joker pulled over in front of us without warning.
ABS is scary until you get used to it.

This morning we lay in bed and watched a film - my motivation for not drinking and driving home last night was so that I could lie a-bed this morning.
'Conspiracy' - a film from 2001 and starring Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci as Heydrich and Eichmann, planning the 'Final Solution'. A film that was set in one room and yet which engaged and wrung every emotion from you. When Branagh as Heydrich has bent all to his will, he calmly picks up a long-playing record of Shubert. 'Listen to this,' he tells Eichmann, 'it will tear your heart from you.'
The man most despairing at what he is a part of is Doktor Wilhelm Kritzinger, played with the greatest of skill by David Threlfall, Frank, from 'Shameless'.
A mighty piece of work and worthy of the profession.

Christmas is nearly over. And so is the snow. More flurries tomorrow and tomorrow night, but it's melting, slowly.