Colour and Confusion

These are neurons - although not mine, so far as I know.

St. Francis of Assisi, best known for his role as Dr. Doolittle in the film of the same name, had his day today. Yes, 4th October is when churches welcome everyone's pets in to pee on the floor and be blessed.
So, Whisky went to church, and got blessed, he also got admired. A lot. And he dug up earth outside in the church grounds until I decided it was probably not a good idea to be digging in the earth in church grounds.
Whisky has now doubled in size since we got him, no longer resembling a Guinea Pig, but rather a small dog.
In church, someone other than the vicar, made up a new chapter of Genesis, in which God - still as sexist as ever, invented dogs to be the constant companion of Adam (yep) and to reflect God in Adam's eyes, and would therefore be called 'dog' - God backwards, natch - owing to the fact that they had run out of names. All dogs are he.

Ok, so that was the afternoon service.

This morning, a visiting vicar kept referring to God as 'he' in his sermon. I asked him afterwards if he thought God was white. He told me that God was all that we are. Good answer, and I'm not male, so is God not male then? Of course not. So why the 'he's then? Good point. The visiting vicar was incredibly receptive and apologetic, and in fact works tirelessly for equality in the church, which I believed, owing to the fact that he was black.

Now this whole black thing, is in fact...getting weird. The visiting vicar didn't look black. At all. He looked completely white but he sounded black. And I was later told that he had suffered incredible discrimination because of his colour.

Then there's Obambi. Someone I know asked a friend the other day, how it has been decided that Obama is black, after all, he is half black and half white, so who decided he was black? Well, to be fair, he does look black....ish.
So it is rather confusing.

Anyway, back to the morning service.
The visiting white, black vicar received the criticism well, but the director of music didn't.
The people who do the prayers and music have been told they must use inclusive language. The music director thinks this is an irrelevance, bizarrely in my opinion, since he has two daughters and a wife.
He transgressed and I called him on it. He said it was because he was Chinese.
?
English is his third language,
'But you speak it very well,' said I,
'But in Chinese, you cannot tell the difference between the words for he and she,'
'So...that's great isn't it, no gender differentiation?'
'No, there is, the two words just sound the same when said aloud,'
'Ah, fascinating, however the service is in English,'
'But you need to know where I'm coming from,'
'And now I do, and you speak English very well, so I'm sure you know when you're using a word that means one specific gender,'
'It was hard for me to come to Canada and learn English and French and German and Spanish,'
'Yes indeed, unnecessarily confusing really, however, back to the English, if you are unsure about the word, feel free to run it by any of us,'
'But you know, worship is about love and joy,'
'Certainly, but it is important how we express that,'
'You can fire me if you want, but I am here because I love God,'
'Well I can't fire you actually, but I wouldn't want to anyway, you're a good musical director, but you need to use inclusive language,'

Eesh, by the end of it, I was sure he understood my point, but what I wasn't sure of, was whether the upshot would be that he'd come on board or resign.
Either way.

Third Wave

Rumour has it that the city of Vancouver will be dealing with its homeless problem shortly before the Olympics - that's to say that they will conveniently disappear. The skating events will be here in Richmond, but, as any City Councillor will tell you, there are no homeless in Richmond, so no problem there.

In a totally unrelated matter, the Olympic athletes are to be decked out in specially designed schmutter with a big black 'C' on it, and a Maple Leaf. By an amazing coincidence, and to the chagrin of every other political party, the Conservative party's logo is a big blue 'C' with a Maple Leaf.

A presenter on the radio suggested that VanOC could kill two birds with one stone - as it were - by dressing the homeless in leftover athletics gear. Tidy 'em up a bit, in a corporate sort of way.

And in an actually unrelated issue, I use that word deliberately, if I want to become a third wave feminist, I'm going to have to get my groove on pretty damn quickly. Apparently it involves the politics of menstruation. I can't see me wearing my menstrual blood as lipstick, I'm more of a subtle pink shade of lippie type of person.
Still, I'm both appalled and fascinated at the same time. Mesmerised even. I SO want to be a third wave feminist, but what if the politics of menstruation has given me the old body swerve by the time I get with the programme?
Hmmm?

Swine

A change in the weather, it's cooler, rained hard today and last night.

So, today, we find out that Canada has put itself into a big old medical experiment. Some unpublished Canadian research strongly suggests that being inoculated against regular 'flu, makes it more likely that you will contract the swine 'flu, or H1N1 as we are now more technically and accurately calling it. So six - I believe - Provinces have decided to not issue the regular 'flu vaccination except to people in certain specific categories.
The States is going ahead with Plan A, that is, to offer both.
I'm not sure which of us is the control group, but doesn't it make you tingle?
No?
Oh.
We live and love in interesting times.

There is something disgusting about some of the reactions to the arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland. He anally raped a 13-year-old girl, having first drugged her, and when he was charged, and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor, he ran away to join the foreign legion - well, not exactly, more, to live in France.
And the world said...?
'He's done his time,' Really?
'It wasn't really rape, she agreed to it,' so far as a drugged, frightened thirteen-year-old can agree to sex, she...no, she still didn't agree, but she didn't struggle enough,
'But he makse GREAT films,' uhuh, and this means he can commit a violent act against a young woman...or any woman...or any human being...or even an animal, it just won't wash.

Apparently Egypt has had all its pigs killed earlier this year, to avoid swine 'flu. So far so good?
No, I know, it sounds ridiculous by anyone's standards, but now even Egyptian Muslims are regretting it.
The country's Christians have the contract to collect organic waste, which they used to do and feed to the pigs. Nice bit of recycling.
You see where this is going?
No pigs, no waste collection, no waste collection - even more of a health threat than H1N1.
Oops!

Jedi and Other Friends

Crikey, what happens to the weekend?
Must be a Jedi mind trick.
I don't know why the Jedi refer to their skill as a 'mind trick', it makes it sound cheap. Vampires at least call it glamouring.

Bozo5 sent me an article about Jedi from the Grauniad. It seems that Tesco have a policy of not allowing people to wear hoods up in the store, and asked a man to remove his hood or leave the store. Little did they know, that they were speaking to a practising Jedi, who claimed religious discrimination. Tesco's retorted with the observation that the three best known Jedi, Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, were all frequently to be seen with hoods down.
I suppose the real problem here is that most societies allow people to do quite ridiculous things that flaunt the law, in the name of religious freedom. No company is allowed to reject someone for a job, or sack them, on the grounds of gender or sexual preference, but the church can, heck all of the religions can.
If you have any kind of imaginary friend, write your own rule book.

New series of Dexter. Excellent!!!

Papparazzini

Today, I had my picture taken for the local rag. It will be incredibly cheesy, since there were photos from many angles, but all of me pretending to ignore a garter snake puppet, whilst peering over my specs at the camera. In the background, empty, stacked chairs, indicating the school programmes that won't happen on account of the funding cut - but mostly because of a much longer term problem.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow, I have been and will be, interviewing exceptional women to be my assistant. I hope to goodness I will be able to employ someone by Monday. Luckily, whoever she is, she will be exceptional.

Today, the weather was more bearable - not down to the promised 18, but 21 was doable. Meanwhile one colleague, huddles in an office with the door closed and an electric fire on. Oh, and wearing short sleeves - what's with that? If you are insanely cold, at least put on more clothes whilst helping to destroy the planet.

A bizarre news article here today, in which two polygamous men were not going to be prosecuted for polygamy. Their crime doesn't seem to be in any doubt, the police spent a lot of time investigating, and yet they are not going to be prosecuted for breaking the law. I can't get my head round this.
Two pervy old bollixes.

New TV continues unabated. It's like we hibernate, unable to miss anything, come home, shut the door, eat, watch TV. The opium of the people.

But before we did that this evening, I took the hound for a walk. He's getting to be quite the walker. As we rounded the corner, we saw a young man get out of a car that was parked facing one way, leaving another man in the car, and get into an expensive looking black, sleek car on the opposite side of the road, facing the other way. After a couple of minutes, he got out and got back in the first car, then the black, sleek one left.
I wonder what that was about.
Probably not the opium of the people, probably something else.

Cougar TV

Autumn! Here it is! And after tomorrow, the temperature is supposed to drop to a more autumnal setting.

Who needs more law dramas? Not me, that's for sure, except....'The Good Wife' turns out to be stonking.
And...I wonder where it's filmed?
Oh yeah, here.

We have the first episode of Britcom, 'Beautiful People', I loved that the two lads like to do things everyone does, like pretending to be Canadian. Yes, they spoke loudly in a generic North American accent about how things are in Vancouver, on today's TV, Vancouver is the new Toronto.

On last night's opening episode of the new series of 'How I Met Your Mother', Robin was wearing a Vancouver Canucks' jumper at a hockey game.
Ah, Vancougar.

A Thousand Words

Good service.
Dreary meeting.
Good afternoon.
What-ho.

Mork and Ellen

Oh, is it Saturday already? I suppose so.

I had a wonderful morning. I went to a meeting of the International Anglican Women's Network. We watched a film about how African women worked together to bring an end to war and the tyranny of the egregious Charles Taylor in Liberia. They literally put on their jewellery and white clothes, that they were not allowed to wear, and made themselves into an unmoveable wall. Solidarity. They had some strong leaders, Christian women who determined that as Charles Taylor was an outwardly devout Christian, they and their Muslim sisters would 'Pray the Devil back to Hell.'

It was a moving film, but the morning itself was incredible, to be with other women, unapologetic about their own feminism, and seeing it as part of their Christianity.
Inclusive language was a priority for many of the churches, because it is so fundamental.

I found a letter on the subject of inclusive language from the President of the Canadian Auto Workers dated 1997. It takes no prisoners,

"Language is powerful

Language is a uniquely human tool. When we want to express ourselves, we struggle to find the right words. Words can wound, they can soothe, they can explain, they can lie. Words can include and they can exclude. We all know that words can be powerful."

But this paragraph struck me particularly,

"Some of our collective agreements still contain language that is gender-specific. They use the pronoun "he" when referring to jobs that can be, and are, done by people regardless of gender. These agreements usually include a paragraph that says that where there is gender-specific language, that language should be understood to include both men and women. This doesn't cut it. It's a bit like saying "I know your name is Ralph, but we're not used to having Ralphs around here. Joe is easier to remember, so I'll just call you Joe. No hard feelings, eh?" "

I was happy that I hadn't used any gender-specific language in Save-On today, when the young fellow-me-lad at the checkout turned out to have a name tag that said, 'Grace'.
Phew.
But then she said something that made me think it wasn't gender that was a problem, but possibly alien abduction. In a manner that put me in mind of Mork from Ork, she picked up the bag of tulip bulbs and said in halting English,
'It so wonderful, you put in ground and you get flower,' indeed.

Fringe Benefits

Something on the radio broke through my sports' filter today.
At first it was the interesting pronunciation of 'Arsenal' - Arse-earn-all, then shields went up again .... something about curry .... - Celtic... Eduardo.... and then..Portsmouth University - down shields! Some bloke from Pompey Uni has done a study about whether footballers are faking their diving and tackling, or not. Fascinating. Only the vaguest idea what it all means, but Pompey was on CBC radio, so who cares !

From far to near. It's weird seeing all the buildings and places we see in downtown Vancouver on 'Fringe' now. Reading the sign that says, 'The Irish Heather' pub back to front through the glass. And they do that big blocky sign hanging in the sky thing, so the words 'New York'....whatever..just ain't right.

Why does Facebook keep telling me I have mutual friends that I've never heard of ? Just because someone has the same surname as someone I do know, doesn't mean I know them.

And why are we still asking people whether they want the Olympics or not? Who tf cares? They're happening, it matters not who wants them to happen or not, the money's been spent, the buildings, roads and rail have been built. Just breathe in and think of ...wherever people who aren't English think of.

And the best news article of the day is that environmentalists dressed as suffragettes dumped six loads of horse manure at Jeremy Clarkson's home. Rock and roll!

Season

The first Amanitas of the season, well, the first ones I've seen, and I sought them out - I know where they grow.


After a summer of endless love, an autumn of mellow fruitlessness.

Back at work since Monday, what-ho! Things, however, are in a bit of a mess. The Province isn't giving us any funding, we're not doing winter programmes and maybe not even spring. Schools are pissed off. At present I have no assistant. The homepage of the website had two spelling mistakes, as did the leaflet which was changed from the one I produced. One snake has died, the other escaped.
And on, and on.

To fill the darkening evenings, TV programmes are beginning. Glee, Bones, Fringe - this last, newly moved to Vancouver to film.
And House, two hour opener. Instead of the now tired old alternative life in a coma (The superb 'Life on Mars' notwithstanding), we are going to have the doc in the loony bin.
On the downside, True Blood has finished. Poo. Double, triple poo.
Soon, there will be more TV recordings backed up than we can watch, we will become slaves to it.

I do love this whole season.

But in the wider picture, the UN has decided to set up a women's agency. Although there are currently four departments, they are all Cinderellas. The creation of a full agency gives them some clout.
I see this as hugely important. Although the countries where conditions for women are the worst are not part of the UN, it is the responsibility of the developed nations to prioritise women's issues. How can we expect others to change if we don't show how important it is to us?

Birthday Boxing Day

The hot weather has continued,so we saddled up and shipped out. We ended up at Deas Slough, where we discovered a good place to kayak, but some kind of war between canoeists and water-skiers. The accommodation reached was that 'paddle sports' were to take place before 13.30 and water-skiing after.
We arrived around 13.00. Two dragon boats came in off the water on cue, but the water-skiers were already out there.
Should we go out or not? We could hug the water margins, and there was already a kayak out there.

Some getting-on-for-senior gentleman, sitting in camping chairs by the water's edge grumbled about them.
'They pollute the water, they pollute the air, they don't have any skill and on top of all that, they play their loud music,' all of which, it must be said, was true.
'I'll help you get the kayaks into the water,' said one, settling it.

Whisky sat up on my lap at first, not happy with his life jacket, but wanting to look around. Then he snuggled down into the hull as the water got choppier, the wake from the speedboats.

We explored and we enjoyed the water and the afternoon.
Birthday Mark II

Last night's Othello didn't disappoint, and as ever, gave food for thought. Othello himself was not so much black as cup of medium strength tea coloured. The dialogue had him referring, several times, to his own black face, reminding me that the costume designer had told us that originally, Shakepeare's troupe would have performed his plays in their own clothes and without scenery and props, so the actor playing Othello would have had to keep reminding the audience that the character was black.

The backdrop to the stage was the sun setting behind the mountains, Canada geese flying across the sky, the mast of a boat crossing the water and the lights of the North Shore gradually illuminating.

11th September 2009

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. Whisky and I have spent some of this beautiful day out on the balcony and now I'm off to see Othello at Bard on the Beach.
All good.

Sleeping Dogs

This morning's health segment on the local news programme, concerned a study that had showed that couples get more sleep if they sleep apart.
I knew it would be, as soon as I saw the study reported, I thought, yep, that'll be Doctor Art's story in the morning, and it was.
Hardly makes a difference to us at the moment, since we have to get up during the night to take the dog out for a pee.

Alex had her graduation ceremony yesterday, I will be getting a DVD of it, which I'm looking forward to seeing. My own graduation ceremony was in December. This does seem like an unbelievable amount of time after being awarded a degree in June or July. Had I gone, Princess Anne would have handed me a pretend degree, I dunno, she wasn't trusted with the real things I suppose. I jest, it's never the real thing they hand out.
In fact, I was in labour with Laurence, so I missed it, and yet, didn't.

Our Province has its own auto insurance company, wouldn't want any competition in that industry, would we? It also sets the road tests and rules and what have you. Yep.
Now it has been discovered that they sold three illegally modified grow op trucks, with everything still in place that anyone would need were they going to start growing pot. Apparently a bit of a misunderstanding with the RCMP over whose responsibility it was to remove the gear.
Hmmm...
Whilst they have been arguing about that, I wonder if it has occurred to the police to check who might want to buy such vehicles. Probably not their responsibility though.
If the Province has the motor insurance industry all sewn up, perhaps it should also consider growing and selling the pot itself, then the police could concentrate on something else like traffic violations.

If we are still in this house when I am properly old, I am going to cut down the cedar hedge that half blocks my view of the intersection so that I can sit in a rocking chair with a half-cocked air-rifle over my arm.
Whisky and I spend a lot of time on the porch proper, from where I can see all the appalling things that happen at what should be a quiet crossroads.
Far from it.
Today I witnessed one of those things that people tell you about, but I swear I've never actually seen.
A woman stopped at the intersection and applied her mascara. Eventually, a lad came up behind her and beeped and she moved off.
But here's the thing. The VERY NEXT driver to stop there, was on his cell phone. He stopped and continued his conversation, and again, someone came up behind him, but this time, just waited.
Hmmm.

Road Yet to be Travelled

For some reason, they don't have an Ikea catalogue at the hairdresser's, so I am forced to read their celeb mags. Well, alright, if you twisted my arm I'd have to confess I'm not forced to, since I have the two books I am reading in my bag. But I do anyway.

I haven't honestly heard of most of the celebs, although some of them I know from GoFugYourself, my guilty online reading site where I chortle, often aloud, at some of the bizarre outfits they wear. From here I know of Lady Gaga and Bai Ling, although I have no clue what their purpose in life is.

So, flicking through said mags today, I discover a couple of people I am familiar with.
Kelly Osborne - it always seemed unfair to me that neither of the Osborn children got their mother's looks, but in fact, the picture of Kelly was quite flattering, and it turns out that she does favour Sharon.

Then there was Dexter and his sister. So, Dexter, or rather, whatever the actor's name is, whom we first met on Six Feet Under, as the gayer than springtime brother. Quite clearly no acting needed there.
And Dexter's sister, whose Adam's apple we keep trying to catch a glimpse of.
Only it turns out that neither of them are gay, au contraire, although they both set our gaydar screaming, they are in fact married - to each other. What?!? I know!

Speaking of women who wear trousers - which of course we all do - Bozo wondered whether I was considering mentioning the Sudanese woman who has been sent to gaol for wearing trousers. And a very good question. I have been following this case and greatly admire the courage of this woman. She could have wriggled out of the charges because she was working for the UN, but she didn't, she resigned, she could have just paid a fine, but she wouldn't because she wanted to challenge the actual law. She could have been flogged, she risked that. She has drawn international support for the cause, which fundamentally is about human rights, but it's no picnic making the sort of stand she has done. We take for granted what our grandmothers' generation did to get us the vote - even the most weak-minded would be horrified to lose that now, but blood was shed to get us that equality, just as much blood was shed to put Obambi in the White House. It's complacency that is the most dangerous thing now.

Because it leads to, or at best masks, situations like the gender pay gap in the Financial sector in Britain. Across the board, the gender pay gap is 28%, in the financial industry, where 51% of employees are women, the gap is 47% in annual average earnings. Women get 80% less in performance related pay. Surely, you might argue, this means that women in the industry are underperforming?
Firstly, 86% of women start on a lower salary than men. Ok, ok, but get to the bonuses.
Those bonuses are earned as a result of higher status tasks and networking. The research showed that the lads culture reigns supreme, so that men are encouraged and women discouraged and thus, ultimately end up doing less prestigious tasks, which then become known as women's work and so the spiral continues downwards.
The networking often takes place in establishments on the margins of the sex industry, such as lap-dancing clubs, strip bars and hostess bars, places that in any case, are inappropriate venues for work and by their very nature, exclude women.
It's shameful, but constant shaking of the head, like constant weighing of the pig, doesn't improve matters.
When politicians like Harriet Harman attempt to even the score, they are derided and harassed.
There is a way to go yet.

Whisky's Maiden Voyage

I like this picture because it reminds me of one of those e-mail clips that go around from time to time, where you are lulled into a false sense of something or other and then a figure pops up in the foreground and goes, 'Boo!'

Whisky got his sealegs today, only...on a lake. We went to Deer Lake because we knew it was neither deep nor was there a current, so it was as safe as it could be.

First time out, he whined for a while, but didn't really make too much of a fuss. After about an hour and a half, we returned to shore and had some sarnies. I managed to drop mine, but caught it between my knees. This turned out to be serendipitous, because this time, Whisky didn't even whine, he just licked the mayonnaise from my legs and then went to sleep on my jumper in the hull - which is why you can't see him in the picture.

Around 16.00, the skies opened up. I was happy as a pig in muck, I covered Whisky with my rain jacket, but then there was a roll of thunder. The rental place called all their boats in and we decided to call it a day.

Raaaaa

Essay question : "I created your civilisation, now I will destroy it." Discuss.

Ok, I will.

Imagine your are the type of Being who could legitimately say this. Why would you? You are powerful enough to create and destroy the civilisations of lesser beings, (but who nonetheless can understand your language - because they are clever enough to have learnt it) but you have a serious case of inferiority complex, otherwise you wouldn't need to tell the lesser being of your intentions, you wouldn't need to see them suffer, because you're a superior being, sorry, Being. Most humans wouldn't need to do that, you kind of imagine a superhuman wouldn't have the personality faults of the least well-adjusted of our race.
Suffice to say, the original Stargate film was on TV and Ra, the androgynous god, was addressing Alan Shore, who coped quite well without Denny Crane.


For us, this is the long weekend, our Bank Holiday, Labour Day, is tomorrow. Kevin and I have blitzed our garage - the final frontier. We visited three different recycling places this morning. You think you have no junk, and then you go through everything with a fine-tooth comb, or more...a medium-gauge comb and you discover you were wrong, and that you really did have several of that thing you keep thinking you had none of and keep buying more of.
At least now we know what we have in there.

Last night, we watched a Swedish vampire film,'Let the Right One in'. It worked for me on many levels, snow, and lots of it, simplicity, and it was thought-provoking.
It was made in 2008, which rather non-plussed me, because the furniture, clothes and buildings made it look as though it was set in the 70s. This must be the explanation, because it cannot be that the Swedes are behind us in fashion, since they gave the world Ikea. So perhaps they are actually ahead of us and we will soon once more be dressing in long scarves and stripy, knitted tank tops.
One thing that I found irritating however, was that it was dubbed rather than subtitled. This gives one the impression that Swedish people go around having bizarrely phrased conversations in flat voices, which of course we know they don't, because of the Ikea adverts.

I am working my way through the 2010 Ikea catalogue. I nearly have it memorised.

Club Med

I am, as the young people say, 'stoked'. (See what I did there, huh? said it like an old lady:)
I have received, in my capacity of (as the vicar herself calls me) 'sous-vicar' - which I wouldn't mind being for real, apart from the whole having to be nice to people thing - a letter of vehement complaint about the use of non-inclusive language in our church. This comes on the heels of an elderly man reading a passage from the authorised Bible, rather notorious for its sexist language.
On TV at the moment, the morons are advertising their wares, in the course of which advert they refer to God as 'he' and promise to send you a King James version.

I can't wait to roll up my sleeves and get stuck in. Muahahahaha.....people are going to get educated to the nth degree.
The funny thing is, most of the people at church, even many of the older ones, are quite anti sexist language anyway.

The good old Mediterranean diet is in the news again. Even more studies have shown that it beats all other ways of eating for good health. It turns back the seven signs of ageing, kills 99% of all known germs and helps you relax, work and play.
And normally we do eat a fairly Mediterranean-ish diet at the Schloss, lots of veggies, olive oil, pasta, prosciutto, mozzarella, curry, no, I wasn't that good at geography, but some things I don't want to know, I have my fingers in my ears and am singing, lalalalalala!!!
Just that for the past few weeks we've been eating a North American diet as well.

And now, we discover that many items in the Med range are poisonous to dogs, grapes, avocados, onions, garlic, tomatoes, wine, funghi and some nuts. Well, bollocks to that I hear you say, dogs eat meat, oh yes they do, it's just something else to worry about.

Whisky, meanwhile, is making friends and influencing people.
Kev asked me to take Whisky for a walk midday. He's not a fan of the lead. Whisky that is, not Kev.
And, it turns out, he doesn't particularly have to be. We got as far as the grass verge round the corner, and girls on bikes stopped to cluster round and admire him.

He's going to be a big help next year with the veggie garden mark II. He is keenly digging a hole in the patch of earth in front of the house. Excavation is going well, from his point of view.

Of Pets and Other Animals

Whisky now has a life jacket. The label on it says, 'Outward Hound'. Har-di-har. I was channelling Sleepy, I know I was; I know what her inner Muzac is and it was playing in my head. Then I had a choice of colours and I was compelled to choose orange. See, that proves it.

A life jacket saved a small girl yesterday, when she was pulled off the dock where she was helping her dad, by a harbour seal. One of the commentators on the news article online suggested that the seals were rising up and getting their revenge for the clubbing.

Talking of clubbing, in Superstore, where Sleepy's personal Muzac was still playing in my head, I now of course, have to visit the pet aisle. I noticed that cat owners may purchase their moggies 'Frisky's party mix' just in case your cat needs to put out snacks when their friends come round presumably. On the packet was a picture of a cat who looked as though it had taken some kind of hallucinogen, surrounded by party streamers and such like.

This week has seen a number of delivery people coming to the house, bringing small items, and in one case, the essential piece of our vacuum cleaner that was recalled in May, ours went on the 5th May to be precise.
The actual postie came twice. He was enchanted by Whisky both times.
The Fed-Ex man said I was the first person he'd found at home. This struck me as being not too odd, since his job was to deliver parcels at a time when the majority of people are at work or school.
'That's good,' I said, 'must mean we're coming out of recession,' but I might as well have said something in French.
The Purolator man noticed I was English, and so regaled me with a list of places where he has relatives in England. Some pretty nice areas too.
When we were on Mayne Island in the summer, a man we met did that thing to Austen where you get asked if you know some specific person in the UK.

Last night we had an incredible storm. Thunder, lightning, pounding rain, it was fabulous. Today was a perfect day, warm enough, with skies that promised more excitement and indeed, once or twice it delivered. The soil stayed wet all day.
Beautiful.

Old Friends

'Oh me, oh my, small fry.'

Not entirely random.
The way that I deal with unemployment on a personal level, is to make daily lists and work my way through them, this is also how I coped with post-natal depression and how I hope to cope with pre-mortem retirement.

But this morning's list has not being going well. A fair number of them involved the computer and another group involved ringing people. The computer kept locking up every few minutes - which I now firmly believe ... or..maybe weakly believe, had something to do with Facebook chat. And everyone I needed to phone didn't open until later, all except the lady in the States I had to call, fortuitously, wherever she works is a few hours ahead of us.

The friend I was attempting to chat to on Facebook, British Karen, I have known since before I was Holly's age, and I (really this time) do firmly believe that there is some kind of psychic connection involved in strong friendships. Karen told me that she was recently thinking about someone I haven't been in contact with for over thirty years, my French exchange partner and penfriend from when I was at Grammar school, and she contacted me through Facebook this week.
I was just stunned, both at getting in contact with Marie, and at the co-incidence.

On Saturday we did a lot of driving around, we rented kayaks from Jericho beach, saw our friend Christine, widow of Bruce who died this time last year, and who was launching the kayak that she and her daughter finished building, a project he started with that same daughter the year before he died.
Then over to Surrey to pick up Whisky.

And it seemed that the world and her love interest were having garage sales out on the pavement.
Like the opposite of spring cleaning, only the same in essence.
Clearing out the old, the unwanted, making room for the autumn, for when the doors close and we have to enjoy our indoor space before we fill it up again with the fruits of Christmas overspending.

The Times They Have a-Changed

'k, so being a dog owner has changed since the sixties. Back when I were a lass, you got your dog with a ten bob donation to the RSPCA, you fed it either PAL (Prolongs Active Life) or Pedigree Chum ('the one dog-breeders recommend') or something else that contained Marylebone jelly, there were no injections, but you battled with fleas throughout the dog's life, and you de-wormed it once in a blue moon. You bathed it when it had fallen in some body of water that contained a significant smelly-mud content.
If it misbehaved, you said, 'Bad dog!' and if it did its business where it shouldn't, you had to rub their nose in it. Oh, and of course, they pooped on the pavement where it would lie until it became white.
Our dog, Spot, was such a dog, as, later, was Ben. (The dog, not the son, although that one did throw my mother).

Nowadays, you have to audition for a breeder to even sell you the pup, then you have to select from 30 or 40 different scientifically concocted foods, get it inoculated against a whole range of things, one of which (distemper) did actually exist back in the 60s, you have to clip its claws, defrag its ears, modulate the Heisenberg's condensers, oh, no, sorry, went off track there, clean its teeth, de-worm it weekly until it's old enough to only be done monthly, bathe it regularly with oatmeal dog shampoo (well, that may be just me to be fair), pick up its plopsies and put them in a bio-degradable plastic bag, give it 'crate training' and learn how to think like a dog, because you are the head of its pack.

I certainly shouldn't have been surprised about the last bit, since my sister has had dogs for many years and has done all that alpha-dog training bit.

Of course, although I sound like I'm making fun of it, I'm not, I know that thinking has improved and progressed, dogs are generally healthier, and small children less likely to go blind from playing in a park.

But then there are the slew of things that deserve to have fun made of them. I was nonplussed when someone at church showed up with a small poochie in a contraption that looked like a child's pushchair-cum-senior's shopping trolley. Wtf???? thought I,
In the pet store, there were little box-shaped handbags for carrying your accessory-dog à la Paris Hilton, numerous toys of every shape and size, sparkly things, bejewelled things, jackets, boots, special bags for taking your dog on an aeroplane as hand-luggage, oh, well that one's sensible I suppose, and dog life jackets.
'Pshaw!' I said to Kevin.
'What?' he said back,
'Life jackets for dogs!'
'Well ours is going to have to have one,'
'Dogs can swim,'
'So can you, but you can't get in the kayak without a life jacket. Same for a dog, if that boat tips over, he would be disorientated just the same as you would, the life preserver will bring him back up to the surface so that he can actually DO the doggie paddle,'
'Ah, yes, hmm...well, that does make sense.'

Tail between legs.

Whisky

Mesdames, Messieurs, je présente....Whisky.

So here's the story of the dog.

I needed a reason to peruse the pet section in Ikea, so we bought a dog.

Not really.
Kevin has wanted a dog for the longest time, but I didn't, so we didn't. Then at some point this summer, it hit me like a delayed thunderbolt, that Kevin REALLY wanted a dog, and that he hadn't pushed it because I hadn't wanted one, so that made me feel a whole lot of stuff, but the end result was that I realised, we should get a dog.
Is there a thread in there somewhere?
To me there is.

So we started looking. I would look at the local papers and he looked at the animal rescue centres' websites. He didn't have a clear idea of what type of dog he wanted, but we both knew which we didn't want, and the animal shelters were full of them - pit bulls and rottweilers.

We had narrowed it down more to dogs we didn't want.
Size - neither accessory nor Bugblatter beast.
No breed that had impaired breathing or the inability to lap water on its own. In fact, it seems the current trend here is to get crosses that give rise to breeds with strange new names, and which avoid problems that pedigree dogs frequently have.
Labradoodles, Maltipoos - which gets mis-spelt by the non-native English speakers to 'Multipoos'.

On one of our expeditions to North Vancouver, we were taken by a small to medium sized dog with a pleasant temperament, the owner said it was a 'Shishon or Zuchon' - ie a cross between a Bichon Frisé and a Shit!Sue! - both breeds we would have avoided.

So I kept my eye on the local ads. Puppies go quickly. We rang up for some Wheaten Terriers, all gone.

On Thursday, I saw an ad for a litter of Zuchons. I rang, and they hadn't all gone. Friday I went to see them and picked one out, Saturday I picked our puppy up.

Let the games begin.

The Old Curiosity Shop

Dolores O'Riordan (not pictured here) has been on our radio a lot recently. She used to be with The Cranberries, but has now made a solo album. I can't say I was ever a fan, apart from that one song, Zombie.
But since she's been on the radio a lot recently, I have been trying to analyse what exactly it is about the southern Irish accent from around Cork that makes some of them so incomprehensible.
Dolores has one of those accents. She would pronounce 'Irish' as 'Oirish'.
At first I thought it was because they barely pronounce the consonants. Then the next time she spoke I realised that in fact, most of the vowel sounds were completely different from the way anyone else pronounces them.
So, just to recap, I've narrowed it down to just the vowels and the consonants.
Good.
Dolores did, I must say, do a superb 'unplugged' version of Zombie for CBC.

Ok, so as promised, the curious world of feminism according to Schnee.
Firstly, I have been reading books. Old books.

Alex got me to buy and to read 'The Awakening' by Kate Chopin. It seems so gentle and subtle, but the feminist message in it, of the awakening of a woman to how restricted her life is because women at the time were regarded as some sort of accessory to their husbands, and her casting off of this role, was so revolutionary that the book ended her writing career.

And I had meant for a long time to read Mary Wollstonecraft's 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman', which I have obtained from the Book Depository, but that's not it. I also have, and am reading, her 'Maria and the Wrongs of Woman', which is fiction, but with a very heavy feminist message. Bear in mind that she died in 1797. I think what I am finding the most fascinating about this book though, is the history, because it's not someone from our own age looking back and writing about the conditions, it's someone who was actually around at that time, so it's real. Dire, but real.

I was amazed at how the theme of the first book, The Awakening, was similar to the theme of the film, (500) Days of Summer, described here as 'a masterpiece of passive-aggressive misogyny.'

The National Lottery fund in Britain has awarded 400,000 pounds to a charity that combats homophobic bullying.
So who could possibly object to that?
Oh, well, the same bunch of self-righteous pricks who object to the EU trying to promote gender-neutral language. Why yes, Tories! (Bet you thought I was going to say Jeremy Clarkson huh?) Like Clarkson, they hate 'political correctness'.
Cretins.

So, again to recap, passive-aggressive misogyny has survived intact and the Tories may be the party of Britain's future, but they are still, ooh, to be fair, more not at all passive, just aggressive misogynists and homophobes.
Business as usual then.
Phew.

Starfish and Coffee

That's the name of the photo, and of course of the Prince song, that my grandkids love the most. Doesn't everyone have a favourite Prince song?

One of the first things that made me laugh when I got here - along with the constantly amusing use of the word 'beaver' and the pronunciation of 'Gouda' - was the fact that there are speeches from the throne.

Now I sometimes assail Kevin with my wisdom from the throne too, but in general I feel this is an event that can only be shared with your partner and possibly your children when they are very small.

Stephen Harper has no such modesty, he shares his with the country, heck, it's probably even televised.
I shudder.

On the wall in my main floor throne room, I have a postcard with a loo brush on it, and the phrase, 'Memoiren einer Klobürste' who is saying, 'es war nicht alles scheisse'.
I know what you're thinking, must have been after the spelling reforms.
Anyroad, turns out the bog brush was right, because this time it wasn't all shit. BC have been told to clean up their act, quite literally. Our garbage needs to be reclaimed, and we're not going to be allowed to just dump it somewhere else.
Scheisse!

One of the things I have been missing out on since being here, is granary bread, and it's not one of those things that someone can just bring out for you. We have a lot of approximations, but until recently, not the real thing, and it has to be the real thing because it doesn't disturb my tum.

But now, I have found the real McCoy in Save-On.

Yes, of course there's a minor aggravation involved.
Save-On is a lovely supermarket, but somewhere in its echelons it has an illiterate in a position whose main function is to provide wordage.
They had a 'tin vegetables' aisle. Whether it was because said functionary read my blog, or because customers were staying away from the tin veggies in their droves, we will never know, but the sign disappeared and was replaced with something containing the word canned or tinned.

So, the granary bread, is called such because the malted grains are allowed to start to germinate on the floor of the granary.
Right.
But Save-On are calling their bread 'grainery bread'. Yes, of course you don't recognise that word spellchecker, because there is no such word.
No, it's not the North American word for granary, it's simply a non-existent word.
I suppose it's up to me to tell them again.
*sigh*.

What's going on in the world of feminism? I hear you ask.
Tell you tomorrow.

Pink Ashes

God bless the Prince of Wales.
Seriously, that came out of nowhere.

This, however, didn't.
One of my fave blogs, The F-Word, pointed me firmly in the direction of a post on a science blog that questions whether girls really like pink. And it's something I question myself. In some ways, I want it to be a non-issue, we have taken the step from wanting girls to be allowed to do 'boy stuff' as well if they want to, to saying, well, actually, we should value 'girlie' things as much as we value boy stuff, so if girls want to be fluffy and wear pink, we shouldn't think that's bad, we should realise it's as good as wearing blue.
But this is interesting, because she does make some valid points about how girls are simply swamped in pinkness from the get-go and are made to associate it with their femininity, and I can't pretend that it doesn't bug me when the 'ladies' version of anything, laptop, razor, mobile phone, mini-Cooper are always pink.
On t'other hand, I am sitting here typing this wearing pink.

And on the subject of pink...or rather, not pink at all, but sexist language again, which in my books is blue, I was reminded by a post on Sleepy's blog of how language determines how we think.
In Britain, until we suddenly were kicked in the breeches and were made to see how racist we were, everyone always used to refer to the corner shop as 'the Paki shop'.
In fact, long after we got with the programme, many kids of the more socio-economic D-E class, would refer to all Asians, and sometimes, the darker-skinned Italians, as Pakis.
And of course, the whole of Pakistan, without exception, is Muslim, ergo.....

In March of this year, the EU issued a booklet to member states, advising them that they should be using gender-neutral language, that for manning, they should be using staffing, for chairman, chairperson etc., all standard stuff.
But they also reminded people, that using titles such as Miss and Mrs. was discriminatory towards women and that what they should use is.......people's names! Yes, imagine that!
Three (male) Tory MEPs were furious, they demanded that the EU should not only withdraw the leaflet, but apologise for it.
Wankers.
Of course, it made them look like wankers too. And out-of-date even for wankers.

England won the Ashes. I forgot to mention that.
No, no, stay with me on this.
And of course, that's good, particularly because......
To put the English team off their stroke, in the middle of the play against Australia, the Aussies produced some kind of publication that dished the dirt on every man* in the English team.
Not really cricket what?
But England still won.
AND... a spokesperson for the English team afterwards pointed out that naturally the English had similar information on every man* in the Australian team, but that they'd of course, never publish it, because.... it wouldn't be cricket.

*When I was at school, one of our PE teachers who came for a term, had played for the English women's team, and English women's cricket continues to outplay every other country, so we got to play cricket for a term, but mostly, I have to confess, cricket to me means drinking Pimms whilst the sun gently sets to the sound of leather on willow, and I mean that in the real sense, not just the advertising sense.
And yes, I also guess that most of the countries England plays cricket against, involves women with rather restrictive dress codes, but c'mon, Australia, I mean, those women are FORMIDABLE!!!

Sons and Others

Sunday. Huh. Still quiet. Dull headache. Blood of Christ, aliens, vampires.

My friend M preached a GREAT sermon. She showed us how, when Jesus told us to turn the other cheek, give your undergarment to the person who is suing you for your overshirt and go the extra mile, he was showing us ways of challenging what is wrong, not accepting it. She told us that the word 'resistance' in the passage, is undertranslated, the Greek word means to stand against, and is used to denote the clash of two armies. So instead of fighting fire with fire, we should be more subversive.
The slap on the right cheek can only be a slap with the back of the right hand. When you face someone, to slap their right cheek, you would have to use your left hand. Jewish society of the time did not permit the use of the left hand. A slap with the back of the hand was from a person with higher status to someone lower, and couldn't be repeated, it would be meaningless, like repeating a joke. So, to turn the other cheek, is to show that you don't accept the slap. It's a way of standing up to the wrong.
The taking off of the undergarment in the presence of someone who has sued you for your coat, humiliates them so intensely, not you, that they would think twice before going down that route again.
The Roman military had rules that were so strictly adhered to, that if, as a civilian, you were told to carry the soldier's pack a mile, you would do just that, and the soldier would know absolutely, that you would drop that pack off at the one mile mark.
Mess with their heads.

My friend Andrea is the global relations co-ordinator for the Anglican Church of Canada and is in Jerusalem at the moment.

Top line from tonight's 'True Blood', Lafayette - 'Just because Jesus and I agreed to see other people, doesn't mean we don't talk from time to time.'
Lafayette rocks.

This afternoon we went to see 'District 9'. It's very thought-provoking. It was also very headache inducing, or more....increasing, the cinema was packed, even in the middle of the afternoon, so we were in the front row. Now I remember why I never go to see films until everyone else has. Still, it was good, and nice that it was set in Jo'burg, and the actors were not big names, at least not over here.

Returns

Parting is NOT sweet sorrow, no, forget that sweet bit.
I miss Teddy's voice, Holly's smile, Ellie's havoc. All the little shoes have gone, as has Marmaduke, the most cuddled toy cat.
Shucks, Superstore offered fewer shopping opportunities.
But, they got back without incident, plane took off on time, landed early and they managed to get on an early train. Too early. Austen had pre-booked tickets for off-peak, but with three overtired small children and three large suitcases, he and Sue were unwilling to wait for over an hour. Plus, the train pulling in was a rare direct one.
Determined to pay the additional charges, they got on. The ticket inspector read the tickets very thoroughly. He looked at his watch. He re-read the tickets. Then he gave them back to him and went on his way. Excellent man. There should be a word to denote the opposite of a Jobsworth.

Meanwhile, back at the empty Schloss, Kev and I caught up on some TV viewing. We have been watching the new series 'Hung' with half attention, you know, so far it has been one of those programmes you can keep one eye on whilst doing something else. And then Rhea Perlman appeared. Watching Rhea Perlman is like watching someone with barely hidden devilment, you're just waiting for it to break out.

Can't wait to see District 9.

Germaine Greer, writing in the Graun, has highlighted another of those little problem areas for gender politics. The unhappy case of Caster Semenya, a gold-meadal winning athlete who is having to undergo tests to prove that she is a woman. In sport, which is the test of the physical, it must be that women compete with women and men with men, and therefore it has to be allowable that either can be called to prove their gender, in exactly the same way that sportspeople can and should be tested for performance enhancing drugs. But as ever, of course, Caster has been pilloried and poked at by anyone and everyone who think they have some right to demean her. To my mind, that alone proves she's a woman.

Plans are underway for next summer. My friend Dawn and I are going to Alaska and I am already looking forward to it. We have to decide whether we are going to go a few days early to visit Denali National Park and either before or after the trip, I'm hoping that Dawn will be able to spend some time here for the BC experience.

And I go back to work on the 14th September.

Northerly

Crazy times, and we have spent much of it on and north of the North Shore.
Monday we went to Whistler - the slow way, stopping at Whytecliffe Park and Shannon Falls, with lunch at Squamish.
Austen and Sue, and even Laurence, were just stunned by the beauty of the sea to sky highway, and Kevin and I were stunned by the progress on the pre-Olympic improvements. We didn't get back until ten.

We had planned to go south again on Monday evening, but those plans were changed for us and instead we went to the Capilano suspension bridge then on to Lynn Canyon - where there is another suspension bridge and more gratuitous beauty.

Today we had a last kayaking excursion to Deep Cove and ended staying the day. Tomorrow we'll be at YVR seeing Austen, Sue and the kids off. Deep sorrow. And I don't know where the time has gone, I truly don't.

I must get back to my random acts of feminism, only maybe less random and more guerilla-like.
Alex is in Vienna.
Ben is holed up in a garret in Woking. I keep reminding him he can come back.

Patriarchy

We went kayaking and rowing on Deer Lake today. Whilst I would have said I'd only ever done the Noddy version of kayaking anyway, I'd have been wrong, THIS was the Noddy version. Hell, we were even sharing the lake with pedalos.

This actually happened, this was actually said.

Young man working in the kayak rental hut, to Susan and me, with Austen back behind us.

'Which boat would you guys like?'
'We're not guys,'
'Isn't he with you?'
'We're not guys,'
'Is he with you?'
'Yes, but we're not guys,'

Seriously, I couldn't bear to ask. If we had one man with us, does that then make us men?

Later, the young woman working there,
'Do you guys...?'
'We're not guys,'
'No, but it's what I say,'
'It's sexist,'
'I know it's sexist,'
'Well then don't call us guys, if you know it's sexist, don't do it,'
'But it depends on your culture, some cultures are matriarchal, ours is patriarchal,'
'That's the point, that's the whole point, it's not SUPPOSED to be patriarchal, it's supposed to be egalitarian,'

Jesus H Christ, I mean JESUS H CHRIST!!!!!!

Meanwhile, we are told that the Liberal Democratic party in Britain, have produced a Manifesto for women, real women in fact. It's a good start, but the article on the F-Word's website, reminds us of key points agreed upon by the Women's Liberation Conference in 1978, and I think it is still a good starting point.

1. Equal pay for equal work.
2. Equal education and job opportunities.
3. Free contraception and abortion on demand.
4. Free 24-hour community-controlled childcare.
5. Legal and financial independence for women.
6. An end to discrimination against lesbians.
7. Freedom for all women from intimidation by the threat or use of male violence. An end to the laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and men’s aggression towards women.

And let's face it, the 'assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance' are all upheld by sexist language.

Salmon and Cucumber

Alex left today. We went for a last brunch at the Cucumber Café, an odd place. It's like a diner that's trying to be a restaurant. There are too many people whose job is to just be there. The décor is retro kitsch somehow. But the food is good, and the staff were polite, and hey, it's not that far away.
But I'll miss my girl.

When I came back from the airport, we all went back to the Aberdeen Mall to see the Terracotta Warriors and the dancing fountains. We had Beard Papa cream puffs and managed to buy nothing in the Daiso store, so score really.

Yesterday, plans went awry. We had planned a kayaking trip, but we woke up to torrential rain, so we re-planned it to Science World, however I had promised Alex a final morning outing to Steveston, and by the time we got back, we realised that by now, we would be the idiotic people in the endless queue, so we went to UBC instead.

I see that the missing merchant ship with Russian crew, may or may not have been sighted off the coast of West Africa. I'd feel more amused by this, were it not that my father was in the merchant navy, and I can imagine the worry to the families of the crew members.

I wonder if someone will find our missing salmon. Going on four-year spawning cycles, we were expecting ten million sockeye this year, but in fact only one million have returned. Not only have the fishers been told they can't catch them, but even the First Nations.
At least everyone's in the same boat (no, not intended) this time.

Mountain Climbing

...however, not by me.

Monday - Vancouver Aquarium, shopping.
Tuesday - Recycling, Ice Age movie for the kids; shopping for Alex and me, family event evening.
Wednesday - Grouse Mountain.

The past few days have swept by insanely.
Weatherwise, Monday it deluged, Tuesday it picked up, today it was perfect for the Grouse Grind, which Alex, Kevin and Sue did. Austen and I took the kids up the mountain in the cable car.
[Alex is an angel. I love her.] - Guest Blogger, PepCougar wrote that.

The kids loved the mountain, and that includes the bigger kids. They loved the Lumberjack show, which I deplore and find about as entertaining as watching paint dry. They also loved the Raptor show, as did I, but by the end of it, I was all patronised out.

I see from the BBC's website, that Brits have been misusing their consulates around the world. Although the BBC reports that people are ringing up asking for weather reports and advice on dealing with unruly children, I think this was my favourite,

"One caller asked: "I'm making jam - what ratio of fruit to sugar shall I use?" "

Aung San Suu Kyi has been found guilty of ..whatever or however you would describe not knowing that a stranger was swimming the lake to your house to warn you he had a vision of your impending death. She has been placed under further house arrest for three years. The world responds with horror .... except China, like the disagreeable neighbour it always is.
Shitty, predictable, both the verdict and China's reaction, but nonetheless, shitty.

More Mormonising

Once the world is on a theme, it just rolls.
Last night, we watched Jonathan Ross - we're behind the UK, but not YEARS behind as with Graham Norton.
Rossie had the frontman of The Killers, Brandon Flowers on. He let us know the bloke was a Mormon and then let that drop, but carried on baiting him. First up, Flowers was wearing a stupid-looking jacket with pheasant feathers on the shoulders. When matey said they were pheasant feathers, Rossie just had that playful smile around his mouth, but totally desisted from mentioning pheasant pluckers.
Apparently, The Killers spend more time in the UK than in the USA and Flowers likes salt and vinegar crisps, in a sandwich with hummus.
'Humous,' corrected Rossie. 'The chocolate in the US is shit,' he went on,
'No, I like it,' said the Mormon Killer.
'Yeah, but it's shit,'
'I think it's OK,'
'Yeah, but you're wrong,' said Rossie, at which point, Flowers admitted he did prefer Cadburys.
Jonathan Ross, on top form and nudging his way back into my good books.

I was pleased to learn that homophobia doesn't exist. I'm sure all members of the LGBT community will be equally pleased. Although.....maybe not so much, because it's not that it has CEASED to exist, just that we were all mistaken about it in the first place.
What nits we are.

Terracotta Warriors

Rain! Rain! Lovely, ground-thirst quenching rain.

Alex and Laurence had finished yesterday by going to the cinema to watch GI Joe. Laurence was determined to see this, Alex went as a favour to her brother. When I collected them, Laurence had thought the film was shit, Alex had enjoyed every minute.

On Friday evening, Austen and Kevin had gone to watch the BC Lions again, in the hope that they might win this time, and at the very least, by having me drive them to the skytrain station, they could both drink.
The Lions won, and this, apparently, put the crowd in a very happy and mellow mood. They all sang 'wimoweh'.
This may seem obvious, your team wins, you are happy, and yet, and yet.....Austen couldn't help contrasting it with the sometimes appalling crowd behaviour of fans at football games at home.

Anyhoo, back at the ranch, Sue, Alex and I hunkered down to watch the film 'Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona'. I have to say it was an incredible film. It reminded me of a French film, where the camera shows you the behaviour of people and the way they behave and you, the viewer, interprets. Fabulous scenery too. Not one for the action film fan, but if you like a movie that makes you think, this is a good one.

This afternoon, Alex and I went shopping, to see if we could find the same T-shirt as Ben's favourite one, that mysteriously disappeared whilst he was here. We didn't find one.
Alex also made me go to the Aberdeen Mall - the Sino-Japanese dominated mall, where we found that the terracotta warriors had moved in.

And talking of moving in, my favourite programme, 'True Blood'. has a new vampire moving in. Perhaps rather a clichéd theme, but, according to AfterEllen, we're getting a lesbian vampire queen.
Who could want for more?

Tomorrow - the Aquarium.

Mum and Daughter Day

The family. The only one I don't recognise is me.

Today was designated as our mother and daughter day. Alex and I went to Havana for lunch, spent too much money at Ten Thousand Villages next door but one, and then trawled Ikea. All of which was greatly enjoyable.
I don't wish to diss the good work of Ten Thousand Villages at all, but I felt there was some kind of irony to their statement that 80% of the world's poverty is suffered by women, so 70% of the goods they sell is made by women.
Hmmm.
The problem is that we already know that 80% of the world's work is done by women, so it would seem to me that the way to equalise the situation is to get men to do some of the work and then pay the women for it.

Late in the afternoon, when we had returned to the homestead, Mormons came to the front door. They proved to be inadequate sport.
Austen amused himself with them to start with, but then I thought,
'They've bloody well knocked on my front door, why shouldn't I get to be unpleasant to them? Alack and alas, I was not on form, and they turned out to be simply wooden robots with painted smiles.
'What is your church doing to combat misogyny and homophobia?' I asked. They looked confused. They asked what misogyny meant.
'Oh, we love women,' they said, 'women have a sacred task, to bear children.'
They probably wished they hadn't said that.
Then I moved on to homophobia. They didn't know what that meant either. Seriously, their brows wrinkled and after a few seconds said that they thought it meant homosexuality.
Having explained what homophobia was, I asked again what their church was doing to combat it.
They side-stepped the question, but assured me that they loved homosexuals (?!) but not the sin of homosexuality.
They probably wished they hadn't said that either.
I asked them if they thought Jesus considered homosexuality to be a sin.
Yes, they did think that.
I told them that the Jesus we knew from the Bible considered everyone to be equal.
'Ah...,'they said, 'but he did keep company with sinners,'
I asked them whether Jesus considered Gentiles to be sinners. Guess what? They had no idea what Gentiles meant.
I assured them that homophobia and misogyny were the sins, and hoped that they would meet the real Jesus at some point, but honestly, I felt that the whole thing had been pointless and that I had wasted ten minutes I'd never get back. I felt I should have had better sport with bigots who knocked at my door unsolicited, especially ones who dress in three-piece suits.

Last night, or maybe the night before, I dreamt I was preparing for a visit to my place of work, by Angela Merkel. Everything was ready, but the place was dirty, and however much I cleaned, the place stayed dirty. I'm sure there must be some significance.

In the Guardian, there is an excellent article by Tanya Gold, on how appallingly Harriet Harmon MP has been treated by the media over the past week. And true to form, the majority of comments are by complete trolls, many of the remarks being, wait for it, yes, misogynistic.

Maynelining

Mayne Island was quite spectacular - and educational.

We had to manage without plumbing (and TV). I don't know whether the island has mains water supply or whether it is just that the houses and cabins are so spread out that most of them have wells and sceptic tanks, but our friends' well had run dry - in their absence - and this had been helped along by the previous people who stayed, having had a freak toilet incident, which resulted in all the remaining water escaping. All the remaining bottled water had been used up, presumably flushing the loo.

We, being trained boy scouts and girl guides, had fetched water to flush with from the sea, used the bottled water we had brought, to wash hands and clean teeth only and we bathed by swimming. A grand time was had by all, especially the teenage one who played his guitar, smoked - whatever - and roasted marshmallows round the fire pit - which, given the lack of rain, we weren't even sure we should be using, but we had our trusty seawater on standby.

On the last day, we hired a double kayak for four hours and all took it in turns to go out and tame the waves. We saw beds of purple and silver starfish and scary-looking seaweed. The weather, which was supposed to have broken, was in fact sunny and warm and quite, quite perfect for kayaking.

We were all, however, on our return to the mainland, glad to be able to shower and wash our clothes, not to mention flush the toilet.
Odd how, all together in the cabin, and under drought conditions, able to easily adopt the Aussie, 'if it's yellow, let it mellow' philosophy of water conservation, but on our return, unable to extend the same at home. Difficult in any case, when across the road, people are still gratuitously watering the pavement.


Yesterday evening, our last supper before Ben's departure, we all went to Memphis Blues Diner on the Drive and sampled the Priscilla Platter. All, that is, bar Alex, who had generously stayed behind to sit on the kids.

And so my boy has returned to the UK today. A difficult parting.
Today has been spent washing clothes, tidying and getting Ben ready for departure. Afterwards, Alex and I mooched disconsolately round Steveston, then I took Kevin and Austen to the Skytrain station - thence to go to watch another BC Lions game.
The next adventure starts soon.
And I have just one more week with Alex.

Ultraviolence

Time Flies.

I am vexed, very vexed. We have suffered at the hands of vandals and this leaves me low.
Last night I noticed that four of our solar lights had been stolen from the front garden. Not the wizard's balls, and in fact the ones taken were just cheapies, but there was a sense of violation. Then this morning, more had been vandalised, the tops containing the solar cells and bulbs had gone. And this time, the vandals had come up the steps to get them. It makes me feel violent, and visualise blood and gore and guts and veins in m'teeth. Not sure where that's a quote from.

Whilst in my violent frame of mind, Ben made me watch 'Bronson', the story of Britain's most violent prisoner. It made me realise that you really do have to use violence to overcome violence and that some people are just wrong 'uns. Also, although I've always been against capital punishment, it made me think that some people just need to be put down like rabid pit bulls.

We missed Pride. This year we were determined to go, it's the biggest family street party in a city of many family parties. Alex and Ben were there and had a brilliant time.
I had been up and off to church early to make sure all went according to plan, if not smoothly. It did, but I was a bit languid afterwards, and lacked the motivation to do much. I think I would have missed most of it in any case by the time I got back.

Tomorrow, we're away to Mayne Island to stay in our friend's cabin. At present, with no rain for days, weeks, months, the well is dry, and the toilet broken. Fun all the way. It is supposed to be an incredible place though.
Watch this space.

Vicars and Dicks

Alex and Susie.

So, overheated life continues, but the ac is on top of things again now. I'm having difficulty remembering what I did today, but not because of overindulgence, more due to a confusing vicaring emergency.
Our vicar is on holiday and I am her warden. When she asked me to be her warden and I asked,
'Well, what does it entail?' she replied,
'Oh, nothing really, just see things in the same way I do,' and, in fact, I do see things the same way she does. I think she understated the job spec though.
The stand-in vicar for tomorrow, has had some kind of non-specific emergency, which I hope doesn't involve life or limb, she is a very nice lady, but at 20.30 on a Saturday, eh...seems like even priests and the elderly are out.
Oh, did I mention it's my job to authorise ..... anything that needs authorising, and to organise .... whatever needs organising. Fortunately, the secky is on the ball, and she organised me to organise...the other people.

Enough of this confusion.
Last night we went to see Richard the Second - and it was good, but for the fact that the cast had decided amongst themselves to pronounce the name 'Hereford' as 'Herford'. For some reason, they didn't think to ask the English Creative Director how to say it.
Now my take on this is that, whilst they may pronounce other words differently, the names of people and places need to be correctly said. It is ridiculous to have characters repeatedly proclaiming their love for England and yet clearly unfamiliar with the parts of that country.
But Austen has a different take on this. He pointed out, that for a bunch of Shakespearean actors, it's odd that none of them noticed that they were interfering with the iambic pentameter. Good point.
Nonetheless, it was well done, well performed and now I am anxious to see Henry the fourth, but will have to wait until next year.

And whilst on the Henries, I was amused to read in Pep's blog about the celebration of Henry the Eighth's coronation, that the denizens of Pompey processed along the road chanting 'Henners, Henners!' this tickled me in a toe-curling kind of way.