11th September 2011

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

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

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

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

On the Boardwalk

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Presumption

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

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

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

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

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

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

Depths

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

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

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

Don't love the concept though.

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

Enter Stage Left

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pause

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Different Day, Same Answers

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

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

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

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

Another Wheel Falls Off

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blackberries, Noise, Spain

Ooh cripes. Friday.

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

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

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

The Equality Illusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roughage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hors de Combat

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

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

Saffron

Saffron-coloured nasturtium.

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

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

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

Loaner

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broomsticks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vision and Fuckery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Boonies

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

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

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

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

Decisions

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

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

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

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

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

Weather

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

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

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

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

Wednesday's Child

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

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

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

And full moon.

Team Colours

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

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

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

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

A Snickety Start

A Lemony Snicket start to the day.

But let me start two days earlier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

TGIF

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

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

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

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

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

Signs

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

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

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

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

Victim Blaming

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

The story was as follows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Return of the Non-Native

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

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

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

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

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

On Holiday

At the Static. Be Back Later.

Joining the Dots

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

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

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

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

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

From the OED:-
"

discriminate

Pronunciation:/dɪˈskrɪmɪneɪt/

verb

[no object]

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

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

No joined-up thinking you see.

Obsessively Boring

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

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

Hummus is very filling.

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

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

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

The Male Side

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

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

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

Ecce Vancouver

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

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

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

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

Ecce Vancouver.

Squirrel

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

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

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

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

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

Elephant Day

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

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

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

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

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

Paling into Insignificance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just Not Cricket

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

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

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

A Weekend

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

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

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

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

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

The Wrong Insomniac

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

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

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

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

Feeling Groovy

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

Flaming June.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now I'm going to fade.