Waterfall

I love seeing the Chinese elders doing Tai Chi, it is better than watching dancing. It is something you come across frequently in the morning here. You can be walking across the park or as I did this morning, past the Cultural Centre and then suddenly, there they are, a whole group of them, moving fluidly in perfect unison. It is relaxing just to watch them.

This morning I had my first interview in Canada. I got the impression they were rather underwhelmed. I am at one and the same time both over-qualified - in education - and under-qualified - in history. Oh well, it really was good to have the interview experience, just as we used to tell the kids at school and then I went and spent the rest of the day stuffing envelopes at the Nature Park with Lori, which just goes to prove that a huge part of enjoying your job is the people you work with.

Thanks be to the weather god, today we have lower temperatures and rain, wonderful, glorious rain. What a relief from the wretched heat.

Yesterday afternoon, when the water was not yet falling, I watched a film by mistake. Ben had recorded and was watching 'The Legend of Zorro'. I watched while I was drinking my coffee and before going out to do the shopping. I eventually did the shopping this evening. Zorro, a film which seemed to get a lot of bad press, which I think may be automatic whenever Antonio Banderas appears, was actually rather engaging. Fun.

All may not be well with the world, but at least on South Park order is restored, Big Gay Al is back as scout leader. Who doesn't love Big Gay Al?

Manners

I would have said, if asked, that I had become fairly relaxed about manners.
Take table manners for example. I have no problem putting my elbows on the table or tilting my soup bowl towards me. We don't have special knives and forks for eating fish and I don't feel any need to drink red wine only with strong meat, although those last two are probably not about manners at all.

But since coming to live here, I am surprised by just how deeply ingrained some of those things are. And honestly, I feel like a freak most of the time, yet I can't change. Take for example the inability to start eating before everyone else. Here, you are often told to start as soon as you have served yourself or your plate has arrived. Can't do it. I've tried, but there is almost something physical that stops me. And it must be irritating for everyone around me. I never noticed before how much slower I am at eating than anyone else. It's not because I talk non-stop at the table, because frequently, I don't talk at all. If only I could start eating sooner, maybe I'd be finished more quickly, but it ain't happening for me.

When I am out with other Brits, or when I have visitors here, I am even more aware of our little ways. I think it's down to us simply not being as relaxed as Canadians.
Everyone waits patiently, no, expectantly, until all are ready to eat. When we talk, we all conversation cue. We all put our knives and forks together when we have finished eating. We all wait until everyone has finished to leave. If kids are here, whether they be mine or other people's, and even if they are not really kids anymore, they will wait to be told they may get down. Or they will ask,
'May I leave the table?'

It all may sound trite, normal, banal, and yet it is stuff you never think about until you go somewhere else.

I can remember being quite shocked at the eating etiquette in France yet after a while it seemed fun and practical to wipe your plate with bread, one of the exact things your parents told you not to do. Meals went on for so long, just on and on and yet no more food was eaten than in Britain. But I found it uncomfortable to be sitting at the table for so long, trapped.

Another form of manners I cannot get rid of is traffic etiquette. There is far more of an expectation here that pedestrians should have the right of way, so you can just walk around and as a general rule, people won't attempt to run you over. But I can't help acknowledging them. A palm facing them to say thanks. Likewise when I am driving, just as everyone does in Britain. And it's odd, if you do signal thanks, people acknowledge you back. Still, not something I can see myself being able to stop.

I don't know if manners are good or bad, necessary or not, nor am I even sure whether continuing to be British about all this makes me feel different in a good way or in a freakish way. It's just programming. I just never realised quite how well I had been programmed or how all of us all the time have been programming our children.

Llama

Today, direct from the Andes, we bring you ..... llamas. Ok, maybe they actually live in Langley rather than the Andes but still, not native to Canada. And people came in their droves to the Nature Park to see them and to walk with them. Goats were substituted for two of the llamas, and they seemed to be rather curmudgeonly, but then who can blame them, the butchers' shops round here regularly feature goat leg. We were also selling and serving blueberry pie, but the real draw was the llamas.

Now if you watch 'Little Britain' then you will know of course that the only gay in the village is Daffyd Thomas. In his case however, virtually everyone in the village is gay and the rest are completely uninhibited talking about gay sexual practices.
Sadly for Lance Williams, he actually was the only gay in his village. Well maybe not the only one, but fairly rare, so he was a bit of a silly billy to go on the rob. He was caught on video-cam and easily identified because of his rather camp way of walking. He won't be doing it again for a while.

So, what are the fluffy, feel-good middle easterners doing right now? Oh, they are taking a little bit of time out from praising terrorist organisation Hezbollah for attempting to annihilate Israel, by enjoying a little gay-bashing spree. Except that gay-bashing doesn't really come close to describing it. Now Sadman Insane, if you remember, happily gassed Kurds, Shi-ites and, well, anyone whose gib he didn't like the cut of.
But now Shi-ites, themselves victims of Hussein's death squads, are finding someone they don't like and deciding to do a bit of mass killing. But really, this is nothing like Hitler at all, I can hardly see any similarity.
Oh and, you remember how Iran executed a girl who was raped - because she was raped ? Well, Iraqi Shi-ites are also eliminating children who have been abused.

I can't imagine why we use our own people to test drugs on. Oh yes, sorry, I can, it's because we aren't Nazis, but the man who almost died last year after a drug trial went horribly, horribly wrong, gets the chance to face death yet again as he has now been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Poor bloody bugger. I hope the no-mark terrorists who refer to themselves as animal rights activists can imagine what it must be like for this bloke. But I guess they can't, since they frequently attack humans to stop medical research.

Perhaps the Dalai Llama* could help, I'm not sure which one he is, and honestly, none of them looked very wise, but then who can really tell? People gain peace and healing from swimming with dolphins, maybe walking with llamas has the same effect.

*Yes, I do know that the Dalai Llama is not actually a llama.
**Thanks again to Simmi for various articles.

Battiness

I can see the choice of Heath Ledger for the role of the Joker in the next Batman film being controversial. Not one of those choices where you go WOW and yet, Heath has gone from strength to strength. He is one of many Aussie actors that I think of as the elite of cinema. I think he'll do a good job and it'll give him an opportunity to expand his range still further.
I also greatly enjoyed last year's 'Batman Begins', directed by Christopher Nolan. I was a fan of the original two Tim Burton films, very dark and creepy as you'd expect from Burton, but then the switch to Joel Schumacher for 'Batman Forever' and 'Batman and Robin' was a big disappointment. So I am full of hope for 'The Dark Knight'. Sadly I'll have to wait until 2008 to see it.

Still on films for a moment, before I left the UK last year, I saw a film at the cinema called 'The Descent'. It was about a group of women friends who go exploring in an uncharted cave system below the Appalachian Mountains. Once down there, and because it was uncharted, lost to humanity, they of course can no longer get out the way they got in due to some freak accident that I can't remember, and then discover the hideous mystery of the caves, people trapped down there long before have evolved into nasty slimy flesh-eating monsters.
Imagine my surprise, when shortly after arriving au Canada, I started seeing adverts on TV for a film soon to be released, called 'The Cave'. This was a film about a group of mostly men who go exploring in an uncharted cave system below the Carpathian mountains. Yada yada, can't exit, slimy flesh-eaters evolved from humans...
Last night I finally watched 'The Cave'. Honestly, they were both very similar and I think some would prefer one, some t'other.
Possibly because I saw 'The Descent' first, because I saw it on the big screen and because I liked that the team was all women, I enjoyed this one more. There were moments when I experienced claustrophobia just from watching the screen. The tension and creepiness really worked for me and the Thelma and Louise-ish ending didn't promise us a sequel as the ending in 'The Cave' did.

While on the subject of women, if you are one or wish you were, take the lesbianity test*. Handle with care, you may find out you're a gay man. If you do, then you should go straight to the BBC website and try out their Sex ID quiz. This is a more serious and scientific test, but still fun and vital to knowing who you are. Have a ruler handy :)

Meanwhile, over at After Ellen* the website was hacked by islamic militants. Do what? I hear you say. Yes, seriously, bigots bloody abound and they hate women, gays, for pity's sake, they probably even hate black people. If they really believed that a fiery hell awaits the women at After Ellen, why don't they just sit back and wait for their god to deal with it? Well yes, yet another rhetoric question, of course I know that their god, like ours, doesn't go around hating people, in fact as with the Christian bigots, the Islamic bigots don't understand their own faith.

A new website, fed up with the likes of BS showing us her airbrushed everything, allows real women to post pictures and stories of their real pregnant and post-baby bods. It's a liberating site and good for them. Women constantly suffer the tyranny of media images.

Finally, as you know, my mate Simmi kindly watches the right-wing press so that the rest of us don't have to. Sometimes it gives her a belly laugh and then she'll tip me off to something that the Daily Nazi has ranted on about. Imagine my surprise when she sent me a link to a Daily Nazi article that was not only written by someone clearly not illiterate and insane, but which made both of us say, 'er, what she's saying is right.' We both agreed with the article writer. We think she's a left-wing mole.
No matter, the press have been patronising us for weeks, continually harping on about things that any human being knows about the war between Israel and Lebanon. Everything this journo says puts things into perspective.

*Thanks Simmi.

Bear

Although not this one as it happens. Whistler is a strange and lovely place. There is a village at the bottom of 'the slopes where everything happens'. The 'everything' includes chairlifts going up the mountain, zip lines, zip-trecking, completely insane BMX bikers who have their bikes chairlifted up and then bike down, dressed like some sci-fi half-person, half velociraptor.
Then there is hiking, bungee-jumping and no doubt a myriad other ways to scare yourself stupid. The village itself is like an extended theme park based on a German town square but surrounded by Swiss chalets - the hotels. And yet, and yet...I was struck that the people walking around the town seemed quite ordinary. I would have expected a lot more in the way of pretension in a place where Kevin joshed that they charge you fifty bucks an hour just to breathe.

The people we were visiting live in Whistler, but a ten minute drive from the hotel. We had a very enjoyable evening, and around 23.00 we were feeling tired and ready to leave. Suddenly there was a huge BANG as though a giant had thumped the back of the house. Everyone rushed to the back balcony. At the back of the house, where the steel bins were, was a 400 pound black bear. My son Ben could see it clearly under a tree. The bear seemed to leave but then we heard the BANG again, and it was there, probably hadn't in fact left. We couldn't go, we were under seige to to a black bear. The children stayed out on the balcony watching the bear and we finally decided that it had been there long enough for us to leave at the front of the house.

It was a strange thing. I didn't actually see the bear and so really had insufficient fear of it. Ben, who did see it, and all of the Canadians who have had plenty of opportunity to see bears and knew what they were capable of from long experience, had enough sense not to want to go outside while it was around. I realised why we had taken the car.

People have dogs and cats here, just as they do in Britain, and there are of course the ubiquitous bunnies - maybe we should have rounded a few up and taken them up into the mountains, but I am still surprised by the animals that are around us here that we just see in cartoons at home. Chipmunks, red squirrels (almost extinct in Britain)coyotes, racoons, skunks, and in the mountains, bears. I'm hoping to see a sasquatch next time.

Well, no, not really, not unless it is at some distance, but I do believe I might.

A little Curry

And off we go to Whistler, future home of the 2010 winter Olympics. Well, we have the skating oval in Richmond, but the skiing stuff will be up there. Our reason for going is a family matter however. Kevin's great uncle will be turning 80 so food will be eaten, drink will be imbibed, and tomorrow we will return. And there will be pictures of mountains and trees. Muahahahaha.

'Dave Navarro looks like Satan, and a bit gay, but then the devil is a bit gay isn't he?' This from Ben. 'Well, ya....ok, Tim Curry's devil in 'Legend' was a bit gay, although technically a demon I think, but are we going to split hairs over imaginary foes here ? I don't think you can necessarily draw any metaphysical conclusions from that.'

And no doubt the Devil was in Barney the very bad dog.
Barney ate Elvis's bear which was on display at Wookey Hole in Somerset. What Barney shows us by his irreverent approach to the King's former property is that humans can be big stupid wankers with far too much money. Let's just hope that somewhere in the entrails of all this, no-one decides to put Barney down. Poor little hound dog. Thanks for that one Simmi.

Step away from the vehicle Stephen Harper, I have solved Canada's silliest problem. The thing which bugs people most when they visit Canada isn't the hordes of roaming beavers, or the dead skunks in the road or even the wandering moose, but the annoyance of not knowing what anything costs. The majority of prices are quoted without tax, so you think something costs, say, $2.99 but it actually costs you 3 something. This pisses people off. It pisses me off, it pisses visitors off and it even pisses Canadians off. Really, it's got to stop.
Ok Stephen, listen very, very carefully. You insist that shops price everything twice, once pre-tax and once with tax included. That should please everyone and is not the slightest problem now that we have those computer thingies. Got that? Make it so.

If anyone tells you that the film 'The Benchwarmers' is just John Heder playing Napoleon Dynamite again, just say,
'And you see a problem with that?' It is a very funny film. Napoleon Dynamite was a seriously brilliant film. Heder may need to develop some range eventually but for now, he still rocks.

Is this not the best news EVER for British people? It turns out that our national food, ie curry, may save us from Alzheimers. Wicked. Not that I ever needed any excuse to eat more, but since it helps.....

Joy

Remember the band 'Three Dog Night'? Yeah you do, 'Jeremiah was a bullfrog...' ('Joy to the World'). They're still around you know, they all look like bloody bullfrogs now, but hey, why not, if people are still paying to see you and you're not dead yet, go for it.

Anyway, they've been around for 35 years, but they're not in the news, not even sure why I thought of them, total opposite of my kind of music.
However, another old bullfrog, Fidel Castro, who has been around for roughly half a century, although no albums to his name, is ailing. I don't really feel one way or t'other about him either, but you know, you notice when the world changes, names disappear, life's rich tapestry changes all its colours. I mean, whatever happened to Moshe Dyan? Rhetoric question, obviously I know what actually happened to Moshe and Kruchev and all the people that used to be. Castro's one of those. Then the spectacle of all the Cuban exiles in Florida all readying themselves to dance on his grave. What a disgrace, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Equally depressing is that scientists have realised that the great apes are smarter than the lesser ones. I mean really, you have to screw your eyes up, wrinkle your brow and say 'What?' Didn't we know that from like...I dunno, before Castro's time? Is this the Rip van Winkle team that are just publishing? The only thing they say which makes it sound even vaguely de nos jours is that they acknowledge that
".....one species may outperform another in a problem-solving test not because it's smarter, but because one species is poorly suited to that particular testing situation."
Yes indeedy, we've been there, we've seen the KKK method of deciding that blacks are less intelligent than whites because they asked them totally loaded questions. Intelligence can't be discovered through testing spurious knowledge, but through problem solving tests, and again, this study does make that quite clear.

Spiralling even further down into the depths of the crashingly obvious, ok, no actual research money was spent on this, but Doctors are having to take time out from the company's time - the company being the NHS - to warn ladettes that wearing high heels and then getting drunk, is causing more and more accidents, or, autrement dit, using up more of the taxpayers' money.
This article reminded me with a horrible, vivid jolt, of a day when Austen and I had been called into Accident and Emergency because my father had had a stroke and spending the day watching him and worrying about him, and then when he was finally admitted to a ward and we were told to go home, meeting one of the girls from my own tutor group as we left the hospital.

'Hello Miss,' she greeted me cheerily, 'why are you here?'
'My father's had a stroke, why are you here Elaine?'
'Oh, my foot's gone sceptic Miss,' she said, showing me her porky little hoof, shoved into a shoe that was too small and too high and which I had told her daily not to wear to school. In spite of that, I liked Elaine, but she really didn't get it.

That's a gratuitous picture of Jaime Pressly, Joy from 'My Name is Earl', a show I love. My friend explained to me a little while ago that Joy is a honey, but not someone you lust after because she isn't smart. Made sense, I totally understood that.

PS. It's August, the French are on holiday, no I mean seriously France has shut up shop and gone away. Does no-one see the opportunities here?

Blueberries

Wow, is it August already? July really goes quickly when you're not locking antlers with hot, cross adolescents all month.

I went to the Nature Park this morning and walked the trails with Lori, the blueberry bushes were in full fruit and very lovely and enticing they looked too. I do love blueberries. Most Canadians do seem to love them too, but perhaps it's something they take for granted. Having become thoroughly addicted to them, I used to go back to the UK and pay through the nose for small punnets of imported ones. Here, I could buy them by the truckload straight off the farm when they're in season if I wanted.

Enough with the soft fruit! How's it going in Iran? I hear you ask. Well, I don't know whether you can spot a theme here, but you remember how, when the Taliban were (officially) in charge in Afghanistan, they used to publicly execute women in a football stadium for deviant behaviour such as learning to read? Well, slap me twice and call me charlie if that dear little man, you know, the one with the PhD in traffic management, didn't decide that it's such good sport, that he recently had a 16-year old girl publicly hanged for equally heinous crimes. Yep, evil lass that she was, she reported that she had been raped! Yes, rape, or, adultery as they call it in Iran. Hmm... presumably she raped herself, er, I mean committed adultery with herself because that's the only way I can explain how this works. She won't be doing that again, that's for sure.

Simmi has cleared up a long-standing mystery for me. A couple of years ago, I sent Kevin a book, a paperback, by Robert Rankin. If you're not familiar with RR, he writes very funny slightly irreverant magic realism types of books. I enjoyed the 'Brentford Triangle' trilogy - of which at last count I think there were five books, because it was set in that particular part of London and was very typical of the people and customs there. So I decided to send Kevin one of the books. It never made it. At the time Kevin told me that books were often stopped and not let through, but surely, surely not Robert Rankin for pity's sake? Well, the book was called 'The Antipope', so who knows?

Oh dear, dear me, you've gotta feel sorry for poor Mel Gibson. Drunk and yet still driving, he was a VICTIM of his own addiction. He is truly repentant for his anti-semitic stream of vitriol when he was arrested, presumably not by normal traffic cops in California but by a team of Hasidic Jews on motorbikes. I pick them because they are obvious to spot, most Jewish people go around completely incognito just to confuse people like Mel.
He said he is, "in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display."
We're with you Mel, because when drunk we all insult some random group of people that we have no particular interest in. Oh hang on, or do we in fact let our guard down and diss the French or the Portugese or someone who have recently beat us at footie? Hmmmm....I'm glad he knows the language of repentance then. I know I've mentioned it once or twice in the blog recently, although I hadn't actually quoted Jay and Silent Bob - not that Silent Bob says much -
'We found the Bible man, it's full of all kinds of weird shit, like did you know that Jesus was a Jew?!'
Mel must be just devasted that he's now not going to be allowed to make that mini-series on the Holocaust, you can't believe how some TV companies can overreact can you?
I hope he finds his 'appropriate path for healing'. I can suggest a few but he might get his knees dirty.

A little mirth

This is a picture of what you can see from Dyke road, so basically it either is the dyke or is from the dyke, I can't quite work out what the exact meaning of the word is in the Canadian language. There seemed to be nothing that I could see that would hold back the sea.

Ok, I'll come back to Dyke Road, quite literally in fact.

Yesterday afternoon we went to the cinema to see 'Clerks II'. My goodness it is shamefully funny. What I mean by that is if you have no shame, then it is so funny you will stop breathing. This happened to me, tears were running down my face, making my mascara form Kiss-like rivulets and my diaphragm couldn't keep up with my lungs. Don't tell me that's too much medical detail, or inaccurate, this is Kevin Smith we're talking about.

I also managed to see two more films on TV, neither of which was funny, but both of which I greatly enjoyed. 'Four Brothers', not a critically acclaimed film, but rather satisfying nonetheless and 'I'll Sleep when I'm Dead' a film with Clive Owen. Sorry, an excellent film with Clive Owen, I forgot that he'd done that rather sub-standard one with Jennifer Aniston.

At the weekend, my friend Canadian Karen, saw the actress who plays Jenny from the L-Word. I was supposed to have gone to this event, so I should have seen her too, but I'm more happy that Karen saw her. It's just... there must be some kind of celeb etiquette, and what is it? Do you run over and gush at them? Do you pretend you haven't noticed them? And then, each celeb might be different, some might crave love from their fans, some might crave privacy from their fans. Who knows? I think it should be an additional piece of information available on imdb.com. Mia Kirschner,** (craves attention) Kate Winslett ^^ (craves privacy). Ah well, I'm sure I pondered this same unanswerable question when I saw one of my own top celebs on Elm Grove, David Wells.

God bless the Guardian - normally - but an article today pushes a particular button for me. The article talks about whether lesbian attitudes to some gay male behaviours is changing. Ok, interesting idea and the article takes quite a raunchy look at the lesbian scene. But what makes me rather uncomfortable is the article's insistence on referring to lesbians as 'Dykes'. I think this is similar to white people calling black people 'niggers' or straight people calling gay men 'fags'. People can call themselves those names, but outsiders can't. I can giggle when my friend refers to my beloved Ikea as 'Dykea' and I can wonder how the City of Richmond can be so bold as to have a 'Dyke Road', I can also use it 'entre nous' with friends who are part of the lesbian community in private*, but there seems something profoundly disrespectful to publicly use words that have traditionally been used as terms of abuse at least until they are 'taken back'. - I learned that from the Kevin Smith film yesterday, one of his characters was 'taking back' the term 'porch monkey'- badly.

So why was I at Dyke Road? My son now has a job there, he's a meat-packer. No seriously :)

* Deliberate tautology** for Karen.
** Tautology - the science of becoming taut.

Addendum : After publishing my own blog, I then went to look at the others I read, and this has pissed me right off, taken all the mirth out of me. Lousie Livesey makes all the points I would myself, so I have nothing to add except - please read the post.

Res Publica

Great band, sadly short-lived.

Res Publica, the affairs of the people. Back to those abstract words again. Demokratia, rule by the people. I find it quite interesting that the two main political parties in the United States have names that have become associated with right and left wing and yet neither word is too dissimilar in meaning from the other.

Plato started his work 'The Republic' by criticising four different forms of government that he was able to observe. Tyranny, rule by a tyrant, democracy, rule by the majority, timarchy, rule by a bloke called Tim, and Oligarchy, rule by a couple of gals called Olga.

But democracy in Plato's time was not democracy as we know it Jim, because the definition of who the people were does not tie up with ours and the system by which they ruled the city state was organised chaos. Everyone had the right to go to and debate everything. So imagine, instead of having our elected representatives go and discuss and vote on our behalf, we could all go along. Be a bit hectic. And then in Plato's Athens, it wouldn't in fact be anyone, slaves couldn't go, women couldn't go, they were considered property just as slaves were, foreigners living in the city - nope. Was all a bit shallow.

Plato's proposed Republic, was more like the democracy we know now. Everyone meaning everyone had full access to the resources of the State. Plato's educational theory underpins those of most modern democracies, that all should be given full education in all disciplines so that each person would find their own strengths and ultimately be able to serve the State by being the best possible person in whatever function they seemed best to fit. Fab.

While democracy was going on in Greece, well, parts of it, certainly Athens, the Romans were striving for a Republic. The reality was quite similar to Athenian democracy, no women, no slaves, yada yada, but they were an Empire and the struggle for them was to govern that Empire as prefectures rather than suffer the tyranny of an Emperor. There lay the problem, Rome was expansionist and big, Athens was small and the City States were all self-governing.

But something more came out of Athenian democracy. Hedonism. Seems like a dirty word to us, synonymous with laziness and lotus-eating. In fact it was a shift in social behaviour.

The Greek States had all warred among themselves, consider how Troy was destroyed, wiped off the map. Sparta, a timarchy which dedicated itself to raising warriors. All of this is considered agonic behaviour. With stability and economic prosperity came a shift from agonic behaviour to hedonic. The State and its people no longer prized warriors to be the most important people. Of course they still needed to maintain an army, things weren't so stable that there wasn't some bloke with a bunch of elephants just round the corner waiting to invade (ok, yes that was Rome but nonetheless...)but the army was no longer the be all and end all. Poetry, art, music, philosophy were now considered to be worthwhile pursuits, to enrich the society and the lives of the citizens.

Today, we value democracy so highly that we are willing to go to war to protect it. One reason given for the West's support of Israel in the current hostilities is that the State is the only one in the Middle East that is a true and complete democracy.

Is democracy intrinsically better than any other political paradigm and how did it become so widespread? I think these two questions are linked.

My theory involves two deaths and a religion. The first death, that of Socrates, was important because it is similar to but pre-dates that of Christ.
Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens, ie encouraging them to question. Isn't that an odd thing to be charged with in a democracy? Yes, no, maybe. Socrates' ideas were radical even for a State that considered itself quite liberal, if indeed it did. There is a kind of paradox. Hedonism is dependent on stability, and yet in its very nature lie the seeds of its downfall. It is a delicate balance. Philosophers challenge, all creative arts challenge, plays, art, poetry, they are all seditious by their nature.
And Socrates, given the choice by this liberal city, of leaving Athens or drinking the poisoned chalice, chose the latter. One final seditious act, one that validates his life and work, what he believed in. One that points like an arrow back towards the moment when he made that choice. His execution by the State was adminstered by his own hand.

The life of Jesus Christ was in many ways similar in nature. He too embraced poverty in order to travel freely around the ancient lands of his people, to bring a new message to them. They were a people under occupation, but it wasn't the (for the most part) benevolent government of the Romans that he was preaching against. It was, just as for Socrates, the intransigence of the thinking of the governing councils of his own people that he was challenging. He was a man of the people, a very ordinary Jew who surrounded himself with other very ordinary Jews. And who preached love. And a love that would conquer death. A simple message but one that ordinary people could relate to and one that he would also validate with his life. Another arrow pointing back towards a moment of choice.

So how did I get from democracy to Christianity ? Jesus taught us that God's love is like that of a parent and parental love is unconditional. Jesus' mother is very central to the story, she is honoured and her motherhood considered important. When we experience that kind of love, it enables us to also give it. Jesus taught people to deeply value other people, and I mean deeply, not superficially in the way that society values physical strength and fame. When we do value others we cannot but believe we all have the same rights. Christianity has by no means conquered the world without bloodshed, although I believe it could have done. It offers people hope. It offers people salvation. For many people that is what has appealed about Christianity. When you're facing the black death or starvation, to know absolutely that you will survive death and have a better life afterwards is a definite 'yep, count me in,' thumbs up.

But Jesus also preached democracy. He preached that all people are equal, and that is the basis of democracy. He showed us that people can take care of each other, and that their human needs are important. If you think of the distribution of the loaves and fishes, whether you see that as a literal miracle or a miracle because everyone shared what they have, it sent a strong - in my mind political - message. He surrounded himself with the common people and these were the people who were to bring his message to the world. And he taught that you came to salvation through your own will, a personal commitment. This too is the mainspring of true democracy, anyone can help to govern a people, not because you have fought and killed off all the opponents, but because you have the confidence of enough people who will vote for you. Yes, you may convince them through rhetoric, yes you may not fulfill your promises, but then the people have the right to not have you represent them too. It is a relationship of equality.

Democracy is an ideal. I don't think anyone quite has it right yet, but it is a good ideal, it is worth working towards because everyone in a democracy has a say and every individual's rights are valued so far as they are not contrary to the rights of society as a whole, the public good. We should value democracy, and we should strive towards it. We should also protect it, if necessary with our lives, because where there is no freedom, there is no life.

Orca

My mind keeps wandering back to a local news story from yesterday. A First Nations elder from Vancouver Island was killed, at the age of 68, in a canoeing accident. My friend told me that the coastal First Nations bands believe that when a Chief dies, that the soul becomes part of that of an orca. Not enough detail was given in the news article to satisfy whatever is niggling away at me, it's as though there's something we don't know, the departure for a whole detective story.
Chief Jerry Jack wasn't old in modern terms, and he was taking part in an inter-band race. I'm guessing he probably learned to canoe and kayak as soon as he could walk, if not sooner. The canoe turned over. I'm sure Chief Jerry Jack knew how to do an Indian roll or he wouldn't have survived to the age of 68. Of course, I'd like to think some supernatural force was involved.

In 2001, a male orca was separated from his pod and stranded off the west coast of Vancouver Island in Nootka Sound. The locals thought this was a female whale so called it Luna, but the First Nations band named it Tsux-iit. What's in a name? Maybe nothing, maybe a lot, but it symbolised the start of a tug-of-war over one Killer Whale.

The combined forces of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Vancouver Aquarium and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration decided that they should attempt to lead Luna back to his pod and set about trying to do so. The First Nations Band, of which Jerry Jack was a chief, had decided that Tsux-iit was the reincarnation of another chief of their band, Ambrose Maquinna, since Tsux-iit had turned up just three days after Tyee Ha'wilth Ambrose Maquinna had died, promising that he would return as a kakawin (orca).

And so began a war between Fisheries and Oceans Canada et alia and the Mowachaht/Muchalaht band. DFO tried to lead Luna away, Mowachaht/Muchalaht nation got into their canoes and led Tsux-iit back. This went on for nine days, and then it seemed as though the superior technology of the Canadian-US 'rescuers' would prevail. The winds became so high that the First Nations canoists could not outrun the powerful motors of the ships. Luna was captured and put in a pen ready for transport.

The elders of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht told the band they must let Tsux-iit go, but to sing the paddle song of Tyee Ha'wilth Ambrose Maquinna to let the kakawin know that he was not alone. They stood and drummed and sang, proudly, tearfully, and the winds subsided and the sea grew still. The band took this as a sign and took to their canoes once more. As they did so, Tsux-iit escaped from his pen and was free again.

This was no story of two hard-headed sides trying to get their own way, here were two peoples who cared for the welfare of the animal but who had different views of what that should be. Each was willing to accept the judgement of Solomon for the good of the whale. The DFO backed off at this point and let the orca be.

Luna/Tsux-iit prospered in his new home, he ate salmon and played with boats like an juvenile male, ok, not so much the salmon-eating bit, but like any juvenile, he continued to call for his pod, so there was a sense of yearning that accompanied this physical well-being.

In March of this year, Luna/Tsux-iit was killed as he dove underneath a powerful tugboat with a six foot propeller. The crew were distraught, the Mowachaht/Muchalaht were distraught when they were given the news and they paddled out to the scene, not believing that Tsux-iit could be dead.

So, did Chief Jerry Jack go to his death to join Ambrose Maquinna? Was the death of the orca in some spiritual sense linked with the death of the Chief who had fought so hard to keep him in the bay?

I think that all one can really say is, let's hope to goodness that in the next couple of days, no more orca get separated from their pod and end up off the coast of VI.

Knickers

I'm somewhat aeriated today. Yes, I know that aeriated isn't an actual word, it's a pretend word but one we actually use, and it means getting your knickers in a twist. It's one of those words like lehr that is used but never written down.
'Ooh, that's lehr that is,' is something kids would say all the time. Maybe it's spelt 'lair' or 'leer'.

Red herring.

The first thing I'm aeriated about is comparatively trivial, the TV prog 'Rockstar' is now starting to piss me off, because it's becoming clear that the band, Supernova, you remember, being sued by the already existing band Supernova, are merely puppets. Incidentally, Ben tells me that it actually does show in the UK, contrary to what I thought.

Now, we saw a show that had some of the finalists from Canada, out of whom just two were picked. There were some stonkingly good singers and performers among them. How then did the show end up with Zayra, an annoying person who can't actually sing in tune? Week in, week out, she gives us off-key renditions of all sorts of songs. Each week she is in the bottom three, each week she escapes relegation in spite of the fact that the band are now openly hostile to her. This week, when someone else was sent packing, someone who ultimately would never have fronted the band, but who was lightyears better than Zayra, the jaws of every one of the other contestants went 'clunk' to the floor. Someone is telling the lads not to fire her because she provides tension. She argues with the band. This week, after the most horribly screeched rendering of Blondie's 'Call me' wearing an electric blue shiny jumpsuit, they told her she needed to start a solo career, like, now. She turned to the audience and said,
'I think I was great, what did you think?'
Enough. She has to go.

On a far less trivial note, I utterly, utterly fail to see how any human being who calls themself a Christian and who lives freely in a democracy, can revile other human beings based on who they have sex with. It is just preposterous. Imagine Jesus Christ, the one we know through the Bible, not some other mangled by people's febrile imaginings and hatred version, being in Colorado Springs and being faced with this vicious bunch of self-righteous morons. That's what it comes down to. What seriously would Jesus, the person that this lot claim to follow the teachings of, say? If he were to say,
'Yep, we can't be having with this whole gays having the same rights as every other human being palaver,' then we'd have to say,
'Well, were you on crack when you were preaching that all people were equal in the eyes of the Lord or are you on crack now?'
Of course he wouldn't say that! (I point this out for the more literal minded of my friends) It would go against the whole message of his life. What these bozos are trying to do undermines everything he stood and died for. And that's the thing, they say they are doing it BECAUSE they are Christians. If they came out and said,
'Ok, we're Nazis, we follow the teachings of Hitler,' at least that would be honest and wouldn't dishonour the faith of real believers.

Perhaps all of this might be one reason why the United States doesn't feature in the list of top ten countries where people are happiest. Britain doesn't either incidentally, but six of the top ten are European countries. Canada is number ten. I think there is more work to be done on this study, because three, maybe four of those European countries (I'm not sure about Iceland) are those heavily socialised Scandinavian countries I'm always praising, thus, could be of global use to have this phenomenon looked at more carefully.

And yet, in spite of being the tenth happiest country, Canada doesn't feature at all in the Daily Mail's look at where 4.5 million Brits are spread around the globe. Their journalism is none too accurate, 4.5 million becomes 'nearly five million' in the opening sentence. However, what is not to forget is that this is the Daily Nazi, rabbid, mouth-frothing right wing. I'm surprised the article doesn't suggest that we ex-pats should rise up and stage a British Empire coup from wherever we are living, waving our Union Flags and chanting, 'God Bless the Daily Mail.' Oddly, NONE of the countries mentioned by the Nazi are on the list of top ten happiness places.
What I fear is that Britain is actually exporting Daily Mail readers to Colorado Springs where they can happily pursue their divine right to hate everyone apart from themselves.

Thanks Simmi for both the Daily Nazi and the Independent articles. The picture by the way is neither Norman nor Sherman but Fanny the Wonder Dog, sadly now deceased, but beloved of all Julian Clary fans, of which I am one.

Freefall

Verlaine, ah, Verlaine, je pense à toi. I don't know why. Those French poets, they just live inside my head and pop up unexpectedly sometimes.
Verlaine fell out with his lover Rimbaud, not of course to be confused with Rambo, which in its turn is not to be confused with Rumba. Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, Verlaine was a little too fond of the absinthe, ah maybe that's why I thought of him - I won't explain that and only one person will understand it, anyway, that same Absinthe that was so beautifully portrayed by Kylie Minogue, 'lovely little Kylie' as Dame Edna is wont to say, frankly about the only engaging thing in that whole bloody film, although I know a lot of people worship 'Moulin Rouge' and I feel like a traitor for even daring to suggest that something the demigod Ewan was in was less than celestial, incidentally I saw 'The Libertine' recently and I found that less than celestial too, in spite of having dear, dear Johnny in it, el Deppo of course, interesting historical figure he was playing but ah, you can have too much of an evil disgusting thing, anyhoo, Verlaine, in his absinthatious state, insisted on shooting poor Rimbaud in the wrist, the bugger, oh well, quite literally I suppose, and of course he got sent to prison where he wrote some of his most sublime poetry, looking out wistfully, should have been wristfully, just as I have just been, I fancied a great thunderstorm was upon us, deeply envious of the expected thunderstorms in England, but no, bang on ten, pardon the pun, fireworks out in English Bay, so looking out through the bars of his cell, him, not me, perhaps the cells of his brain contracting through lack of the green fairy, but then when he got out he must have been straight back on it, tried to strangle his mother,
'quel ciel triste, piste, où va le pâle sourire de la lune, qui me regarde écrire,' was that Verlaine? no, no, Apollinaire I think, Guillaume, ha, funny, Guillaume Apollinaire, but really he was half Polish, had quite a different name, what did his friends call him? Krosto or something, Kostro, that was it, where was that article Simmi sent me about the Polish couple who threw their St Bernard dog out of the window, that was bizarre, pregnant wife off her head with booze, and the husband, threw the dog out of the window, hit a poor bloody passer-by, that's not how I think of Poles, I can imagine someone in Pompey doing that, but Poland, that's not the stereotype of poles that I have inside my head, hard working my imaginary Poles are, yeah, that was odd this morning, seeing that drunken Chinese guy, I was thinking, 'that's not right, Chinese are all clean-living, hard working,' then I remembered the triads, guess they're not so clean living, but then maybe this guy wasn't drunk, I used to live next door to a woman who had vertigo, no, next-door-but one, anyway, real vertigo, not the psychological one, the disease, she was always getting dirty looks from people because she looked drunk all the time, no mattter, then this guy, he sees another Chinese guy, and says, 'Holà!' so maybe he wasn't even Chinese, although the Chinese kids I used to teach were always incredibly hard working, could see the benefit of learning languages, always, always, or do I just reconstruct all my stereotypes inside my head to fit in with the great protestant work ethic? Could be, could be, where did it go? How did I become such a lotus eater? 'Arbeit macht frei', too right, it sure does, who said that ? Oh yeah, Hitler, not so good, that little Austrian, Austria - beautiful, Austrians, too right-wing, except Karen says her friend's Austrian husband isn't, not at all, not at all Austrian, no, that's not right, not at all right-wing, stereotypes, jeez, must stop that, so Verlaine, symbolism, influenced by Baudelaire, Baudelaire, 'les fleurs du mal', divine, divine, flowers of evil, how great was that man's artistry, skilful handling of the French language, cut, shape, tease, twist. And Verlaine, and Apollinaire, and Rimbaud, all of them, in their drugs and drink they take it and shape it, make something beautiful from it, add to their own language, enrich it, make it greater than it was.....

Yeah so now you've seen inside my head, that's how it comes out, like a garbage chute but punctuated. James Joyce didn't use any punctuation in the last chapter of the incomprehensible yet worshipped Ulysses. What's that about?

One toe in

Over the past couple of days I have been making the acquaintance of Canadian Health Care.
My friend Anne is in hospital recovering from surgery and I have now visited a couple of times and my son Ben has had to see a doctor who sent him for a test.

Canada has a National Health Service but it is structured slightly differently from ours in Britain. As ever, Canadian friends feel free to correct me on details. All Canadians have free cover, but those in employment and whose employer provides a scheme, are able to use a wider range of services. If you do have such a scheme then you are registered through that. I haven't explained this very well, but if I compare this with what sometimes happens in Britain it may become clearer.
In Britain some employers have private health care schemes that they give as a perk to their employees, and I believe it is then taxed as a perk. In Britain, you have a National Health Service number as a matter of course, ie being born or becoming a resident. Your private scheme is quite separate from the NHS. Here, the two schemes seem to overlap and blend together.

In both countries, emergency treatment is through the National Health Service. In Britain there is NHS and there is private and the two don't really overlap, in Canada the private insurance seems to provide a premium service in the way that some of the charter airlines have a premium cabin on their flights and things are a little more polished and less cattle-like.

Thus, although we have had to pay for Ben's medical stuff - I can claim it off his travel insurance - we are using exactly the same facilities as anyone using the Canadian NHS.
Ben alerted us on Sunday night that he needed to see a doctor. On Monday morning we walked into a clinic, there was one other patient waiting to be seen, and he had a consultation, this morning we have been to a radiology clinic and had an ultrasound, even though this was deemed not to be an emergency by the doctor. I can only guess at what the time scale for any of this would be in Britain, but I'm certain that he wouldn't have seen a doctor yet.

The other thing that rather surprised me was the travelling. Ben's appointment was at 8.30 in Vancouver, so driving into the Province's to-all-intents-and-purposes capital city during rush hour, I decided to take a London approach to this. We left here at 7.15, thinking we would be stuck in solid traffic, moving along in first gear, then having to find the clinic, then looking for parking.

Wrong, oh so delightfully wrong. We were parked outside the place by twenty to eight, even after the additional five to ten minutes looking around for the office.
We were too early for most things to even be open, although we discovered a Macdonald's serving brekkie to the type of people who have brekkie at Macdonald's. Oddly, these didn't seem to be the kind of people who eat there on the ads. No business suits, although to be fair, several of the customers were able to walk straight.

Ben it turns out, is fine, although it was never something we could leave until his return to England.

My friend Anne is doing well, and Vancouver General Hospital seems rather fine in comparison to any British hospitals I have visited, and I have visited one or two over the years of my parents' illnesses.

I don't want to pass judgement, I have really only stuck my toe in the water, whereas I have had years of swimming in the British NHS sea and there are certainly things about it that I believe we can be very proud of. Midwifery for one and the computerised system of record-keeping another.

This evening, Kevin and Ben are going to Stanley Park to see the Raconteurs. One of the members of this band was part of the White Stripes and they are getting a lot of press. I have a feeling that Kevin and Ben's journey may not be as easy as ours this morning. Apart from anything else, it is the first night of the Festival of Light - the city's annual firework festival, which is just stunning, but ensures that hundreds of thousands of extra people are going into town.

Through a glass darkly

Just before the sun's rays woke me this morning I dreamt that I was messing around with candles, but not very carefully so that I realised the wax had gone in my eyes. I couldn't see properly, just puddles of colour. I feared the candles may have set fire to things around them whilst I was unable to make out where one ended and the next began. On waking, my first thought was, 'That was how it must be to have cataracts.'

Our eyes let the world in and so they can also imprison us. The dream made me imagine the panic of suddenly realising that that faculty had gone. It's easy to be blasé. I'm short-sighted and for so long that I have become used to it, see the benefits in it. After all, sometimes it's useful to see the world out of focus.
I discovered even at school, that when addressing a large body of people, it was easier if you couldn't see them clearly. But if the option isn't there, that's different Ma'am, scary.

Then there is the impact of light. Without it no-one would be able to see. There is a line from the poem 'McCavity the mystery cat' that has stuck with me since school days.
'And every cat in the twilight's grey, every possible cat.' A fine line, so many things that can go wrong and suddenly trap us in our physical world instead of allowing us to freely enjoy it. Without the light, everything is blurred, shadowy, grey.

And as with the physical, so with the intellectual. Plato's people, us, sitting in our cave experiencing the world as shadows cast on the back of the cave, until one day someone breaks free of the cave and discovers the real world that is casting those shadows. The people back in the cave will not believe her when she comes back to share her new-found knowledge. Why should they? To Plato this is because the one who returns to the cave is the philosopher, bringer of knowledge and wisdom.
To me it's someone with just another veil, language and personal experience. Those trapped in the cave at least experience the shadows for themselves. The philosopher tries to explain what she or he alone has experienced and with mere words.

It always comes back to words. I always come back to words. Right now I'm hopping off this lily-pad, I'll be able to find it again, it's such a familiar one.

Today is Austen's birthday and for the first time that I can remember, I can't even ring him to wish him a happy one. Austen and his family are in Glastonbury. Although the word is synonymous with the music festival, to us Brits it is also a place of mysticism. Actually, the west in general is pretty mystical. If you think of that big bulge at the bottom of England, go east and you come to an area of the highest UFO sightings in the country, follow a ley line to the west and you come to places of the most ancient mystery.

The Tor is a place of feminine power. There are levels, a path that winds around the Tor up to the summit. Women walk those levels on days of spiritual power such as Beltain and Samhain. People in general walk them whenever they are there.

Today was also my friend's dad's birthday. I know he's still around. I'm going to wish both a Happy Birthday knowing that there are veils that hinder communication with both today, but having faith that both will just know we're thinking about them.

Ségo

No, not sago, the least delicious of all the comfort puddings. Ségolène Royal, affectionately referred to by her countryfolk as 'Ségo', is one of the possible candidates to become the next President of France.

I feel that you have to be an exceptional woman to even register on the radar in politics, to even be in the Presidential race in macho France is stellar. In my opinion, French women often enable Frenchmen to continue being sexist, so I cannot but admire a woman who has caught the public's eye.

An article in this Sunday's 'Observer' however, caught my eye for another reason. It was interesting, it was informative, but as the article got going it made mention several times of how sexy Mme. Royal is. (It also irritated the hell out of me for utterly failing to put any accents on her name, but that's a whole other rant).

Why? Why is this even appropriate to mention? Does anyone comment on the sexual attractiveness of Sarkozy and de Villepin? Not when I have been reading. Does a woman have to be conventionally attractive to hold a high office in a State? Angela Merkel is surprising her critics by doing a good job in difficult circumstances. I'm not sure that Andrew Hussey would find her attractive, and in many ways she does women a great service by not toeing that particular line. Hillary Clinton has had to pretty up to be taken seriously in politics. Anaconda Rice or whatever her name is could certainly be less waxed and polished.

I find it a very insidious message to be honest. On the one hand, Hussey is praising her, on the other his praise runs like this,
"....it's also easy to see how much of Royal's power is sexual. She is flirtatious, stylish and feminine in equal measure."
So how much of the praise that Hussey is heaping is real ? Is this the toadying that we expect about many pretty but sub standard women actors? Is Ségo really as good as they say or is it coloured by rose-tint? As I said, I'm more willing to believe that a woman has to be phenomenal to make it that far, but when journos open up this can of worms she will be judged later by the same.
'Oh,' they will say, 'of course she has done well, but that is because she is so lovely that everyone wishes to please her,'
or
'Oh, what a disaster, but what can you expect, she only came to power because of her looks.'

I tried to crane my neck and look at it from a different angle, which woman would I be happy to see in power in Britain? And of course I allow myself to appoint actors as well as politicians, although one of my picks, Glenda Jackson, is both.
Certainly Margaret Beckett would be on my list, perhaps not seen as having outstanding leadership skills, but you never know what might be brought out if she were given that responsibility and she has always been a damn fine minister.
Helen Mirren of course, even Dame Judi, though you may remember she caused me to frown with her recent 'Mrs Henderson' film. I wouldn't want Ruth Kelly, I've never quite understood why she gained portfolio in the first place.

My absolute top pick for today's Britain on the world stage would be Miriam Margolys. She looks as though she could run the planet in a wise mother sort of way. She has an infectious laugh and she is extremely intelligent. Maybe I should have put that first.

What of our beautiful young starlets? Yes, really, they would have to each have another twenty to thirty years under their belts to make it into my list, but given that, then I'd let in Kate Winslet, she is beautiful, clever and educated. I might even have Kate Beckinsale, after all, no-one can kick vampire and werewolf arse like she can, a damn vital skill for a Head of State.
But Keira Knightley ? I think not. I'm no fortune-teller, but I somehow can't imagine her ever being up to the task.

I would like to see Ségo have her opportunity to preside. I would be happy to see her meeting with Kanzlerin Merkel enhancing the female perspective in Europe. But I really don't care whether she sets a journo's boxers on fire. I'd just like to see more of a balance of power.

Departures

There is a bit of a breeze today, what a blessed relief. The tomato forest is liking this weather though, as are the peppers and the basil.
The 'bit of a breeze' over in Illinois however seems to be arriving in the form of tornadoes, I can see that might be a touche more worrying. Much of the area where my friend lives is suffering from power outages. Widespread loss of power is more than just an inconvenience, my friend was unable to put petrol in the car on her way home from work. With the distances involved here in North America and the lack of public transport - some of which relies on electricity anyway - that can be quite scary.

In the comments to yesterday's blog, Karen confessed to multiple killings and the RCMP have been alerted of course, but she also mentioned the phenomenon of tempers fraying leading to violent crime in this kind of weather. I have read about this happening in New York and some of the larger inner cities in Britain, and yet it is surely not totally explicable by the weather.

I have mentioned before that I used to live next door to a family from Trinidad. Canadians and Brits have all seen those TV ads for Malibu where West Indians try to get more serious about selling melons or using mobile phones and so on. I have no idea whether the ads show on TV in the States, but friends down south can see them here if interested. But the stereotype of the laid-back West Indian is one that I recognise almost intact from my ex-neighbours. Firstly, as often happens with groups of ex-pats, other Trinidadians would visit very regularly, but secondly, they really were amazingly chilled - quite literally for most of the year since the weather was always way too cold for them. Warmer weather just made them more relaxed and amiable than ever. The hotter it got the more hospitable they became.

Today Alex, Lou and Hazel go back to the UK. Starbucks and Tim Horton's will experience a noticeable drop in sales. I will certainly miss my girl, but she now needs to get stuck in to working and saving some money before uni starts at the end of September.

So my life tilts. Having had three girls in the house has given it a more feminine shift, from this evening there will be more males in the house than females, well, just me in fact. Later this month when Laurence arrives, even more so. And yet, and yet...with all those tomatoes out on the deck producing fruit perhaps the balance is maintained after all.

My friend Karen told me on the phone yesterday to 'dumb down' my blog or to at least add footnotes, she was sure that construction workers read it. I'm not sure that construction workers necessarily need things to be dumbed down, but just for Karen, I've glossarised some of the more difficult words.

Tomato : a vegetable*, eaten heavily disguised in pizzas, you may even have eaten one.
Feminine : lesbian** but without the sex (necessarily)
Weather : main subject of conversation for all Brits and Canucks.
Public Transport : a mythical system of getting large numbers of people around.
Malibu : coconuty*** bliss in a bottle although drunk mainly by footballers' wives.
Starbuck : one of the lead characters in 'Battlestar Galactica', the straight woman's female crush.

*Technically a tomato is a fruit
**Not to be confused with Lebanon
***I have no real idea how to spell 'coconuty', maybe it should be 'coconutty' like 'nutty' but..that just doesn't look right. The OED online is no help, no help at all.

Canicule

Holy mackerel it's hot. Tipped to reach 36° today, UV index of 5, so minutes of grace before you burn baby burn. Despite my best efforts, my arms are starting to look like the advert for Boots (I think) skin products that shows skin damage. Or a crocodile's skin, depending on your angle.

The UK have been suffering longer, my friend Ree in Illinois has been suffering longer, but the last couple of days, we have been up in the thirties too. So, Europe, the US and Canada, I think that constitutes global warming.

Yesterday my friend Yvonne and I went to visit our other friend Anne in hospital. Yvonne has air conditioning in her car, the hospital was also cool, so when we came back here and I asked her in for coffee, it was as though we were met by a wall of heat as we stepped into the house. And that was with all the windows open and the ceiling and floor standing fans going.

When we went to the Okanagan a few weeks ago, there was air conditioning in the rooms, so it was lovely to get out of the heat, but it made the most incredible noise all night, so it seems like you either get kept awake by the heat or the noise. Ah Nytol, the lightweight's drug of choice.

David Adam, the Guardian's environment correspondent, paints a scary picture for us about the implications of global warming for Britain. Still, marginally less awful than being stuck on a weird seacraft with Kevin Costner, but what can you do ? Well, I think the answer to that for Kevin and me is for us to move to Nanavut. Looks like the climate there will soon be like it is here now, perhaps a little less tropical.

In other news, and I realise what risk I take by mentioning this, but I always feel very saddened as I did in the UK whenever a police officer is killed in the line of duty. Two RCMP officers were shot recently when they went to check out a report of domestic violence. A man was assulting his own sister during the course of a fight they were having, the RCMP officers attempted to arrest him but he took off in his truck. When they finally cornered the guy, he shot them both. The female officer, Robin Cameron, was a single parent of an 11 year-old girl, the male officer, father of a nine-month old baby who will grow up without his dad.
Oddly, my take on this is NOT that we shouldn't have police officers, far from it, and I have no answer.
I have no idea whether tougher sentences for criminals has a deterrent effect. I am certainly not in favour of having the death penalty restored, hell, I have no idea whether they ever had it in Canada in the first place. I'm fairly sure that in the American States where it remains, there is no less risk to the lives of police officers.
There are severe restrictions here on the use of weapons by police officers and this, as in the UK where the boys and girls in blue are not armed at all, may have a very significant effect on overall numbers of police killed in the line of duty.
I think it may be interesting to have a comparison with heavily socialised countries like Scandinavia where taxes are high so that everyone in the country is well looked after.

Perhaps, as with everything, the answer lies in the way we educate people, maybe more personal education is needed, and at a much younger age. We are an advanced enough society to do that. Britain in the past few years has joined many of its mainland European partners in putting Citizenship on the school curriculum.

Whatever the answer is, we need to find ways of protecting those who protect us. Hell, even a conservative could appreciate that, a Mountie more than any other police officer I've ever heard of is a valuable commodity in the monetary sense. There is a lot of training and even the selection process is long and hard. Since I've been here I've met or heard of far more good people who haven't quite made it into the RCMP than those who have.
When the report says two good people down, they ain't kidding.

Poetic

The meanings of some words are quite straightforward, table for example, most English speakers, in spite of all having pictures of different tables in their heads, will understand the meaning if the word is put in context. 'I eat at the table' or 'the table will give you the results.' Different types of table, but put in context...

Some words change their meanings according to the culture as I have found since being in Canada, for example, to us English, a pillow is what we sleep on, to Canadians it is also what we would call a cushion on the sofa.

Then there are words that describe an abstract concept such as Humanity, Justice, Art. One such word that our Renaissance French lecturer spent some time trying to put over to us, was the idea of 'La Poétique'. It doesn't mean poetry itself, nor does it mean poetic, the adjective. La Poétique is the essence of poetry, that which underlies it and makes it poetry and which can be found in other things, but only if you have grasped what it is.

One small strand of Sartre's Existentialism is concerned with the way we define our world with words, and in this way we change the way we perceive the world. We use words to impose boundaries on what we see, Sartre gives us the example of looking at the root of a tree. We give it the name 'root' and thus we see it as something separate from but connected to the tree. We could have not chosen to name it and we would have then simply perceived the tree as a whole.

The naming of things cause all kinds of problems because of the way it influences perception. Do we call our god God, or Allah or Jehovah ...? Do we see what we want to see because the name itself comes with a whole definition? Perhaps.

But it's that little word poetic that I wanted to come back to. Not the French one, the English adjective. Interesting how a word can come to mean something so far removed from its original meaning. When something is poetic, it might actually be just that - poetic, or we might mean it in the sense of poetic justice. Depends on the context.

In general, I'm not feeling full-on sympathy for those bleating at their respective governments for not rescuing them quickly enough from Lebanon. The governments of Britain, Canada, the US are all there, evacuating them, just apparently not quickly enough. I felt full-on sympathy for people trapped in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, because it seemed like a perfectly good place to go on holiday. But Beirut, well, for the past thirty years, the name has been synonymous with destruction and conflict. I do of course acknowledge that some people are there working, but some - are just there.

But when you are a muslim cleric, I shall not type his name because to name him is to give him some kind of credibility, who publicly praises the atrocities of 11/09/01 and organises violence against Danish embassies because of a bit of humour, and then when you hot foot it out of Britain before you are put away and you decide to go to Lebanon, to then whinge at the British government that they won't rescue you from said new country and take you on a Naval ship back to dear old blighty, well, there isn't even a word for that amount of cheek.
But the British Navy's refusal to allow him on the evacuation ship, that, THAT is poetic.

Arrival

The Benjamin of my tribe finally walked into arrivals at YVR yesterday at something like 16.00, sans baggage. Hmmm. He had waited until his flight's carousel had been picked clean and then was told by some helpful person to find his airline's desk. This turned out to be like one of those chocolate orange TV ads. An almost impossible task since Zoom do not actually have their own desk at YVR, however we did succeed in tracking down one very nice gentleman who had the task of dealing with ten different charter companies. So he was our chocolate orange and when we had done all the Indiana Jones stuff to find him, he in his turn found Ben's luggage. Sorted.

Meanwhile, over in Britain, well, that's not entirely accurate because it doesn't include Scotland, but in general, the school year is about to grind to an unnecessarily tardy close.
Throughout the temperatures of 30 plus, teachers have been giving way, oh so way more than their pound of flesh before finally collapsing in a heap for five to six weeks. Oh yes, it's the five to six weeks 'holiday' that the general public focus on. Has seemed odd to me that teacher recruitment has been low for a number of years now, you'd think teacher training would be the number one pick for lazy graduates.

Often, at this time of year, you can hear some wheezing whinge from the right wing press and their lackeys about how it's time to reform the school year, after all, wasn't it created like this so that children were out in the fields to help bring in the harvest? Now, the argument goes, that child labour laws and mechanisation in the agricultural industry have removed that need, we should be making the school year longer, or smarter or something. The five term year is the most fashionable paradigm.

Well...teachers aren't the only stakeholders in education. As the school year stands at the moment, many parents seem incapable of taking their holidays during the six week summer period, so I cannot imagine how they would cope with little slots every ten weeks.
Education is steadily disrupted by a stream of kids being taken out of class from late September through to the end of November, and then it starts up again around Easter. And maybe a little ski-ing flurry in February.
Er... I should point out that Ben is here because he has finished school, not because I am one of those parents springing him early.

I was in the middle of slagging the right wing press as usual, when I received this link from Simmi, it's a corker:)

In my LGBT slot, Simmi had also sent me this interesting article from Planetout, comparing North American airlines for LGBT friendliness. Our own Air Canuck comes third, although as I said to Simmi, the fact that they are even included is something that gives kudos to Planetout itself. I would expect commercial airlines to be quite LGBT aware. It may seem a bit of a stereotype that all male air crew are gay, not only because of Alan Cummin's half of the comic air crew in 'The High Life', but speaking as someone who spends her fair share of time on aircraft, many of them are quite camp and again, speaking as a frequent air traveller, frankly - I like that. Simmi tells me that they're doing European carriers soon.

On the F-word blog yesterday, Jess McCabe pointed out that Manchester, yes, the city not the football teams, are charging a fee of £50 to everyone participating in this year's Pride march. It seems quite outrageous to me - no pun intended, seriously - when I think of the cost to the public of policing football matches and also of the money made by the city and its commerce and merchants because of Pride, well, apologies, but they're taking the piss.