And....

.....we're off to Birch Bay again, this time with the crew, will be back Tuesday evening, don't wait up.

Please feel free to smoke me a kipper though.

Spieglein an der Wand

The Department of Health in Britain have put forward the view that all men over the age of 50 should be on medication to bring down cholesterol.

Last week however, we were told that new research was suggesting that lower cholesterol was a contraindication in cancer. So, put another way, low cholesterol can increase the risk of cancer, OR that taking statins can increase the risk. The increased risk didn't seem that great to me, but still, to say that all men over the age of 50 should be given statins is to say that they should be given a medication that may increase their risk of cancer. It would however, lower their risk of stroke or heart disease.

I don't have any problem with the idea of the 'nanny state', I feel that it goes hand-in-hand with the welfare state. But I do think that people should have more choice about how they want to die, or more to the point, of how I want to die.

Cancer seems more horrible than heart attack or the stroke that actually kills you. However it seems potentially less horrible - depending on the type of cancer - than stroke that doesn't kill you.

Now I am also focussed on a topic I've touched on many times before. Dementia. Kevin's aunt has now reached a stage where she has been hospitalised again and should be in her endgame, but her physical health has been good for most of her life, so she could continue to live in this state of fear and loathing where she is caught up in the nightmare of her own existence for who knows how long.
She has always been a woman who is full of fun and good humour and now, and now.... What dignity is there for her? I hate that we afford animals more mercy than those we love.

I watch myself ageing in the mirror and I watch with interest. Like the stepmother in Schneewittchen,
'Spieglein, Spieglein and der Wand, wer ist die Schönste im ganzen Land?' but unlike her, I'm not sure I care very much. Oh I share some of her concerns, about being side-lined because of no longer being young, in spite of my experience, skill, knowledge. But I don't blame the young for that.

And yet, that in itself worries me. Is it a symptom of a greater malaise? Will I stop worrying about equality and the environment, about democracy and freedom for all?

As I sit in the silver behemoth with the air conditioning letting someone else drive, I feel comfortable and safe.
But when I'm in the driving seat of our little red car, listening to the engine so that I know when to change gears, swearing and cursing at other drivers who drift across the lanes with their zombie stares as they talk into their cell phones, and when I walk, pissing and moaning about the lack of pavements, that's when I feel alive.

Bowling

A fitful night's sleep from the heat despite the ceiling fan, and just before waking, a dream in which Sleepy and Crisp-e were doing stand-up in Guildford, but I couldn't get a ticket. Frustration.

We went to the downtown eastside of Vancouver to visit St. James's church. We found it and parked easily enough, but it was closed. A man was sleeping at the top of the few steps that led up to the front doors. On each of the doors across the front of the church was a sign asking those who sit or sleep on the church steps not to urinate, defecate or fix drugs. Seemed reasonable. We walked all around the church but none of the ways in were open. This also seemed reasonable in some ways, the ways that count.

We went to Granville Island, and first to Kids' World. Behind the building was a pond with ducks and geese and a wooden pirate ship. Just behind the prow was a hold, a four-sided box that went from the deck to the ground. Most children could climb out of the portholes below the deck, but a stocky child was stuck.
Standing, his head and shoulders were out of the hold, but he couldn't wriggle out of the portholes and he couldn't pull himself up and out of the hold. He was getting distressed.
I tried pulling him out, but he fell back. His nanna came over and looked down into the hold.
'He's too heavy,' she said.
I told him to brace his back against one side of the box and walk his feet up the opposite side, holding my hands, so that I would counterbalance his weight with mine.
He was worried about getting mud on the side of the box where other children might want to play. In the circumstances I told him not to worry.
This worked, and the boy was pulled out.
'You must be very strong,' said the nanna in a matter-of-fact voice, 'he is very heavy.' But she thanked me, and so did the kid.

Canadian drinking establishments have offended two of my children in the past two days.
Yesterday, in Steveston, Austen, Laurence and Kevin went into a pub with Teddy. They ordered drinks. Because Austen was driving, he had a soft drink, but the others had beer. Then, Austen was told to sit in the family area with Teddy. Laurence and Kevin however, were told they couldn't sit in the family area because they had drinks. No-one could explain this bizarre behaviour from the pub. Austen pointed out that it would be quite acceptable for him to be drinking in the middle of the afternoon with his son, but at that pub, he would have to have been separated either from his beer, or from his son.

This evening, Alex introduced me to Value Village. She had bought 'vintage' clothes from shops in Camden that had 'Value Village' labels on them. An item from VV priced at $5 was sold for £15.
I liked the idea that all these items were being recycled, even that there was some market for them overseas, I just didn't want to do the recycling myself.
When we got to the checkout, Alex had forgotten her purse. Hmmmm. So I had to pay.

On the way back home, we got a phone call telling us to go to Silver City - the cinema behind which is a diner, a restaurant and a bowling complex. We were to meet the others, all but Kevin, who was feeling unwell, there.
We waited and waited, but the others didn't appear, so I suggested to Alex that we went into the diner for a drink and sat on the patio.
Gung-ho. Until the manager asked to see her ID, which....she didn't have because she had left her purse at home. The manager said we could sit in the family area but that she would have to have a soft drink, although I could drink if I wished.
Alex was NOT amused.


When the others arrived, we zapped home and got her ID and then we were honour bound to go in and buy drinks while Austen, Sue, Laurence and the kids went to bowl.
A double Cosmopolitan seemed to end the annoyance though and the manager took it all with good humour.
I don't suppose he really wanted to turn our money down.

My Girls

All good. Finally everyone slept and felt well, so we had a wonderful day out ending with a barbecue, a rainchecked one from yesterday.






In a way, these photos are history, family history. My children and grandchildren in my home here in Canada.

Tomorrow we venture into Vancouver.

Marguerita

We're drinking Margueritas, not sipping you understand, drinking, because we're on holiday and the sun is shining. Also, we've eaten too much, far, far too much and everyone knows that alcohol cures stomach upsets. At least, my Aunt used to recommend different alcoholic drinks for different ailments. I remember that brandy was the cure for anything to do with stomachs, but then probably she didn't know about Margs.

Today is both St. James's day and Austen's birthday. We had planned to visit the Anglo-Catholic church of St. James in Vancouver today, but plans have had to be flexible.
In fact we have spent the last couple of days filling the fridge with food. The fridge is groaning. Jet lag has kicked in and sleeping patterns have been all over the place. At least my own has settled down.

The sales are on, aren't they great? Alex and I bought jumpers for $2.97 yesterday in Old Navy, and these were jumpers we might have bought at full price.

An article in today's Guardian points out that tourism to the US from Britain has declined dramatically since 2000.
The writer says that he can fully understand Brits avoiding the plastic tourist traps of Florida and Las Vegas, but there is a beautiful and amazing country out there to explore.
Usually I am fairly appalled by the comments, you worry about the readership of the Guardian when you read the abysmal standard of writing and thinking, but one very strong message came out from this one. People don't want to be treated like criminals trying to enter the US. And that's a very valid point.
There is no reason why visitors to the country have to be labelled 'aliens' and even from my own experience the self same forms and questions can be filled in and answered without tarring everyone with the same brush.

The behemoth. Austen and Sue have rented one. They were very careful to get one just big enough to seat everyone but not unnecessarily big. Thought was put into this. On almost every occasion, we can all get in it and when only a couple of us are going out we go in Kev's environmentally acceptable vehicle.
All of which actually makes me even more judgemental of people who drive this kind of vehicle almost empty, or who park in the 'small cars' spaces.

Summer is doing its stuff.

Airport

Arrivals. So much nicer than Departures. So bonding too. All the other people, I can easily cry to see almost anyone re-united.

A paper sign in front of me says 'Mrs Patel', I can't believe there aren't dozens of Mrs. Patels coming through. But when she arrives, a man hugs her, did Mr.Patel fear he may not recognise his wife? Had she been away so long?

Old ladies, I love seeing the old ladies, whether they are arriving to visit friends and rellies or whether they are coming back home, they are somebody's old ladies. Perhaps the depressing old ladies don't travel, or perhaps they constantly do, hopping from home to home, outstaying their welcome.

Then there are the people you recognise from way back, almost forgotten, but look, they haven't changed, well, maybe the hairstyle is different, and you can't even remember their names.
And of course they can't really be the people you knew, just types, people with similar mannerisms. That's all.

Even in the short time since I was last there, there have been improvements, newer boards, things have turned around a little. Timmie's is closed. But the big advertising poster for year round King Crab is still there, how could that be? We watch the men and women go out and do battle with the Bering sea to catch the crabs once a year, 'Deadliest Catch', a dangerous job.

The BA crew, the pilots in quasi-military uniform, catch the eye, make you turn and feel secure.

And then the first glimpse, way off, too far to really see, but a pace, a mannerism, and then as they draw closer, the moment is finally there. They are there.

Today, the jetlag, me too in a way, after two nights of very bad sleep. And Austen trying to get used to driving the hire car with our bizarre road rules and signs and oddly placed crossings. There is no handbrake. Today local stuff for local people. Canadian stuff, Costco, the Nature Park.
Alex to the bank, the Mall.

I can't believe they're here. In a very, very good way.

Arrival

And they're here! Thanks for all the good thoughts !

YVR

What can I tell you? Nothing in my life matters right at this moment except the arrival of my family. We should be at the airport right now, pacing the Arrivals lounge, me making unreasonable Tim Horton's demands.

The sun has struggled through the clouds a couple of times today and it's warming up.

But.....this morning/early evening, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on, the plane sat on the tarmac for a couple of hours. So now we don't have to go to the airport until 20.30. We have switched from tracking the BA website to the YVR one. (Vancouver airport for anyone whose life doesn't actually revolve around it).

I haven't slept much and my brain isn't functioning too well, but I'm guessing that I'm less tired than my lot who're still up in the air.

Hopefully, next time I blog, they'll be here.

Unicorn

There's a unicorn in the picture, if you understand unicorn to mean having one horn.
One of the antelopes had lost one, apparently this is bloody and painful, but people came to the centre to see the unicorn and the centre helps conserve endangered species, so it was not in vain.

Foolishly, I hadn't really thought much about the strike by certain city workers in Vancouver. The garbage is apparently not going to be collected until it's resolved, but hey, everyone knows the drill with that one, after a while the army get called in and although it's not very nice work for them, we get to see our own military forces on the street, we bond with the lads and lasses who keep our country safe, then the binmen go back to work and all is well.

Except...the knuckleheads who run our Province, or the judiciary or someone, has ruled that garbage isn't an essential service and so the army can't be deployed to stop rubbish rotting in the streets and keep the citizens safe from disease and pestilence. And thus the binmen can strike for as long as they like with impunity.

Today has been last minute cleaning and tidying. The house gleams. It's also very neat. Actually, the house itself is generally fairly neat, but now, even Laurence's room is tidy.

This afternoon was our writers' group summer party at Raymond's house. In spite of the rain, we had a good time. I do like the 'pot luck' that we do here where everybody brings a dish and you get a wonderful array of different foods.

Tomorrow, at 18.30 if all goes according to plan, Austen, Sue, Alex, Holly and Teddy's plane will land and we'll be at the airport to meet them.
I'll take all the positive vibes I can get.

1947

July of course must be space month, and here in Canada, our sci-fi channel is called Space.
Today on Space, we were up in the Yukon where aliens had been frightening anyone who happened to be on the main highway one night, and then we were re-visiting Roswell. I believe the 'Incident' happened earlier on in July, but nonetheless, 60 years ago this month.

I find it fascinating how the pendulum swings back and forth on this. Was there, wasn't there? Definitely no, definitely yes.
'Swing up and bring me hope of life, swing down and plunge the surgeon's knife,'
The surgeon's knife did indeed seem to be a bone of contention. Or rather his (in this case) scissors. A real surgeon would never hold them like that. Hmmm....
All to play for, if they're out there, we'd better stop squabbling because it might be them against us.
If they're not out there then we'd better stop squabbling because we're all there is.

The last few days we've had good, solid rain. Obviously cooler. But I'll be happy if the weather does what it's supposed to and brightens up on Monday. Not that I want the heat back, no siree Bob, but I want Vancouver and Richmond to show their splendour. I want my family to have their breath taken even before they land, when they look down from the aeroplane and see the trees, the water, the mountains.

The horror of 'honour killings' stalks both of our lands. In Britain, three male relatives of a young woman who was tortured, sexually assaulted and brutally killed by them, have been put away and for a long time.

Good, it is a message that needs to be sent however many times it happens, but it shouldn't ever happen. It is not an acceptable cultural practice any more than female genital mutilation is. It is something brought in from an inferior culture, like a virus coming in on imported food or a plane.

And here, it goes on and on. Almost always the husband, or father, or in one case, the mother who gave the order for her daughter's throat to be cut in India from a telephone in Vancouver, or was it Surrey? I don't remember.

In both the British and the most recent Canadian case, the police had been made aware of threats, of a history of violence. And here, the cry goes up.
Racism.
Racism? Why do you do this? Do Canadians from other cultural backgrounds kill for 'honour'? Or is it in fact actually proscribed by the law of the land?
Oh yes.
So it isn't part of our culture, it's not something we can put up with. Racism? You cannot justify everything by crying foul. Not things that are against fundamental human decency.
How long would we have to go back in our history to find a time when women could be legally brutalised and killed by men because they did something those men didn't like?

Further back than 1947 that's for sure. Stop squabbling? Well some things are worth fighting for. And the aliens had better realise it.

1969

On this day in 1969, apparently, man first walked on the moon. And at school, we were allowed to watch it. I remember, we were all in the hall at primary school, watching history on TV. I think it was unprecedented to watch TV at school then, but I may be wrong, we may have been assembled to watch the Queen or some such.

For those at Mayhem, and thus presumably Britain in general, today was the last day of term, the final day of the school year, whilst in our shops, all the 'back to school' displays are up.
It must have been getting close to the end back in 1969, who knows, but for Karen and me it was the end of an era, in September we'd be going to secondary school. I had left Portsmouth and wouldn't return for 32 years, but in the meantime I'd meet Di and Kerry and Eve and people who would be good friends.

And we've lived our lives since then, but what has happened to the space race? Why aren't we building on the moon? Why isn't there an international space programme putting someone on Mars? The thinking has all been left to science fiction.

Anyway, back to Earth and a couple of things that BC has got organised.
One is dogs. Now I didn't realise this until yesterday when I saw it on TV, but most municipalities have dog licences and wardens who can fine people if they can't show proof of having paid their $35. And the fines are huge.
Not only that, but the price of the licence goes up if the dog isn't neutered, and, you can't own more than two dogs.
I think that all of this is brilliant and yet bizarre, there is hardly any attempt to police the roads here, people are allowed to operate machines of death whilst talking on cell phones, having small children on their laps, they don't seem to go to gaol for drunken driving, it is just all quite extraordinary.

It has also only just occurred to me how well Canadians manage the school holidays. Although school breaks up at least a month earlier than in Britain, the city centres aren't packed with roaming packs of unpleasant youths all day long as back home.
Every Community Centre, Heritage site, Church, Mosque, Synagogue, Temple, all run summer schools, which pretty much not only wraps up school aged children all day, but university students too, for these are the squadrons who run all these programmes.

I find this all admirable, but again, odd. In Britain there would be no chance of having a programme run purely by university students, you'd have to have some qualified leader, some already overworked professional in charge.
At the Nature Park, we have two fantastic students running our summer programmes, and a team of high school pupils volunteering with them.
And why would secondary school pupils volunteer their time? Because it is part of what they HAVE to do. Somewhere along the line, to leave here or get good marks there, they have to have 'volunteer hours'.

Amazing, alien, amateurish. But still amazing.

Water Buffalo

Yesterday Holly went to the zoo, today, her nan went.
Today, I went as a second member of staff on the Seniors' tour to the Mountainview Conservation Centre in Langley. The place was more like a safari park than a zoo, each animal or set of animals had so much space in their enclosures that we couldn't actually see all of them. Ivan the Indian Rhino was hiding somewhere. This water buffalo came over to have a look at us.
Kris, ever the naturalist, asked some question about whether you could tell the sex from their horns. I pointed out that he had very large goolies hanging there for all to see.

There were some packs of dogs from Africa that were the most endangered mammal there, but they were being managed and bred here in BC. They looked quite soft and pretty, but it was pointed out that if a keeper stepped into their enclosure without the pack being enticed away first, they'd soon be food.

Fortunately, we had no medical emergencies. I think there was a possibility of that had we not been pulled around the many acres by a tractor whilst sitting on what looked like benches stuck on a trailer.

And I got home early. On the doorstep, a parcel, a picture by Teddy and Holly. Good timing methinks, I can get that on the wall before they arrive and a very worthy pic too.

On National Geographic, we're watching some Herpetologist searching for giant crocs. A couple of nights ago, a different herpetologist was looking for giant cobras. Everyone's into herps, everyone wants to find giants. Since Herpetology encompasses both reptiles and amphibians, I look forward to some enthusiast coming to take a gander at our giant bullfrogs at the Park.

Still, no-one's quite as good as Steve Irwin at this game. There are some good presenters on TV and I believe there are some bad - I remember Sleepy wanting to euthanase one of them - but Steve-O set the bar high.

And I learnt another animal related fact today. The American badger is a completely different animal from the European badger. Good old Brock. I was quite confused to see something that looked like a large Pekinese dog waddling across the TV screen but being called a badger. There was something terribly...un-badger-like about it.
This probably explains the distinct lack of badgers in American literature. At least...I assume there's a lack, I can't say I've read too much of it.

Oh, and that last picture - a condor. I think he was watching us.

Holly

Happy Birthday to my beloved granddaughter, 3 today. She went to the zoo, I've seen the pictures, though I'm not quite sure how her daddy managed to be there! I had to phone and leave a message at 8 this morning. But I'll be seeing her in five days' time!

The last couple of days, people have been bringing us in spiders to identify. Red ones, red and black ones, furry ones. In my entire life I never thought I would be involved in identifying spiders, I used to get the screaming habdabs when confronted with quite innocuous ones as a young whippersnapper.
I felt full of my own importance peering at a little reddish brown corpse through a big old Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass and carefully measuring the cephalathorax. I didn't manage to find out what it was of course, but I did venture a moderately informed opinion on what it wasn't.

It is bizarre that people will go into the nearest public facility with their questions.
A friend who works at the Firehall told me that a couple of weeks ago a man just wandered in and asked some medical question, the type you'd normally ask your pharmacist about. The fire chief told the guy to do just that.

Kris told me that a couple of years back, a member of the public came into the Nature House with a taped up box. They wanted her to identify the snakes in the box.
'Where d'you find them?' she asked,
'On a truck,'
'Right....do you know where the truck came in from?'
'Not sure, the States somewhere, maybe Texas....'
'So......do you think it might contain some of the most deadly rattlesnakes in North America?'
'Don't know..'
'Well there's no way that box is being opened in this facility...'

Another thing that has happened the last couple of days is that I have been at work until 19.30. Yeah, quite reminds me of days at Mayhem. Except that I would have had plenty of time to do the work during my normal day, just that I've had to wait for the President of the Nature Park Society to come over from her day job to help me fill in a Grant Application.
Tonight we all but finished it. And designed a Halloween House.

Jeux sans frontiers

Space, the final frontier.....you might have been led to believe, the reality is that the final frontier is the City of Delta. I spent almost three-quarters of an hour there yesterday trying to find a friend's house that I'd been to several times before.

Firstly, and you might think logically, the roads are all numbered. You might think that, and you'd be wrong. The streets are numbered and the avenues that cross them are numbered. So....you have a two way numbering system going on. THEN....you have streets off of other streets that are numbered with an A or a B. Confused? Oh no, that's by no means the last word.

Let us consider the hypothetical street 714a. 714a is a street off 714, but not directly. To get to it, you have to go down 697 Avenue. Ok, so you're pootling down 714, turn off on 697 to get to 714a, but then you discover that you've come to the end of 714a and you haven't seen your friend's house number. What's going on? Well, there are six or seven more sections of 714a and none of them are joined in any way to the section you went down.
And not only that, but if say, your friend's HOUSE number is 6923, then you expect their neighbours to live in 6922 and 6924, or at worst, 6921 and 6925. You might think that, but like I said, you'd be dead wrong.

And rumour has it, well more than rumour, that the police won't attend domestics at these addresses for the self-same bloody reasons.

Pshaw.

This morning the temperature was unusually tolerable and shortly after waking, rain was pattering on the skylight and the windows and as I walked to work, although it still felt warm out, it was also, obviously wet.
The roads looked as though someone had washed them with soap suds, white foam making its way down from the camber.
The parched trails in the park were now softened.

By close of play, the sun was shining again.

I generally keep quiet about Harry Potter, due to the fact that I always thought I was the only non-fan in this quadrant of the galaxy. However it seems not. Nicholas Lezard makes some pretty damning comments about the standard of writing contained within the pages of the books and this, together with the derivative nature of the subject matter, is pretty much the point in my opinion.

"A nine-year-old might feel quite pleased with the writing in the Harry Potter books. It's pretty embarrassing coming from an adult," says Lezard. God bless ye Nick, it needed saying.

Sleepy says she's fed up with Victoria Beckham, frankly I'm fed up with Mr. Posh.
No, he hasn't been stalking me or anything, but I'm not in charge of him. Just because he speaks roughly the same version of English as me - very roughly - we are not joined at the hip.
More than that, his presence on the same land mass as myself has no impact on my life bar the fact that people keep asking me what I think. I think nothing, he is no-one, the only opinion I have is that he isn't attractive and the game he plays IS called football. (That's not an opinion, that's a fact.)

Oh and here's something else I don't have (much) of an opinion on. Conrad Black. I understand that he's an evil, swaggering toad, who has turned his back on Canada and now is trying to turn his back on Britain. The justice system of one country or another will deal with him so that I don't need to worry about him. The only slight bugette I have with the whole thing, is that my understanding is that his crimes are all money related whereas I keep reading stories about men murdering or violating women getting away with far shorter sentences than CB.

Justice, the final frontier.

Fever Pitch

Here's a conundrum to kick off with. What could be more sinister than being erased from history? We were watching a Discovery Channel programme about a woman Pharaoh who had been pretty much been written out, but at some point, the presenter pondered who could have erased her from history or something more sinister. So if you can think of anything, let me know.

Do you have an evil side that can be used for the Good? I do. I have to curb my need to correct people's English grammar and sometimes pronunciation, not when it's based on accent, but when it's based on a mishearing of a word, laziness or incorrect stress.
MOST of the time I succeed, not always.
I can't take 'artic' for 'Arctic' for example, that's pure negligence.
'Forsithia' for Forsythia is because you've only ever seen the word written down.
Emphasising the adjective before the noun it's describing is because you haven't got to that page in your English text book or you don't listen to the BBC enough.

But both Kevin and my friend Ree are prepared to let me loose on their reviews and reports. I get to criticise, underline, suggest, edit, insert comment boxes and they don't hate me afterwards. Well, they might, but they let me do more and that's what counts. These are technical things that I don't even really understand, and in some ways that's easier, because I don't get sidetracked by the content.

Excitement is at fever pitch now on both sides of the Atlantic. Austen and Sue are making last minute arrangements, Marks and Spencer are working flat out to get my order to Portsmouth, Alex is frantically touring the entire country, lest any part of it remain unvisited and here I am like a kid who has opened almost all the little windows on a six month Advent calendar.
Which reminds me, I can't remember ever seeing anyone wearing a dog collar outside of a church here. Why is that?

We saw another great film yesterday, one that we had rented, 'Driving Lessons' with Julie Walters, another of Britain's great middle-aged women actors. This was a wonderful film from start to finish.

So, who could fail to be fascinated by the story of Bin Laden's 27 year-old son being outraged by publicity over his marriage to a 51-year-old, five times divorced grandmother from Moulton in Cheshire. Seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up.
I just hope to god she isn't going to cost the British taxpayer money by going to live in one of those places whence she'll have to be airlifted out in a couple of years because he treats her so shockingly and she can't get reasonable and free treatment for her MS.
Frankly, I think there should be a reality show in there somewhere, 'Growing up Gotti ' be damned, 'Living with the Ladens' bring it on!

Autobots

Have I mentioned how hot it is? Oh yes, I think I may have.

Seven hours out in it today, luckily we did have a canopy and our dragons to keep us from complete frazzle.
The City Celebration was nowhere near as busy as the Salmonfest, which was a shame in many ways because there was a lot there for people to do and it was quite literally in the City Centre, turns out we have a running track there and that was where the event was.
I truly hadn't realised this was what was meant by 'the oval'. Obviously in Britain 'The Oval' is 'The Cricket Ground' but here I've only heard the expression in relation to skating. 2010, we have the Olympic skating in Richmond, so a multi-million dollar, or billion dollar or whatever, skating oval is being built.

Our dragons looked superb. We had a steady stream of kids coming to colour in scales to stick onto them. But it was bloody tiring. AND I ended up covered in sparkles, sparkles I couldn't even get off in the shower.

Anyroad. When I got back and had showered, couldn't not really, Kevin and I went out to eat at Big River, the diner opposite the cinema and then went to see the Transformers movie. This was something Kevin wanted to see and I had absolutely no interest in. I tell you this to prove that I was not pre-disposed to enjoy it.
Well it was brilliant, utterly brilliant. It's great seeing that kind of film on the big screen, but the effects were amazing, there was also some just fantastic cinematography. The dialogue, the acting, the humour, superb. Well worth seeing.

Who'd have thought?

Red, White and a little Blue

Here's the thing, if you had one of those white Ford Transit type vans with the totally enclosed back space, and you were parked in a public car park, why would you engage in sexual activity in the front?
It's ok, the question's rhetorical, I know the answer.

The heat is on again. We were promised lower temperatures and not just for one afternoon. But...it's back, beating down.

The weekend to come promises little rest. My dragons and I will be spending Saturday at the City Centre Celebration. I have no idea why we have to celebrate quite so much. Every week we are 'invited' to some fest or another. Mostly we have to tell them to sod off.
We get no benefit as an organisation from any of this, the idea is to raise our profile and yet wave after wave of kid already recognises us from the school programmes.

Back at Schloß Schnee, Kevin is writing an account of some of the projects he has worked on for his professional organisation. Just like me, he is having to 'learn the code'.
One of the most frustrating projects in his career needs the most encoding.
When the company he works for was first taken over by a Dutch firm, there was an office in California and an office here in Richmond.
The Dutch firm looked to rationalise and there were severe cuts made in the Canadian office. I remember his office at this point and it was a few good engineers working in what looked like a makeshift office connected to an equally makeshift lab.

The project, a collaboration between both teams, limped along, hamstrung by the distance and lack of communication. The small electronics team in Canada were being jerked around by the monster mechanical team in the States.

Then along came a Brit to sort it all out. He actually lived in California, still does in fact. But having seen both offices and looked at the expertise in both, he simply said to the Dutch,
'You're cutting back the wrong one, close the American office.'
Simple as that.
Before Kevin knew it, he was off the project that was becalmed, beset by huge problems, and going nowhere, and was part of a growing and flourishing company.
But it's difficult to account for that in professional terms. Should you try to weather the storm or cut and run? When do you reach the point where you have to jump ship?

My friend Dawn, as you know in Bangladesh, has contributed to a blog being published by one of her colleagues. I will link to it while she is out there. In her own most recent e-mail, Dawn had mentioned eating a western chicken dish as a refreshing change from the Asian food. My first reaction was, fancy anyone needing a change from Indian food, but then I thought again, and wondered how long even I would be able to eat it without respite. I think I've certainly managed a week, but then only dinners.

Interestingly, L'Oréal, they of the expensive end of the inexpensive cosmetics and hair products market, have been fined and in the case of one senior exec, given a suspended gaol term, for using representatives to promote their product who were specifically aged 18-22, UK size 10-14 and 'BBR', ie bleu, blanc, rouge, the colours of the French flag.
No, sorry, they haven't been punished for all of that, just the French flag bit. Uha. Why is that bad? Because apparently French flag colours means the person is white.
See to me, it just means French, and it seems more reasonable for a French company to promote their product in France using French people than it does to specify age and size.
And we're just talking about people who demonstrate their products in supermarkets, I'm surprised they even register on anyone's radar, they certainly don't on mine, oh well except for the woman in ours who dems everything and seems to have very few teeth but talks a lot.

Still, she is white.

Marie Antoinette

Having sweated like a ...sweaty thing all day long, the sky has now clouded over somewhat and the temperature has become more bearable.

Luckily, our local rag, whose job it is, nay DUTY to inform us what manner of weather we're enduring, today ran the headline, 'Heatwave!' followed by an article confirming that we are indeed having a heatwave, but without then adding,
'a tropical heatwave, the temperature's rising, it's hardly surprising, we're having a heatwave,' which, in fact, IS surprising because that's about the standard of their journalism.
At the end of the revelation, they remind people not to lock their pets in their cars.
And honestly - it probably needed saying.

Today I made dragon books - well, to be honest, our receptionist did the making, I just primped and fluffed the writing and illustrating a bit more. Tomorrow I collect our dragons, and I'm excited. Now I need the much needed rain to not actually arrive on Saturday. However, if it does, then it'll be payback for a little bit of astonished sarcasm I couldn't help on the phone t'other day.

A school phoned and enquired about booking a Park Interpreter for a tour. I gave her the details. She seemed surprised to learn that there would be a charge. She then more or less said that they'd bring the kids to the Park anyway, but not have the tour.
Fair enough.
But she'd need the picnic tables.
'Well,' I said, 'they are there for public use and our own summer schools who of course have priority, plus, there is some Park management going on in that area next week,'
'What does that mean?' she asked,
'Dead and dying trees which may be a hazard to the public will be being chopped down,'
'But we need that shelter in case it rains,'
'Well all I can do for you is the opposite of whatever a rain dance is,' I said.

In potentially horrifying news, U.S.TV are now planning to take another British sacred cow and suck all the humour out of it before sticking its original label back on and releasing it on an unsuspecting but desperate public.
At least this time, they can't possibly, POSSIBLY call it 'Little Britain'.

Hosanna! Green Wing, the formidably funny Britcom, is having a rerun on BBC Canada. Having a low boredom threshold means I tend not to be able to watch things more than once, but Green Wing, that I am happy to watch again.

And so to Marie Antoinette. We were sitting around talking one lunchtime, and Kris suddenly said,
'I wonder what happened to Marie Antoinette's children.' And then we both forgot to look it up, and so it continued, we'd think of it, then forget.
Until today, today I remembered to look them up and of course by doing so, read about the woman herself and decided that maybe she was a very much maligned woman.
Unpopular mostly for being Austrian, set up by some con artist so that the public believed her guilty of something she didn't do and finally executed just for being an aristocrat while the hoy palloy cheered.
THAT is the real meaning of the word 'racaille'. Rabble.

In her final months, and after the execution of her husband, Louis Vuitton, I'm just kidding, Louis XVI, she was imprisoned with her children. After her death, her son languished in gaol until he died of TB, but her daughter, later Duchesse d'Angoulême, lived on and exercised some influence during the reigns of her Louis XVIII and Charles X, her uncles.

So now I wish the same for Marie Antoinette as I wish for Anne Boleyn, that they could somehow, by some miracle, have known before they died an untimely and unjust death, that their daughters would survive and be great women.

Blueberries

Although I realise that ferns do not yield up blueberries, the picture makes me feel a modicum cooler.

This morning as I went into the Nature House, I noticed the first ripe blueberries of the season. They didn't taste very sweet, but it was a thrill to see them. This evening I bought the first punnet of the season. Oh, no, not true, I got them free for spending over $150.

The temperature is now stupidly hot, and I mean STOOPIDLY. Getting in to the car - stifling, standing out in the car park - suffocating. In the house - wall of heat. No hiding place, especially if you're in downtown Vancouver, since they've been told to turn off their a/cs.

I went round to visit my dragon today, the one that's being made. It is brilliant. I had been told that this woman was an amazing artist, but until she showed me round her house and I was able to see her work for myself, I had no idea how good. Her work is just brilliant, beyond brilliant, it needs to be seen.

So it turns out that men and women talk the same amount. A 'noted neuropsychiatrist' had previously 'found' that while women utter around 20,00 words a day, men only spoke about 7,000. In the case of said neuropsychiatrist, clearly 7,000 words of bullshit.
Researchers at the University of Arizona somehow persuaded 400 people to wear a device that automatically digitally recorded all of their conversations over a period of time and the study itself went on for six years. Pretty thorough then. The result was that there was no significant difference.
Next stereotype please....

I can't help wondering whether the premier of Pakistan is feeling a little sheepish about certain remarks he made about Salman Rushdie, now that he and the nation's Pres have been pretty publicly spanked by Al-Q.

The Guardian reports that an increase in the wearing of pants in the Middle Ages increased literacy. I'm not totally sure I follow the argument, more underwear = more rags = more paper = greater literacy. Yeah see, I'm not sure how paper per se increases literacy, I would have thought some actual teaching may have to be involved.

Queer as Volk

'We welcome and support diversity.'
I'm writing a grant application at work at the moment. I have to show that our programs are available to all irrespective of religion, gender, physical ability, age and sexual orientation.
I could cover the rest, although age was a tricky one, difficult to show that programs for Kindergarten kids are available to all irrespective of age, but whatever, no, the impossible one was sexual orientation. Ergo the lame statement, from the heart, but lame. Oh and when I say from the heart, there's some diversity I don't welcome. The badly behaved can bugger off and find another Nature Park.

Oh, and on the subject of intolerance and gay matters, on the website/blog 'Queerty' that Sleepy alerted me to, I was less happy than they to notice that Shannon Doherty is about to annoy us all on the small screen again. I can't help it, I just find myself disliking her. Queerty refers to her as 'the dastardly Ms.D' but we all know that dastardly is a term of endearment. They like her secretly.

I'm horrified to have stumbled upon the Italian for 'a great piece of pussy', I never wanted to know that, and unlike most other new items of vocabulary in whatever target language, natch, this one won't go away, like that annoying song that's stuck in your head, Sleepy got me the other day by mentioning 'all around my hat, I will wear the green willow.'
And FYI (*narrows eyes* and you know who you are) Folk Music is god's way of telling us you can buy earplugs from all good chemists.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Silvio Sodding Berlusconi, what is he on? Describing Mrs. Thatcher as una bella gnocca is bang out of order!
Perish the thought.

Lesbians on last night's Doctor Who btw *you know who you are*. Completely matter-of-fact, but then that's Russell T. Davies for you, it's all part of life.

Did I mention it's frackin' hot? I feel like meat on a barbecue. Sizzling, but not in a good way. The sun creme's not doing it.
And then the lunacy of the lettuce leaf. In the summer, when you're most likely to eat salad, the humble lettuce leaf only lasts a couple of days even in the fridge. In the winter, when you want stomach filling root veggies, your lettuce will last a couple of weeks. What's that about?

That weird thing's going on again.
Sleepy's catching up on one of Kev's and my favourite series, Shameless. But we've run out. I brought back series 1 & 2 on DVD last year. Showcase (by coincidence previously THE showcase for gay TV) have been showing intermittent episodes. But tonight, tonight meine Damen und Herren, they are showing the third series.
Oh yes.
All around my hat I will wear the pink will-ow....