Takin' Tom to Cape Breton

Cape Breton tomorrow.

Finally.

We’re going on a work retreat. A think-in before the House sits again, so to speak. At least that’s what it says on the agenda.

We’re congregating in Sydney. Sydney, Cape Breton that is. Home of the Tar Ponds and Coke Ovens. Bondi Beach it ain’t. One of the most polluted sites in Canada. They’re still fighting over how to clean it up. They’re talking about a mobile incinerator.

A mobile incinerator?

How does one implement the necessarily rigorous health and safety standards to ensure public and environmental safety on a mobile incinerator, I wonder? No problem apparently. Hmmm.

But yeah, Sydney is also one of the most diverse constituencies in Nova Scotia. We’re having an international meal tomorrow night. And it being Valentine’s Night, I have been assured by our host, the king of the poutines himself, GG, that there will be a surprise for the ladeez.

I keep imagining a Cape Breton coalminer’s version of The Full Monty. With fiddles.

It snowed again at the weekend. Dumped another foot on us. When it snows, the city becomes incredibly quiet. Nothing moves really apart from the psychotic jogger types and the snow ploughers.

Then, after it stops, people emerge and start shovelling out their cars and shovelling their pathways and driveways clear.

The snow plough comes along and shoves the snow off the road onto your nice clear path. So you push the snow to the edge of the path. There are little tunnels that we walk through to get here and there. Unfortunately, they run along the path and they don’t clear little pathways out at the sides. So if you want to cross the road or catch the bus, you have to jump into a big pile of snow and hope it doesn’t go up to your knees.

Bah. Very annoying on a Monday morning when you’re grumpy and you don’t want to be standing in the freezing cold waiting for the damned bus in the first place.

Today at approximately seven am the entire city of Halifax, apart from the joggers, woke up and looked out the window and swore as they realised that it had stopped snowing and they had to go to work. Boston got a snow day!!!! And we were supposed to get that storm.

Bah. Bloody Environment Canada getting everyone's hopes up again.

Cape Breton tomorrow but.

We’re allowed bring two cds each in the SUV. I’m inflicting Tom Dunne’s Irish collection on my co-passengers. To punish them for asking whether I had any Pogues.