So the rush is over. The work rush.
The holiday rush is about to start.
I am delicately balanced between the self-imposed stress of the two.
As I said to a colleague today, I have deep reserves of patience available if I need some, I just don’t think many people are worth dipping into them for.
He said he felt the same about life.
It was one of those afternoons.
We passed the budget and headed over to the Triangle for lunch which was very relaxed and nice and I did my thing that I do of not mentioning politics AT ALL, which seems to help the people from work when they’re very stressed, although sometimes I think it makes me look like a bimbo (what a horrible word) and I just burbled on at length about various things until I hit on the one they wanted to talk about and then sat back and listened to the stories.
Which was great because I learn so much about Canada when they tell those stories.
Also, even though they are about things I am still learning about, they are really comforting because they remind me of the swirl of the pub after work at home, which is the thing I think I miss the most about home.
The idea that it may be five o’clock, or three o’clock, or two o’clock in the morning and we might all have had a shitty week, and have partners at home who are expecting us, or chores to do, or someone we don’t like particularly to meet, or a meeting to go to. And I might have spent the week moaning about my life and bitching about you and getting paranoid about your motives and consequently trying to shaft you out of a job, but HEY…..
… I’m not done with you just yet, so let’s go for a pint and remember why we do this job.
At one point in the afternoon we found ourselves discussing McCarthy’s Bar, which two of them had read.
And then one of them said he was dead. Pete McCarthy.
I hadn’t known that.
I love afternoons like that.
They don’t come along very often.
And then someone told a story about the storm the other night, about how the dog was scared and couldn’t sleep. So they both had to go downstairs and sleep with the dog…
I would have put the effing thing out in the yard.
Canadians and their pets....
After enough time had passed and everyone was either gone or gone, Himself and I wandered out and walked down to a spot on the waterfront where the birds gather and watched them for a while.
Until he said, see that sparrow?
There were about fifty.
Which one, I said.
The one over by the wall.
I looked.
There was one. It was hopping anxiously over and back in front of a little clump of grass that was clinging to life in a narrow crack in the pavement.
Canada is full of cracked pavements.
Well, Nova Scotia is.
I watched the sparrow. I had a feeling this was going to be one of Himself's comments on my world. His humour is genius.
And one of my colleagues had spent forty minutes the night before trying to convince him that plants could talk.
Swampy had bailed on him of course.
I think that’s why he remembered it.
He’ll have to get used to Swampy’s disappearances.
That’s just what he does.
Anyways, I watched the sparrow for a while.
But I couldn't fathom what he had spotted.
What? I said.
That sparrow is trying to talk to that blade of grass.
Which blade?
The young one, in the middle.
I watched again.
Sure enough, the sparrow was zoning in on that blade for some reason.
Rubbing its brown breast against it.
It’s probably looking for food.
No, look, they’re all eating out of the stalk on the other side.
So they were. Humming around it like jewel birds.
Everyone, even sparrows, is a humming bird inside. But you gotta do the best with what you got in this world.
And they were on the waterfront.
In Halifax Nova Scotia.
So it was common or garden grass in a crack in the pavement.
Anyways, I watched some more.
And then I started to snigger.
Because he had noticed it straight away for what it was.
A stupid sparrow. Too dumb to notice all the eating going on just beside him.
It gets you thinking all the same.
All this hippy dippy stuff they come out with.
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