Haiti brings out the pedant in everyone

Haiti. 

What to say.

I was listening to Stephen Lewis, father in law of Naomi Klein and kick-ass international humanitarian in his own right, talking on the radio today (as part of CBC's National Day for Haiti, which was mostly a rehash of the last week's conversations with some added Canadian rock stars telling us to contribute to the relief fund) and he said that yes of course, it is completely normal for us all to feel numb, overwhelmed, and devastated by the news coverage of the earthquake.

I was thinking, why would I feel any of those things?

My house didn't fall on my head. 

I'm not from Haiti.  I'm not trying to find out what happened to my family that I had to leave to come live in Montreal, to try and have a shot at a life. 

My mother didn't die.  My brother didn't have to dig his family out from under what's left of his house with his bare hands.  My sister isn't lying under a sheet tent in a street with no food or water, waiting for an amputation when the MSF saws finally get through the 'bottleneck' at the airport.   My dad isn't working a backhoe burying thousands of bodies in mass graves.

Obviously, I feel very sad for all the millions of Haitian people who are feeling numb, overwhelmed, and devastated by the earthquake.  And supportive of all the brave kind people who are trying to help them.

But could we all get a little fucking real about this.

I spent the day shopping and getting my hair done.

Like millions of other western hemispherians.

Mostly today, I felt contented in a slightly sickening consumer-buzz kinda way.

Christ, I even put my dog in daycare.

To ease the guilt of leaving her on her own when I go out.

What makes me feel numb, devastated and overwhelmed at times is the fact that for the totally random reason of birth, I can do all of those things and for equally random reasons, billions of people round the world can't. 

Ever. 

Because if we all could do them, then there wouldn't be enough resources for it to happen.  And me and all my privileged western hemispherian colleagues would not have such a nice time.

And so we have constructed a world in which we make sure they won't ever get off their knees enough to realise that we aren't so great after all.

I know Stephen Lewis knows these things.

A lot better than me.

So what in jaysus' name is he doing on the radio mouthing platitudes at us?

Because if he went on the radio and lectured us all on the unfairness of it all, we'd get mad and his foundation would lose funding.

It has struck me forcefully that the media coverage of Haiti is different to previous disasters.

For me, anyways.

When you think about it, go back to that Michael Buerk report from Ethiopia in 1984 that everyone my age remembers so well (because it resulted in Live Aid). 

Bad stuff happened.  You saw it on television.  If you were in a house where there were newspapers, you read about it in detail.  If those newspapers were broadsheets, you got some sense of why it was happening.

You got past the word HUNGER.

But mostly it was a narrative that hyped the unfortunateness of some poor people and the bountifulness of the rest of us.

Nowadays, it's a little more complex.

The news breaks on Twitter, it's reported on 24-7 rolling news, the videos are put up on YouTube, they're shared and dissected on Facebook and other sites, Google brings millions of opinions to your fingertips.

It's at the same time easier and more difficult to get past the word DISASTER.

Reading around the issue I am struck by how RIGHT everyone who is commenting feels they are.

The US ARMY ARE WRONG.

It's the Navy, was my impression.

The Aid Agencies ARE SURRENDER MONKEYS.

They`ve been outflanked by the speed of the military operations, was my impression.

The news media are DISASTER JUNKIES.

For a reason.
 
The Haitian government is CORRUPT.

Well, which G8 nation is propping it up.

Too many viewpoints for me to figure it out.

But the hum of the rest of us feeling good about throwing another couple of hundred onto the credit card bill is coming through loud and strong.

Thank Christ for that.... maybe it`ll help with the numbness.
 
Interestingly, a poll of Canadians found that 88% of them felt that the money they donated would NOT get to the people of Haiti.

But they are still leading the world in donations per head.


Tonight`s the big face off between the Canadian mega-fundraiser and the Yankee one.  Which I have to go watch soon, because it is the thing to do in our house tonight.


I guess people are good, generally.  But they cling to viewpoints for reasons of stability and that is not good, generally.

Hopefully the intersection of the two aspects of us will result in a new, better, Haiti at some point in the future.

Social media so far is not impressing me with its ability to clarify complex issues.

This week's Friday is Saturday

I had the day off work today.  It is a great scheme that the provincial government has.  Basically, if you work an extra half hour every day, you get every third Friday off.

Talk about golden handcuffs.  Very difficult to leave a place like that.

Even if  being headhunted by a major corporation is a pleasure-suffused experience.

So I had today off and slept in till 9.30, which was not good because we had a date at the puppy resort.

I found one that had dates, not interviews.  Which was also cheaper.

So threw some clothes on, put the coffee in the travel mug and off we went.

Dumped the dog off.

They said I could call and check up on her as often as I wanted to.

wow.  I mean, I know I'm sad and all, but it would never occur to me to check up on her when she's in a place where someone else is being paid to put up with her.

Off I went to get my hair done.

Graham shrieked at my split ends.

I hadn't noticed I had any.

WHAT have you been doing to your hair?  Have you been using a straightener?

Again, I was a bit bemused at all the fuss over nothing, but it was nice to have them oiled and rubbed and cut and shaped and then he put me under the dryer for a few minutes (because I have SO MUCH HAIR) and I nearly fell asleep such was the pleasantness of the hot air on my sore neck (from Pilates).

If I had a kid today would have been yummy muymmy day.

Graham and his partner are adopting two kids.  One is 24 months and the other is 18 months.

I asked him was he insane.

No.  He's just a really really nice person, I guess.  He made me feel a bit selfish, what with not wanting to adopt any unwanted kids who will end up in care if I don't.

Ah well, selfish is as selfish does, I guess.

Then I went to the Home Depot and did the birthday shopping for Himself.

Power Tool section.

Of course.

I hadn't realised there was a power tool made that he didn't own, but apparently there was.

Then I went to the major store that I'm not supposed to shop in, but I do because it's cheap and I don't have a local electronics store to support (because they all closed down due to the intense competition from said mega-store!), and finally finally bought the external drive I promised Yandry the Cuban barman last November.

Now, just to get it there...

Also I bought a new phone, that is guaranteed not to cut out when the Internet is being surfed, like our current 24Ghz piece of crap.

And a new alarm clock, because I am tired of trying to sleep in a room that is bathed in eerie green glow all night.

And then I went to the bookshop I'm not supposed to shop in either, because it kills the smaller guy, and bought four books in the 80% off section...

Selfish selfish selfish...

I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to do though - I got four books for the price of one.  That's three weeks reading.  I was down to Bill Clinton's My Life... yawn...

Then I went to an independent food store and bought lunch.  To make up for all the other sins.

Then I went back to the puppy resort and picked up my girl.

The puppy resort technicians were in tears when we left.

My computer just posted my post while I was still typing... new keyboard... I keep doing stuff I don't mean to. 

Anyways, either they are the best goddamn marketers I ever met, or the dog is one of those 'street angel, house devil' types.

Oooh, she's so gentle with the other dogs, and she's soooo pretty, and she's such a gooood girl...'

Whatever.

She's a pain in the ass most of the time.

Anyway, she's been asleep since we got back, so puppy resort is definitely ON!

Now I'll post until I think of something interesting to write about.

The thing I love about Friday being the Saturday, is that Saturday can be whatever you want it to be.

Sunday will just be Sunday.

Blogpost No. 650 - nearly five years of blah-di-blah!

This posting is my 650th on the blog.

In two weeks, the blog will have lasted five years to date.

Percy's Depressed started on January 31, 2005.

In 2007, it changed to Chocolate Court, to mark the fact that we lived near Chocolate Lake in Halifax.

Just under a year ago, in honour of our new home, it changed again to Essays from East Lawrencetown. Which is a little clunky, and doesn't get as much drive-by traffic as something with chocolate in the title, but it's fine, and I'm not using this blog to market myself, I am using it to get rid of my writer's itch.

We bought our house a year ago tomorrow, by the way, I cannot believe we have owned it a year already.  Here's a picture of the deer we share it with!


According to the site meter, which has had to be re-installed many times, I have had 16,500 visitors in the last 27 months. So that works out at about 16 - 20 a day I think, which puts me in the 'millions of other half-assed bloggers' list (below A-list, B-list, C-list, and up-and-coming list).

Personally, I am astounded that I am soon going to be able to say that I stuck at something (other than my education) for more than five years.

GO QUEENIE!!!!!!!!!!!

Bitter sweet Sundays

Somebody mentioned on Facebook today that Sundays are so bitter sweet.

True.

I love waking up on a Sunday knowing I don't have to go to work. But round about 4.30pm on a Sunday, I always get a really sad feeling.

I think most people do.

Sundays are such a strange day. They've changed so much over the years (well, if you're a lapsed Catholic living in a country where religion is not part of the DNA they have).

When I was young, Sundays meant you had to go to Mass. Then you had roast beef dinner and listened to the radio. Which meant listening to people drone on about Northern Ireland.

Then you went for a walk. Sometimes we went for a walk with the Queen Parents. Which involved a long walk in Portumna forest park, or somewhere like that (long for a kid, obviously) and then you went to the hotel for a mineral (pop) and a bag of crisps (chips).

Sundays we didn't go walking with the parents, we went to visit Paddy. That also involved a walk. A very very very long walk. And then sometimes a secret trip to the lemonade shop.

Also known as Kellys pub.

But that's a different story.

Then when we got a little older, I went to boarding school. Sundays meant you were getting a visit or not. If you were getting a visit, Sundays were FANTASTIC, until about 4.30pm, when you were sitting in the grimy hotel in Dungarven, having a mineral and a bag of crisps, and you remembered you had to go back to boarding school for another four weeks of misery before you saw your parents again.

I think that's why I get so sad on Sundays.

The brother went to boarding school for six years, and on Sundays he got to come home, bolt his roast beef down, and see his friends, before making a loaf of sandwiches and buying a bag of Pot Noodles and heading back to prison for another week. Four-thirty was round about the time of day he would start on the Queen Mum, wondering whether he could just stay home this time, and not go back to school.

I don't know who was more upset...

As for me, I got to go to secondary school at home, and Mass had been scheduled for Saturdays as well now, so Sunday was a big long teenage lie-in, followed by roast beef of course, then sitting in the playroom watching MTV USA, hosted by FAB Vinnie. Three hours of music videos and desultory conversation with Eileen or whoever else was around.

Then back to school on Monday.

When I went to college, weekends were often spent at home. Get the bus down on a Friday night. Spend Saturday doing laundry or catching up with people. Out Saturday night.

Sundays were when you had to get the bus back to Dublin. If you hadn't cadged a lift with Willie Burns on Saturday night in the pub. Or you couldn't persuade mum to drive you to the train in Tullamore.

Long, wet, boring trips through the midlands (before the motorway was built) in a smokey bus. Then trying to get a bus home to wherever you lived. Culchies roaming the streets of the capital with bags full of lasagne dinners and bags of spuds. Trying to fit into a pub stuffed with bags of clean folded laundry sent with love from Cork and Galway and Portlaoise and Donegal.

If I stayed in Dublin for the weekend, Sundays were a long, boring day of trying to stay warm in whatever hovel I was living in; writing an essay or just trying to find enough money to buy a packet of cigarettes to have something to do.

It was only when I started working that Sundays became a little more interesting. Long brunches in Odessa or somewhere trendy, with all kinds of people popping in and out and enough money to buy the paper and read it with a latte or a pint.

Now we have every second Sunday. This is a second Sunday, which means Kitty and Little 'Un were here for two days of chaos and noise and loud telly and cooking and feeding and whatever activities are on the menu. Then around 4.30pm the doors slam for the last time and the car heads off back to Truro and the dog lies abject at the gate hoping against hope that they're not gone and I pace around the house for an hour trying to find things to do to make the bitter sweet feeling go away.

But it appears on the other Sundays too.

5.33pm. Suddenly, completely dark. Shannon won't come in from the gate. I will go find some nice raw meat to bribe her with.

Even puppies find Sundays bitter sweet...

At least we don't live somewhere where you have to sit quietly and read the bible all day.

Inmytunes 2009: a cornucopia of Canadiana, brought to you by Queenie (and Rich Terfry)

Every year-end for the last few years, people who are members of the mailing list inmyday (of which I am a member, obviously) can put together a playlist of their favourite music of the preceeding year. Then share it with everyone else on the list.

Bingo!!

You start off the new year with a load of new music.

Of course, it being the inmyday Inmytunes compilation, there are rules, and of course it being Inmyday you are allowed to bend them. The original rule was that you had to make a compilation of the top 15 or so songs on your iTunes 'most played' list.

That turned out to be a little embarrassing if you had had a tough year emotionally.

So that quickly morphed into 'most played if I had a hyper-critical audience sitting with me at all times' list. Then as is normal on inmyday everyone just went off and did their own thing anyway.

By that I mean that I understand that sticking to the rules is some people's idea of doing their own thing.

Anyways, I have gotten to hear a lot of music that I would never have heard otherwise, seeing as I don't spend a lot of time buying music or reading about it anymore.

This year I was totally screwed. I think I bought two albums all year. And I gave them away before I ripped them. But I was saved by Buck 65.

Buck, or Rich Terfry as he was named by his mammy and daddy, who live near Enfield which is near here of course, DJs the Drive show on CBC radio 2. The show is for me and people like me.

People who don't like advertising.

People who like to listen to Rich shite on about baseball while they sit in traffic.

People who like the feel of the show, which feels like Rich is bringing in his own records to play for you.

People who want to know what's going on in the Canadian music scene, but who don't have the energy to go to gigs anymore because they don't start till ten pm, which is bedtime chez nous.

So, I cheated on the Inmytunes this year. Basically, anytime Rich and I agreed that a certain tune was a great tune, I made a note of it on a piece of paper I had stuck in the sun vizor (difficult on the highway trips). When I heard him spin it a few more times and we were still agreed that it was a TRULY GREAT tune, I put a circle round it.

Tonight I sat down and bought everything with a circle round it on iTunes.

Note to music promoters.... Rich Terfry moves downloads ... ohmylord he does... every song I bought was a massive spike of downloads, way ahead of everything else on the album.

So thanks, Rich. I really enjoyed this year's compiling.

If you're interested, on the Euro front, he plays Wilco and David Gray and the Waterboys to DEATH. And he's very excited about some woman singer from Dublin right now, whose name keeps escaping me, because he talks really fast when he's excited. But you should send him records. Because he sure sells them if he likes them.

I'm just going to take a moment to flip the playlist back to front. I had started with the electronica-type stuff and then got progressively folkier, but it's not working for me so I'm flipping it round.

Which is incidentally the order in which I downloaded them... I should've been a dj.

Inmytunes 2009

1. The Deep Dark Woods, All the Money I had is Gone (Winter Hours).

This is a very simple little song from a great folk band from Saskatoon. I thought it was pertinent for the year that was in it.

Rich and I dedicate it to all the capitalists out there who are hurtin'...

CBC Radio 2 had the strangest competition this year. The Great Canadian Song Quest. They got people to vote for 13 places (one in each province/ territory) and 13 bands (the same), who then had to write about said place in their province. DDW won the vote in Saskatchewan and wrote a song about Charlie's Bar, which sounds a bit like a Canadian Whelans and is being torn down.

Generally, the songs are a bit meh.... except for Quebec, which was won by...

2. Martha Wainwright, Four Black Sheep in the Snow (CBC Radio 2 Great Canadian Song Quest)

I think Martha missed the memo from Rich that said 'these songs are meant to be cheery for to cheer up Canadians who have lost all their money'. Anyways, I thought PFI would like to hear it, as Martha is 'known to us'.

Isn't it funny the way the guards say that about people. The Mounties don't say that. They just say 'he had a criminal record, that's probably why he got shot'. The guards say 'we don't know why he was shot, but he was 'known to us''.

Weird song. From a weird songstress.

3. David Myles, When it comes my turn (Things have Changed)

I think I am heading into my middle agedness, judging by the first three songs on the list. Or, maybe me and Rich are just feeling a little old arsey this year, what with getting to be married and all.

Not to each other of course.

I hate baseball.

I was about a month ahead of him I think.

Anyway, David is from New Brunswick I think, and he is just back from recording his new album on the SAME CONSOLE in some famous studio in Arizona as was used when Radiohead were there and recorded The Bends.

Which is my least favourite Radiohead album.

I'm shocked an album that miserable was made in the sunshine...

4. The Wooden Sky, The Late King Henry (If I don't come home you'll know I'm gone)

I just like the name of this song. And the tempo is kinda rollicking, maybe nice for kiddies.

Note to parents: Not only did I not put the song I really liked with the swear words on the playlist this year, I put on this song the kiddies might like.

Learning I am...

5. The Duhks, Mighty Storm (Fast Paced World)

I love the Duhks (ducks), who are from Winnipeg, Manitoba and so know a thing or two about weather. This is dedicated to all the Irish weather you`ve been having lately.

Bless.

6. Kathleen Edwards, Sure as Shit (Asking for Flowers)

This was our wedding song. So it goes on the list.

7. Bahamas, Southern Drawl (Pink Strat)

Man of mystery. Very difficult to find out anything about this guy. Apparently he's on tour with Amy Millan, so maybe he will turn up here some night and I won't go. Nice song though. Very smart.

Speaking of...

8. Amy Millan, Baby I (Honey from the Tombs)

Amy, the queen of Canadian pop. The homecoming queen for the nerdy boys. She pops up again later with The Stills. As she says herself: 'together, my own songs and these covers create a bed where the lonely can rest for a little bit, where little hopes, little deaths, and big loves are flammable but fallow'

Amy's fab. We are big fans, me and Rich. He nearly passes out when he talks to her.

9. Jenn Grant, Dreamer (Orchestra for the Moon)

Jenn has a voice like hot chocolate. Which is apt, because this song mentions her having a date at Chocolate Lake, where Queenie and Himself used to live (and dream), so it had to be included.

10. Cuff the Duke, Long Road (Sidelines of the City)

Okay, last of the alt: country, Canadiana type songs.

Onto more inmyday-ish type music.

11. The New Pornographers, My Rights versus Yours (Challengers)

According to the blog metatag, The New Pornographers are AC Newman and a group of ridiculously talented people uniquely equipped to realize his musical ambitions. You may know their album, Mass Romantic. It was considered the best indie album in Canada until Arcade Fire released Neon Bible. This song is from another album called Challengers. Either of them are worth a listen if you dont know these guys.

12. Metric, Sick Muse (Fantasies)

Emily Haines and James Shaw, the singer and guitarist in Metric also play with Broken Social Scene. Emily is one of those effortlessly cool blonde rockstars that make me feel completely inadequate, but despite that, I love this song.

13. Stars, This Charming Man (Nightsongs)

A lush retake of a Smiths classic, by the people who also bring you Broken Social Scene.

14. Stars, Your ex-Lover is dead (Set yourself on fire)

When there`s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.

`Xactly.

Plus there are cellos. I do like a bit of cello in my eloquent, Montreal-based pop music. Even if they did support Coldplay recently.

... ah, the almighty dollar does strange things to us all. But these are the best lyrics on the compilation:

I`m not sorry I met you.
I`m not sorry it`s over.
I`m not sorry there`s nothing to say.

15. Holy Fuck, Lovely Allen (LP)

From the boys who are known as the Toronto evil super group, who brought you the Cowboy Cat t-shirt. Anyone who wants to buy me one is very welcome to do so!!!

Reminds me of God is an Astronaut a bit.

Anyways, folks, that`s it for another year. Hope you like them.

The Noughties: the decade of stress and destress. Destress!

This was written last night during a power outage.

We got a weather bomb this evening, much to my amazement. It snuck up on me, whatever about other people. Yesterday the TV people talked about some snow and I thought, ah well, another evening on my own while my beloved ploughs shopping malls so people can buy crap even when it's snowing and they should be home where it's warm.

But when I got up this morning the weather network had a storm surge warning, a winter storm warning and an extreme wind warning. Despite all the warnings, I pottered about all day as usual until Himself's cousin mentioned something about candles, etc on FaceBook.

Shit.

Candles.

Even more importantly, etc.

Himself had already gone to work, so I rummaged around in the barn until I found the stove and the gas canisters and the camp kettle. I got the flashlight and tied everything down on the deck and the power went at 6.45pm, just as I was settling down to a night's mindless electronics-based entertainment.

Three long lingering flickers and she's gone for the night.

It's gone everywhere, so we'll have to take our place in the queue for service resumption.

It came back on at 3.15am, which was not so bad.

So instead of the opening of Season 4 of Dexter, I am sitting with a glass of Baileys (the ice is melting in the fridge so I have to use it up!), surrounded by the soft glow of candles. The furnace is out, but I have blankets and I heated water on the camp stove for a hot water bottle.

The dog is sleeping next to the back door, tired and sulky because I wouldn't let her run around the yard enjoying the 100 kph wind gusts.

I suppose that just about sums up the second half of the decade for me. I spent the first half of the decade feeling sorry for myself. The second half I spent accumulating the wherewithal to sit in the dark and cold with no company except for a crazy dog, and limited access to electronics, feeling thankful for the opportunity to do so.

Of course, I accept that this evening could not happen without battery power. I have a torch for when I need to walk around the house.

The northeast wind is HOWLING round the house.

I hope a tree doesn't fall on me.

So where was I with the decade... oh yes, I decided to move to Canada. To this day I don't know why. I get asked all the time by people who grew up here and think Europe is the bees knickers.

I just say it was a whim.

Sounds better than an inexplicable urge to get the hell out of the strait-jacket of a life I had put myself in.

Anyways, I don't know why I did it. Some days I'm glad I did, some days I'm not, and most days I don't think about it too much anymore.

The weird thing is how it all turned out. I came to Canada and something made me go to Nova Scotia, even though I'd planned on going to Alberta, and then something else made me go to a little island off its south west coast, even though there was no reason to go there apart from seeing a whale, and then I met Himself.

Destiny?

A series of bizarre coincidences?

Who knows.

And we decided to build a life together against pretty immeasurable obstacles at the time. But we have overcome every one of them.

So I guess the second half of the decade was also all about taking the stubbornness that I had honed in the first half, and putting it to good use.

Now I have everything I dreamed of having on those depressing Sundays so long ago. The soulmate. The home. The copse of trees. The ferns and the mushrooms and orchids hidden in its dank depths. The dog waiting for me every evening.

The deck with the bbq and the wind chimes I always dreamed about. The sound of the shore every day, every night. The dilapidated, monster camping 4X4. The canoe on its roof. The camping gear in the back. The special places we take off to by the lake, by the sea, in the forest. The friends we go camping with. The photos. The summer tan.

Not so much the mosquito bites on my legs.

The vegetable garden. The greenhouse. The flowergarden. The humming birds that visit in the summer.

The seasons. The colours of my maple trees in the Canadian Fall. The job (until March anyways). The trips home and away. The country of Canada to explore and love. The bookshelves. The books on them. The laptop. The global connection to everyone everywhere that I need to stay in touch with.

Peace. Peace and quiet. No sirens. No noisy neighbours. No fighting or yelling or loud television sets. Silence.

Yesirreebob, if you want silence, come to the Great White North.

What I don't have is a decent hair cut, highlights, lowlights, any kind of decent dye job, manicures, acceptable tights, a single suit or acceptable item of power wardrobing (although I have quite the collection of spark-burned fleeces).

Interestingly, I still manage the killer shoes... I wonder how that happens... but I have nothing to wear them with except denims!

I don't spend evenings in restaurants or at gigs or even in pubs, I can't spend more than $14 on a bottle of wine, or buy books when they are first published. I can't go to hotels for the weekend, and I'll probably never get to go shopping in Montreal or New York or Dublin again.

I miss every single one of those luxuries more than I will ever admit to my beloved. I still sniffle over the absence of Anthropologie clothes in my life. And I still lie awake at night worrying about stupid things. Because that's what I do.

I still try to talk myself into a funk every now and again, because that's what I also do, but it's hard to find the energy to be depressed when you have an animal who needs to be walked along glorious clifftops every sunset.

February of course, is another beast entirely, but everyone in Canada has the blaghs in February so it's okay to be morose.

The wind has dropped out completely now in the hour it took to write this. The moon is out and shining in the window. The Hunter is sparkling to the south east of the moon.

If the power was on I wouldn't have had the curtains open and I wouldn't see it.

I guess I should bring the dog out for a run.

One thing that interests me is where I got this dream from (Observer magazine? My childhood reading?) and whether all this positive thinking stuff is true - did I imagine it into existence as Mr. Chopra would have me believe?

Or is it just the culmination of a series of random choices I made this decade?

Who knows?

I wonder what I'll have done in ten years time?

As usual, I have no plan whatsoever, apart from a faint urge to move to the beach in South America (which I share with the rest of this huge country)!

Happy New Year everyone. Happy New Decade! Just think, in ten years, all those kids will be teenagers!!

The noughties: the decade of stress and destress. Stress!

I have been reading my friends' summations of their experiences in the last decade with interest. It's probably a factor of our age (thirties heading into forties), but really, the noughties seem to have been littered with stressful (not always bad, but still stressful) personal events and major investments which did or didn't work out.

Oh and careers.

Lots of career magic thrown in there to keep us on our toes.

No different for me.

I've been trying to think what I did in the last decade.

Good opportunity to sit down and think about it, what with the ice pellets flinging themselves against the front windows, the dog having her post-walk, mid-morning nap, and Himself upstairs asleep after working all night again...

The major event of the decade for me was moving to Canada in June 2005, roughly halfway through the decade. Consequently the first half is a bit of a blur in my memory.

The first couple of years were spent mostly trying to flog the dead horse of a relationship I was in. In my twenties and early thirties, I liked nothing better than to flog dead horses. Out-dated left-wing politics, selfish men, pointless arguments over a bottle of wine ... that kind of thing.

I remember sitting in the park in Ballsbridge having lunch with Accent Monkey explaining the latest series of 'death by a thousand cuts' that was going on, and she wasn't saying much, but I started getting this very strong vibe that manifested itself as a voice in my head saying 'would you just fucking leave him so we can all get on with things'.

I'm not saying the vibe was coming from Accent Monkey, but the voice in my head had a strong Dublin accent.

So I did, readers.

Took a while. A long while. Very painful. Very very painful. Thankfully I took a notion one day in 2001, and bought an apartment in a dingy part of town, so although I wasn't living the glamorous life of a Celtic tiger cub, I wasn't homeless. But for the first time in years all the animals had paired off two by two, and I was solo, bunking down the back of the ark. The loneliness was a physical beast that prowled around me. I didn't sleep for months. I thought I was going to go mad from the tiredness.

My parents and my girlfriends and their partners hauled me through it.

That and India. I went to India on a truck trip towards the end of 2002 (I think). It opened a crack of longing for something in my mind that ended up with me leaving Ireland. I went to find myself, but instead I found a place at the other side of the world that has such hope and despair and joy and sorrow and materialism and spirituality all wrapped up in each other... coiled round and round each other like snakes in the temple of Haripad ... presided over by a pantheon of gods and goddesses that encapsulate all that is good and bad in all of us and in the world.

A place where healing and politics and sexuality are all written about in the same texts ... where they lay fibre optic cables using families that live in the trenches to do the work ... where filth and rubbish and all kinds of human squalor wash up against sublime architecture ... where animals are worshipped and lepers ignored.

A place where all of the world's major religions jostle for position in ways that are ugly sometimes but where the overwhelming sense of culture is that there is a reason for all of this chaos... there is an energy in the world that we are all part of.

There is no either or in India. There is what there is and it is all connected.

I also decided in India that I didn't like cities.

Back in Dublin city I limped along for a while, but my heart stopped being in it sometime in 2003. I had moved to a new job and I was working very hard and enjoying the stretch in my brain and my energy, but the by-product of that job - hanging around the social partnership clique - was not good for either my soul or my liver.

Social partnership is a good idea, but it needs work. You cannot 'help' run a country without any accountability. The representatives of workers and employers and farmers and the like, sitting round the table were accountable to their members but not to a higher outcome (e.g. social cohesion, prosperity, competitiveness, etc). That meant that they looked after their members' interests (of course), and so hobbled the hard choices that might have led to us having a chance now.

As for the government ... I won't talk about that here.

By 2004, I was earning enough to get out of dodge, but not enough to buy a house of course (that was for lawyers and couples only), so I traded up to a classier version of the apartment I was living in.

It was interesting that throughout all those years of banks flinging, throwing, shovelling seven, eight times their income at people, offering 100% mortgages over 45 years, with a line of credit to pay the taxes and the moving costs on top of that ... I was never allowed to borrow more than 3.5 times my income, and never allowed more than a 90% mortgage ... despite the fact that I was earning good money working for the government and had no debt to speak of ... other single women I know encountered the same discrimination.

... Although I was annoyed at the time ... it does appear we were saved by our unemployed girlie bits in the end ...

After the excitement of the move and the decorating wore off, I took a long, long, look at my (admittedly) very nice apartment and realised that 467 square feet was all I was going to be able to afford by myself.

And slowly fell into the worst funk of my life.

The city was getting pretty chaotic. It was easier to walk an hour to work than to take the bus or drive, but a two hour walk on top of a nine hour day was pretty tiring.

I took to going to the supermarket at 9pm on a Wednesday night, so I could get a parking space. Getting petrol took an hour. Going to yoga took an hour. Everything took an hour.

Life consisted of work, shopping to cheer myself up about work, going out or entertaining, then lying in bed all day Sunday feeling sorry for myself and agonizing about how soulless my life was.

I took a few weeks off and went to Venezuela for another truck trip. I was hoping for another India (great driver, great people on the truck, great country). We had some nice people, but the truck was partly populated by the four rudest people Britain has ever produced in millennia of producing arrogant jingoist arseholes...

I still had a good time. Again, Venezuela got me thinking about the pointlessness of a job tinkering at the edges of the reality of the economy. Apart from it paying the mortgage.

Then one day I had a stupid argument over nothing but a status issues, with somebody in work. Went for a walk to clear my head. Picked up the paper and saw an ad for visas to Canada.

The light went on in my head.

Canadians don't have egos big as the Rockies, sure they don't!! They have trappers and lumberjacks and people who have calluses on their palms!!

I'll go there!!