Mid-February mid-Atlantic weather advisory

Sometimes I love to post blog entries with titles that will mess up or just get in the way of serious Google searches undertaken by serious people looking for serious information.

And so with this one.

Please be advised this posting will mostly be about vitamins. Not maritime conditions.

So eventually the weather systems aligned. What I mean is, the weather systems that are pounding Atlantic Canada eased off slightly and the weather systems pounding Ireland and the UK ramped up slightly and so there was almost a condition alignment. It brought about some interesting consequences.

The Queen Parents started to get quite panicky about the idea of me driving to Cape Breton by myself, until I pointed out that the snow is scraped/ pushed/ ploughed off the roads here, so it is safer than at home.

Certain random people sent me emails that said 'yeah, okay I understand now'.

I got to see photos of people I know to be grown ups making snowmen when they should have been at work.

I would just like to point out that people don't make snowmen in Canada as a rule. They're too busy getting on with the day. Tobogganing now or skiing is considered acceptable snow fun.

In fact, there's such an absence of snowmen in politically correct Canada, I am beginning to think snowmen is one of those Enid Blyton things along with all those bad, unmentionable things she seems to have encouraged many generations, including mine, to do in her seemingly innocent children's writing.

Maybe we'll all wake up one morning sometime soon and realise that to build a snowman is a really bad thing.

Anyways, back to the weather.

Now that you have the same weather as us, here's some advice.

Take plenty of Vitamin D. At least 1,000mgs a day. This week in Canada, it was announced that they're pretty sure that there's a positive link between Vitamin D deficiency and multiple sclerosis. So take it for that reason too.

Go on. Vitamin D is really cheap. It's sunshine in a bottle.

If the wind is cutting your face, and you live near the sea where there's lots of salt, or near the airport, where there's lots of salt right now, you're going to have dry skin by the end of March. Then one day in April the sun will shine very brightly and you will look in a mirror and go 'ohmygod deh wrinkels!!'

Don't panic!!! Go get some Vitamin E capsules, and take them if you feel like it. But about once a week, cut a capsule open and gently pat the goo onto the skin around your eyes. Let it dry in. Don't do this unless you have an hour to spare to just sit around and do this, as the goo is very very sticky. Do not under any circumstances go for a walk on the beach.

INSTANT WRINKLE REMOVER, EH! EH! EH! FOR LIKE NO MONEY AT ALL!!

See, the Queenie knows how to look after you all.

Those tissues with the goo in them to make your nose feel nice when you have a cold are really great for getting snow/ salt/ sand/ all the winter crap off your shoes/ boots.

WEAR A HAT!!!!

Look after your hair.

It is very important to use the right shampoo and conditioner in the winter because the snow/ ice ruins your hair and the continuous hat wearing gives you a bad case of hat head.

I have tried them all. Organic, non-organic, every supermarket brand, every stylist brand, Aveda, all of them.

The absolute best shampoo - conditioner combo for the winter hair that comes with wind, rain and snow is Head and Shoulders shampoo followed by Pantene conditioner for coloured hair.

So there you go.

Just think... for you guys, this is an exciting period that will end soon with snowdrops and tulips and daffodils. For us, this is what it's going to be like until April.

April is when the snow melts into the rivers, the birds come back, the fishing season begins, the hardy among us get out the camping gear.

And the black fly wake up.

A shift from Victorian thinking

I have mentioned to people here a number of times that I find the Victorian model of caring for the poor that is played out in Nova Scotia quite stunning in its dinosaurosity. I usually get the Nova Scotia huh stare for that, and it's not just my unacceptable use of the non-word dinosaurosity.

Poverty is usually structurally-based, I explain.

More staring.

People who are poor are generally poor because there's some flaw in the design of the society's structures, not because they are lazy or bad, I explain.

Shift to polite staring.

For example, the best way to get a job here is through networking, yeah... so, if you're poor and you don't know any working people/ golf people/ can't join a gym/ drive to a volunteering event, then your chances of getting a job go down, yeah... and that's a structural issue in society....

Extreme polite staring with added uncomfortable shuffle.

Sheesh.... I never know if they think I'm wrong, or they think I'm insane, or if they just don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

Then today, I get this in an email from some social policy institute in Canada (the Caledon Instititue I think.... I get so many).

How I chuckled... hahahaha.... they just think I'm a bleedin' socialist, that's what!!!!

Community Roles in Policy Sherri Torjman, January 2009

There has been growing interest in recent years in place-based interventions and their unique contribution to tackling complex issues, such as poverty. While communities are pursuing a range of direct interventions, they are recognizing increasingly that the problems faced by individuals and households living with low income result not from their own weaknesses but rather from problems and barriers in the broader economic and social system. This paper discusses the following activities in which communities can engage with respect to policy:

· monitoring policy developments
· building an evidence base
· enabling access to existing benefits
· improving programs and services
· creating new programs or services
· reducing basic costs
· designing appropriate environments
· creating contextual change
· reducing barriers and disincentives
· assessing policy impact.

ISBN - 1-55382-328-1
29 pages

Read away, boys and girls.

Now, I wonder if the wonderful Irish policy-makers who gave us the national anti-poverty strategy and the partnerships approach to urban regeneration, etc, have figured out the structural causes of the latest kerfuffle in the nation's finances.

Or do they give a crap about some rich blokes who've got caught with their billions exposed?

Prob'ly not.

Humae Vitae - differing perspectives

From today's Irish Times:

FORTY YEARS ago today, Pope Paul VI issued probably the most controversial encyclical letter in the history of the Catholic Church. In Humanae Vitae, he reaffirmed the Church's official ban on artificial contraception, stunning the Catholic world at a time when there were strong expectations of some easing in the traditional teaching.

I was talking about this subject with some friends last night. Telling them about the Contraceptive Train events that took place in Ireland in the late sixties/ seventies (can't remember the exact date), and one of them told me a story about a couple getting married in Nova Scotia in the sixties.

The woman was Catholic, so they had to go to the priest for the talk.

Same deal in Ireland.

The priest explained the rhythm method to them.

Same deal in Ireland.

The priest then told them that the rhythm method was pretty unreliable, so what they needed to do was go to the doctor and get a pill (which you could get back then) that 'regulated' the rhythm.

NOT the same deal in Ireland.

In Ireland, the priest was too busy telling you that the rhythm method was to be used only for the mystery of procreation.

In other words, you could only use the rhythm method to conceive.

Not to not conceive.

There was no talk of the miracle pill that you could get to regulate your rhythm.

No sirreebob.

If you wanted talk of that, you had to go see that communist-anarchist-sinner, Dr. Paddy Leahy.

Canada... deep in its soul there is an innate decency and respect for the intelligence of its citizens that we didn't have for a long long time in Ireland ...

A country that gives Dr. Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada for his contribution to society, knowing that a large chunk of citizens will be annoyed about it is a good country.

No wonder half the Irish medical graduates from the sixties moved here to practice.

Medicine that is.

Not the rhythm method.

Queenie is definitely middle-aged

Queenie always felt that a sign of youth was shouting at the evil nincompoops on the radio that constitute the news broadcasts. Moaning Ireland particularly irked her, for two reasons. Firstly that you had to listen to it to know what was going on for work (boring), and secondly because it was the same players spouting the same lines day in day out. Plus the tearing into them style of interviewing (which was apparently invented by her ex, but she only had his word for it, but he was usually right about stuff like that).

Leaving Ireland was a relief in a way. No more IBEC. No more Vintners Association. No more Tom Parlon. No more Willie O'Dea. No more Michael Ring (I'm hearing a lack of women here, I'm sure there were annoying women too).

Here in Canada, the CBC current affairs stuff is pretty good. Particularly around teatime. And during the day they have great arts programming. And a great Internet-related show. And a show called Dark Arts, which is about healthcare, which is fantastic, hosted by a doctor who gives House a run for his money.

But in the morning.....

In the morning it is local. Lots of weird people from Musquodobit talking about pig roasts and the occasional 'news' item about a wind turbine that's going to spoil the view from Anne Murray's summer cottage.

There's a boy interviewer (who thinks he's Irish) and a girl host, who introduces the items but NEVER does an interview. I think she butters the toast while they're going on.

I often wonder how Aine Lawlor would cope if she'd washed up here.

Anyways, this morning, I hit the wrong button when the alarm went off and got onto the Dalhousie SU radio by mistake.

Flashpoints was on. Flashpoints is their current affairs program.

It focuses almost exclusively on the war in Iraq (and global warming). It talks about framing a lot. It explains the different sects in Iraq which is good because it means I don't have to plough through the actual newspaper articles in order to keep up with who is on the side of the workers and who is not.

This morning they were talking about the credit crunch and the continued bail out of the investment industry.

Socialism for the rich apparently (?!)

The guy with the beard (don't ask me how I know, I just did) kept repeating that phrase randomly in a triumphant tone.

This was while the woman was explaining that most of the investors were mom and pop pension funds (?!)

Then they urged everyone not to drink Starbucks coffee anymore because they don't pay their managers overtime.

And they do something weird with their tips that I was too sleepy to follow.

Time passed, spent talking about al-Sadr, that renowned hero of the Iraqi working class, when the host crowed that there were calls coming in about the Starbucks item.

Great, said mom and pop investment funds girl.

Two of the calls were pointing out that Starbucks was the only coffee chain in Canada to give part-time workers their health benefits and the third said that the tips were fine. Thank you very much.

Mom and pop investment fund girl (who may or may not be mom and pop funding her to go to Dal girl too) said that really the point was that everyone should get free health care.

Ehm, we do, don't we?

You are middle-aged when you find yourself shouting at the anarchists on the radio.

Also, when it is the day after you went to Rona and bought a toilet and a hand basin and considered that fun, it must be true.

Ah well, it was a good long run....

Facebook envy

Is anyone else suffering from it?

I surely am.

I find Facebook a great chore, but at the same time, some days, the reason I get up in the morning.

Where is Ken?

Is Joos near a silverback?

And what is that one that's always tanned and on a beach somewhere exotic doing, and why is she still following you around online being your friend....

And oh look, there's your husband's ex-wife's sister's husband's neice's friend.....

On your cousin's closest friend list....

Anyways...

I don't have brothers who have girlfriends/ spouses/ mates who like sisters...

And I still haven't figured out how to make friends on the Internet.

That aren't scary after a while.

Or else I move country....

Anyways, I don't have cheap flights anymore. Or rather, I removed myself so far from my life that I have to choose between instant gratification and home, which may or may not be a sign of growing up ...

But for me to read a blog post about a woman that I love who is in a place that I know all about, but where I never have been ...

... Having the time of her life, and then it snows...

... which is shit, I accept ...

... but hollow laughter....

Hollow laughter is pretty good actually.

Power off for Earth Hour boys and girls.

Let's all do something really useful.

Grammys, ECMAs, and other stuff

So Amy won the Grammys.

So what. We had the East Coast Music Awards on the same night in the Maritimes.

Much more important.

Joel Plaskett Emergency won all the prizes for a mediocre album about an ashtray.

Poor Wintersleep didn't win anything, despite the fact that the music journalist in town loves them.

Boo fucking hoo.

Reminds me so much of Ireland in the eighties when U2 won all the prizes.

Except of course, I liked U2.

I like neither of these acts.

God I wish I was somewhere where you could go to a gig in a heated venue that started before eleven.

More importantly, The Daily News is closing down today.

That is bad.

How can you have a first rate city with one newspaper?

Apparently, the Greater Halifax Partnership have taken to referring to Halifax as 'the new Dublin'.

Now there's a scary thought.

That would put me living beside the Red Cow Inn, where people get shot.

Oh, that's right, I live near Spryfield, where, er, people get shot.

But only sometimes.

Not as often as when I lived in Dublin.

Halifax is not the new Dublin.

Halifax is the old Dublin.

That's why I like Halifax.

Like the old Dublin, Halifax is a former colonial capital that has gone to seed due to the pull factor of Ontario and Alberta. Unlike Dublin, it is not the entry point to the lucrative EMEA markets and it doesn't have a dodgy tax break system that facilitates MNCs to set up shop here.

Its best hope is to become the Florida of the north.

We should send a flotilla of boats to Cuba and load up anyone interesting (shouldn't be too difficult, everyone here knows the way to Cuba), and then set the town on fire with a salsa beat.

Plus we'd have all those trained Cuban healthcare professionals to fill the jobs we will need filled.

(Apologies to Cubans by the way, I am not being insensitive to your culture, I am merely taking the piss out of the GHP)

Hey, we'd have fun at next year's ECMAs.

Incoming February bleughs alert.

May the existential crisis and unconnected ramblings time of the year begin.

The things your friends find for you to do...

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Queenie has finally sorted out the parameters of the 2007 mix for Inmyday.

Not that she was under any pressure, GOD NO, cds popping into the mail box every evening from people who have jobs AND children is not PRESSURE.

Nosireebob.

It just took a while to organise the potential tracks on the iTunes.

Finally, she did a smart list that was tracks added after 01/01/2007 and tracks added before 01/01/2008.

That only took a month to figure out.

Then she had to get the names of the tracks, having done something stupid to the iTunes so that it wouldn't 'get track names' for her. Everytime she tried it sent her a stupid message saying unable to connect to iTunes.

WTF?

I thought the whole point of iTunes and iPods etc was to force you to buy music.

With your shiny new Canaydyan credit card.

Nope.

The point is to make Queenie get in tune with her technology.

At least it's only every three years.

So, three hours, a disk defragmentation, the wholesale clear out of her hard disk and a download of the latest version of iTunes update later, we are ready to begin....

... I was just downloading Version 7.6 of iTunes when the door opened and the Himself who was supposed to be working till midnight walked in.

Shit.

No dinner (why bother with dinner when it's Tuesday, you've had a stressful day wowing the masses, there's an open bottle of wine, and no Himself).

Thankfully Himself is the kind of Himself who sees the lack of dinner on the table as an opportunity to cook dinner for the woman he loves.

He even washed a wine glass for me.

What did I do in a past life to deserve this man?

I must have brokered the peace treaty between the Chinese and the Parthians in the eleventh centurey, or something equally major.

Anyways, just as we were eating dinner, the phone rang and it was the weather saying, it's snowing again, come back to work, so off Himself went again until midnight so I will try to get this done.

Inmyday Music 2007 - Queenie's cd.

Well, I have 5.26 GB to choose from, but there are some issues.

Some of it I stole from Mr. Monkey's laptop when he was over during the summer.

I don't know if that counts.

Also, I spent a lot of this year trying to rebalance the emphasis on the iTunes from plinkity plink shite that Queenie listens to in favour of a little cock rock for Himself.

When we're having our Friday night chats we always end up having an argument about whether or not cock rock is a valid music genre.

Yes it is.

Cock rock is rock played by a band with a guitarist who plays with his guitar resting on his enormous cock, sung by a singer who sings while squeezing his equally enormous cock.

Yes it is.

So we will have some CR on the cd.

It's good for the soul, really it is.

But we'll start off mellow.

1. Cowboy Junkies, a lovely mellow cover of The Way I feel, from the Gordon Lightfoot tribute album, Beautiful.

In celebration of the fact that I am now supposed to be okay about GL.

Buy the album.

It rocks.

2. Yaser Habeeb, Elana.

From a $1 album I got at a yard sale, called Sahara Lounge. Vurry smooood.....

And cos I love yard sales.

3. Elliot Smith, Angel in the Snow.

'Cause I'm going out with one.

Ahhhhhhh...

Also, this is my most played song this year, with a whopping 27 plays according to the software that monitors your darkest moods and silliest parties.

The reason I play it so much is because I just think the guitar riff is the sweetest little complicated but simple little riff I've ever heard.

4. Burial, Archangel

This is my favourite album of 2007.

I found it on eMusic one day when I was really desperate to spend my 30 buys, it being the end of the month. As I mentioned in an earlier post, every song on this album reminds me of a band I used to listen to in the eighties. I wanted to put the whole album on the playlist, but I didn't for reasons of DE RULES (which took up about 37 emails - I love inmyday because we can have 76 emails about music and 3 about war on the same day. Or vice versa. Depending)

I put Archangel on because a) it is about angels, b) it is 5 star rated, and c) it is my most played 5 star on the album (see I did pay some attention to DE RULES).

5. Jimmi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower

This was my first purchase in the attempt to balance the music collection. It didn't go down particularly well. It's not cock rocky enough, apparently.

I think it's pretty good.

And he wore very tight trousers.

Isn't it very similar to Archangel in a weird slowed down speeded up kinda way?!

6. Led Zeppelin, Whole Lotta Love

HOORAH!!!!!!!!!! COOOOOOOOOOOCK RAAAAAAAAAAAWK!

You need coolin'! de dum DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM DE DUM!

What an opening line!

On Friday nights, the cock rock argument usually stems from the 'if I were to walk down an aisle at some point in time, what would be the song' argument.

In a very frightening way, this CANNOT be dislodged from the top five.

Angels have a stubborn side to them.

I need someone to send me a cd of 'potential walk down the aisle songs if they were ever to be needed ever' real soon.

Otherwise the Queen Dad could be in a world of pain some day.

7. Radiohead, Weird Fishes, Arpeggio

This is the one I want.

It's Radiohead.

I can't do it to anything else.

This was a question on Canada's smartest people quiz Sunday night. Which band sold their album for what you can afford last year?

WTF? It's in the shops now.

That wasn't part of the deal, lads.

Anyways, let's stop for a moment and listen to the SONG OF 2007.




By the way, Zoom are flying to Nova Scotia from Belfast from the end of June to the end of September this year. Please form an orderly queue if you wish to recommend a particular week, bearing in mind that August and September are the best months. Also bearing in mind that Electric Picnic is on during Labour weekend so I need to know soon if people want to do both.

8. Patrick Watson, Drifters

I only discovered this guy this year. Actually this was the year of Watson, Cat Power, Elliot Smith and Erik Wollos. Four artists I had never heard of but am very glad that I have now, as they formed the spine of my listening.

Plus Tom Waits, as Mike, the neighbour who chose to abandon us, as did Kate and the kids and the dogs, gave me the complete works this summer.

Talk about giving a girl a doorway back to 1989....

9. Erik Wollo, Totem

I like this song, because it reminds me of our key joint learning pathway last year, which was a journey into the Aboriginal American experience. 2007 will be a key year in the Canadian history of dealing with 'the Aboriginal question' I think.

Many things happened.

Caledonia. The riots in the summer. The tension between the old guard, the recognised leaders, and the younger leaders coming up, who are sick of the same old same old.

Jim Prentice. Minister of Indian Affairs. A man who seemed to get it, but because he was competent (and ambitious I assume), he got moved to Industry. With disastrous results.

Payments for the industrial schools. Long conversations on the radio about how large cheques would result in drunkenness on reservations. And now everytime there is an accident, that's the reason.

The abandonment of the historic Kelowna Accord signed by the previous governments, along with everything else that was signed by them.

In the absence of being able to do anything, we watched a lot of movies on the issue and read some books.

I even read Germs, Guns and Steel.

I still don't get it.

10. Mavis Staples, Down in Missippi

For Barack. The day after MLK day.

God love him.

This was a great find. Staples was one of the singers that associated with MLK. Ry Cooder has rerecorded her hits, you can hear him in the background.

This is why I like Canada.

They might not get their own inequities.

But by God, they get the inequities in YankeeLand.

Ohyessirreebobtheydo.

11. Cat Power, Keep on Running

Because you have to, don't you.

Now we head into the difficult last couple of songs part of the cd.

There are about seven in the playlist, so I will have to cull...

Give me about twenty minutes to figure out what to delete and what to keep in and what order to put them in, etc.

Time passes.....

12. Okkervil River, Love to a Monster

Okkervil River beat Spoon, which is probably not right.

But it's past my bedtime.

And it's only Tuesday.

13. John Lee Hooker, Let's go out tonight

This is the first cd that Himself chose, bought and added to the online collection.

So let's stay in and listen to it.

Now, all I have to do is go buy enough cds to burn, envelopes, stamps, etc.

This weekend. I will.

Anyone else who wants one let me know.

I will burn twenty copies.

Note to self: I have already set up 2008's smart list.

I ain't going through all this again.

Night.
xx

Life is a movie... if you can get a ticket of course

So I went to the movies last night. The movie started at nine, so at ten to nine I arrived at the cinema. There were two queues. There was a queue for people who had paid for and received tickets. And there was a queue for people who didn't have tickets. And there were a lot of people who had booked tickets online but who didn't have the tickets with them. And there were also some people who had a pass but no ticket. There was no queue specifically for them, so they were just joining either queue.

But it was all quite good-humoured at first. We're in Canada, eh! We just stand in the queue and roll our eyes at each other and congratulate ourselves on how laid back we are.

It's not like there was nobody in charge. In fact, there were a lot of people walking around with clipboards, wearing film festival tee shirts with volunteer written on them. Mostly they stood in front of the door, while everyone queued patiently. Occasionally, one of them would walk down the queue I was in and ask whether everyone had a ticket.

Unfortunately I had someone with me who didn't have a ticket. And who consequently should have been in the other queue. But then we would have had to stand in different queues, and he's a teenager so I figured we would just queue together and then I would buy him a ticket at the box office when we got inside. Neither queue was moving after thirty minutes of standing around and I didn't want him to have to stand on his own.

Also, I figured as this was the queue for people with tickets we'd get into the box office before all the tickets were gone.

Normal resourceful behaviour in every way.

Are you all still with me?

So then, in the way of queues that have to stand around for long periods of time without any explanation, the adjoining people in the queue started chatting and bitching about the queue. As my adjoining people were an elderly couple, who were getting completely pissed off at having to stand on the street in the dark, I volunteered to go up and find out what the frig was going on.

I approached the most approachable-looking of the pack of volunteers milling around hugging their clipboards against their free tee-shirts (which were incidentally, the ugliest film festival tee-shirts I have ever seen, white with AFFA in black on the front).

I asked the little woman with the big tee-shirt and the clipboard why there was a delay.

There was a question and answer session on in the theatre, but it was nearly over.

Being experienced at extracting information from officious Nova Scotians at this stage, I said: 'so we'll be getting in soon, then?'

She looked a little panicked. 'Well, they'll have to clean the theatre then.'

'Okay so, and then they'll let us in?'

'Oh yes.'

'Great', I said. She looked relieved. 'And when will that be?' I asked.

Another panic look.

'About twenty minutes?' I suggested helpfully.

She did not compute.

'Fifteen minutes?'

You often have to give them an alternative, so they can pick the easiest one.

'Oh no', she said, 'at least twenty minutes.'

'Grand so', I said. She smiled in relief.

Back I went and told the old dears and resumed queuing while he went for a coffee and we held his space and kept her company. The girls arrived and joined the queue beside us and nobody said anything about queue-jumping so I figured that was okay.

And then someone came down the queue a minute later and told everyone that there was a question and answer session on inside but it was nearly over and then they would clean the theatre and then they would let us all in in about twenty minutes.

Old dear rolled her eyes at me.

Eventually, the queue started moving and after another bit we got into the theatre.

The girls went in to keep seats and I stood at edge of the box office queue to get Justin a ticket.

There were two volunteers standing behind the counter with a huge pile of tickets and a lot of paperwork and a box with names and envelopes with tickets in them. All of which looked to me like the guest list. (which in normal societies that function properly is kept separate from the box office, as you all know).

The queue seemed to be made up of people who were either a) collecting free tickets, or b) collecting tickets they had purchased online, or c) collecting tickets because they had a pass hanging around their neck (which of course in a functioning society would get you into the theatre without having to queue). There was a lot of signing of forms for said ticket and waiting for the computer or something to print stuff, but nobody seemed to be buying a ticket for cash.

So, I figured nobody would mind if I just nipped in and got a ticket for cash while the people behind the counter were waiting for the computer to spit out some random piece of bureaucratic paper they needed to part with tickets.

So I nipped in and waved a twenty at them and asked could I buy one.

No, apparently. I had to queue to buy a ticket.

I explained that I had queued for an hour already.

I must have been in the wrong queue. I would have to go outside and join the queue for buying tickets.

I looked outside.

It was a really long queue.

So I decided that in the absence of any system on their part for the efficient vending of cinema tickets for cash I was not participating in their effing Kafkaesque nightmare just so Justin could go to the movies.

We stood in the lobby for a while near the box office, sussing out the lay of the land.

There were too many volunteers milling around to leg it in without a ticket (remembering of course that I have a ticket for myself and it would be just Justin who was getting in for free).

Justin was up for it.

I figured we'd be caught.

The pair behind the counter were studiously avoiding eye contact with me so that they didn't have to deal with an actual film-loving, paying punter while they were handing out the freebies.

Eventually I approached one of the volunteers and explained my predicament and asked if I could just buy a ticket so we could sit down because we had been waiting for an hour.

They looked sympathetic, as they had been following my progress, there not being much else for the seven of them to do.

I know they sympathised with me. There was a lot of looking panically at each other and then eventually, a group shrug and someone said 'there's nothing we can do, it's just the bureaucracy.'
I said: 'you are the bureaucracy. Why can't you just do something about it?' and walked away before I effing hit one of them.

A Scottish woman behind me said helpfully: 'you just have to let them do it and wait your turn.'

I often get told stuff like this in similar situations. I think it is because people feel I don't understand the Canadian way. They don't realise that I just think it is the stupid way.

'I don't think so', I said.

All of this had taken about twenty minutes, so it was now nearly ten o'clock and I had been standing for over an hour.

Then, suddenly, with loads and loads of people still queuing outside, they locked the doors. There was a small queue left inside, so I joined it and judging from the enormous pile of unclaimed tickets I figured I was going to succeed.

I gave Justin the thumbs up.

He gave me one back.

Justin is eighteen and about six feet tall and was standing in the corner wearing combats, a baseball cap and a hoodie over it. But he had been really patient.

I was very proud of him.

I was determined to get him a ticket after all this.

Just then, the senior clipboard person came over and said she was sorry for the problem, but I just had to queue up if I wanted to buy a ticket.

I pointed out that I was, in fact, doing that very thing.

She pointed out that I had jumped the queue.

I pointed out that the door was locked, so for all intents and purposes, this was the end of the queue, which is where I had been told to go, so in fact, I was obeying orders.

She pointed out that I had been standing around inside for a while, so that didn't count.

I pointed out that I had queued for an hour OUTSIDE in the queue for PEOPLE WHO ARE FUCKING ORGANISED enough to have a ticket.

She looked completely confused then. Well why do you want a ticket, she asked.

For my friend, I said.

'Why didn't you buy him one in advance, then?'

She hugged her clipboard to herself triumphantly.

'Because I didn't friggin' know he was coming when I bought the tickets, did I!'

I probably was screaming in frustration at this point, I don't know, the rushing of blood in my head was blocking out all sound.

'Well, you should have made him queue to buy a ticket', she explained.

'He's a teenager! What, am I going to make him queue in the dark on his own.'

She looked over at Justin, who was leaning against the wall looking like a really smelly crack dealer, and then looked back at me in utter disbelief.

Well, it was worth a try.

'I am sorry I can't do anything', she said.

'That's okay', I said, 'why don't you just organise it better next year.'

She stared at me for a long moment and then turned and walked away.

Then it was my turn to buy a ticket.

Tickets in hand, we bounded up the stairs to look for the others.

There were at least fifteen rows of empty seats in the theatre.

Yes, that's what I said.

There were at least fifteen rows of empty seats in the theatre.

I was standing at the top of the stairs, gobsmacked with astonishment at the complete incapacity to organise a piss up in a brewery; that had led to a situation whereby the volunteers had locked the doors on a long queue of people who wanted to see the movie, before making sure the hall was filled with punters.

Said volunteers being volunteers because the Atlantic Film Festival is a film festival that's always whingeing about not having any cash.

Then the Scottish woman who had advised me to go outside and join the very end of the said queue stood behind me and loudly said: 'there she is, she's very brazen'.

I thought she was impressed with my resourcefulness.

I turned around and waved my tickets at her.

'I am, aren't I!' I laughed.

'Fucking queue-jumper', she hissed at me.

Justin looked at me and said 'what did she call you?'

'A fucking queue-jumper.'

'But we did queue!'

'I know.'

'For a friggin' hour, Queenie!'

'I know, Justin, I know.'

Anyways, the movie, The Stone Queen was good, but not good enough to have had to put up with bureaucratic bullshit for almost two hours.

A pox on the Atlantic Film Festival. You better not ever come to me looking for money.

And I have four more tickets for shows.

Two of which are for the same cinema.

Himself reckons they have a photo of me in the volunteer room to ensure I'll never get in again.

Sigh.

Is it me?

Or is it them?

That's all I want to know.

If it's me, I'll change. I'll become a better person. I will never again weigh up the benefits of two queues and pick the smarter one. I will go to the queue that inconveniences me the most and benefits the supplier of the service that I am purchasing the best.

I will.

I will swallow my consumer rights knowledge and let them fuck me around because my desire for efficient customer service is irresponsible on my part.

I will.

But I just can't help but think it's them.

They could have:

- Spent the hour we were all queuing giving people their freebies.
- Spent the hour we were all queuing sorting out ticket collections.
- Spent the hour we were all queuing selling us coffee, hot dogs, chocolate, tee-shirts.
- Spent the hour we were all queuing creating a buzz about the film festival, handing out fliers

In other words, they could have spent that hour we were all captive to them extracting money for us and SAVING THE ATLANTIC FILM FESTIVAL.

But no.

They were all in there seething about the woman who got the biggest clip board because her husband is on the board of the Festival.

And working out who was going to deal with the Irish woman going postal in the lobby because she didn't want to queue.

I can hear them now.

Effing come from aways.

They have no manners, do they!

They just don't understand it's the Canadian way, or the highway.

They think that just because all Canadian population growth from this year on will be due to immigration that they can come in here and take our jobs and then swan around demanding we treat people with respect just because they are paying punters.

I wish I was in this photo! Or, how to age gracefully...

So there wasn't a peep out of anyone from Ireland for a few days and I couldn't figure out what it was until I clicked on accentmonkey's blog this morning and saw the pictures from the wedding.

Ah yes, of course.. Portumna will never be the same, I'm sure.

So I looked through all the pictures. And then I looked through them all again. All those familiar faces. Familiar faces that are gradually changing.

Mixed feelings...

Two years away from all those faces. Yet I still feel very strongly connected. Even though all the experiences are second hand for me now. Still, they are part of every day thanks to the wonders of technology.

Christ we're all starting to look a teensy bit middle-aged but!

In a perverse way I was glad to see it, as I had spent part of the morning panicking about getting old, it coming up on my thirty seventh birthday (what kind of an effing birthday is thirty seven!! Other than depressing!). Plus we had spent the previous evening in the company of Himself's work colleagues, who are all about twelve years old and MARRIED. Well, actually some of them are already divorced, which is even scarier.

We were celebrating my second anniversary in Canada. Well, what was really going on was that after almost six months of responsible living and parenting and with a night off due to Kitty staying with a friend, Himself announced we were going to go out and get liquored up. So I created a hook to hang the liquor on, not being able to face a night out without a reason anymore.

So I scored six tickets to the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation Annual Summer Drinks party and off we went. Queenie, Himself, Alex and Tristan, and Eric and Gillian.

The NSLC parties are amazing concepts. Three hours of free samples of everything they sell in their stores. With food and a band. It's like a big wedding. They have three a year - summer, a new wines fling in the spring, and a winter whiskey party.

I went to the whiskey one in my first year here. I remember watching everyone standing around sipping slowly and chatting and thinking that if they had these parties in Ireland, there would be a triage unit set up in the middle of the room.

A very sedate affair.

The Summer Beach party is a whole different kettle of fish.

And I realised finally that I am getting middle-aged.

There was so much skin on view. Oceans and oceans of pale skin, bad fake tan jobs, leathery wizened tan jobs. Mostly with long, bleached, straightened, sprayed fake blond hair.

Alex and Tristan spent the first half an hour running around in pointless alcohol and women free circles, shouting 'girls', 'liquor', 'ohmygod thankyou Queenie', until Himself pointed out that there was liquor to be had. Himself had worked his way up the wine stalls and was introducing himself to the Captain (Captain Morgan's rum - staple drink of Cape Breton) at that point.

I was stupified with shock. As well as the flesh and the hair, there were arses everywhere. Acres of arses. Whole prairie-widths full of them, poured into leggings atop stiletto mules.

I saw Paris Hilton from behind. It was definitely her. A little see through baby doll dress and long legs (mahogany) slipped into little pink slipper mules. A dog under her arm. Long silvery blonde hair. Then she turned round.

Fifty. At least fifty. Life lines etched into her mahogany face like runes on a granite pillar.

Whatthefuck?

All the men looked the same; khakis or shorts with a polo shirt and sandals or flip flops. Standard Canadian summer wear no matter what you're doing. Or what age you are.

All the women looked the same too; leggings or skinny jeans with a little strappy top and wobbly mules. Standard Canadian party wear no matter what age you are.

Except it does of course.

Why does wearing clothes designed for a twenty year old not work when you're an ageing woman and work just fine when you're an ageing male?

Because the frigging women's clothes are so ludicrous in the first place.

Queenie was wearing her jeans and her green long-sleeved top that she's had for seven years and her black zip up biker jacket that she's had for six and her flat pumps. You could see nothing but my face and hands.

Less is more after twenty five, ladies, less is more.

So it struck me how great everyone looked in the photos of the wedding. How all the men and women looked so confident and attractive and comfortable in their skins and how all their smiles were so relaxed and happy. Not a stiletto mule in sight, so no grimaces of pain, see.

There's a lot to be said for an uncertain climate!! And a lifetime of partying in a field.

And then I immediately felt better about getting older. Because all the people I will be getting old with are so cool.

And as Himself said this morning as we peeled our eyes open to survey the events of the night before, we may be getting old but we are the coolest old farts in Halifax according to Alex and Tristan.

Hmmm, he didn't look too cool when he was getting thrown out of Cheers pub at one am this morning.

His crime?

He asked where the bathroom was.

Apparently, if you don't know where the bathroom is then you shouldn't be there in the first place. They are lucky I wasn't with him when it happened. Although, I got thrown out of there once before for refusing to let them put my ID card in a scanning device unless they told me where the data went.

The bouncers of course don't have a clue where the data goes, or why data going somewhere would be a bad idea in a country that pretends to be free, so they barred me for life for having a bad attitude.

Anyways, Himself is barred now as well for wanting to have a pee in the bathroom. The official reason is that he was intoxicated.

Ehm, yes.. we paid six dollars to get in to a place that serves alcohol, and patiently allowed our bags and persons to be searched by a gimp, and then paid over-priced prices for drinks so yes... he was slightly intoxicated.

We weren't off our heads on drugs like everyone else in the place appeared to be but.

Anyways, we headed down to Gingers with Hotspurr to have a drink in a bar that 'spects you to get liquered up'....

... yes dear...

As we were leaving, Tristan and Alex came running out. Well, Tristan was trying to stand up and run at the same time. They were outraged at the treatment Himself had endured, so Himself suggested they all go back in and take on the bouncers. He's such a provocateur sometimes.

They were horrified!!

Young fellas... they had spent the entire evening telling me about this guy and that guy they were going to smash his head in yadda yadda. But a trio of bouncers with scanning devices? Nosireebob.

So Himself pretended to leave in a huff.

We were relieved really. Gingers is so much more enjoyable than a heaving throb of twenty something pheromes. Even if it doesn't have a seventies dinosaur guitar band doing Duran Duran covers in the back bar.

Hungry like the wolf.... time for breakfast... we are supposed to be having a barbeque today, but Mr. Sun has not appeared yet.

The rabbit got round to it eventually

So he did answer me eventually.

Q Hi Pat, Great to talk to you from Nova Scotia, where I'm following the election closely. Can you respond to the ongoing Fianna Fail threats that a Fine Gael - Labour coalition will undermine the stability of the social partnership infrastructure? Thanks

A Labour is fully committed to working and enhancing the social partnership model, just as I did in a previous existence. I believe there have been similar developments in Nova Scotia?

Ehm.... no, Nova Scotia has one of the worst union-employer relationships in the western world, but thanks for answering the question, Pat.

Don't sleep with a drip, have a beer with your neighbour instead

There are many things I love about Nova Scotia. One of them is the way neighbours interact in the summertime. Everyone just stays home and ignores each other in the winter of course.

If you find the right neighbourhood.

Which we have done now.

We are slap bang in the middle of mid-thirties, twenty-first century, work-life balance-oriented, professional/ trades suburbia heaven.

Think Slackers with gardens. Along the edge of a beautiful lake.

There are four apartments in the building. On the ground floor, James and Shelley from Cape Breton have been renting for a couple of years. They're going home for the summer, to run a famous pub in Mabou called The Red Shoe, which is owned by the Rankin Family. But they'll be back in the autumn, and for the summer they're subletting to Shane, who's also from CB and who is very nice. Albeit suffering from a broken heart at the moment.

Poor lamb needs a new girl. Never mind, I know lots of them.

Pat Rabbitte hasn't answered my question yet. I swear to God if that man ignores me yet again, this time on a live interactive internet Q&A, I will fly over there next week and vote for a Shinner.

I will.

Anyways, between James and Shelley and us are Chris and Matt. They share the apartment. Matt is older than the rest of us, but not any more mature, thank goodness. He has the loudest television in Christendom, but we can sleep through it mostly. He's an employer negotiator for the health service, so he loves to bait me. Chris manages the yacht club down the road, and is always out sailing. She's from New Brunswick, but she don't talk like she is...

How do I get someone to stop saying 'me and Shataya ain't got no money so we ain't going out tonight' and say 'Shataya and I don't have any money, so we're not going out tonight' without having to correct that person EVERYTIME they open their mouth?

Anyways, back to the neighbours.....

Above us are Lyse and Craig. They are house-hunting at the moment. :-( Lyse is an illustrator and works from home; Craig works for a car dealership. They are very involved in the Search and Rescue program here, so are constantly heading off into the wilderness to train or to find people. They have a big canoe which we all use on the lake.

Next door, Mike and Kate live with Conor (8) and Mica (5). Mike works with me too, so we hang out a lot. Mica and Conor get babysitted by Kitty a lot and they LOVE her because she lets them watch tv. Kitty and Mica go swimming in the lake a lot too.

Mike and Kate have two dogs, Molly and Minuit. Minuit is a black poodle rescue dog, who loves to bolt for freedom. Often when I am sitting on the doorstep having my coffee, I will see a flash of black curls streak by and have to give chase before he gets to the main road.

Molly is a much more sensible shepherd-lab cross. (I think, she has a shepherd's face anyway)

On the other side is the plumber and his girlfriend and his rental people, Mandy and her girlfriend. Who have an insane black lab who barks ALL THE TIME. But he's kinda sweet too.

The plumber's van has a logo: Don't sleep with a drip; call your plumber. It helps that he's very good-looking.

Nice sunny evenings are great. People tend to congregate in our garden because we have the most sunshine and chairs. We all have a couple of beers and sit around and shoot the shit with each other. Everyone just wanders in and out of each other's garden (apart from Mandy's as she has insane dog wired in securely).

It's so nice. I hated the high walls and 'let's pretend our neighbours are not there because then we'll have to talk to them and they might have more money/ less money than us' crap I had to put up with in Tenterfields and Addison Park.

Things I love-hate about Canada - part the third

Quality of life.

That's why we're all here. Apparently. Those of us that are left in Nova Scotia are here for the quality of life.

The Nova Scotia government PAYS for, using MY tax dollars, advertisments saying 'Come to Life'. Meaning, come to Nova Scotia for the quality of life.

We're so broke we can only afford three words. The other six are too expensive.

They show this ad, USING MY TAX DOLLARS, to ME, on my tv channel.

After I stopped shouting 'stop showing the fucking advert to me, I'm already here', I thought about it and now I have one question.

Define it.

They never do.

If they did, those of us that are left would leave on the next train.

If we could afford the prices.

Having said that, I am here, I am still here, and now that it's March and the winter is over, I do like the quality of life here.

There's no traffic.

There's hardly any yuppies and they all live in Bedford so I only have to see them when there's a Tory meeting I have to go to for work.

The pubs are nice.

The restaurants are great.

The scenery is awesome in a quiet way - I've burbled on about it enough not to have to describe it again.

The people are lovely, even if they are too polite and self-contained for my liking.

The food (in the summer) is fresh and organic and reasonable.

The book shops are pretty cool.

The conversation is pretty intellectual.

BUT.....

and this is a big but....

most people who live here can't afford any of those things.

So,

COME TO LIFE.

If you are a reasonably well off and healthy just pre-retiree.

Nova Scotia is the Florida of the North.

Get used to it boys and girls.

Either market yourself as such, or stop putting that stupid ad out.

Things I love-hate about Canada - part the second

Politeness.

As most of you will know, Canadians have the reputation for being the politest people on earth.

Canadians talk about this a lot, they are quite proud of this tag. Nova Scotians add to it their tag of 'friendliest people in the world'.

Coming from the land of a hundred thousand welcomes I know what a ball of smoke the concept of friendliness can be, so I'm not even going there today.

The question about Canadian, or Nova Scotian in particular, politeness is not whether this is true or not, but why it exists in the first place.

So I went rooting around Wikipedia for some answers. And lo and behold, there's a theory about politeness. Why am I not surprised? There's a theory about everything, isn't there?

Politeness Theory

Politeness consists of attempting to save face for another. Simply put, model persons want to maintain others’ face, but nevertheless are often forced to commit face threatening acts. Thus, politeness strategies are developed in order to formulate message in order to save the hearer’s face when face threatening acts are inevitable or desired. This means that the speaker avoids embarrassing or making the listener feel uncomfortable.

So, politeness is a construct designed to get other people to acquiesce to your needs without feeling that they have lost face.

And here was me thinking that politeness was 'a good thing to do'.

Apparently, the majority of Canadians believe the same, telling pollsters recently that they were polite because that was how they were reared. That would explain a lot. In Nova Scotia politeness is often given as a necessity rather than a gift. I am of the opinion that if you don't feel like being polite then you should be grumpy. Therefore, I HATE IT when people are polite to me because they have to be and then glower at me because of it. Here in Nova Scotia, mostly in work, I often come across politeness which barely conceals disdain, contempt, aggression, rage, passive acceptance of being trampled underfoot, or just plain dislike.

I'm still not done with feeling crap when it happens.

I often think it is me. My politeness techniques are different to theirs and the difference grates on them, or so I rationalise it to myself. I get archly teasing about my 'Irish temper' and my 'Irish directness' (in the Nova Scotian 'I am polite but you are pissing me off so much I am grinding my teeth, so I am going to put you down so I can feel better about the whole thing' manner which they have nailed perfectly in this province).

But if politeness is a construct designed to get other people to acquiesce to your demands, then that's a whole different kettle of fish, isn't it?

Back to Wiki:

There are four main types of politeness strategies: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-the-record or indirect strategy.

First, bald on record strategies do not attempt to minimize the threat to the hearer’s face. This strategy is most often utilized by speakers who closely know their audience. With the bald on record strategies there is a direct possibility that the audience will be shocked or embarrassed by the strategy. For example, a bald on record strategy might be to tell your sister to “do the dishes. It’s your turn.”

This would be my normal way of operating in the world. I assume everyone I meet is a friend I don't know yet, so I assume that if I don't closely know them that I soon will, so I go for them baldheaded.

This tends to terrify the shit out of your average Nova Scotian. Those people who are not terrified become my friends. Easy peasy.

The second strategy is positive politeness and this strategy attempts to minimize the threat to the hearers face. This strategy is most commonly used in situations where the audience knows each other fairly well. Quite often hedging and attempts to avoid conflict are used. For example, a positive politeness strategy might be the request “I know that you’ve been really busy lately, but could you do the dishes?”

Normally, if someone has been really busy lately, I will do the dishes for them. So I don't tend to use this one too much. Consequently, I am really bad at it, and even if I do use it, I come across as being sarcastic and so it generally backfires.

The third strategy is negative politeness which presumes that the speaker will be imposing on the listener. The potential for awkwardness or embarrassment is greater than in bald on record strategies and positive politeness strategies. Negative face is the desire to remain autonomous. Thus, a request without consideration of the listener’s negative face might be uncomfortable: “I need $5” is awkward if five dollars is outside the recipient to the question’s financial capabilities. But if the speaker, knowing that the listener wants to maintain their autonomy, adds an out for the listener like “I know you’ve been kinda strapped for cash, but could I borrow $5?”, the listener is more likely to give them that money because the request showed a respect for their ability to maintain autonomy.

I tend not to borrow money from friends unless I absolutely have to, it being the root of some evil. Having said that, when I am asking for something that will involve a Canadian losing face, I tend to forget (for that read 'don't bother') to add the required add on.

This is where I hit the wall in Canada. In Ireland if you do this, the person will either say no, or show through a facial expression that they really don't want to do it. At which point you back off and say 'don't worry about it'. At which point the Irish person would either not worry about it, or spend twenty minutes telling you it was NO PROBLEM while you said, NO NO, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, and face is saved by having a row over who was prepared to be put out the most.

In Canada they don't do this. They just stare at you with an expression of panic. The more insecure ones flap their hands around a lot. I am always at a loss for words at this stage and this kind of encounter drives me crazy.

It doesn't help that I still don't really know what is an acceptable favour to ask a Nova Scotian. Not very much of a favour or a HUMUNGOUS one I think. In between ones leave them flailing.

The final politeness strategy outlined by Brown and Levinson is the indirect strategy. This strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to being imposing. For example, a speaker using the indirect strategy might merely say “wow, it’s getting cold in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to do so.

This of course is what girlfriends do to their boyfriends. To no effect. I did it this morning actually. Woke Himself up and said 'I'd love some coffee'. To which he said 'mrufufrahaslummmnn' and went back to sleep.

Bastard. Had to get up and make my own coffee.

Anyways, politeness, the ultimate fitting in to a new place test.

I'm probably scoring a C minus at the moment.

Why there is a worker shortage in Nova Scotia

I am tired listening to employers whinge about how they can't get workers. I really am.
Serious rant alert boys and girls...

There is a growing workers shortage in the province of Nova Scotia. In order to solve this problem we must admit to ourselves exactly why there is a growing shortage.

There is a shortage primarily because there aren't enough people to work in the Halifax Regional Municipality, where most of the jobs are. You might think this is a no-brainer, but in Poland for example, they have an 18% unemployment rate and a shortage of workers. So it is important to make this distinction. Demographic shifts, an ageing workforce, a baby boomer generation who have good pensions and can retire early, and a massive drop in births are the big drivers of this.

I say primarily because there are two other reasons why there are worker shortages.

In some parts of Nova Scotia (Cape Breton, South West Nova) there are high-ish levels of unemployment side by side with worker shortages. In this situation, the government's labour market policy has failed to shift workers from a declining sector (usually primary production or traditional manufacturing) into a developing sector (usually business services or health services). Alternatively, labour market policies have failed because they didn't make it easy for unemployed people to enter the workforce, take up a trade, for example, or to learn IT skills when it became clear that there would be a shortage of these workers.

In some sectors of Nova Scotia (mostly health) there are shortages because there is no one with the available specialist skills and it takes a lot of time and money to create these workers. Tomes have been written about the shortage of health workers in the developed world and there is no consensus apart from the fact that you get what you pay for.

Basically, it is not just demographics. A lot of this is the government's fault. They should have prepared for this.

Now that it's happening, the first thing we need to do is find out what shortages are there exactly, in what sectors, how many and for how long (if there will be too many nurses in three years, then there's no need to panic is there)?

Do what the Paddies did. Set up an Expert Group on Future Skill Needs. Get business, labour, post-secondary and labour market people involved. Make them responsible for their own recommendations. Do separate reports on key sectors - healthcare, trades, ICT transport.

Identify the shortages, identify the reasons for the shortages, identify the ways in which we can eliminate those blockages, identify the future workers, identify how we will train them and when they will be ready. They can be immigrants, or unemployed people brought back to work, or Nova Scotians lured home, or young people coming up, or women, or Mi'k Maq or African Nova Scotians who have been ignored until now or whoever.

Leave no stone unturned.

The next thing we need to understand is why people are leaving. So we can staunch the bleed. All the people I know who left for Alberta did so because they were tired of scratching a living on Nova Scotian wages, paying Nova Scotian taxes and paying off huge Nova Scotian student loans. They would rather live here (where their wives, children, families are) but they can't afford to.

Rant alert

The middle class in this province has its head in the sand about poverty. If you make $60k here and you're in a dual income household you have a pretty good standard of living - two cars, cottage, meals out, bottles of wine, etc with few of the strains of big city life. Why is that? This nice lifestyle is on the back of people who get paid crappy wages to deliver services to you. That's why they're so cheap. This has not sunk in with most people. Europeans take it for granted that in order to have social stability and low levels of poverty, you must have good service wages and a high cost of living.

Extreme rant alert

Here, poverty is an opportunity to show how generous you are. I have never, ever, ever in my life encountered a place where you have to buy a lorry-load of tinned food at the start of the Christmas party scene and pop one or two Campbell's Soup cans into your velvet purse every time you go out. Why? Every social occasion in Nova Scotia is used to collect food for the Food Bank.

I'd rather pay more tax, really I would.

I feel like Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist. It's off to the poor house with you me lad!!

- Pharmacy assistant - $8 an hour x 40 = $320 per week
- Call centre person - $11 an hour x 40 = $440 per week
- Labourer - $10 an hour x 60 = $600 per week
- Truck driver - $15 an hour x 90 = $1,350 per week

Crappy work environment examples:

- A friend recently told me that she earns $10k less in Alberta than she did in Nova Scotia and she still comes out $5 richer on a pay packet.

- Overtime starts in this province after 48 hours. It's worse in the construction sector.

- OHS standards in the construction sector are the worst in Canada. More people die at work here than anywhere else.

- They've just started discussing whether to have legislated lunch breaks here. I kid you not. Even the queen of white collar herself - i.e. moi - rarely gets one.

Enough said.

Okay, back to demographics - a key issue, but one that occurs in other provinces and in other countries. They solve that with immigration. Atlantic Canada's immigration policies have failed for a number of years and very little has been done to redress that. People talk about the need for more immigration. This is true, and we need to develop innovative immigration policies but we also need to look at why there are so few immigrants, apart from the fact that we are not made feel very welcome in AC.

Let's see:

- It's really difficult to get a well-paid job here if you are a graduate.

- Most immigrants to Canada are graduates.

- Immigrants are not prepared to work for $7 - 15 an hour while paying off heavy student debt loads any more than Nova Scotians are.

The business community, having lost the opportunity to lord it over average joe Nova Scotians with crappy jobs, terrible labour standards and mediaeval human resource practices, are now grasping at immigration as a straw.

They have missed the point completely.

Instead of asking themselves - why are all our former workers sitting homesick in Fort McMurray (or Fort McMoney as it's called now), working long hours in terrible weather in a polluted atmosphere, paying exorbitant rents for crappy trailers, when they could be home with their families - they are now thinking, ahaa, we'll get immigrants to come over and fill these spots. Sure they'll be delighted to be let into this great friendly little province.

- Immigrants are not stupid.

They will wonder where all the young people are. And then they will find out and why and move to join them. Because you don't move yourself and your family halfway across the world for $10 an hour.

Yes, in the long term we need better immigration levels, but it's going to take years to convince people to come and settle here, particularly as many young people are leaving. What we need is flexible, innovative migrant worker policies for key sectors. Both skilled and unskilled.

Lots of people would come to work here for a year if it were possible. Then they might possibly like the place and ask to stay for longer. Of course, you would have to attract these people with good wages and resettlement packages and have a govt unit that works with employers to ensure they can drive, get car insurance or health insurance, a credit card, a health card, etc - all the things that are an incredible hassle to organise if you are a migrant worker at the moment.

Extremely extreme rant alert

The government spends all its time advertising Nova Scotia as a place to live to the people who already live here. See www.novascotialife.com for an hilarious look at how important Nova Scotian media analysts think Nova Scotia is.

They should maybe think about advertising it to people who think Halifax is a place in England with a crappy football team and don't realise that it's actually the centre of the universe and the best little city in the world etc. Most people in the world don't know where Halifax is.

I know that's a terribly shocking thing to say but I know my geography and this time two years ago I didn't know where Halifax was. Never mind Pictou County.

So I should wrap up this rant. What I'm trying to say is that there is a reason why this is happening, that is cultural, that is much deeper than ageing population or not enough immigrants. This cultural identity, which is 'I'm alright Jack, so it must be your fault if you're not getting on' fits quite nicely with right wing ideology. It is rampant in Nova Scotia. People have had enough and are leaving in droves. Immigrants are not settling here because it is anathema to them.

Yeah, immigration, training, improved access to education and interesting labour market interventions are exactly how we should solve this problem. They should have a conversation about why they're in this mess sometime too.

We could have a potluck. Talk it over. Don't forget to bring a can for the food bank with you though, or we'll think less of you!!

Whereupon the narrator seems to have Aquaired quite a bit of stuff

Queenie is alone tonight. With no pressing tasks to fill the silence. For the first time in seven weeks.

No visitors from anywhere.

No packing to do.

No furniture to find.

Apart from a table and chairs.

But they’ll happen someday.

Of that I have no doubt.

Himself and Tina and Martin, being from a place where possessions are recycled and handed around to those who need them and not thrown away until actually broken, went on Mission “Furnish Queenie’s House” last night, after we spotted a lovely, original 1960s wall unit on our way home, just sitting on the kerb waiting for the bin men.

It being Sunday night. Which is garbage night in the prosperous South end of Halifax.

Yes, I know this is being posted on Tuesday. Home internet access will be resumed on Wednesday, after which time blogposts will be timely again.

As quick as anything the unit, which needs a little bit of work but not much, was in the back of the van, being hauled round the rotary at breakneck speed and up the hill to the apartment, where it was dropped off with Queenie, who had to cook the dinner while the intrepid visitors went off scouring the south end for more finds.

Just as I was draining the pasta to go with the Bolognese sauce I’d slaved over for an hour, the van pulled up – great timing I thought – and was emptied, before speeding off again.

What????

I went downstairs to investigate. Martin was sitting guard over a pile of stuff that included:

A sun lounger
A sun parasol
Two garden chairs
Two beach chairs
Two red fold up chairs, one plastic, one leather
A stereo unit thingummy on wheels which fits underneath the fish tank perfectly and which means I no longer have a problem changing the water, having only to wheel the tank into the kitchen and park it alongside the sink
A brand new pull-along garden hose thingummy, replete with brand new hose
Three sets of shelves
A little wire vegetable rack on wheels, which contained a brand new apron, two oven gloves, two pot stands, a chopping board, and a packet of bag clips (I swear)
An interesting looking beige footstool with claw legs, which is exactly the right height for resting your legs on, upon which my legs are resting while I type
Two tall uplighters, neither of which appear to work unfortunately
A big bright blue plastic thingummy, the use for which Queenie still cannot ascertain, despite having stared at it for a long time
A desk in perfect condition
A wooden six-drawer bureau that will need to be sanded and stained to put in the spare room (along with the futon and the seafaring chest and the mirror) for all the visitors that will be coming to visit hopefully
A Wilson golf bag (minus the strap which is presumably why it was on the kerb)

Why a golf bag?

Martin and I sat and looked at the pile of stuff, not having yet realised that we had locked ourselves out of the apartment, and reckoned it must be an Aquarian thing, this passion for other people’s rubbish.

Himself and Tina both being Aquarians, d’ya see.

Having said that, once I get the uplighters, the golf bag and the big blue thingummy back into the garbage collection on Wednesday night it will have been a good haul.

And when you add that haul to what Himself had already Aquaired for us - a sofa and chair, a rocking chair, a huge chest of drawers for our room, an end table and a futon mattress – as well as what I have purchased – the biggest bed in the world, three seafaring trunks we got for fifty bucks the lot at a yard sale, and the makings of a pretty well-stocked kitchen and linen cupboard, and then add allathat as Gypsy used to say when she was little, to the free tv and microwave I got from Missy and Shazz, and my amazing basket of stuff which Jersey Girl and her BH gave us when they were here, which fuelled my ongoing amazement at the generosity of people - Queenie is back in the possessions game.

Sigh…

And to think I arrived a little over a year ago with two suitcases and a computer bag.

The one thing keeping me sane throughout all of this is the fact that the whole lot cost just over $1,000, of which $600 was for the King Size super deluxe Sears-O-Pedic bed with twin boxspring and soft-top mattress.

FOKO/ Ikea/ European Living/ Habitat can go and stick their over-priced Burmese teak futon with Egyptian cotton weave mattress thingummies up their own arse, boys and girls.

Also, note to self, Accent Monkey and anyone else who has ever bought furniture in Ireland – when the furniture people in Canada say they’ll deliver your bed between 12 and 5 on Saturday, which is two days after you buy the furniture, they apologise for the delay in delivery, turn up on time on the day and don’t moan about the stairs. Even if you only bought the furniture because it was being practically given away in the discount depot at the back of the shop.

I have learned two things this week.

The Sears Discount Depot in Halifax is the best shop in the world bar none.

One man’s rubbish is an Aquarian’s idea of a good time.

Anyways, so Martin and I started hauling the loot upstairs, only to realise that we had locked ourselves out of the apartment. Martin got quite anxious. But those of you who know me know that I tend to lock myself out of my apartment quite a bit. So it only took a minute to break in because I had already cased the joint because I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to break in. But we got in before the Aquarians got back, more importantly. And then we all sat around and ate pasta and drank Hemp beer in honour of the occasion and agreed where the new furniture should go.

So here I am, fully furnished, backside ensconsced in Himself’s mother’s former suite, legs resting on the new footstool, looking at the fish swirling around the tank which is resting on its mobile stand.

I feel like Del-boy Trotter. Before he hit the jackpot.

Although the apartment is a little nicer than his.

It’s the second floor of a three storey house.

The floors are all wooden, as they always are here in Nova Scotia. I think it’s real wood though, not laminate.

All the walls are a very boring shade of yellow but Himself is going to paint it when he gets a chance. There are many winter projects in this apartment, sanding and painting and staining, which will be good for both of us as we get a bit restless when the long evenings draw in and there’s nothing to do. Canadian television being awful.

The guy is coming on Wednesday to hook up the internet/phone/cable package. I ordered it today. He’s coming AFTER I GET HOME FROM WORK, so I don’t have to take a half day. He’d have come on Saturday, like the Sears guy, but that didn’t suit me.

Of course it’s probably like this at home now. So I should stop gloating. I just have such dreadful memories of ‘getting things done’ in Dublin. It always involved having to take a day off work and then spend an hour on the phone giving directions to someone who grew up in Finglas which was just down the road, or having to listen to some boring Dubliner millionaire carpet layer bang on and on and on about how he had to live in Carlow because it was so expensive living on the Northside now (because all us culchies were buying up property I supposed, I never used to take the bait) and how the wife didn’t really like it because she always had to drive home from the golf club instead of getting a taxi, but he needed to have a few scoops after all the commuting so he wasn’t going to go halves now ya know ...

The front door is up a narrow set of stairs. When you enter the apartment, the room that will be a study/dining room is on your immediate left. The living room and kitchen are both off of this space. The kitchen has tall white cupboards and a “Canadian Auto Workers circa mid-eighties productivity go slow” fashioned stove and fridge. Think Impact members making laptops – that’ll give you some sense of what level of innovation I mean.

The kitchen window looks out onto the street, which is residential and tree-lined. The living room looks out over the garden, which is mostly just grass, through the trees to the lake. The winter view will be nice I think.

Off the right-hand side of the hall, there is a large master bedroom, the bathroom, which is small and needs some work, and the spare room. Of which I am inordinately proud.

Because I know in my heart of hearts that if I had been able to afford to buy a nice apartment with a dining space and a spare room, instead of a rabbit hutch, I would probably never have left Ireland.

That’s the thing about Queenie: I never really wanted much. Just a nice place to live that I could afford, and a meaningful job with some nice people (part of which I had), and not too many traffic jams, so I could get to the countryside at the weekend. And maybe a nice person to share it all with (although I wasn’t allowed to admit that of course because that would have meant I wasn’t ecstatic about my life, which appeared to be verboten in Tigerland, although hopefully that’s not the case anymore)

But for some strange reason that I will NEVER fathom, that was not possible in the land of possibilities.

And now the fuckers have put my (Irish) mortgage up by $200 a month. Just to remind me of how insane it all is.

And Eddie Hobbs says I should put my SSIA money, what I’m counting the days down to getting just to see the number and translate it into Bahts or whatever, Eddie Hobbs (who the hell went postal in RTE and put the Del-Boy of the NGO sector in charge of the common man’s finances, although I suppose it’s better than that Trot they used to have – what was his name?) Eddie Hobbs told my mother that I should put my lovely SSIA money, which is for following my dream, that I should put the money into the gaping, yawning, greedy, panic-inducing chasm in my potential happiness and Sears-O-Pedic king sized comfy sleep at night that is my rabbit hutch of an Irish property investment.

My ass I will. The difference it would make? Fuck all, boys and girls.

Here, if whisked across the sea by the magic interbank transfer device (which I of course know how to operate, having had to explain it to the lady in the bank some months ago, along with the concept of overseas) and translated from strong EUROs into some of their Canadian dollars, I could use it to buy four acres of land by the sea, and still have enough left to go to Cuba for six months.

Or build the off-grid straw bale cottage with the organic toilet that’ll be flushed by the solar panels we’ll find on the kerb some night no doubt on the land, and just go to Cuba for two weeks.

Living the dream, eh?

I guess the trick is to try to live one. Not three or four.

But those of you who are getting yourselves sorted already know that, don’t you.

It’s difficult though, isn’t it? Managing expectations.

Why is it that we spend each of our decades extricating ourselves from the crap into which we got ourselves in the previous one?

By the way, when I was sitting on the doorstep thinking about what I was going to say this evening, the title of this blog was to be ‘Whereupon our hero emerges from the wilderness’.

And it was to be a contemplative piece on the concept of heroes. More particularly, an update on the hero for whom this blog was originally established. I mean one Percy, or Sir Perceval as he’s often known: Knight, Dragonslayer, Poet. Who has disappeared off the face of the earth for quite a while now.

But I got talking about myself. as usual.

Tomorrow.

I promise.

Domestic Bliss on Beaufort

Friday evening. I am sitting on the smallest deck in the world as usual. We have had a barbeque. Himself cooked steaks and baked sweet potatoes. I did the fresh corn, drizzled with oil and wrapped in tinfoil. The Queen Mother made a salad. The Queen Father was driven by Queenie to the Liquor Store and bought an eight pack of Keith’s (for the Queen Parents), an eight pack of Olands for Himself, and an eight pack of Schooner for me. He had also been to the nice wine shop in Bishop’s Landing and bought a couple of bottles of Knife and Fork, the great wine we found which comes in litre bottles with screw tops but which is very drinkable and a reasonable price.

Then we had mangoes and ice cream.

As you can see, everyone has found their role and is doing their bit to make it work. It’s all very domesticated. We had a nice meal and sat around talking about Belgium and Holland and the second World War and what the Canadian role was. And what they did in Bosnia. And Rwanda. We circled around Afghanistan a bit but didn’t go there tonight. It’s too depressing.

I find myself reading voraciously every time a Canadian is killed. Trying to remember their names. Trying to remember where they’re from and what their girlfriend or wife said at the memorial. A lot of it is to do with the fact that I can only remember one or two of the thousands of people who died in the Troubles. That has always bothered me.

Canada’s role in Afghanistan is troubling. For many Canadians too. You forget how much combat this country has seen. Most of it against the will of most ordinary Canadians.

However, it was too nice an evening to spoil it with war talk. We are all feeling very relaxed at the moment. For different reasons, I suppose. Himself and Queenie are thrilled because we’ve found somewhere to live. A really gorgeous two-bedroomed place with a kitchen that you could have a party in, a dining room and a living room, out on Herring Cove Road, which is a lovely part of the city. It has a really nice big garden, with a gate in the back fence that leads to a path through the woods, that ends at a sandy beach on a swimming lake. Steeped we are. We signed the lease today and take possession in mid-August.

I spent a lot of time this evening discussing the possibility of getting a kayak for the lake until Himself not unreasonably pointed out that we needed some furniture first.

Spoilsport.

I cannot believe that I am finally going to live in a wonderful, light-filled, large, two-bedroomed apartment in a house with just two other apartments, with parking and heating included, on the edge of a lake surrounded by a maple tree wood, for six hundred euros a month.

This is why I came to Canada.

You are all invited of course. The options are: come in the summer and swim in the lake, or come in the winter and skate on the lake, or come in the autumn and admire the trees. Or come in the spring, but I wouldn’t recommend that.

Queenie will be hosting skating parties. Imagine that! So long as she doesn’t have to skate.

We alternate eating in with going out with the Queen Parents and it is working well. The Queen Father is astounded at Queenie’s ability to cook. It just sort of happened this year once I had a bit of time and a nice kitchen. And we’ve been eating a lot of really wonderful in season Maritime food – squash and sweet potatoes and fresh corn and blueberries and freshly picked raspberries and lobster, and crab, and wonderful haddock fresh off the boat. So it is a pleasure to cook and to eat. And the kitchen is big enough for two women to work in without killing each other. And then it’s time to watch the CBC news and moan about how terrible it is compared to RTE (it’s not really – one of the things I love about the CBC is that they have the young funky presenters doing the main news, and the old arses are relegated to the second channel late news, in direct contrast to RTE).

I’ve been working three day weeks for the last little while, so I can spend some time with the folks. And Himself. He has a job now, hauling logs in Nova Scotia, but his hours are crazy and his schedule is not a five day week, so we can go eight or ten days without spending any quality time together, so I have been trying to make sure we have at least two days every ten where we get to converse enough that we can get down to the mundane. Which is of course extremely important for the smooth running of a relationship that has recently moved from being together to living together.

So far so good. Queenie has a bit of work to do on a couple of issues but is determined to try. So has Himself of course. But that’s up to him.

Work is finally calming down. That’s one of the reasons why I have not been blogging. Well, crazy work, followed by visitors, followed by domestic chores, followed by time with Himself, followed by sleep. Takes up pretty much all the time. Anyways, this is the first night for a while everyone has had enough of everyone else and is off doing their own thing.

The Queen Mother is cleaning up in my kitchen. She’s not been too bad actually, for a mother staying in her daughter’s house for the first time. The only hiatus was the evening I came home from work exhausted and she had gone to clean the green bin and realised there were maggots in it, which could turn into bluebottles, which therefore needed to be exterminated. She had soaked them in water and something or other, but still the hose needed to be found, and a scrubby thing, and then it needed to be washed out and rinsed and bleached and etc, and Queenie had to act like she knew/ cared about what she was doing when really she just wanted a gin and tonic and bed, but we got it done.

The Queen Father is reading The Colony of Unrequited Love and grumbling at the news. Himself is looking for cheap furniture in this week’s issue of Bargain Hunter. And Queenie is updating, because Luke is sick of checking in.

Consider yourself updated until tomorrow. There will be another post tomorrow.

Whereupon the narrator gets comfortable...

Rambling alert. It's late and I'm *tired*.

I think it’s a mafia society.

Canada I mean.

Real old style garotte from behind mafia culture.

I often wonder where their sense of this cultural history comes from.

Somewhere really vicious.

They talk very openly about things that nobody mentions in Ireland. Or London. Or Paris.

Wife-beating. And murder. And drug dealing.

And they fight. The young men do. They attack each other in the streets. Except I don’t know if that’s true, because I don’t know anyone who was attacked. In some sense there's nothing unusual about it, it goes on everywhere, but they don't do anything about it. No zero tolerance here. The cops just ignore it.

It’s amazing how we only start giving a shit when it affects us.

And there's a sense of 'good luck to you, dude' for those guys who shoot up half a town and two Mounties and then disappear into the woods for months.

Apart from the Mounties. Who get incredibly pissed off and ALWAYS get their man in the end.

Half-starved, frost-bitten, lost in the snow.

Corporals January, February and March.

But then they all have a nervous breakdown when someone in the armed forces gets killed.

I think it's about being happy that the people involved chose their own path.

And soldiers don't, do they?

But yeah, they happily engage with and talk about feuds all the time.

And they're very fond of their local headbangers.

In the Irish sense of the phrase.

And then, they've such an incredible sense of order in society they bring in a law that supports gay marriage. And common law relationships exist after one year. As opposed to NEVER in Ireland.

I don't know where the latent violence in Canada comes from. Nor the tribalism.
It doesn’t come from anywhere in particular, I think people brought it from where ever they came from.

I think that might be the problem here.

They don’t encourage the finding out of tribal cultural history easily here, because they don’t want to allow tribalism. Because Canada would disintegrate into a series of forest and urban fiefdoms.

Or revert to, I should say.

But it exists anyway.

That sense of affinity with others of your kind.

And it’s getting stronger.

Why are we all starting to mass into tribes again?

I was thinking the other day, the movement of people around the planet must be wrecking the dwarves’ heads.

"There's something up boys... the weather's changing up top. All that thunder and lightening," they must say to themselves. The gods stomping around.

Or maybe we sound like a flock of birds.

Swirling around their mountains like nasty seagulls do down on the waterfront when you’ve got an ice-cream.

What do I sound like to a sparrow?

Or a blade of grass?

I explain further on why I am talking about these profundities.

Dear Reader,

I have always wanted to start writing a book with those words.

I love those kinds of books.

Dear Reader means:

Sit down, girl.

Why?

I’m going to tell you a story.

Really?

Oh yes.

Then Dear Reader would perk right up and say:

Fantastic, let me get comfortable.

Time would pass.
Pasta is cooked.

Eventually Reader would resurface with a bag of stuff

…. Have I got everything?

Smokes.
Chocolate.
Bottle of wine.
Vibrator. Just in case.
And the dvd.
In case I need to see his face (insert actor of choice).

I’d sell fifty million copies if I could continue in the same chatty narrator vein through a rip-roaring twentyfirst century version of the nineteenth century chick lit sprawl.

I would.

Anyways, back to the sparrow…